Best hard rock album of all time?

Zand · May 5, 2006

cbcbd said:
That's mainly the reason why I could never really get into them. The riffs and music were so RATM, but the singing was Chris Cornell... and there's no mistaking Chris Cornell's voice or Morello's style - their styles are very unique from other vocalists/guitarists, which means that they can't blend in. It was a mix of two bands that I loved and it was obvious.
And it's amazing... in some songs you can tell very well which guitar parts were Tom and which parts of the music Chris put in there. Audioslave is ok, but it'll never vibe well with me.

Excuse my stupidity with acronyms, but who's RATM?

WICKEDBUMPER · May 5, 2006

back in black.
Neil Young's Weld. I know, Neil Young? weld can be used to strip paint.
any Led zep.

WICKEDBUMPER · May 5, 2006

Zand said:
Excuse my stupidity with acronyms, but who's RATM?

Rage Against The Machine.

Zand · May 5, 2006

*Smacks own head* Should've had that one. Don't know how it slipped my mind. I remember when I was somewhat little and I called it "Balls on Parade".

Marc · May 6, 2006

cbcbd said:
But then the sound would've been all Soundgarden - not saying that Hiro and Matt Cameron (great drummer, love the style) didn't contribute, but Tom Morello's guitar with Chris Cornell's vocals was what made Audioslave what it is without being too much RATM or Soundgarden.

The sound would have been more Soundgarden, which, IMHO would have been a good thing.

I was just never a fan of Morello's solos. His style is too disjointed, clipped and annoying. It's kind of like listening to Mick Jagger sing. He'll never hold a note for longer than a second or two because he knows he's never singing on pitch. Every note and chord Morello plays in a solo is dissonent and therefore cannot be held for much more than a second without sounding terrible. Thayil could make his guitar sing. It really was a better match with Cornell.

Besides that, Thayil was very versatile... compare for example, Fell on Black Days, Half, and Burden In My Hand...

riverc0il · May 6, 2006

marc, i gotta disagree with you about thayil vs. morello, i think they are both not very versitle, or at least never showed it. thayil was always about playing lots of notes, playing them fast, and coming up with weird and bizarre note patterns (not bluesy, never that!). i really enjoy his guitar, but when i listen back i just don't see a lot of versitility. with morello's solos, i think they are the only thing to like about audioslave. he isn't versitile either, but just as much a great guitar player as thayil. part of RATM's MO was to be dissonent, his guitar was a perfect fit. and i think a lot of his solos did sing. bombtrack for example... very clean, clear, and precise at one point... just floats through the speakers. any ways, i see the two as similar in having a very particular style but those particular styles were night and day from each other and i appreciate both for what they were. what is thayil up to these days?

Marc · May 6, 2006

riverc0il said:
marc, i gotta disagree with you about thayil vs. morello, i think they are both not very versitle, or at least never showed it. thayil was always about playing lots of notes, playing them fast, and coming up with weird and bizarre note patterns (not bluesy, never that!). i really enjoy his guitar, but when i listen back i just don't see a lot of versitility. with morello's solos, i think they are the only thing to like about audioslave. he isn't versitile either, but just as much a great guitar player as thayil. part of RATM's MO was to be dissonent, his guitar was a perfect fit. and i think a lot of his solos did sing. bombtrack for example... very clean, clear, and precise at one point... just floats through the speakers. any ways, i see the two as similar in having a very particular style but those particular styles were night and day from each other and i appreciate both for what they were. what is thayil up to these days?

Steve, according to wikipeida...

Since then, Thayil has played guitar for Pigeonhed, with the Presidents of the United States of America, played on Dave Grohl's metal side-project PROBOT, and No WTO Combo with Jello Biafra and Krist Novoselic, and has also worked on other projects.

Re: Morello and Thayil... well, I can agree to disagree. I admittedly have not heard a lot of Morello's stuff with Rage, just the real popular singles, because I just never really go into their style of music. I'm judging his playing almost exclusively based on his stuff with Audioslave.

riverc0il · May 6, 2006

morello is definitely better with RATM stuff. audioslave did absolutely nothing for me depite the fact that i abolutely love those guys in their original groups.

thanks for the quote from wikipedia. i love that site, but i haven't trained myself to look there when ever a ask "i wonder......" i can't beleive he played with POT USA!!! thayill created some off the wall stuff, i loved his work with sound garden. lots of weird time signatures like "never the machine forever" on dotus. he definitely has a more musically interesting song composition style than morello.

