Albums That Changed Your Life

[MGS32]

So I posted this thread a while ago in DKJ's group (RIP those guys I guess) but I'm updating and reposting it on here just to get a discussion going.

I think music affects us all differently and at different times and I think its cool to reflect and see the effect it has on us and how you can attach certain time periods/events to specific albums, anyway here is mine.

AC/DC - Iron Man 2

This was a movie tie in with Marvel Studios' Iron Man 2 as it heavily featured AC/DC songs, this album is kind of a greatest hits compilation really but anyway, this was the first album I ever bought myself rather than listening to whatever was on the radio and popular at the time. This album really shaped my style of music for the next however many years its been now, it started with my best friend at the time giving me pirated copies of AC/DC singles and we'd spend hours playing Playstation and listening to AC/DC and it was really the foundation of my music taste while also being a great memory of my childhood.

My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Kill Joys

This was when it truly all started for me, we all go through it. Don't anyone here try and pretend they never had it, we all had our emo phase. The angst, the hormones and the music, that combination seems to unleash something horific in teenagers. I remember rushing to HMV and buying this album on CD (I wasn't really up to date with current trends at the time and also couldn't afford an iPod) and I was in love from the first track, "Na Na Na" is a perfect album opener, its a shotgun of pure adrenaline and it set the tone for the rest of the album. I truly think this was MCR's best album, its the least emo of them all and it just felt they were at their peak around here, it was more punk rock as opposed to emo rock. It struck a good balance and overall a great album, ever time I hear any song from this album it just takes me back and its a reminder we never truly lose that emo piece of us.




There is a pretty large gap here because my tastes really stayed the same and nothing changed until MMLP2 was released.

Eminem - MMLP2 (Marshall Mathers LP 2)

Ooft, here we go. This is one some of the folks here will remember, the angst hit a boiling point and I was at the lowest point of my life and it seems that people who go through that sort of thing always find a musician they resonate with and at that time it was Eminem for me. I don't regret being so obsessed with him but its not my proudest moments, it was definitely when things hit its worst in a lot of ways and I feel as stupid as it sounds this album gave me a very "Fuck everyone" attitude to people. Anyway going back to listen to this was pretty bad, it really hasn't aged well and I definitely think I'm past my Eminem phase. Still however, it makes the list as it was a very important piece of me growing up. His older stuff holds up better, Survival is still a pretty decent song however.

Arctic Monkeys - AM


Holy fucking shit this album is so freaking good. I found this album in the Summer of 2014 which I think was another major step in growing up, I went through a lot of life changes and I moved schools and to "fit in" I forced myself to listen to popular music, its a stupid thing in retrospect but that is what you do in life. Anyway this album was pretty huge in the UK around this time, the album opener "Do I Wanna Know?" was all over the radio and I fell in love with it, in a sea of pop music there was this one rock album with amazing hip hop style drum and bass beats so it was a best of both worlds. Its my favourite album of all time and in a matter of weeks now I'm getting the cover tattooed.

Blink 182 - California


This was a big awakening in music for me, I went dark on music for a while but the more I started to work within the industry I gradually drifted back into it and this was when my music taste was basically set in stone. I listened to this on the recommendation of a friend and its lead to me rediscovering old favourites (Arctic Monkeys) and finding new favourites (Oasis, Catfish And The Bottlemen, The Strokes). It was really important in the relationships I have with people now as they were mainly founded on our tastes in music so I think this one deserves a note in here for that.

Combined Entry


Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not - Arctic Monkeys

Is This It? - The Strokes


These two albums I listened to at the perfect time, I'm at a crossroad with life right now as I become an adult officially and just figure out my place in the world these two seem built for people my age and Arctic Monkey's album specifically talks about themes that you're most likely to experience around this time. Both are really great listens aside from that.




Anyway, leave your list down below.

 

[Solid Snake]

Moved to media section with the music tag. :bodallas:

 

[Black Wizard]

Metallica's Ride the Lightning is probably the most important album in my music history. I don't quite remember exactly how old I was but if I had to wager a guess I was about 6 years old. My uncle was a huge Metallica fan, and I was very attached to him from a young age, so I spent a lot of time with him. I was looking through his CDs and cassettes when I pulled this one out, and he put it on and started For Whom The Bell Tolls. I don't know what is was but that song spoke to me on some level I didn't quite understand at the time, but from that moment on I listened to metal. I never liked all the boy bands growing up in the late 90s, or Britney Spears, or Blink 182 when pop-punk became a big thing, because I had metal.

