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Rating: 
Summary: Stairway To Controversy
Review: After leafing through a couple of pages, it won't take long to figure out Chuck Eddy has a far different idea of what passes for metal music than most other people. The temptation to discard it has probably overcome more than a few metal heads but that would be a disservice. Eddy has compiled a historical tome which more than anything else traces the best metal of the 70's and the bands that influenced the best metal bands of the 80's.Stairway to Hell's acerbic tone reveals a treasure trove of information for the discerning metal fan. Eddy relays that the punk band The Dictators had a profound influence on Twisted Sister and drummer Mark Mendoza was a member of both bands. Through Eddy we learn the New York Doll's influenced both Kiss and Motley Crue, and Junkyard were former punk rockers. Eddy's expertise lies chiefly in the 70's and he continually alludes that punk and metal are kissing cousins completely fused by the 1980's(we get it Chuck). Kudos to Eddy for realizing the brilliance of Kix, a notoriously underrated band and giving Blue Oyster Cult appropriate metal god status (he also recoginzes Ride The Lightning as Metallica's best, a definite plus). This book is ideal for fans looking for overlooked 70's music that influenced much of the metal of the 80's and beyond. Unfortunately, Eddy's age and bias show as he delves into the 80's and 90's. Eddy dares to include Teena Marie and Pat Benatar as metal and justifies it by claiming metal is whatever he says it is (nice try Chuck). It is clear that Chuck is a familiar victim of generational bias, namely his bands are better than yours (if you grew up in the 80's or early 90's). Iron Maiden and Judas Priest are not included in a book about the best 500 metal albums (a travesty)while bands like Bon Jovi and Poison receive accolades. Progressive metal serves as a dartboard for Eddy's barbs and he chooses Anthrax's "I Am The Man" ep for inclusion over "Spreading The Disease" or "Among The Living." Eddy's most damning crime is his inclusion of the best 100 metal albums of the 90's. This list reads like a compilation by a middle aged guy, picking the most 70's sounding albums of the 90's for inclusion, which is essentially what happend. Eddy relys on critical acclaim for underground acts when they don't sound 70's (the worthy mention of The Gathering's "Mandylion" and Tiamat),while incuding at least two 80's metal compilations from Priority Records released in the 90's as eligible. 80's bands releasing new albums in the 90's (Warrant & Cinderella)are also mentioned. Alterna/Punk bands like Weezer, The Offspring, Green Day & Everclear dot the landscape and ofcourse Nirvana is not left out. Glaring omissions include Pantera's "Cowboys" and "Vulgar", Paradise Lost's "Icon and Draconian Times", Skid Row's excellent "Slave To The Grind", "Chaos A.D. by Sepultura, "Seasons In The Abyss", by Slayer and albums by Dream Theater, Fates, Warning, and Savatage to name just a few. Eddy won't win any awards with the new generation of metal heads as he omits Slipknot, Korn, Marilyn Manson, Sevendust, Linkin Park, and Limp Bizkit. In sum Eddy provides an excellent book for debate and controversy while failing to provide even a rudimentary compilation of the best 500 metal albums of all time. Eddy's deriative style smacks of Lester Bangs and barely avoids plaigarism. His annoying fusing of pop culture terms with his own invented and pretentious language fails to come across as original but as both aggravating and contrived, missing the mark on all counts save for his noteworthy knowledge of the 70's. Martin Popoff is recommended for a more balanced view of heavy metal music, while Eddy is recommended for a second-to-none view of music of the 70's that was metal or was related to metal
Rating: 
Summary: Stairway to Awful
Review: Chuck Eddy is pretty rad for writing this book. He spews scorn at self-righteous hipsters who view any music that isn't indie rock or post punk as kitsch. At the same time he mocks stupid metal dorks who believe that all music should be unlistenable and contain classical guitar solos and use lyrics that deal with the rapings of medieval women.
I think Chuck Eddy is in many ways the johnny Rotten of rock critiscizm in that he wants to see it all destroyed. He tries to do this in this book by building a list of albums that are only really similar in that they contain loud guitars on a few songs. Reading this book will take you on a journey to the center of Chuck's mind. It is like a stream of consciousness novel. I don't agree with all of his tastes, but I appreciate Chuck's determination to not believe the hype.