kickstand · May 7, 2006

riverc0il said:
whoa whoa whoa, green day, counting crows, and dmb are not hard rock, let alone the 90s grudge sound :lol:

i am down for a vote for appetite for the best "hard rock" album of "all time." though of "all time" really is only a period of about 20-30 years or so. funny how genres change, black sabbeth used to be called metal, now it is just hard rock :lol: GNR was my favorite band fr a long long time. i didn't get into them until the UYI trilogy of don't cry, november rain, and estranged. i don't think GNR jumped the shark until the spagetti incident (some might argue the stones cover of sympathy for the devil, but actually like the remake). UYI was an outstanding pair of albums, sooooo many hits off those albums too.

the best guns songs were not the singles though. take rocket queen off appetite for destruction, kicks!!! night train, just plain old mean. also like how they stripped down you're crazy from AFD to lies. UYI-I was just off the hook. i still remember hearing the opening riff to right next door to hell. coma is amongst the best 10+ epic songs. the entire last four songs off that album are amongst the best 25 minutes of GNR including one of my favorites, dead horse. UYI-II seemed to get the b-sides of UYI-I, never cared much for II.

any ways, look at how many hit singles GNR had. probably the highest amount per album in the history of hard rock. appetite got it started and was the most 'raw' sounding before axl went nuts o' perfectionist.

OK, I'll give you CC and DMB (I was lumping all 90's music together), but Green Day not hard rock, nor grunge???? What would you classify it as? Most of it I would call Trash, but I don't think that's a genre. If it's not "hard rock" or "grunge", I wonder what it is. "Dookie" came out in 1994 (maybe 1993). That's smack in the middle of grunge-ville.

agreed, GNR's best stuff were never singles. "Rocket Queen" and "Coma", IMHO, are in the Top 5 GNR Songs. Also partial to "Get In The Ring".

riverc0il · May 7, 2006

OK, I'll give you CC and DMB (I was lumping all 90's music together), but Green Day not hard rock, nor grunge???? What would you classify it as? Most of it I would call Trash, but I don't think that's a genre. If it's not "hard rock" or "grunge", I wonder what it is. "Dookie" came out in 1994 (maybe 1993). That's smack in the middle of grunge-ville.

it doesn't matter what time a record came out, else you could call nine inch nails grunge. green day was the first major rock concert i ever attended back in 1994, but green day had a full release and some EP releases before dookie and had the current line up circa 90-91 iirc. green day was a bay area band out of CA, far removed from the then developing grudge sound of seattle. not to mention the bands musical origins are punk in nature. though green day hardly stays true to punk origins, i prefer to look at green day and the other bands that followed green day like blink182, etc. as pop punk, commercial punk, what ever. green day is about as grunge as sonic youth is classic rock. man, i love a good genre discussion!!!

kickstand · May 7, 2006

I know all about Green Day's roots and the stories of how they alienated their original follower by "selling out" (see: "Good Riddance"). As for lumping them, CC, DMB, whoever into a grunge genre, when a radio station I was listening to once in a while was changing formats to hard rock/grunge, those were 3 of bands getting mixed in with their old format to lure new listeners to the station. When NIN came out with "Downward Spiral", the song "Closer" was getting played on all forms of modern rock stations, even though "Closer" is more radio-friendly than the stuff on "Pretty Hate Machine" and "Broken". Sure, you can call NIN industrial and Green Day punk, but I can also lump bands like The Allman Brothers and Lyndyrd Skynyrd into 3 or 4 different genres as well. I guess it all depends on your point of view, or even the song itself.

skibum1321 · May 8, 2006

kickstand said:
I know all about Green Day's roots and the stories of how they alienated their original follower by "selling out" (see: "Good Riddance"). As for lumping them, CC, DMB, whoever into a grunge genre, when a radio station I was listening to once in a while was changing formats to hard rock/grunge, those were 3 of bands getting mixed in with their old format to lure new listeners to the station. When NIN came out with "Downward Spiral", the song "Closer" was getting played on all forms of modern rock stations, even though "Closer" is more radio-friendly than the stuff on "Pretty Hate Machine" and "Broken". Sure, you can call NIN industrial and Green Day punk, but I can also lump bands like The Allman Brothers and Lyndyrd Skynyrd into 3 or 4 different genres as well. I guess it all depends on your point of view, or even the song itself.

I have to agree with River here that Green Day is not grunge at all. There are none of the real characteristics of the grunge sound (from Wikipedia - Grunge music is generally characterized by "dirty" guitar, strong riffs, and heavy drumming). Green Day is definitely more of a straight pop-punk band and I would group them more with the Offspring than with grunge.

