Top 5 Heavy Rock/Metal Albums

1) Cream - Disraeli (or is it derailleur) Gears (1967) - a confused roadie talking about racing bikes gave the album it's name. It is a great, great, great, great album by a band that really fucking hated each other. Maybe that's why it's so driven? Cream are a supergroup and this album is testament to that ideal. Fantabulous tracks like Sunshine of your Love, Strange Brew and Tales of Brave Ulysses make this album no 1 on this list.  I even love the Ginger Baker sung Blue Condition, even though it could be an audience splitter.


2)  Led Zeppelin - IV (1971) - Blues Rock, Heavy Rock and sumptuous hippy-dippy Folk all rolled into one. The result makes for a holy grail album that has created a nation of floppy-haired guitar-mashing male youth. This album certainly helped push forward the development of Heavy Metal and it just made it look cool to be in a band! There are no duds on this album, every song is a genre-defining tome. This should certainly be a bookend to most album collections.


3) Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970) - the album that the devil gave birth to, ushering in the new genre of Heavy Metal - yes it is that old! The album's sound was created by howling part man, part werewolf Ozzy Osbourne, the 3 fingered grim-reaper-esque guitarist that is Tony Iommi, the sludgy dark bass renderings of Geezer Butler and the skull banging drumming of Bill Ward. A sonic overload that cannot be ignored. It is all thanks to a reliance on the triton - the devil's chord. The Sabbath declared war on the world with this their first album and gathered an army of like minded followers in the years that followed. Thank fuck for Birmingham!


4) Mercyful Fate - Melissa (1983) - Great hard-rockin' album from Danish metallers that reeks occasionally of Spinal Tap but that's what makes it for me! Part NWOBHM, part prog metal, part black metal - all good! king Diamond's vocal acrobatics take the overall sound to a new level, higher than many of their contemporaries.


5) Nirvana - Bleach (1989) - before the back-breaking release of Smells Like..., Nirvana birthed this cheap (600 dollars) but significant pre-commercial grunge-laden album. It has Negative Creep, About a Girl and School, all great tunes to shake yer mullet to. This may not be on the list of most music fans but it was much a youth-defining moment for I. Nirvana were very much a hidden treasure before the world knew them for THAT song, the one that killed Kurt's spirit.