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Top 100 Heavy Metal and glam rock acts from the MTV era - it's still real to me (2 Viewers)

but I think if Dave could have written a Black album or even RELOAD he would have done it
It occurred to me that I said RELOAD when I should have said LOAD, and I think I actually forgot there was a RELOAD and just got the name crossed up.  I am old.  

 
Megadeth's Peace Sells...and So Far, So Good...So What were two very fine albums in the grand scheme of things metal. Peace Sells has riff upon riff, as you point out. I'd say "Wake Up Dead" is my favorite song off of that album. So Far was actually a nod to punk in their thrash, right down to the cover of "Anarchy In The U.K.," a cover (one of a few) that I believe got me into the Pistols. I was into the Dead Kennedys before the Ramones and the Ramones before the Pistols.

The Pistols are something else to behold, and are someone to watch for when I do a punk one hundred on this very board someday soon. 

Shameless plug right there. 

 
Man, I'm listening to Peace Sells right now and it just riffs along and growls. Everything down to Mustaine is just growlin' growlin' growl. 

Now I'm on to "Bitter Peace" by Slayer and it is just sinister. The opening Sabbath-like riffs and then to blatant speed metal. Oh yeah. Gimme more. 

Bitter Peace

Can't stop the warring factions

 
I was listening to Holy Diver in the car and it occurred to me that I probably like Dio because he doesn't so much sing as ENUNCIATE like a veteran actor playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night.
You're gaddam right he does!  I love him even more now that I can think of it like this.

"Juuump, jjuuUUUUMP!  JUMP ON THE TIGAAAH!"

 

 
Soft stuff coming through, no smooth transition here

8. Def Leppard

They should really be #7, but #7 gets big points for helping bring up Skid Row and Cinderella.  We'll be keeping it relatively quick on those guys.

Def Leppard never helped anybody out other than letting their one armed drummer stay on board with his Batman contraption.

Should have been #9 really, for number of arms.

Their backstory isn't glamorous or particularly interesting.  A few English teenagers start a band, and they started to make it pretty quickly.  Rick Allen joined the band on his fifteenth birthday, and on his 16th birthday they were opening for AC/DC at the Hammersmith.  

They had hooks from the beginning.  
Ride Into The Sun
Rock Brigade

High N Dry, pure, and I love it
 Mirror, Mirror
 Another Hit and Run
 Bringin' On the Heartbreak

Pyromania, just as good
 Photograph
 Foolin'
 Too Late For Love 

I guess you just can't say enough about what John Mutt Lange was able to do with these kids.

Just under two years after that release, there's Rick Allen's infamous Corvette crash on the country road.  Kind enough to give their man some time, he figures it out, and a few years later they put out something that sounds completely different... takes a while to get everybody's attention but then absolutely explodes.

Women first single didn't super catch on
Animal set those critters free Def lepherds
Hysteria .. ok not bad we've sold a few now...
Pour Some Sugar On Me MTV loves a good concert footage video. This dumb ### track gets huge. Elliott claims the song was at least partially inspired by the Aerosmith and Run-DMC version of "Walk This Way", which made him realize the potential of the mixing of rap and rock. Great!  Strippers once again rejoice.  As do I.
Well in any case, it did the trick for those guys.

I had the 45 of Sugar.  I dug the B-side, Ring of Fire

They toured and toured, this In The Round thing was a big attraction for them.  Back to the studio, after a few years, but guitarist Steve Clark dies tragically after struggling with substance abuse.  They finish the record as a four piece, but it's pretty terrible, let's get real and 

Let's Get Rocked
 This is embarrassing

Vivian Campbell comes on board to fill the void - one tryout had been John Sykes -  and the lineup has been the same for 30 years.  So they must have beat the curse or whatever.  I haven't gotten much into anything else they've done in more recent times, but they keep it clean and can still pack an arena.  

Odd arms or even, I still love this band's early years, and fully enjoy Hysteria as well, played as some of it might be!

Tom Breihan's Number Ones on Love Bites

 
Oh. my. God. Oh. my. Gawd. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod. 

There's a band on the playlist not counted down yet, and they were rockaction's favorite band his later junior year and early senior years of high school. 

He was such a sweet kid. You couldn't bring him down. Ever. 

 
Man, I'm listening to Peace Sells right now and it just riffs along and growls. Everything down to Mustaine is just growlin' growlin' growl. 

Now I'm on to "Bitter Peace" by Slayer and it is just sinister. The opening Sabbath-like riffs and then to blatant speed metal. Oh yeah. Gimme more. 