Max · May 8, 2006

I guess it boils down to what you consider "Hard Rock." Back in the mid 60's / mid 70's I would have nominated;

Amboy Dukes - "The Amboy Dukes" (with Ted Nugent before anyone knew who he was)
The Who - "Who's Next"
MC5 - "Kick Out The Jams" (I might be mistaken on the album title though)
Deep Purple - "Fireball"
Ten Years After - "Live"
Led Zeppelin - I forget the title, but the album with Stairway To Heaven

Pretty tame to you young people (under 40) but it was cutting edge back then.

ChileMass · May 8, 2006

Green Day isn't grunge - they are the new generation's Ramones.

No definition is necessary. C'mon, it's rock 'n roll fer Chrissakes, not brain surgery. You know hard rock when you hear it, and if you're older than 40 you consider Sabbath hard rock. If not, they probably put you to sleep.

Hendrix is primarily hard rock. Zeppelin qualifies as hard rock for no reason other than "Black Dog" on Zep IV. GNR was great but destined to implode. Nirvana and grunge in general I could take or leave. Emo makes me crazy due to its preoccupation with death and negativity.

My personal vote for single hottest metal song of all time is "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain. 2 minutes and 30 seconds of shredding guitar by fat Leslie West......

cbcbd · May 8, 2006

riverc0il said:
morello is definitely better with RATM stuff. audioslave did absolutely nothing for me depite the fact that i abolutely love those guys in their original groups.

My sentiments exactly.

kickstand · May 8, 2006

ChileMass said:
No definition is necessary. C'mon, it's rock 'n roll fer Chrissakes, not brain surgery. You know hard rock when you hear it, and if you're older than 40 you consider Sabbath hard rock. If not, they probably put you to sleep.

BINGO! Grunge, metal, classic - all subdivisions of the rock-and-roll genre, IMHO. Well, said, Chile.....

LisaBatt · May 8, 2006

I think my chocies are more suited for favorite progessive/symphonic rock...

The stuff I loved in the days when people my age group were more into the stones, the who , etc Genisis -The lamb Lies down on Broadway, ELP- Brain Salad Surgery, Tull-Aqualung, Deep Purple-Made in Japan. Hey-these music threads are good to keep my mind off of missing skiing so much!!!!! Keeep it going!!!!!!!

Greg · May 8, 2006

riverc0il said:
i am down for a vote for appetite for the best "hard rock" album of "all time." though of "all time" really is only a period of about 20-30 years or so. funny how genres change, black sabbeth used to be called metal, now it is just hard rock :lol: GNR was my favorite band fr a long long time. i didn't get into them until the UYI trilogy of don't cry, november rain, and estranged. i don't think GNR jumped the shark until the spagetti incident (some might argue the stones cover of sympathy for the devil, but actually like the remake). UYI was an outstanding pair of albums, sooooo many hits off those albums too.

the best guns songs were not the singles though. take rocket queen off appetite for destruction, kicks!!! night train, just plain old mean. also like how they stripped down you're crazy from AFD to lies. UYI-I was just off the hook. i still remember hearing the opening riff to right next door to hell. coma is amongst the best 10+ epic songs. the entire last four songs off that album are amongst the best 25 minutes of GNR including one of my favorites, dead horse. UYI-II seemed to get the b-sides of UYI-I, never cared much for II.

any ways, look at how many hit singles GNR had. probably the highest amount per album in the history of hard rock. appetite got it started and was the most 'raw' sounding before axl went nuts o' perfectionist.

Ewww. Yuck. I think both Use Your Illusion albums sucked, big time, especially after Appetitie and Lies (two totally different projects, mind you). When I think of AFD, I think of 5 scumbags drunk and stoned in some smoky bar pounding out great rock tunes. When I think of either UYI albums, I think of that MTV video (Don't Cry, I think) when in addition to the band, there's a keyboardist, backup singer chicks, a guy with a tambourine, etc... They went on tour with a horn section too. Sort of lost their edgy roots, I think.

I agree that Nightrain was an awesome tune. So was Mr. Brownstone.

Steve Mach · Jan 8, 2013

Can't argue with Appetite for Destruction.

Nick · Jan 8, 2013

Hmm... growing up in the 80's / 90's I was always a big fan of Pearl Jam, but most of my music collection is 90's rock. I grew up in Connecticut listening to Radio 104. I even had Radio 104 stickers all over my mountain bike (haha).

It's been mostly digitized now, I find myself listening to more and more older music (70's / 80's) and less and less 90's rock. I dunno why. I wonder if I've outgrown it? It just doesn't have the same emotional effect it did on my in my more formative years. I still enjoy it and like it, just doesn't "impact" me the same way.

Best hard rock album of all time?

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