The Greatest Metal Concept Album Ever Tournament: Sweet Sixteen
The round of 32 of the Greatest Metal Concept Album Ever Tournament is over. Let us commence with the weepening and gnashening of teeth. Things will only get harder from here out as classic albums are pitted against modern masterpieces.
While the opening volleys of the bracket resulted in a few predictable ends (I mean really, how was Abigail not going to win that match?), upsets still abound. Hail of Bullets, Bathory, and The Sword all find themselves exiting the polls in shame and anguish! Oh, the cruelty! But there can be only one! Who will emerge with the crown?
Remember, your goal is to not just choose the album you like the most, but to try to pick the album whose concept best fits the music. Y’all did pretty well with the first 16, so let’s see how strong your resolve is in the right side of the bracket. Be judicious as you cast your stones below.
The new bracket (stab to embiggen)
Mastodon’s Leviathan vs. Dream Theater’s Scenes from a Memory
Moby Dick vs. Reincarnation
Blut Aus Nord’s The Work Which Transforms God vs. King Diamond’s Abigail
Metaphysical Ponderings vs. Spooky Ghosts
Therion’s Secret of the Runes vs. Cult of Luna’s Vertikal
Odinism vs. Self-Alienation in Metropolis
Nocturnus’s The Key vs. The Ocean’s Pelagial
Sci-Fi Occultism vs. Oceanic Psychosis
Queensryche‘s Operation: Mindcrime vs. Edge of Sanity’s Crimson
Disillusioned Junkie Turned Revolutionary vs. Children of Men, kinda
Iced Earth’s Night of the Stormrider vs. Meshuggah’s Catch Thirtythree
Pagan Earth’s Revenge vs. Psychological Paradoxes
Opeth’s Still Life vs. Vektor’s Terminal Redux
Oppressive Religion vs. Finding Immortality…in Space
Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle-Earth vs. Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal
How Melkor Lost All His Friends vs. Wolves and Other Spooky Night Stuff in the Dark Side of Man
