Best Metal Vinyl Album

Harris4crna
Yeah, i bought the 33 versus the 45 of master puppets. I agree, not so good.

The Because Sound Matters Metallica reissues are awful. I bought 33 rpm reissues of MoP and AJFA, and I unloaded the MoP at a loss as it was unlistenable. The vinyl looked like it was burned and had an unacceptably high surface noise for a brand new record. The deal breaker was buzzing distortion throughout many of the songs. I recently bought a copy of AJFA and again high surface noise, which most likely means that they use cheap quality vinyl for their pressings. The sound is ok considering the well-known issues with producing that album mentioned in this thread (btw, it's not lack of bass per se, but the tuning of Hetfield's guitar that buried the bass lines as well as mixing of the drums that are way too forward in the mix), but "Dyers Eve" sounds completely distorted. I thought my cartridge broke the first time I was listening to it, but "luckily" it turned out to be the recording. I don't know what the 45 versions sound like, but I will NEVER buy another record on the Because Sound Matters label. It's a perfect example of cashing in on the vinyl revival without any concern for the quality of the product. Shameful. Stay away.

For me personally I has not been so much an issue of the sound quality as it has been of the pressing quality. In fact, sound quality wise I have to say all heavy metal vinyl pressings I have heard have sounded better than their CD counterparts. For example, Metallica "Death Magnetic" and Audioslave "Audioslave" are horribly compressed on the CD versions (as a side note, both are produced by Rick Rubin whose phenomenon I cannot understand as every record he produces sounds just awful in the CD version; how he maintains demand for his services is a sad telling of what sound sells these days.); however, both records sound much, much better on vinyl. But the quality of Metallica pressings on the Because Sound Matters label is just shit. Burnt vinyl, distortion throughout the songs, vinyl noise right out of the sleeve as if it's been played 500 times. Disgusting. The Dutch pressing of Audioslave is way better. So I'm still an advocate of hard rock and metal on vinyl in general, but the quality of the pressings needs to improve big time. If they press on cheap vinyl with no concern for the quality, no matter how good the sound might be otherwise, the record will never sound good.

If a vinyl record is mastered from the original analog tapes it should sound much better than an over-compressed CD copy. My copy of "Death Magnetic" sounds much better on vinyl than the ear-bleeding CD of that album.
I suspect, however, that many records recorded today are recorded and processed digitally, even if they are then released on vinyl in addition to CD. Why and if they still sound better on vinyl is an interesting question. I have seen a thread on here discussing this a while ago. The consensus seemed to be that there are vinyl records processed digitally that sound spectacular, but I believe we're still talking recordings originally captured on an analog tape.