Classic Metal Albums of the 90's

Oh, and I don't know about *classic*, but good: Dekapitator's We Will Destroy...You Will Obey!!!

Sure, we are all close to burnt on thrash re-hash, but in 1999? Classic styled thrash was not coming from anywhere else, really. Amost.

corplhicks wrote:

And Houdini is one heavy bitch; don't know how it escaped me.

I see what you did there !  

Boris2008 wrote:

Awesome thanks guys, obviously stuff like the Black Album and RIP were on my radar but there is plenty here that wasn't (the last Rage & Running Wild albums I have heard are from the 80's) should keep me going for a while!

RAGE's Trapped!, The Missing Link and Black in Mind are essential albums. And you'll probably want to get End of All Days after listening to those too.

Somehow we missed Blind Guardian.

I thought 'Nightfall' might be an obvious one but for me I would vouch for 'Tales From The Twilight World'...

007 wrote:

corplhicks wrote:

And Houdini is one heavy bitch; don't know how it escaped me.

I see what you did there !      

As tempted as I am to credit my wit, I have to admit that was purely unintentional.  

Boris, you gotta hear Blazon Stone.

At The Gates - Slaughter of the Soul
In Flames - The Jester Race
Morgion - Among Majestic Ruin
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Bolt Thrower - The IVth Crusade
Motorhead - Rock And Roll
Black Sabbath - Dehumanizer


I can go on!

Lurideath wrote:

Motorhead - Rock And Roll

That was a 1987 release.

The 90s is a strange decade for metal..

IMO many of the metal albums released during the early 90s could easily belong to the late 80s... so from that short period of time ('90 - '92) there are some truly classic albums namely:

1990
Megadeth's Rust in Peace
Judas Priest's Painkiller
Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss
Kreator's Coma of Souls
Pantera's Cowboys from Hell
Death's Spiritual Healing
Annihilator's Never Neverland
Suicidal Tendencies' Lights Camera Revolution
Queensryche's Empire
Testament's Souls of Black
Artillery's By Inheritance
Anthrax's Persistence of Time
Atrophy's Violent By Nature

1991
Dark Angel's Time Does Not Heal
Heathen's Victim of Deception
Overkill's Horrorscope
Running Wild's Blazon Stone
Saxon's Solid Ball of Rock
Savatage's Streets: A Rock Opera
Sepultura's Arise
Skid Row's Slave to the Grind
Xentrix's For Whose Advantage

1992
Black Sabbath's Dehumanizer
Blind Guardian's Somewhere Far Beyond
Dream Theater's Awake
Demolition Hammer's Epidemic of Violence
Rage's Trapped!
Running Wild's Pile of Skulls
Iced Earth's Night of the Stormrider
Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction
Sodom's Tapping the Vein
Testament's The Ritual

After 1992 things take a turn for the worse in some respects with the scene becoming over-flooded with 'extreme metal' and other alternatives to 'metal'. Traditional heavy metal and thrash metal entered a lull period after 1992.

Believer - Sanity Obscure
Crowbar - Odd Fellows Rest
Deliverance - What A Joke
Fu Manchu - In Seach Of.. / The Action Is Go / King Of The Road
Helmet - Meantime
King's X - Dogman
Life, Sex & Death - The Silent Majority
Living Sacrifice - S/T / Inhabit

The 1990s also had these excellent death metal albums:



Too bad they're out of print. I own Millennium, but Imperial Doom goes for absurd prices on eBay and other auction sites. I wish that album would get reissued. There are so many metalheads out there that would love to own it.

Alex Dee Rokket wrote:

After 1992 things take a turn for the worse in some respects with the scene becoming over-flooded with 'extreme metal' and other alternatives to 'metal'.

There are classic extreme metal albums. Many listed by myself & others in this very thread.

mc666 wrote:

Alex Dee Rokket wrote:

After 1992 things take a turn for the worse in some respects with the scene becoming over-flooded with 'extreme metal' and other alternatives to 'metal'.

There are classic extreme metal albums. Many listed by myself & others in this very thread.

I should clarify - yes I agree there are a number of classic extreme metal albums released during the mid-late 90s. I definitely think that for those who are into those sub-genres there's plenty to choose from in the 90s.

Perhaps it is just my fall out with extreme metal as of late that made me gloss completely over those albums; however, stuff like Immortal, At The Gates, Death, In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Cryptopsy, Morbid Angel, Emperor, Darkthrone to name a few of the better known ones all had classic albums during the 90s.

There are nicely done progressive and power metal albums of mid-late 90's, lost and forgotten since no one knows about them, even those who like metal.

After reading this thread I am surprised by how many 90's metal albums I actually own, but like others have said, they are from the very early nineties and by bands that were established in the 80's.

I was thinking more about bands that emerged during the nineties like SYL or The Gathering, bands that I totally missed at the time, but a lot of your suggestions have made me think that i should check out some of the bands that just carried on producing quality stuff too.

Dark Horseman wrote:

Somehow we missed Blind Guardian.

Imaginations From the Other Side is probably the best album ever made by anyone. Nightfall in Middle-Earth isn't far behind. Since the 00's, the band really hasn't been able to match the quality of those.