Bitter Peace

Can't stop the warring factions
Diabolus gets a lot of hate but I think it's their second best album after Seasons. I like their chugging heavy riffage. 

 
10. Judas Priest 

And then, from 1977 to 1982 they'd release an album a year, breaking through to mainstream America despite being loud-as-#### leather daddies, thanks to something like this You've Got Another Thing Coming
Just catching up here…

Priest deserves this ranking, even if there are some clunkers sprinkled throughout their catalog. One thing that got me, though, is remembering the days where bands would release  an album per year. Yes, they only had 8 or 10 songs on them, but you didn’t have to wait 3 years for something new, and it’s totally unheard of these days.

Priest in a 5 year span:

80 British Steel - Breaking the Law, Metal Gods, Livin After Midnight 

‘81 Point of Entry - Headed out to the Highway, Desert Plains

’82 Screaming for Vengeance - Hellion, Electric Eye, Screaming for Vengeance, You’ve Got Another Thing Comin

’84 Defenders of the Faith (personal favorite)- Freewheel Burning, Jawbreaker, The Sentinel, Eat Me Alive, Some Heads are Gonna Roll

5 years worth of Priest is better than most bands careers. 

 
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I like their chugging heavy riffage
Same here, actually. I like when Rubin slowed them down, which started with South Of Heaven. That's when I got into them and some of their earlier fans had started complaining about it being slower. I'm not sure if he produced Diabolus, but he's generally credited with focusing more on their riffs than their speed. 

 
Just catching up here…

Priest deserves this ranking, even if there are some clunkers sprinkled throughout their catalog. One thing that got me, though, is remembering the days where bands would release  an album per year. Yes, they only had 8 or 10 songs on them, but you didn’t have to wait 3 years for something new, and it’s totally unheard of these days.

Priest in a 5 year span:

80 British Steel - Breaking the Law, Metal Gods, Livin After Midnight 

‘81 Point of Entry - Headed out to the Highway, Desert Plains

’82 Screaming for Vengeance - Hellion, Electric Eye, Screaming for Vengeance, You’ve Got Another Thing Comin

’84 Defenders of the Faith (personal favorite)- Freewheel Burning, Jawbreaker, The Sentinel, Eat Me Alive, Some Heads are Gonna Roll

4 years worth of Priest is better than most bands careers. 
Loved Priest back in the day.  I played Defenders and Screaming a ton.  I still enjoy some Priest but not as much as many other bands on this list.   

 
Oh. my. God. Oh. my. Gawd. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod. 

There's a band on the playlist not counted down yet, and they were rockaction's favorite band his later junior year and early senior years of high school. 

He was such a sweet kid. You couldn't bring him down. Ever. 
Well you know if you want to talk about it I'll be here, you know
And you'll probably feel a lot better if you talk about it, so why don't you talk about it

 
9. Megadeth

Rust In Peace, has it all
Holy Wars
Hangar 18
Tornado of Souls
On any given day you can ask me what my top 5 albums are of all time, and I’d probably give you a different ranking than the day before, but the albums are usually the same. Rust in Peace is one of those albums.  Amazing from start to finish. 
Mustaine put out a book on the making of this album, starting from finishing the tour prior to enter rehab, through the writing and finishing this record. Well worth the read if anyone is interested, tons of great interviews from different points of view. Rust in Peace: The Inside Story of the Megadeth Masterpiece

 
Diabolus gets a lot of hate but I think it's their second best album after Seasons. I like their chugging heavy riffage. 
I’m not big into thrash metal but have always loved Slayer.  Reign in Blood was a game changer.  It seemed to ignite thrash when it was released.   

I still play Slayer and Megadeth a lot on workout days.   It is perfect workout music.   If it doesn’t get you going in the gym, you should just go back to bed.  I have always respected Mustaine for sticking to his sound and style.   I’m glad things didn’t work out for Metallica and Mustaine.   We did get two great bands and dozens and dozens of killer tunes.  

 
One more of those, and only kind of

BUT FIRST

11. Slayer

This is challenging music for most people, and that includes me.  But to take a burgeoning form to its extreme (not that Extreme), but still not go over the top, that's what Slayer did and and they are the best at what they did.

Early on of course, not a whole lot separated them from what other young bands in the heavy thrash scene were doing, but as the more talented groups started softening their sound in search of hooks - and willing, paying ears - Slayer forged ahead and made some intensely heavy and layered ####.

Their uncompromising aggression would prove to bear the torch for blar blar blar blargggghhhhhHHHHH!!!!

