My Favorite Heavy Albums
There are many cool songs and good albums out there, but not so many of them that I enjoy listing as a whole. Usually, there’s one or two songs that are great, few mediocre and few that I never listen. However, there are some albums that I love listening as a whole. So here it goes, sorted chronologically.
Deep Purple – Machine Head (1972)
Machine Head is one of those albums that you listen to thinking “man, this song is awesome and unique, there’s no freaking way the next song would be anywhere as awesome and unique as this one”. And yet somehow every song on this album is like that! The whole album is so good that it’s hard to pick a favorite song, but if I had to pick, it would probably be “Lazy”. Ritchie’s blues infused shredding is nothing short of amazing.
Joe Satriani – Surfing With The Alien (1987)
This is the one that launched Satriani into the stratosphere and cemented his reputation as an alien guitar virtuoso. Almost 40 minutes of pure instrumental guitar awesomeness. From softer clean tones of “Midnight” to searing riffs of “Crushing Day” and liquid melodic solos of pretty much every song, this album has it all.
I was lucky enough to be in New York back in 2007 when he was celebrating two decades since the album was released. He organized concerts in NYC and (I think) San Francisco and Chicago in small venues with the idea to play the whole album for small audience. To make the whole experience even better, I bumped into Satch while he was getting out of the back entrance to grab a cup of coffee before the concert and got a chance to shake his hand 🙂
Dream Theater – Metropolis pt2: Scenes From A Memory (1999)
This is the first concept album I’ve ever heard. Another thing that make it cool is that end of each song is the beginning of the next song, so it’s kind of a 77 minute long piece. And it’s got enough musical variety for an average band to make a dozen albums. My favorite song would have to be Home, which is also the first song I heard from this album.