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I've been expanding my music collection lately, and I think I'm going to purchase another album. I've got the choices relatively narrowed down, I'd just like your opinion on what to pick up next. The last few have been very soft stuff, and if my shuffle feature gives me any more triple shots of James Taylor I may well lose my mind. So I've hardened these few a bit.

1. Wolfmother- Wolfmother

- Dimension
- White Unicorn
- Woman
- Where Eagles Have Been
- Apple Tree
- Joker & The Thief
- Colossal
- Mind's Eye
- Pyramid
- Witchcraft
- Tales
- Love Train
- Vagabond

2. Van Halen- Van Halen

- Runnin' with the Devil
- Eruption/ You Really Got Me
- Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
- I'm the One
- Jamie's Cryin'
- Atomic Punk
- Feel Your Love Tonight
- Little Dreamer
- Ice Cream Man
- On Fire

3. Guns 'n' Roses- Appetite for Destruction

- Welcome to the Jungle
- It's so Easy
- Nightrain
- Out ta Get Me
- Mr. Brownstone
- Paradise City
- My Michelle
- Think About You
- Sweet Child o' Mine
- You're Crazy
- Anything Goes
- Rocket Queen

4. Deep Purple- Machine Head

- Highway Star
- Maybe I'm a Leo
- Pictures of Home
- Never Before
- Smoke on the Water
- Lazy
- Space Truckin'
- When a Blind Man Cries (bonus)

5. Dio- Holy Diver

- Stand Up and Shout
- Holy Diver
- Gypsy
- Caught in the Middle
- Don't Talk to Strangers
- Straight Through the Heart
- Invisible
- Rainbow in the Dark
- Shame on the Night

Van Halen's Van Halen is excellent but I voted for Appetite for Destruction. An excellent album all the way through and certainly the best of GNR by far.

Don't bother with Wolfmother, they're not a bad band, but they're pretty much a derivative 70's/early 80's-based band, so you might as well go with bands actually from that time, who created all the motifs in the first place. So now we get down to choosing between four of my favourite albums.

Holy Diver is probably the most self-contained on the list, as you can survive without getting the rest of Dio's discography, and Vivian Campbell doesn't get much better than on here. You can also do this with Appetite, because it's of a much rawer, more unrefined sound and focus than the rest of GN'R, and can be taken separately. The Use Your Illusions albums almost have more in common with Chinese Democracy than with it.

For Van Halen and Machine Head, you're entering the territory where additional albums are essential. Machine Head will be the lighter series of purchases, as all you really need from Mk. II Deep Purple are In Rock, Fireball, and Made in Japan. You can even get by without Made in Japan, but it's just about the best live album ever recorded, and definitely worth picking up.

Van Halen can stand on its own, but won't make much sense jumping straight into 1984, so you'll probably want to bridge them with Van Halen II, Women and Children First and Fair Warning. Diver Down isn't worth the money, and the only Sammy Hagar-era album you should even consider is 5150. But get the Dave albums first.

So if I absolutely had to choose just one, it'd be Appetite for Destruction, but not by a wide margin. As far as I'm concerned, they're all essential and groundbreaking.

On this list, Appetite. Van Halen is pretty badass, but AFD is IMO one of the best hard rock albums of all time.

My first inclination was to go with Wolfmother, since I recently discovered them myself, and they do kick a lot of ass. However, as was pointed out earlier, they are really a revisitation of the styles begun in the time of some of these other bands. Given that, I would have to go with Machine Head. Deep Purple was such a huge influence on the development of rock it's hard to fathom. That album in particular has some of their greatest songs (namely Highway Star and Space Truckin'). So they get my vote.

I'd go with Holy Diver or Machine Head. Wolfmother has like 2 good songs and the band already broke apart so they're not going to get any better in the future.

Machine Head. It's practically the quintessential hard rock album, not to mention some of the first early heavy metal. Deep Purple is often discounted by uncultured philistines, so do your part to keep things Purple - I don't think you'll find a better interplay of organ/keyboards and electric guitar anywhere on Earth.

Edit - In a solid second place, I'd go for Holy Diver next, but that's the metalhead in me talking.

Get Machine Head for all mentioned reasons. Then get Holy Diver, because yeah, Dio never was better solo. Then get Rainbow's Long live Rock'n'Roll to bridge from Purple to Dio.

Wolfmother - I remember playing these guys at radio when it was still just their EP. They are bringing rock back. And doing it well.

Wolfmother are probably the worst band in the history of the sense of hearing. I would personally blow up their bus if it would stop their reign of terror.

PROTIP TO WOLFMOTHER - believing you are totally saving rock and/or are channelling van halen does NOT mean anyone else does

I go machine head; i like it, i hear metalheads like it, it's interesting and not terrible.

UGH WOLFMOTHER

remember it's lame and absurd when the killers do it, but totally ok when a bunch of retards from gundawindi do it

Stark wrote:Wolfmother are probably the worst band in the history of the sense of hearing. I would personally blow up their bus if it would stop their reign of terror.

PROTIP TO WOLFMOTHER - believing you are totally saving rock and/or are channelling van halen does NOT mean anyone else does

I go machine head; i like it, i hear metalheads like it, it's interesting and not terrible.

UGH WOLFMOTHER

remember it's lame and absurd when the killers do it, but totally ok when a bunch of retards from gundawindi do it

Your a hurtful man. You just hate them because they got SIX HUNDRED BILLION RADIO AIRPLAYS. Amusingly after that stopped I didnt mind them. I HATE ANYTHING POPULAR!!!!

those two fucking songs

they were so goddamn terrible

and just looking at them i want to punch them

i can't say 'pick better singles' because they honestly think they'r esaving rock

Stark wrote:those two fucking songs

they were so goddamn terrible

and just looking at them i want to punch them

i can't say 'pick better singles' because they honestly think they'r esaving rock

ps they broke up over royalty issues.

Wolfmother were better than so much shit out there these days by virtue of actually having technical proficiency.

JointStrikeFighter wrote: Wolfmother were better than so much shit out there these days by virtue of actually having technical proficiency.

That's true, but they sounded so terribly forced "woah let's be really seventies duuuudes", plus the whiny vocals did so not match the music.

Machine Head. Deep Purple and "Smoke on the Water" are classics and great, it's a bit of a must have really .

Okay: Amazon MP3 isn't carrying Machine Head, and I'm not in the mood to fight with iTunes, so I'm unfortunately going to need to strike that from the list.

Qwerty 42 wrote:Okay: Amazon MP3 isn't carrying Machine Head, and I'm not in the mood to fight with iTunes, so I'm unfortunately going to need to strike that from the list.

How about, you know, buying a CD There's an excellent 2-disc "25th Anniversary Edition", remastered by I think Roger Glover (bass player and studio mastermind), with bonus tracks.

Seriously, striking it from the list because you can't get it directly as MP3 is something I just don't get. Get the CD, put it in your computer and rip it in your preferred quality, voila and you still got an uncompressed, unspoiled copy to put in your shelf.

Yeah - an album like Machine Head is one you want a physical copy of.

It's like watching Star Wars for the first time with NetFlix, instead of getting the 4-DVD box set. C'mon, dude. It's Star Wars.

Regrettably, the nearest music store to me that would carry something like Machine Head is half an hour away.

Qwerty 42 wrote:Regrettably, the nearest music store to me that would carry something like Machine Head is half an hour away.

OMG, half an hour? Yeah, that's totally an unmasterable distance