Black Magic

Angel of Death
Postmortem/Raining Blood

South of Heaven

Tom Breihan's Number Ones on Baby Come Back
 


Rest in Power Jeff Today is his birthday 

 
Soft stuff coming through, no smooth transition here

8. Def Leppard

They should really be #7, but #7 gets big points for helping bring up Skid Row and Cinderella.  We'll be keeping it relatively quick on those guys.

Def Leppard never helped anybody out other than letting their one armed drummer stay on board with his Batman contraption.

Should have been #9 really, for number of arms.

Their backstory isn't glamorous or particularly interesting.  A few English teenagers start a band, and they started to make it pretty quickly.  Rick Allen joined the band on his fifteenth birthday, and on his 16th birthday they were opening for AC/DC at the Hammersmith.  

They had hooks from the beginning.  
Ride Into The Sun
Rock Brigade

High N Dry, pure, and I love it
 Mirror, Mirror
 Another Hit and Run
 Bringin' On the Heartbreak

Pyromania, just as good
 Photograph
 Foolin'
 Too Late For Love 

I guess you just can't say enough about what John Mutt Lange was able to do with these kids.

Just under two years after that release, there's Rick Allen's infamous Corvette crash on the country road.  Kind enough to give their man some time, he figures it out, and a few years later they put out something that sounds completely different... takes a while to get everybody's attention but then absolutely explodes.

Women first single didn't super catch on
Animal set those critters free Def lepherds
Hysteria .. ok not bad we've sold a few now...
Pour Some Sugar On Me MTV loves a good concert footage video. This dumb ### track gets huge. Elliott claims the song was at least partially inspired by the Aerosmith and Run-DMC version of "Walk This Way", which made him realize the potential of the mixing of rap and rock. Great!  Strippers once again rejoice.  As do I.
Well in any case, it did the trick for those guys.

I had the 45 of Sugar.  I dug the B-side, Ring of Fire

They toured and toured, this In The Round thing was a big attraction for them.  Back to the studio, after a few years, but guitarist Steve Clark dies tragically after struggling with substance abuse.  They finish the record as a four piece, but it's pretty terrible, let's get real and 

Let's Get Rocked
 This is embarrassing

Vivian Campbell comes on board to fill the void - one tryout had been John Sykes -  and the lineup has been the same for 30 years.  So they must have beat the curse or whatever.  I haven't gotten much into anything else they've done in more recent times, but they keep it clean and can still pack an arena.  

Odd arms or even, I still love this band's early years, and fully enjoy Hysteria as well, played as some of it might be!

Tom Breihan's Number Ones on Love Bites


Hysteria was one of the first albums I ever got. My cousin for my birthday took me to see Def Leppard on the anniversary tour of this album in 2017. Def Leppard is one of my go to bands still. 

 
Oh. my. God. Oh. my. Gawd. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod. 

There's a band on the playlist not counted down yet, and they were rockaction's favorite band his later junior year and early senior years of high school. 

He was such a sweet kid. You couldn't bring him down. Ever. 
Did he just want a Pepsi? 

 
Soft stuff coming through, no smooth transition here

8. Def Leppard

They had hooks from the beginning.  
Ride Into The Sun
Rock Brigade

High N Dry, pure, and I love it
 Mirror, Mirror
 Another Hit and Run
 Bringin' On the Heartbreak

Pyromania, just as good
 Photograph
 Foolin'
 Too Late For Love 
The first 3 albums are rock classics imo. Hysteria was huge, but I haven’t listened to it in years, whereas I regularly go back to the first three albums.

Despite that, however, Hysteria holds a place in my heart. My 16th Birthday- saw Def Leppard in the round on the Hysteria tour, Queensryche opening. Philadelphia Spectrum. (And mom made me go to school the next morning even though she knew I was nursing a massive hangover)

 
Whitesnake were monsters......David Coverdale IMO is one of the top 3 best voices of 80’s power rock. The guy has serious pipes and such a tone.....lord. What a lead singer. 

Funny one their greatest songs would come in 2011 with the title track called:

Forevermore

https://youtu.be/t1_KJxqAhn4

This is the mother of all Power Ballads people. Give it a listen....and crank this ##### to 11

So freaking awesome.

Doug Aldrich and Reb Beech on the guitars......man this is a magical song and so magnanimous!!!
Totally agree on Coverdale as a singer. One of the few singers you (I) could understand when speaking to an audience.

Entered college fall of 85 and befriended guitarist into 70s rock & turned me onto Whitesnake. Thanks to him I ‘discovered’ Trouble, Lovehunter, Come an Get It etc. This was different than the MTV rock I was listening to at the time. Coverdale’s lyrics, like on Would I Lie To You, were just bluesy, down & dirty (will never forget playing record at home & DC sings "just to get in your pants" and Mom says, "what are you listening to?")

