Who's Your Favourite Band, And Why?

[MetalBlade]

My favourite band is Judas Priest.
They have not always been my number one, but they have always been one of my favourites.

The reason I love them so much now more than ever is partly because I credit them as being responsible for my renewed love of metal.
In the middle nineties, I kinda went off metal quite a bit, and got sucked into the whole grunge vaccuum. I refer to this time as my Dark Years.
I was involved in a fair bit of substance abuse back then. Nothing serious, but enough to change the way I perceived music. And my perception of it was pretty poor in hindsight.

Then in 1998, from out of nowhere came Burn In Hell, the new video from Judas Priest featuring the then new singer Tim "Ripper" Owens.

I was astonished.

I had not really listened to Priest for about five years - ever since Rob Halford left the band - but I considered their last album Painkiller to be their strongest to date.
But when I saw the Burn In Hell video on MTV, I began thinking "Fucking Hell, what am I doing listening to crap like The Levellers and U2?"

The next day I went out and bought the new album Jugulator and was amazed at how heavy Priest had become since I had last heard them.
Painkiller is hardly a lightweight piece of work, but this new one was to me borderline Bay Area thrash!
And Ripper Owens brought some real intensity to the sound also.

The week after that, I came across Priest's latest double live offering, Live 98 Meltdown, and one look at the tracklisting convinced me that I had to buy.
I could only imagine how heavy my old favourites would be with Priest's new downtuned sound - Grinder, The Sentinel, Touch Of Evil, Victim Of Changes, The Ripper, Breaking The Law... the list goes on.

But it was to be one of my least favourite songs, Diamonds & Rust, which REALLY got me excited about Judas Priest again.
This new live version was a ballad, performed with acoustic guitars and was a complete reworking of the original Priest version, but Ripper's vocals blew me away completely!
Never to this day have I heard such emotion conveyed in a song.
And by the time it reached it's crescendo, my hair was quite literally standing on end. This guy was INCREDIBLE!

So, my love for Priest was sparked in such a way thet I asked my wife to buy me the Remasters box set containing four classic Columbia recordings - Sin After Sin, Stained Class, Killing Machine and Unleashed In The East. I then went out and completed the set of 12 CDs and the rest is history - Judas Priest became my number one band.

Since then I have bought three live DVDs, the last album with Ripper Owens - Demolition, the latest album Angel Of Retribution with the returning Rob Halford, and I caught them on the tour with Scorpions.

Painkiller still remains my favourite Priest album, but Angel Of Retribution is ridiculously good, especially the 13 minute epic Lochness.
All that's left is the agonising wait until the next album Nostradamus, which promises to be the best ever.

So, people, who's your favourite band, and why?

[deathjazz]

That's so difficult, depends on who I'm listening to at the time

I could say my favourite of all time across all genres is The Beatles. I was introduced to them by my sister who is 18 years older than me and i know most of the lyrics to all their major songs, and some album tracks too.

in the rock sense with longevity it would be maybe Slayer or Cannibal Corpse, neither of them have ever sold out, just kept true to the faith. I've seen them both quite a few times and they're both better live than on record - not all bands are. I got into Slayer by buying Hell Awaits on vinyl, and Cannibal Corpse it was Butchered at Birth on CD.

There's loads of others i could mention, some have had consistent good output like Maiden, Priest or Zepellin, others have had the odd dip like Celtic Frost but the highs very much outweigh the lows!

[MentalGoth]

.
After a really good think about this, i would have to say my fav band is Motley Crue. Ive liked them since they started out got everything they have done and seen them live, I love Vince Neil's voice and Nikki Sixx.

;D

[lawlessgrandma]

Moetley would be my No. 2.

[dittohead]

I think I have a joint equal:

Slayer, not the first thrash band I heard (that honour goes to Metallica) but they're a band that I can always dig into their back catalogue, live they're almost untouchable (excepting Download '07 where I nodded off, they were treading water that day).

& Machine Head (I'll probably get some shit for this one):

I will concede the video to From This Day is cringeworthy, Ross Robinson ruined the MH trademark sound on The Burning Red, replacing it with his standard 'one-tone fits all' low, muddy nu-metal tone to be heard on every album he produced, & that Supercharger should've been an EP with the 4/5 good tracks on there.

But those low points do not outweigh Burn My Eyes, The More Things Change, The Burning Red (good songs, bad production), Through The Ahses Of Empires & The Blackening, nor their consistenly storming live performances.