So guys .........here we go. A new year and so to celebrate I'll give you a new year. We might as well keep this number thing going so expect 1986 in 2016
1985 turned out to be a much better year than I expected coming in. I dug very deep for this one and there were plenty of albums in there that I'd either forgotten or never heard. All up I once again listened to over 100 albums for this exercise. In the end I think 1985 is as strong as some of the earlier years , it's just that many of the strong albums were by rather obscure artists. A number of our favourite bands produced their weakest album in 1985 and a few went a bit softer (some did that well , others not so much) and barely scraped in as "hard rock".
In terms of events we had confirmation that DLR had parted ways with Van Halen and the release of his solo EP Crazy From The Heat. There were reunions of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin for Live Aid. Not a great deal else happened that strikes me.
No problem man. Looking forward to you list. As I said, I made a Top 10, and while it contains some of my favorite albums of all time, this year was not very deep for me.
I will say that my favorite album from 1985 was easily Accept's Metal Heart.
At the risk of incurring TAC's wrath I'll note that Metal Heart didn't make my cut. Nobody can say I have anything against Accept as they have already featured prominently in these lists. Metal Heart actually contains 2 of my favourite Accept tunes (the title track and Living For Tonite) but the mid section of the album - say tracks 4,6,7,8 - I rate as filler. Decent filler but filler all the same, and when the songs are anything other than top notch I begin to suffer Udo fatigue. And that makes it very hard, given the way I'm ranking albums , for Metal Heart to make the cut.
So...................
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 1985 1 Dokken : Under Lock and Key(TIE)
1.Icon : Night Of The Crime
3 Yngwie Malmsteen: Marching Out
4 Streets: Crimes In Mind
5 Heaven: Knocking On Heavens Door
6 Jimmy Barnes : For The Working Class Man
7 Anthrax: Spreading The Disease
8 King Kobra: Ready To Strike
9 Vandenberg: Alibi
10 Bon Jovi 7800 FahrenheitMissed By A Bee's DickKix : Midnight Dynamite
Saxon: Innocence Is No Excuse
Made The Squad But Not The Team:Loudness :Thunder In The East
UFO :Misdemeanor
Helloise:Cosmogony
David Lee Roth:Crazy From The Heat
Lizzy Borden:Love You To Pieces
Gary Moore:Run For Cover
Tytan:Rough Justice
Shy :Brave The Storm
Joshua :Surrender
Phenomena :Phenomena
Horizon: Master of the Game
AC/DC :Fly On The Wall
Virgin Steele: Noble Savage
Hawaii: The Natives Are Restless
Coney Hatch: Friction
Ratt: Invasion of Your Privacy
Mad Max: Stormchild
Tyran Pace :Long Live Metal
Heavy Pettin': Rock Ain't Dead
Dio : Sacred Heart
Lee Aaron: Call of the Wild
Treat : Scratch and Bite
Mox Nix : Mox Nix
Malice :In The Beginning
Pantera :I Am The Night
Hurricane:Take What You Want
Sinner:Touch Of Sin
Tangier:Tangier
For those wondering where Magnum's On A Storyteller's Night is , I rated it too pissweak to be called "hard rock". If I had included it , it would've been a few spots out of the top ten based on ratings. A few other albums I rated for this were similar but I included the bands because plenty of their other material is considered hard rock and I didn't want crossover if we ever do something like this in the AOR thread. UFO's Misdemeanor would be an example.
Fire away.....................
As before , I'll take a break and listen to some newer stuff for a few days and start on 1986 next week some time. That could easily be a 10 way tie for number one