Top 10 Albums: (click link)
KISS - Creatures of the Night
My gold standard for production, drum sound, songwriting, album cover art, and so much more, this album is an absolute master piece. It came out when I was 6, my older brother got the tape for Christmas that year and I somehow convinced my parents to buy me the record soon after. The album has followed me my whole life ever since. Any time I need to regroup, get focused, let off steam, or just rock out, I play KISS Creatures of the Night. It has always been there for me throughout my life, rejuvenates me every time and never fails me.
The irony of this being my favorite album...
Kraftwerk - Computer World
It wasn't until college that I finally explored Kraftwerk, and admittedly I probably needed the maturity to appreciate the absolute genius of them. This album was the gateway for me for Kraftwerk, as one day in my senior year of college my Polish video professor randomly popped in this album at the end of class one day. I only heard the first track and I didn't yet quite know the depth of their influence on just samples alone in music, but it peaked my interest just enough.
Computer World is as prescient as...
Kraftwerk - Man Machine
I usually listen to Kraftwerk's Man Machine and Computer World back to back, which is the beauty of each of the albums' relatively short play time each with 6 tracks. As I'm a musician by nature and graphic designer by trade, Kraftwerk is the perfect synthesis of both of these languages married beautifully especially on Man Machine.
This album proudly puts on display...
Ministry - The Land of...
My gateway into hardcore electronic music, this album was a case of sheer happenstance that I even had it in my possession in the first place, as a neighbor randomly left this tape, along with Skinny Puppy's Rabies, in my best friend Chris's apartment one day in the 8th grade. My best friend said I could have them if I wanted it, along with other random stuff like clothes we would barter and trade with each other. The tapes would sit in a drawer for over 2 years.
Then, my parents...
Vinnie Vincent Invasion
I have never heard an album anything like this before or since first hearing Vinnie Vincent Invasion's debut album. My Mom bought me the tape along with Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet on a trip to Target when I was 10 years old.
Being a huge KISS fan I knew Vinnie's guitar playing would be awesome like on Lick It Up, but when I put the tape into the big blue Dodge Ram family van's tape player, put my seat belt on and Mom started driving, it was an onslaught of walls of guitars like I had never even imagined was possible.
The production was slick with layers of...
Mr. Mister - Welcome to the Real World
As a kid in the 1980's, my family would gather around almost every Saturday to watch Saturday Night Live. When I was about 9 years old, we watched an episode that had musical guests who played a song called Broken Wings which I had heard on the radio a few times. I was inexplicably drawn to the keyboardist of all people, as I had just started taking guitar lessons and loved hard rock and heavy metal. The song was sparce, and didn't even have drums come in until midway through the song, so the keyboards had plenty of room to be prominent. It was the first time I remember seeing someone play a keyboard live, and I wasn't sure what I was even listening to with so much atmosphere coming from just the keyboard player.
At first I missed the name of the band so...
Skinny Puppy - VIVIsectVI
I first happened across Skinny Puppy in the 8th grade when a neighbor came over to hang out with a pretty girl I was friends with (he probably wasn't there just to see me). And the 2 of them struck up a conversation about all of these groups I hadn't heard of, as I was just starting to get into electronic groups like New Order and Depeche Mode after being such a metal head my whole life. Skinny Puppy was one of the groups mentioned, and I asked if that was really the name of a real group and they both looked at each other and laughed with a "silly rabbit!" vibe.
Fast forward a few months, and...
The Cure - Disintegration
For some strange reason but perhaps fittingly, I'm vague about how I came into possession of Disintegration by The Cure on tape. I was a high school sophomore and I either got it from my first ever real girlfriend, or my friend Steve. It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school. My girlfriend had become involved with someone else and I was crushed. Looking back now it of course seems silly, but at the time it was without a doubt devastating. I had somehow gotten mono, was bed-ridden for almost 2 weeks, my already slim 15 year old body had lost a lot of weight.
So by the time 10th grade began in the fall...
