Unquestionable Presence is a tremendous sophomore album that shows how ahead of their time Atheist were.įormed by ex-Napalm Death frontman Lee Dorian, who had grown tired of his former band’s growing death metal sound, decided to push extreme music in the complete opposite with his new doom metal group Cathedral.
BEST METAL ALBUMS OF ALL TIME FULL
While only just a notch over half an hour long, tracks like “Mother Man”, “Your Life’s Retribution” and “An Incarnation’s Dream” feature more notes and twists and turns than most band’s full discographies.
Special mention must go out to bassist Tony Choy, who stepped in at the last minute to replace recently deceased Roger Patterson, and who’s powerful bass sound stands proudly along side the technical guitar work of Rand Burkey and frontman Kelly Shaefer. Featuring endless tempo and time signatures, dissonant guitar tradeoffs and an almost fusion/latin jazz-like quality to their rhythm section, Unquestionable Presence is truly the thinking-man’s metal. With the release of their second full length, Atheist firmly placed their foot forward as one of the forerunners of the progressive/technical death metal scene. Symbol of Salvation still holds up as a straight-ahead metal album, and deserves more praise and attention than it received in it’s day. Sadly it all fell apart after this release, failing to become a commercial success, and with Bush poached by Anthrax less than two years later, it would be nearly another decade before Armored Saint released another full length release. While the production was something of a kindred spirit to the first Alice In Chains album Facelift, thanks to their shared producer Dave Jerden, it’s style straddled the classic metal stylings of the early 80s, thrash metal and the European power metal scene. But this doesn’t mean that Armored Saint’s fourth LP wasn't of top quality, with the pumping opener “Reign of Fire” setting the tone with a driving guitar riff and John Bush’s massive vocals. So what albums stood the tallest and made the cut in our top 20 list? Read on and find out… Armored Saint – Symbol of SalvationĪn album that got somewhat lost in the massive musical reshuffle of the early 90s – the traditional heavy metal stylings of Symbol of Salvation were simply out of place in 1991. From band’s releasing their debut efforts, to older acts finding their footings in a changing time, 1991 was one of the finest years in metal history. In their stead was a whole new crop of bands emerging from various scenes, countries and sub-genres some that would create and expand niche, underground extreme metal, and others that would go on to affect the music mainstream and beyond.