To this day Slide It In is a top 5 ‘Desert Island Album’ for me. (I’ve already mentioned my man-crush on Sykes.)

And although only 3-4 albums in the 2000s I’ve liked a lot it thanks to Aldrich, Beach & Hoekstra. Ironically, reconnected with that college friend a few years ago & he felt Whitesnake had gotten too heavy!

 
Love me some Ratt...unlike a lot of these band, I celebrate the Ratt catalogue to this day.  :headbang:

Ratt, Cinderella and Tesla probably my threplae favorites ranked thus far.
I still listen to a lot of Ratt too.  Some of these hair bands have aged better than others for me and there may not be a valid reason.  Ratt still sounds good to me and Dimartini has a lot to do with that.  I think.  There were a lot of great guitar players in the 80s but Dimartini was great and had a unique style and tone.   The tone has to be one of my favorites.   

 
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But the sophomore album comes out a couple years later, and against all odds, it kicks ### too!

Monkey Business
Slave to the Grind
When bands like Nelson were being rolled out at beginning of 90s, I LOVED Skid Row hitting with ‘Slave’. Crushed you with an opening of Monkey Business, Slave to the Grind and The Threat. Bach’s vocals are tremendous, love the anger, but like someone else mentioned, I’ve not tracked with Bach or Skid Row since the split.

 
My first exposure to Show No Mercy and the album rockaction oh so subtly hints at was from the same guy. It was a stoner house and they just happened to have the first VHS player in the neighborhood so it was a great hangout to get high, blast tunes and watch horror movies. They weren't my usual crowd, just a place I'd wind up on occasion. I remember those two albums specifically and for a guy who just knew from Sabbath, Zeppelin, AC/DC, Rush, Priest, etc, it almost felt like something I shouldn't be listening to. No one else I knew outside of that group had heard of either of them so it was as underground as anything I've ever experienced. It felt like a one-off, almost novelty and not something I really expected to become what it became. It took me another year or two fully embrace it but I'll never forget that first exposure. It lead me to a constant search for new bands just as thrash started to come into its own. A great, great time heading into the pinnacle year of 1986.

 
rockaction said:
Same here, actually. I like when Rubin slowed them down, which started with South Of Heaven. That's when I got into them and some of their earlier fans had started complaining about it being slower. I'm not sure if he produced Diabolus, but he's generally credited with focusing more on their riffs than their speed. 
Loved what they did with South of Heaven and it was exactly what they needed at the time.

 
Pyromania was the first LP I ever owned.  Chose it as a prize for some magazine selling thing we did in grade school.  

That is all.

 
Some TripItUp Def Leppard tidbits 

I have a vintage Def Leppard pyromania shirt that I’m told is worth quite a bit 

seen them live three times, and they execute damn near flawlessly every time 

 
Like the Stones, Def Leppard’s heyday seems sooooo long ago. Musically, one of the mosT disappointing careers of stuff I like.  Unfortunately their fan base is 50-YO cougars now.

 
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Pyromania is a perfect album. Every track is good or great. Photograph is in my top 10 al time songs, and maybe top 5. 

Hysteria is admittedly worn out these days and PSSOM should be sent to the Old Song's Home where it can enjoy Who's The Boss reruns until the end of time But in it's day the album was a great synthesis of rock and pop. Women, Animal, and Hysteria are still listenable.

But yes, the early stuff is the best. Wasted is one of my DL favorites. Then there's Hello America, Rock Brigade, and Rocks Off of On Through The Night. The best of High 'N Dry, IMO, are Let It Go, You Got Me Runnin', and Bringin' On The Heartbreak/Switch 625. You're a DL fan if you know those last two must be played together, not separately.

 
rockaction said:
Oh. my. God. Oh. my. Gawd. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod. 

There's a band on the playlist not counted down yet, and they were rockaction's favorite band his later junior year and early senior years of high school. 

He was such a sweet kid. You couldn't bring him down. Ever. 


No Sleeze Beez I'm sorry kid

 
Pyromania was the first LP I ever owned.  Chose it as a prize for some magazine selling thing we did in grade school.  

That is all.
It's a good choice.

I traded another tape for it.. and I can't remember what right now, this was the kind of pointless crap I thought I'd remember forever like Super Bowls (also forgotten)

It might have been Don Henley

 
I've spotlit Bon Jovi a few times, they're next, and I don't know how the top 6 shouldn't be totally obvious..?

 

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