Category Archives: Top 100 Metal Albums

THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #8: In Flames – Reroute to Remain (Nuclear Blast, 2002)

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ReroutetoRemainThis post was supposed to be about a different In Flames album.  I recently dusted off the band’s 2000 masterpiece Clayman for the express purpose of a top 100 write-up; it is after all the perfect melodic death metal album.  But then something happened; I also grabbed Reroute to Remain off the ol’ CD shelf just for hell of it, and subsequently remembered just how much I enjoyed this lovably flawed piece of metal history that began In Flames’ fall from underground grace and gained them legions of mainstream fans.
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THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #6: Metallica – Ride the Lightning (Elektra, 1984)

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Ride the Lightning is hands down my favorite Metallica album. I also believe that it’s front-to-back Metallica’s best album. While many metalheads point to Master of Puppets as the Bay Area quartet’s finest hour, Ride the Lightning was the first album to showcase all of Metallica’s strengths, the sonic trademarks that would ultimately propel them not only to the top of the thrash metal heap, but all of heavy metal.

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THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #5: Helmet – Meantime (Interscope, 1992)

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Helmet’s Meantime was an odd bird when it was released in 1992.  Straddling the line between heavy metal and the alternative rock explosion that Nirvana had ushered in a year earlier, Helmet was probably the only band capable of getting airtime on both Headbanger’s Ball and 120 Minutes.  That’s how I discovered Helmet; I was thirteen years old and just beginning my headlong dive into the world of heavy music.  I remember seeing the video for “Unsung” and being struck by several things: 1) the riffage was absolutely crushing 2) no one in the band had long hair 3) was that a fucking pink ESP?!  Helmet looked and most importantly sounded like no other band I had encountered up to that point.
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THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #4: Mayhem – Live in Leipzig (Century Media, 1994)

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“When it’s cold and when it’s dark, the freezing moon can obsess you!” – Dead

By and large, live albums are unessential affairs.  They typically consist of sonically inferior versions of a band’s “greatest hits,” with lame between song banter, distracting crowd noises, and more often than not, so many overdubs that the album is no longer “live” at all by the time it hits the record store shelves (or these days, the world wide thieves network, aka the internet).
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