Friday 5: The Top Five Album 1/Track 1
Happy Friday, MetalSucks reader! Welcome to MetalSucks Friday 5, our awesome series that appears every Friday (duh) on MetalSucks (duhh) and involves the quantity of five (duhhh).
Here’s how it works: A list of best/worst/weirdest/whatever five somethings is posted by one of your beloved MetalSucks contributors or by one of our buds (like you?). Then you, our cherished reader, checks it out, has a chuckle, then chimes in with a list of the same. No sweat, just whatever springs to mind, k? (Just like that movie about those losers working at a Chicago record store!) After all, it’s Friday — the day dedicated by the gods to mindless, fun time-wasting. Today we salute bands who got it right right away!
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THE FIVE
The Five Most Awesome First Songs On A Debut Album
THE LISTER
Godless, co-host of the MetalSucks Podcast
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1. “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath
from Black Sabbath
(Vertigo) 1970
For some bands, it takes several albums to make a career, several riffs to make a song. For Black Sabbath, an entire genre was spawned in three notes. It’s hard to imagine — especially as everyone who was alive when this album came out is now either dead or suffering from Alzheimer’s — but this was the most frightening music to ever exist by a long shot. And those three notes started everything we love now.
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2. “Martyr” by Fear Factory
from Soul Of A New Machine
(Roadrunner) 1996
It takes a minute for Fear Factory’s Burton C. Bell to sing the words “Suffer bastard,” but by then a wicked industrial-death tune has already launched and the future of metal was already etched. Napalm Death meets Godflesh and then for the chorus, some dude walks in and tries to impress your girlfriend. It’s hard to believe, but before Burt, Dino Cazares, and his crew arrived, your girlfriend was safe.
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3. “A Shogun Named Marcus” by Clutch
from Transnational Speedway League: Anthems, Anecdotes, And Undeniable Truths
(EastWest) 1993
Inspiration for every genre-bending metal band to follow, “Shogun” is Clutch’s southern-rock plus growl we now know well (but few knew the EPs) and Clutch stuck out like sore thumbs opening for thrash bands then. “Shogun” introduced us to Neil Fallon’s pop-culture phrasing (here he is merging Little Richard and Gene Vincent in the chorus) and lyrical dexterity. Everything that made Clutch great in their very first LP song.
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4. “All Rise” by Wovenwar
from Wovenwar
(Metal Blade) 2014
It is way too soon to call a new song the beginning of an important career for Wovenwar, but it isn’t too soon to state the obvious: “All Rise” is one of the greatest opening tracks on a debut album in metal’s history. Name one song with more hooks in its first 60 seconds than this one. There isn’t one.
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5. “Lunatic Of God’s Creation” by Deicide
from Deicide
(Roadrunner) 1990
Florida death metal was already leading the metal world by the time of Deicide frontman Glen Benton’s mission statement. Death, Obituary, and Morbid Angel had already released excellent albums of their own, but “Lunatic” announced the arrival of something exciting and new. Layered, demonic lead vocals made Deicide sound hell-spawned and raised the bar for all contemporaries.
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