Demanufacture by Fear Factory was the first thing I ever listened to that had electronic/industrial influences which led to me branching out and listening to more electronic and industrial stuff that wasn't necessarily metal. I'm not entirely sure why but I enjoyed how stiff the writing and musicianship is on this album, everything is in sync, it has that mechanical, premeditated sound that makes industrial so great to me. Industrial influences led me to the next album.

The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails came out in 1999 but I didn't discover it until I was about 12 or so. But it was the perfect time for me to discover this. I didn't have an emo phase in my life, I had an incredibly angsty, misanthropic, nihilistic phase (which maybe I haven't fully grown out of) and that was when I started really getting into industrial. I started listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Ministry, Rammstein, and at the same time started discovering more stuff like aggrotech and EBM which were the furthest I'd ever delved into electronic music. Also was when I started discovering more goth stuff (not the shitty Hot Topic mallgoth music, real goth like Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, The Cure's first few albums, Joy Division, Suspiria, Sisters of Mercy).

And this would probably be the album that shaped my current music tastes. This was my first foray into black metal, and to this day black metal is still my absolute favorite music genre. I Am The Black Wizards was the first track I ever heard, and is partially where I get my forum name from. Black metal created this chilling, almost haunting atmosphere that I'd never heard from any other sort of music before. Screeching vocals and treble boosted guitars found their way into my heart, and they're still there to this day.

Last one because I could sit here and just post album after album that I've really enjoyed or were gateways for me to get into other kinds of music, but this one is special. Even though I just said about the last album that black metal is my favorite genre, Gojira is hands down my favorite band and they're nowhere close to black metal. They are metal, but it's hard to label them as anything other than progressive (I hate how progressive gets thrown around as a blanket term in describing a lot of genres but typically tends to happen with metal the most). They're just so... unique. Very unconventional writing styles where the music itself conveys almost as much emotion as the lyrics do, and their lyrics are often very passionate.

That's it for me I think. I don't exactly have a connection with a lot of albums in the way some people do, whereas certain albums bring back a lot of memories or put them in a mindset they were in at one point of their life (I have a few songs like that but that is an entirely different story in itself). I guess I have some sort of connection to when I discovered bands, but I don't think I have the connection on the level I described because there are very few artists or bands that I don't listen to anymore. I never really had phases with music, I just kept discovering artists and kept adding them to the collections. I never "outgrew" anything or got tired of it, all of the stuff I mentioned at the beginning of my post talking about being a small child, or the stuff I discovered in my early teens, I still listen to all of that stuff today and I never stopped. Music has always been one overarching passion in my life, I'm always listening to something. When I wake up, I put music on and it typically plays unless I'm trying to watch something or I'm focusing really hard on a game. If I go somewhere, I have a 160GB iPod Classic that I still use for music in my car. It's just always there, and it'll always be there.

​

 

[Grievous 3D]

Okay...

1). Roots by Sepultura

2). As the Palaces Burn by Lamb Of God

3). Sehnsucht by Rammstein

4). Natural Born Chaos by Soilwork

5). The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga

Others:
Leviathan by Mastodon
The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails
Life is Peachy by Korn
Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson
The Plague Within by Paradise Lost

I would do a write up for each one...but...its late.

 

[JustusSalem]

1) Paranoid - Black Sabbath

2) The Number of the Beast - Iron Maiden

3) Hellbilly Deluxe - Rob Zombie

4) Welcome to My Nightmare - Alice Cooper

5) The Slim Shady LP - Eminem

 

[britishheel]

Mothership - Led Zepplin
One of the first albums that made me appreciate music fully. I can remember just listening to all of the songs non stop every day for a month trying to listen to the drums of John Bonham and the echoing voice of Robert Plant. It honestly changed me as a person forever and made me discover music as a whole.

All Day- Girl Talk

Probably an album no one would have heard or known before, but this is Girl Talk's most famous album and his mater piece in my eyes, All Day. The album is wonderfully made and the samples are a mixture of old stuff I have grown up with through my family and modern stuff I've came to love because of this album, definitely worth a listen if you have a few moments.

Hoops - The Rubens

A new album that I was introduced to whilst touring New South Wales in Australia, it's title track Hoops, quickly became my soundtrack of Australia and I have to admit to be a tad teary whenever I hear a Rubens song. I have fond memories that this album takes me back to every time i listen to it and I mean they're not bad for abbo's.