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Mob Rules is one of Sabbath's best albums but I can't work out why on earth they chose to start it with Turn Up The Night and not E5150/The Mob Rules. Doesn't help that Turn Up The Night is easily one of the worst songs the Dio era line up ever wrote.

Rust In Peace starts and ends well but the middle is totally forgettable. That was my impression when I first got the album and I thought those songs would grow on me; nope, they never have done. Boring fillers.

The production job isn't anything to write home about either, I know everyone seems to think the original mix was amazing but there's no bass at all to speak of, everything just sounds really tinny. Beats me why everyone seems to think it's good.

Youthanasia is Mustaine's dark masterpiece TBH, a deeply personal and very dark record that still holds up today.

On the other hand you could just take Rust In Peace and cut it down to the first two tracks and the last two (don't count Dawn Patrol as a song) and it would be a great EP without all the boring filler in the middle.

While it wouldn't have made the album that much better the decision by Judas Priest not to include Thunder Road on Ram It Down and put the Johnny B. Goode cover on instead is a bit of a mindfuck still.

You're dead right, the gender of writers shouldn't matter. So why does it matter to high street bookshops? I need to get over it and start making an effort to buy more female writers again, but I can't help but assume that if whoever is in charge of purchasing the stock at these shops is more concerned with the gender of the writers they stock, what other priorities are they putting ahead of writing ability? Ethnic status? Disability? Sexuality? I get that these are possibly unreasonable concerns on my behalf, but the seed has been planted in my head and I have found myself veering away from buying female authors because of it. I can't be the only reader who has noticed this trend and been negatively affected by it.

I honestly think you're jumping at shadows a bit, but each to their own I guess.

I have bemoaned this in the past and it remains true today.  It might even be worse now. Going in to a book shop and almost every book on the shelves is written by female writers. It was glaringly obvious last week when I went in to buy a new book and today I got an email from Booktopia.com and out fifteen new titles being promoted a whopping one was by a male writer. One!!! I used to read women writers all the time but I have actually found myself physically incapable of picking up a book by a woman in recent times (unless I'm already familiar with her work). The only positive I'm finding is that because I don't want to buy female writers and my choice has become extremely limited, I'm taking more chances on writers I've never heard of before and discovering some really great new (to me) voices. Still though... very bizarre.

I don't get this. If it looks interesting, buy it and read it, why does the gender of the author matter?

Dehumanizer is a great album and the most viciously heavy and brutal record of theirs since Sabotage.

Iommi
Blackmore
Gaz Jennings
Dave Murray

Great live band, seen them a few times over the years. Earlier albums are great though haven't heard most of the newer ones.

Have to disagree on Under A Pale Grey Sky, that's one of the worst live albums of all time. Unless you like Roots, because they play practically the whole album live. Biggest problem though is that most of the classic songs are put into medleys or abbreviated, which is just not on. Either play the whole song or don't bother, it's musical cockteasing otherwise and frankly an insult to the fans. See also that daft decision by Metallica in the 90s to only play the first half of the title track of Master of Puppets.

I still have an Electric Wizard Let Us Prey shirt from about 20 years ago. Doesn't fit me now of course.

Yeah, Dehumanizer is a top 5 Sabbath album easily, maybe even top 3.

Reservoir Dogs is a lot of snappy dialogue for the sake of it - not that impressive a film. Pulp Fiction IS as good as people claim but I got fed up with people quoting it and thinking it made them some sort of genius.

More specifically regarding the Dickinson/Maiden issue the only Maiden albums I would rate above Accident Of Birth are AMOLAD, The X Factor, and Somewhere In Time. Chemical Wedding is probably the equal of any other 80s Maiden album.

Just watched Jackie Brown. Great film. Definitely one of the best Tarantinos along with KBV1 and OUATIH.