10 Best Sophomore Albums of a Given Lineup

[Charger]

#9

CATHEDRAL - SUPERNATURAL BIRTH MACHINE



After Adam Lehan left the band Gaz Jennings And Lee Dorrian decided to carry on with a single guitar player as Gaz was more than capable of handling the guitar duties alone and also as such they came closer to the sound of their biggest idol Black Sabbath. With Brian Dixon and Leo Smee joining the fold this would actually be the line up Cathedral would go till the end of the band in 2013.
Carnival Bizarre was a masterpiece and the one that followed surely wasn't any weaker. Adapting some sci-fi oriented lyrical content to go along with their usual doomy religion/horror related topics the mix was absolutely perfect. With Planet Of The Apes inspired Urko's Conquest, Cyclops Revolution, Nightmare Castle, Fireball Demon and the title track Birth Machine 2000 show the band firing at all cylinders of doom and gloom and fast paced heavy metal.
One of THE best Doom metal albums of the 90s.

[Zzzptm]

Time for some funk with my #8 selection...



The Isley Brothers had been around for a long time already when 1973 came along... they had a new label, T-Neck, a new distributor, Epic, and a new band lineup, the 3+3 referring to the older Isley vocalists and their 3 younger instrumentalist bandmates. Live It Up was the second album with that lineup and the first platinum-seller for the Isleys. Slammin' hot tracks and smooth ballads combine for an excellent album with many other artists sampling or covering these jams.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^
Just LOOK at those flares!!!


No. 8

Rush - Grace Under Pressure



Their 10th album but no change of personnel since the 2nd album... WHAT! Have I gone mad (probably, but that's for another topic). BUT this is the second release after they went "synth rock" and lost any trace of their 70s "progressive" output. The last album to have a significant prog content was Moving Pictures in 1981, There is little or no trace of prog on 1982s Signals and thus the second prog free album is Grace Under Pressure.

I prefer this to Signals even though Signals is a mighty fine effort, however Grace... is in my top 3 Rush albums.

Best Tracks: Distant Early Warning, Afterimage, Red Sector A, The Body Electric


In summary, not the second album after a line up change but the second album after a significant change in musical direction.

[Zzzptm]

Nice twist on the concept!

And yes, those are some mighty might flares!

[Charger]

Quite interesting KDC....maybe not quite what was intented but a nice twist of the plot!


Mine is bit more traditional.

#8

METAL CHURCH - THE HUMAN FACTOR



The first two MC albums were good but honestly nothing all that special and David Wayne's vocals were nothing special...but then came one MIKE HOWE who's voice was something special. Blessing In Disguise was a change in direction but it's with this album that all the pieces found their rightful places. Nothing but killer tracks here, the title track, In Mourning, In Due Time and especially the SUBERB Date With Poverty are metal classics. I think this is their best album and it deserves to be on this list!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

I swear I'll be more traditional with the rest of my choices. But the change in musical direction seemed as glaring as a change in personnel to me. I would have been happy to have gone with Caress of Steel the second album after Peart joined.

[Charger]

But the change in musical direction seemed as glaring as a change in personnel to me.

Oh yes absolutely. And most of the time those kinds of glaring changes in direction do not work at all...so to have one that not only works but excells is something special for sure!

[Zzzptm]

^^ That is an EXCELLENT choice of albums, Charger! That's what I like about these lists, we're not all coming up with the same stuff, and we get some good takes that we didn't come up with ourselves.

[Zzzptm]

My number 7...



So, Iron Maiden, how are things working out with the new singer? On this album, most excellently!

We know this album well, so know that this is my favorite Maiden album.