Consolidated - The Myth of Rock
I bought this tape for myself on my 15th birthday along with Die Warzau's Disco Rigido at the mall. I had the songs Consolidated, Message to the People, and This is a Collective recorded on tape from my best friend Chris's vinyl collection as an aspiring DJ (as he introduced an enormous amount of electronic/club music that opened up my metal head mind). So I got the full length album and was immediately hooked to the power of the music and energy of its lyrics although I didn't understand much of what they were rapping about.
This was the early 90's, and they were...
Aes Dana - Pollen
Around the year 2000, my enthusiasm towards music being released (particularly in the mainstream) began to wane and by around 2010 my enthusiasm dried up completely. With the exceptions of The Crystal Method, System of a Down, Interpol, and a couple of other groups that rose around 2000, I found myself deeply disappointed and bored of what "the future" was producing. By around 2005 or so I listened almost exclusively to music I had liked previously and was closed off to any new music and frankly thought it all just plain sucked.
Then one day in 2016 I perused YouTube...
Other Important Albums
It's taking a lifetime to build the soundtrack to my life, and these masterpieces are at the top. Here are more of the countless albums that accompany my story...
KISS - Unmasked
This particular KISS album is not generally lauded as everyone's favorite along with Destroyer or Alive, but it is very special to me from the growth and company it kept me during a rather jolting time in my life at age 8. After a couple of years of tumult in the home, my older brother whom I idolized all my life finally ran away from home for good. On many levels, it thrust me into places I wasn't at all prepared for: becoming the oldest child in the house to my younger brother and sister, going to my Dad's house on the weekends alone, and many other changes.
I first went into his room...
Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime
Queensryche is a band that was slowly pieced together over many years for me until I really dove deep into them. It started back in elementary school when I would see their name in Hit Parade and Circus magazines, but didn't know how to pronounce it until a classmate of mine started rattling off names of bands who he thought were crappy, and Queensryche was one of them so I then finally knew how their name was pronounced.
A few years later in junior high...
Hubert Kah - Sound of My Heart
This album lives right in the heart of my freshman year of high school, once again introduced to me by my best friend Chris when I recorded his So Many People 12" record onto tape. I bought the album on tape a few months later. The album carries such a strong identity as an album, with upbeat tracks and occasional breaks in between them, and is easily listened to from start to finish.
Hubert Kemmler has such...
Top of page
Skinny Puppy - Too Dark Park
Loudness - Thunder in the East
Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time
Front 242 - Official Version
David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World
Kitchens of Distinction - Strange Free World
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
Nitzer Ebb - That Total Age
Stryper - Soldiers Under Command
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2
Metallica - Master of Puppets
8Ball & MGJ - Comin' Out Hard
Depeche Mode - Violator
Machines of Loving Grace - Concentration
Willie Nelson - Greatest Hits and Some That Will Be
Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral
Def Leppard - Pyromania
Slim Whitman - Greatest Hits
System of a Down - Toxicity
DJ Screw - 3 in the Mornin'
Winger - In the Heart of the Young
Dokken - Back for the Attack
And countless others...
Front Line Assembly - Implode, Artificial Soldier
KISS - Destroyer, Self-Titled, Ace Frehley, Rock and Roll Over
Brian Eno - Plateaux of Mirrors
Loudness - Hurricane Eyes, Lightning Strikes
Metallica - Ride the Lightning, ...And Justice for All
Y&T - Contagious
Winger - Winger
Future Sound of London - ISDN (Explicit), Dead Cities, Accelerator
Machines of Loving Grace - Gilt (Explicit)
Testament - The New Order
Nine Inch Nails - Broken (Explicit)
5th Ward Boys - Ghetto Dope (Explicit)
Anthrax - Among the Living (Explicit)
Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance
Def Leppard - Hysteria
Beastie Boys - Check Your Head (Explicit)
Daft Punk - Homework
Ministry - Twitch
Yngwie Malmsteen - Marching Out, Eclipse
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