Kiss 1st

A movie soundtrack that's about half instrumental, but it's not a tossoff: the vocal tracks are as carefully produced and enjoyable as Elton's "real" albums.

Outsider is Uriah Heep's 24th studio album. It follows the untimely passing of their beloved bass player, Trevor Bolder in May 2013. The recording started in late 2013 at Liscombe Park Studios in Buckinghamshire, England and features 11 brand new songs, including some epic additions to the band's huge catalog of rock classics. Uriah Heep debuted in 1970 with the release of one of Hard Rock music's milestones Very 'eavy… Very 'umble (which some rock historians argue contains the very FIRST heavy metal song ever, the classic Gypsy) and have since sold in excess of 30 million albums worldwide.

They All Came Down to Montreux was recorded in 2006 during Deep Purple's world tour promoting their album Rapture of the Deep. Fans of the Machine Head era lineup should check this out, as vocalist Ian Gillan, bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice are featured. Among the 12 tracks are "Lazy," "Highway Star," "Space Truckin" and "Smoke on the Water."

Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. In late 1968, he founded Led Zeppelin. Page is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as "the pontiff of power riffing" and ranked him number 3 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time" and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rock's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; once as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995). Page has been described by Uncut as "rock's greatest and most mysterious guitar hero".

The godfathers of progressive metal have been amazing and delighting their dedicated fans since the late '80s. Throughout their impressive and unlikely career they have continued to push themselves and the genre into new and challenging directions. While arguably hitting their peak with 1994's Awake, the band continued to grow with each new release (save for perhaps Falling into Infinity). Their previous studio effort, Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From a Memory, was a milestone in their career, finding all of the band's best attributes amalgamated into a fully realized whole. Although "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" may not be another magnum opus, it is still another fine addition to their impressive discography.

The debut from ex-Kiss guitar slinger Vinnie Vincent, is, well…hair metal through and through. It's got all the calling cards of a band that spent way too much gig money on Aqua-Net. You get the rockin' riff "I wanna party" tunes, the sleazy song or two ("Shoot You Full of Love"), screams, shreds, and drums galore. The nice thing about this record is that it lacks the obligatory ballad, which may have attracted a larger audience (i.e., girls) and pushed up the sales, but you gotta admire them for stickin' to the rock.

Debut albums rarely come as ambitious as the Manic Street Preachers' Generation Terrorists. Released in England as a double album (it was trimmed to the length of a single record in America), the album teemed with slogans, political rhetoric, and scarily inarticulate angst. Since the Manics deliver these charged lyrics as heavy guitar-rockers, the music doesn't always hit quite as forcefully as intended. The relatively polished production and big guitar sound occasionally sell the music short, especially the lesser songs, yet the Manics' passion is undeniable, even on the weaker cuts. While the album is loaded with a little bit too much unrealized material in retrospect, its best moments – the fiery "Slash N' Burn," "Little Baby Nothing," the incendiary "Stay Beautiful," the sardonic "You Love Us," and the haunting "Motorcycle Emptiness" – capture the Manics in all their raging glory.