I agree though I find stuff to like on every BG album.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAADAFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA??? No Therapy? Troublegum??? Heathens, you will burn in the pit of hell for eternity for your sins. And that means FOREVER!!!

DaWeakling wrote:

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAADAFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA??? No Therapy? Troublegum??? Heathens, you will burn in the pit of hell for eternity for your sins. And that means FOREVER!!!

A lot of the guys on here are Christians so they're pretty much covered.  

Many cool traditional metal albums came out during 1994 or 1995 too, not only early 90s. I am going to name 10 of each year:
1994:
ACCEPT:DEATH ROW (underrated)
CENTAUR:POWER WORLD
AXEL RUDI PELL:BETWEEN THE WALLS
RUNNING WILD:BLACK HAND INN
X-WILD:SO WHAT (with ex RUNNING WILD members).
MERCYFUL FATE:TIME + THE BELL WITCH
KING JAMES:S/T
ETERNITY X:ZODIAC
YNGWIE MALMSTEEN:THE SEVENTH SIGN
HELLOWEEN:MASTER OF THE RINGS
1995:
ATTACK:THE SECRET PLACE
DAMIEN:ANGEL JUICE
NOCTURNAL RITES:IN A TIME OF BLOOD AND FIRE
GAMMA RAY:LAND OF THE FREE
NOT FRAGILE:THE RETURN
RUNNING WILD:MASQUERADE
MOTORHEAD:SACRIFICE
KING DIAMOND:THE SPIDERS LULLABYE
GRAVE DIGGER:HEART OF DARKNESS
BLIND GUARDIAN:IMAGINATIONS FROM THE OTHER SIDE
and other records by bands like VIRGIN STEELE, X WILD, WASP, TOKYO BLADE etc...a good year 1995 for traditional heavy metal only it was not big on tv anymore. It was underground again.

Parish - Envision (1995)
Iced Earth - everything from Iced Earth (1990) to Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998)
Jag Panzer - The Fourth Judgment (1997)
Primal Fear - Primal Fear (1998) and The Jaws of Death (1999)
Bruce Dickinson - Accident of Birth (1997) and The Chemical Wedding (1998)
Testament - Low (1994) and The Gathering (1999)
Overkill - Horrorscope (1991), The Killing Kind (1996) and From The Underground and Below (1997)
Orange Goblin - Time Travelling Blues (1998)
Skid Row - Slave To The Grind (1991)

Acid Bath (Both releases)
Alice in Chains (First two)
Armored Saint-Symbol of Salvation
Black Sabbath-Dehumanizer
Danzig II-Lucifuge
Deftones-Around The Fur
Electric Wizard-Come My Fanatics…
Fireball Ministry-Où Est La Rock
Hittman-Viva Machina
Life Sex Death-The Silent Majority
Kyuss-(Blues For The Red Sun,Welcome To Sky Valley)
Marilyn Manson-Portrait Of An American Family
Megadeth-Rust in Peace
Monster Magnet-Superjudge
Orange Goblin-(First two)
Queens Of The Stone Age-S/T
Saigon Kick-S/T
Slander-Careless Talk Costs Lives
Sleep-Sleep's Holy Mountain
Skid Row-Slave to the Grind
Trouble-Manic Frustration
Type O Negative-Bloody Kisses
Warrior Soul-Salutations from the Ghetto Nation
White Zombie-La Sexorcristo

some of these I only discovered in the last 2 or 3 years of the 1990s, and the rest I listened to ALL the time.
For most of the decade, I refused to search radio stations for "metal" as it was usually crap, (as ANY thing they played that was good, was what I already had on vinyl and tapes from the 1980s).

I stuck to mainstream FM rock radio (but barely bought any of it), or OLD country music tapes like Hank Williams, SR.  Johnny Cash, Stompin' Tom Connors, or a few newer albums by like Dwight Yoakam, The Pogues, etc.

I always bought every brand new Megadeth album as Mustaine was consistent with what my rock/metal listening habits were like at the time, and he never let me down like other big thrash acts (including Exodus).

ABSU - The Third Storm of Cythraul (1997)
APPLEHEAD - Meaning (Ocean) 1992
BATHORY - Hammerheart
BATHORY - Twilight of the Gods
BATHORY - Blood On Ice
BEWITCHED (Swe) - Diabolical Desecration (1996)
BEWITCHED (Swe) - Encyclopedia of Evil EP (1996)
BEWITCHED (Swe) - Pentagram Prayer (1997)
CARCASS - Swansong (1996)
COUP DE GRACE - The Coup De Grace (1990)
THE CRUCIFIED -  The Pillars of Humanity (1991)
FU MANCHU - daredevil (1995)
FU MANCHU - In Search Of... (1996)
FU MANCHU - the action is go (1997)
HELLWITCH - Syzygial Miscreancy (1990)
INSANITY - Death After Death (1994)
MEGADETH  - all
MINIER - Minier (1990)
MOTORHEAD - 1916 (1991)
SKID ROW - B-Sides Ourselves (mini LP)
VENGEANCE RISING -Once Dead (1990)
VENGEANCE RISING -Destruction Comes (1991)
VENGEANCE RISING -Released Upon The Earth (199

I made a "wallpaper" with my favourite 90's albums:



1990 at the top, 1999 on the bottom. Ten albums from each year, left to right in order of preference.