Liz is 25 years old. Two years ago, Liz had 40 songs on her iPod and “a graveyard of abandoned projects”. She found a book called 1001 Albums You Should Listen To Before You Die. The book starts with a Frank Sinatra album called In The Wee Small Hours from 1955 and goes up to 2007. On a day 516 days ago, Liz decided to start listening to all the albums in that book. She listens to one album each day, from start to finish, and then she writes her impressions in a blog. On May 6, 2012, if she keeps this up, she’ll have listened to someone’s idea of the best 1001 albums in history.

What caught my eye was that this list of 1001 albums includes some metal. I haven’t made my way through very many of Liz’s posts, but on April 2 (Day 513) she listened to The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden and on March 26 (Day 510) she listened to Black Metal by Venom. By her own admission, Liz was in a “tiny music bubble” when she started this project. Whatever music was in the bubble with her, it’s fair to say that it didn’t include anything like Iron Maiden or Venom.

I like imagining how non-metalheads react when they listen to metal. Reading Liz’s take on these albums, seeing them through the eyes of someone who is new to the genre but is clearly doing her best to keep an open mind, is kind of fun. Of course, she hasn’t been converted — yet. It would have been better if she had found a list of the 1001 best extreme metal albums of all time and forced herself to do that for 1001 days, though she might have been hospitalized before finishing. Also, I’m not sure there are 1001 great extreme metal albums.

After the jump, you can see what she wrote about The Number of the Beast and Black Metal. You can also hear a brand new track from the Swedish band called Shining (not the Norwegian one by the same name) from their next album. I’m wondering how Liz would react to this beast of a song (it’s a fucking killer). Continue reading »