Over the weekend, I picked up a used copy of Napalm Death’s Smear Campaign. While preparing to file it in my CD rack, I noticed that I now owned nine total releases from Napalm Death. This, combined with a recent article about bands with very long discographies, got me thinking, which bands/artists do I own the most releases from? I decided to take stock of my music, including all physical formats and all types of releases (EPs, singles, collections/best-ofs, etc) to see which bands dominated my collection. In my estimation, the results were not particularly surprising…
Darkthrone – 15
Danzig – 14
Misfits – 12
Six Feet Under – 11 (I like them, fuck off.)
Johnny Cash – 10
King Diamond – 10
Megadeth – 10
Napalm Death – 9
Cannibal Corpse – 8
Metallica – 8
Neurosis – 8
Vader – 8
Darkthrone, easily my favorite band ever at this point, leads the pack. However, if you study the results and analyze them further, things get more interesting. Technically, my favorite singer of all time Glenn Danzig dominates with a whopping 22 releases if you combine the Danzig total (14) with the number of Misfits releases I own where Danzig was the vocalist (8). Danzig’s total jumps up to 24 releases if you include my Samhain boxset and the Black Aria album. If you really want to stretch, throw in my Danzig VHS and you’ve got the undisputed king of my music collection at 25.
Chris Barnes’ much-maligned Six Feet Under comes in 3rd with 11 releases owned. I’m bound to get flack for this since about everyone I know seems to hate this band. But, there is something about their bludgeoning, uber-simplistic sludge-laden caveman death metal that I love, and fuck you if you can’t understand me. Mr. Barnes’ total increases to 14 if you include the Cannibal Corpse albums I own that he sang on (3).
Johnny Cash obviously sticks out like a sore thumb here, but I’m not afraid to admit that I have been fond of classic-style country music since high school, which started with Johnny Cash’s American Recordings series and working backwards to At Folsom Prison. I am from the Midwest after all. My grandmother’s favorite singer was the great Patsy Cline, so a little of that was bound to rub off on me. I’m glad that it did.
King Diamond and Megadeth tied with Cash for 5th place. I’ve loved Megadeth since junior high, so I’ve had plenty of time to pile up their releases (I’m excited to finally be seeing them next week, even if it is just MegaDave and some hired guns, but that is neither here nor there). King Diamond took me a while longer to embrace, but once I did he quickly became my second favorite metal vocalist behind Danzig. Of course, much like Danzig, ol’ King jumps up several spots if you include my Mercyful Fate stuff, which would bring his total to a fairly impressive 17. Only falsetto is real.
In my opinion, Napalm Death are one of extreme metal’s most consistent bands, and have not lost any of their potency over the years in spite of stylistic evolution and a lack of original members. I can always rely on ND when I’m in the mood to get some aggression out and headbang myself into a severe neck-ache. Even their so-called “experimental” phase has its merits and all their albums are pretty much essential.
Finally, we come to a 4-way tie between Metallica, Neurosis, Cannibal Corpse and Vader. Four bands that in my opinion couldn’t be more different from one another. Neurosis is probably one of the greatest and most important metal bands to come out of the ’90s and I wouldn’t mind picking up the rest of their releases. Metallica is one of the bands I listen to the least these days, but of course their discography (specifically the early releases) is heavy metal bedrock and pretty much essential to any collection. As for Cannibal Corpse and Vader, well they’re basically my two favorite straight-up classic death metal bands so I’m bound to own a lot their releases, although I still have several more albums to go for each one. Again, the theme of consistency pops up, since I can’t think of many DM bands with more consistent discographies than Vader and Cannibal.
So how about you guys? Which bands do you own the most releases from? Are there any of you out there that have ridiculously obsessive collections of a single band? What does it say about you as a fan/listener? Tell me about it.
THKD 
Six Feet Under LOL
Josh, you have a wife that likes metal. HOLD ONTO THAT S***.
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Man, you know us metal nerds can’t resist shit like this. Here are my top shelf-stuffers:
Darkthrone – 18
Striborg – 17 (What can I say, something about this demented dude really appeals to me.)