But, there's an interesting twist here... my favorite track, "Still Life", is a great rocker about making what could be described as a life-altering discovery about the desirability of something one once was hesitant to embrace. Well, one day, I was listening to Itchycoo Park by The Small Faces and noticed... hey, the singer in the song is going on about how he went down to a landmark location with a water feature and had his mind blown, you gotta try this too... and that's pretty much the same pattern of Still Life, albeit Iron Maiden dress it up with a bit more horror and I don't think at all that Itchycoo Park was inspring them... but, then again, there is quite a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor on the album, so it may well have been something they did and then swore to secrecy on. Probably not, but I like my version enough to consider it as a remote possibility.

Fun fact: To Tame a Land was originally titled Dune, but when they asked Frank Herbert's people if it would be OK to use that as the title, the response was, "Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially bands like Iron Maiden." So they went with To Tame a Land instead...

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^
Look for me to include that one later on my list

[Charger]

#7

MEGADETH - COUNTDOWN TO EXTINCTION




Megadeth has had few line up changes over the years and on most line ups it's actually hard to even find two albums that would be done by the same one! In fact only this and Super Collider fit the bill. And eventhough Super Collider is better than it's reputation it is in no way better than 13! Not even close.
One might argue the same with this one compared to Rust In Peace but actually the difference isn't all that big. Both albums are stellar pieces of work although quite different sounding. RIP was super aggressive thrash beast and CTE bit more mellow traditional heavy metal album with thrash elements. This is also a very even album...not many weak points on it...This Was My Life and Forclosure Of A Dream are the only weaker points on it! The rest are brilliant tracks! Sweating Bullets counts very high on my all time favourite Megadeth tunes.
This and Cryptic Writings were my introductions to Megadeth back in 1997. I still remember playing Carmageddon and having those two albums as my driving over pedestrians soundtrack! Ah...good times.

[Zzzptm]

^ Love that album, noice choice!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Almost forgot to post my No. 7 !!!


The Damned - So Who's Paranoid



(godawful cover!!)

Back when the Damned formed in 1976 they were a four piece comprising Dave Vanian on Vocals, Captain Sensible on Bass, Brian James on Guitar and Rat Scabies on Drums. As Zs has mentioned Brian James left after a couple of albums with Sensible taking on guitar duties and employing a revolving door of Bass players thereafter. But after the 1995 album Not of the Earth Rat Scabies left the band and when they returned for 2001s Grave Disorder they emerged as five piece with Monty Oxymoron on keyboards and Pinch on drums... and the album was fabulous! They followed this album up in 2008 with this album So who's Paranoid, and another great effort (although I marginally prefer Grave Disorder!). A mixture gothic rock, some almost popier tracks and some punkier efforts it's a great mix of styles.

Best Tracks - Under the Wheels, Dr Woofenstein, A Danger To Yourself, Little Miss Disaster and the 14 minute Dark Asteroid recorded as a tribute to Pink Floyd's Sid Barret who had died a couple of years earlier.

[Zzzptm]

^ This lineup of The Damned has made some great albums, I really loved So, Who's Paranoid - Shallow Diamonds is my favorite track from it.

[Charger]

#6

NIGHTWISH - IMAGINAERUM



Who would have guessed that Nightwish would make their best work after vocalist Tarja Turunen left with a bang. The band had been evolving through out the years but it was only with Dark Passion Play (the first album with new vocalist Anette Olzon) that they really found their mojo. Bigger songs, bigger production and Tuomas Holopainen's song writing reached whole new hights. But their magnum opus was the 2011 album Imaginaerum. With songs like Storytime, Turn Loose The Mermaids, I Want My Tears Back and especially their greatest song ever, the incredible Scaretale all shine pretty much above anything they'd ever done (maybe with the exeption of Whoever Brings The Night from the previous album and Tutankhamen from their first one). It was unfortunate that this also proved to be the last album of this line up.
It was a bold choice from the band to go to a totally different direction with Anette compared to the operatic style of Tarja and it proved extremely succesful...so much so in fact that they went with an Anette clone in her replacement Floor Jansen, whose voice is so similar it's hard to hear the difference sometimes.

This is THE best symphoic metal album ever made. Period.