29 Albums That Defined My Life

With all of the Facebook memes going around this year, here's one that actually hits home. Music is the driving force of my life. My journal is full of entries concerning the bands and albums that have impacted me, and indeed that is the basis of how i manage my music collection.

[boilerplate]
Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 20 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill.

My original plan was to write up a short blurb about each of these albums, but (not surprisingly) it quickly started turning into an autobiography. So here's the naked list for now; maybe i'll post the full writeup to my blog later.

Oh, a few other points:
- List is roughly in chronological order (by first impact, not release date) and items are grouped by context.
- Items in bold hold extra-special significance
- I've been hacking on this for like a month now (see also - Rob from High Fidelity). This rev is not perfect but it'll have to do; i'm tired of arguing with myself.
- It's impossible to cut down to 20 albums; 29 is the best i can do :-)


METALLICA
(i can't pick a single Metallica album; narrowed down to these 4)
- The black album
- ...And Justice For All
- Master of Puppets
- Ride The Lightning

Aerosmith - Get A Grip
Van Halen - Balance
Stone Temple Pilots - Core
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Pantera - Far Beyond Driven
White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000

The Verve Pipe - Villians

Ozzy Osbourne - Ozzmosis

Les Miserables - Original Broadway Cast Recording
Rent - Original Broadway Cast Recording
Cradle Of Filth - Dusk And Her Embrace

DREAM THEATER - Images And Words

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling - Original Cast Album

EVANESCENCE - Fallen

Garden State - Music From The Motion Picture
The Cure - Disintegration

Lamb Of God - Ashes Of The Wake
Shadows Fall - The War Within
Killswitch Engage - The End Of Heartache

Avril Lavigne - Under My Skin

Trivium - Ascendency

Bullet For My Valentine - The Poison
All That Remains - The Fall Of Ideals

James Blunt
- Back To Bedlam
- All The Lost Souls


And...bugger it. The following bands didn't quite fit on my list, but it just doesn't feel right to ignore them entirely. Special mentions:

- Nirvana
- Pearl Jam
- Alice In Chains
- Soundgarden
- Jurassic Park soundtrack
- Megadeth
- Fear Factory
- Queensryche
- Slipknot
- Madonna
- Collective Soul
- In Flames
- Dark Tranquillity
- Hungry Lucy
- The Birthday Massacre
- Lacuna Coil