Nine Inch Nails – 15
Iron Maiden – 14
Dream Theater – 13
Cradle Of Filth – 13 (Ditto: I [mostly] like them, fuck off.)
Xasthur – 13
Neurosis – 12
My Dying Bride – 12
Enslaved – 11
Opeth – 10
Leviathan – 10
Bathory – 9
Devin Townsend – 9 (The 9 includes Devin Townsend, Devin Townsend Project, and Devin Townsend Band. If we include Strapping Young Lad in there, though, that puts the total up to 13, I think.)
Judas Priest – 9
Then I had a whole lot of folks cashing in at 8: Anathema, Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Gorgoroth, Napalm Deathh, Satyricon, Slayer, The Meads Of Aspohdel, and Ulver)
Plus a shit-ton of bands at 7, including: Black Sabbath, Death, Morbid Angel, Primordial, and Rotting Christ.
It’s a bit too late for me to do any heavy-duty thinking about “what this all means.” An interesting thing to examine, though, would be not just which bands we all own the most physical releases of, but also which bands we own ALL the major releases by. What I mean is, obviously a band like Iron Maiden, Megadeth, or Napalm Death, who have been around for 20 or 30 years, will have racked up an impressive number of releases.
So, even though I have lots of albums by many of those longer-running bands, I think I’m probably less likely to have every single thing (or at least every LP, for example). Like, with Maiden, I purposely skipped over ‘Virtual XI’ and ‘No Prayer for the Dying.’
There are tons of younger bands, though (or even not so young), that have put out maybe three or four or five albums, and I’ll own every single one of those. I’m not sure whether that means I actually like these less-prolific bands MORE than some of the classics, or whether it just means it’s easier (logistically and financially) to collect five albums by a lesser-known band than fifteen albums by a hugely popular band.
Great topic, though.
And shit, now that I think about it, I was only looking through metal stuff. If we expand into non-metal, I know I’d have to include Swans (which, holy shit, if you include Gira’s solo stuff, his works as Angels of Light, plus Jarboe’s solo work, I have an ungodly amount of: 32), Einsturzende Neubauten, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Mouse On Mars, Bob Dylan, Venetian Snares, and plenty of other stuff. Jesus.
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If you were to count the duplicates of certain albums since our CD collections became one, would that count??? Yes folks, lets keep in mind that we had to purchase a special CD shelf that can hold something like 2,000 CD’s which is almost full and that is about 98% his CD’s mine are in CD books. So as far as numbers go, we will have 4-5 medium boxes of CD’s to move with us back to California. And the CD collection slowly grows week by week, on Holidays and Birthdays. I was not surprised by the results at all, and thankfully Josh and I, for the most part, like the same music. But I will join the club and say I can’t stand Six Feet Under. 🙂
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Also forgot that The Final Frontier showed up in the mail today. Make that 12 for Maiden…
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Ah man, I couldn’t resist this one. A survey of my CD racks returned these results:
Napalm Death – 14
Metallica – 12
Iron Maiden – 11
Enslaved – 10
Megadeth – 10
Iced Earth – 10
Opeth – 9
Katatonia – 9
In Flames – 8
Dark Tranquillity – 7
My Dying Bride – 7
Amon Amarth – 6
Sepultura – 6
Nevermore – 6
Napalm Death was the easy winner, and I’ll still buy everything they put out.
In terms of obsessiveness, I think Enslaved takes the cake for me, as some of their albums were hard to find at certain periods and I sought them all out at once (circa Below the Lights. Their discography is one of constant evolution (I just listened to clips of their new album, which I’ll be pre-ordering despite my disappointment with Vertebrae.) All the other bands simply grew in volume over the years as albums came out. I stopped buying albums by several of these bands as my tastes evolved (Iced Earth, Nevermore, Sepultura) I’d like to say that my days of obsessively collecting discographies are over, but I seem to be rapidly accumulating Darkthrone albums.
Also, this is one of those times I’m happy I still only collect CDs – it was nice to stand there and survey the entirety of my music collection. Thanks for the idea.
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