Rating:
Summary: Escalator To Pretentiousness
Review: Chuck Eddy is so in love with his own heavy-handed verbal witticisms that he should just assemble a dictionary of off-beat criticism metaphors and be done with it. In a strange type of irony, reading "Stairway to Hell" is not too dissimilar from hearing an Yngwei Malmsteen album: during the first couple songs the reaction is, "Wow -- this kid can really jam!" but by the third or fourth song you're reduced to, "Okay, I GET IT already! Shut Up!" In short, it's stylistic overkill intended to impress, not enlighten. To that end this book is exempliary of the worst aspect of any critical offering, being far less about the designated topic and much more about the author himself. Eddy wants to wow, apparently, with snide similes and cleverer-than-thou descriptive wordsmithing -- mired in a vinyl elitist's smugness, no less -- but the resulting compendium displays far less acumen regarding its subject. Purportedly that subject is a chronicling of that musical genre broadly defined as Heavy Metal's finest products -- but unless musicians like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams actually belong to a subset of Heavy Metal I'm unfamiliar with, this volume reads less like a cataloguing of Heavy Metal and more like an egotistical pretense for lumping a synopsis of every album in Eddy's collection into a "Best of Chuck Eddy" volume. Reading through the entries one is not so much taken aback by what's included (although much of it does leave the astute -- and even not-so-astute -- Metalhead scratching his head), but what's not. As many reviewers have rightly pointed out, it's nothing short of blasphemy to compose a book about Heavy Metal that fails to include even one entry for Metal kingpins Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, Scorpions, MSG, Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne, Alcatrazz, and countless others. But then, perhaps it's Eddy's intent not to take the compilation task with any modicum of seriousness, and instead simply thump the reader over the head with irony-laced quasi-descriptive blurbs replete with trademark Eddy hogwash. The astute -- and even not-so-astute -- Metalhead would rightly question whether NOT ONE of those Metal exemplars above has produced output that ranks among the best of the genre, worthy of being archived in a Metal encyclopedia. Eddy, apparently, doesn't care -- he's got his own agenda. Seemingly that agenda is Eddy satisfying himself with hip, inventive, postmodern dissections of the likes of Bryan Adams, Prince, Neil Young, Funkadelic, Teena Marie, and Suzi Quatro. Not to mention extolling obscurity in such forms as Feedtime, Amon Duul, Glen Branca, Raszebrae, Head Of David, Pere Ubu, Roky Erickson, and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. Personally, I couldn't care less about Eddy's ability to self-indulgently flex his knowledge about fringe acts that have a questionably faint connection to things Metal. Where are Samson and Raven and Viper and TNT and Mama's Boys and Tygers of Pan Tang and Tora Tora and Grand Prix and . . . you get the picture. Oh, I see -- they've been displaced by Bo Donaldson, James Blood Ulmer, Sir Lord Baltimore, Dick Destiny and the Highway Kings, Plastic Ono Band, and those Metal luminaries The Chocolate Watchband. Puh-LEEZE. Lynyrd Skynyrd and .38 Special are about as Heavy Metal as a wet dish towel, as are The Divinyls and The Byrds and King Crimson and Argent and Lou Reed and Paul Revere & The Raiders -- yet all are included in this compendium. And even if Eddy's approach was intended to be ironically "eclectic" (to say the least), some of his choices are downright inexplicable: Poison, but not Dokken; White Lion, but not Ratt; Bon Jovi, but not Motley Crue. And why should Maryland AC/DC clone Kix (who mercilessly plunder Cult riffs for material) warrant FOUR entries, while Krokus and Helix deserve NO CREDIT for having trod the same stylistic ground much earlier? Under the auspices of "Best Heavy Metal Albums" we've been presented with a phony bill of goods. Eddie's pint-sized explanation for the vast array of empirically (despite what he says) non-Metallic inclusions is to insist -- in a tone which seemingly protesteth far too much -- that "genre-naming equals corporate categorization equals a shortcut to false order." Apparently the fact that stylistic differentiations provide a foothold for individuals seeking to compartmentalize their preferences is a whopping no-no imposed by the Big Business Powers-That-Be, not a useful system created by music aficionados who'd prefer to know that when they buy a Boz Scaggs album it ain't gonna sound the same as W.A.S.P. His rationalization serves to do nothing but let him off the hook of attempting to adhere to any constrictors (that'd be too close-minded!) and justify, therefore, how in his universe REO Speedwagon can be obliquely counted among the Metal hordes. Thus, based on what's presented in this book, Eddy apparently cares as much about what constitutes the 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe as my cat. In fact, I'd bet my cat cares more. It's maddening for those of us with a proud insight into Hard Rock / Metal esoterica (which would allow us to know, for instance, that Riot's 1981 Elektra release was actually titled "Fire Down Under," not "Fire Down Below" -- the "Below" was a misprint on the album jacket spine, making it NOT, as Eddy suggests, a title "nicked" from Bob Seger) that this type of psuedo-encyclopedia might wind up in the hands of impressionable tots who don't know any better. But it's also redeemingly satisfying that Eddy shows he doesn't know as much as he'd like you think, despite the crafty word-slinging. All of which leads me to the conclusion that this tome is not so much an empirical guide towards anything resembling what could be called Best Heavy Metal Albums, but more a collection of Stuff Chuck Eddy Likes. And even at that, it becomes evident in rather short order that he's not really all that fond of the majority of the entries included. Instead of helpful exegetical analyses, we get 500 snotty screeds that while at times seem to bear some relation to the album under discussion, most are just stuffed with Eddy's self-indulgent linguistic inventions that 90% of the time make sense only to, well, Eddy. Hardly a useful enterprise for us Earthbound music fans who can only shake our heads wondering what "squishing drums" and "razorback-nudging-your-pup-tent guitars" actually SOUND like. Ultimately, any book purporting to catalogue a definitive "best" of ANY artistic endeavor can only be subjective, but such endeavors should at least be counted on to adhere to some semblance of stylistic continuity. You won't find that here -- you might as well just stick to the comprehensive All Music Guides for all the diversity presented in "Stairway To Hell." The only worth I see in this book is that it's inspired me to review my entire music collection -- from Abba to Zappa -- dress it up in cutesy crypto-jargon, and chronicle the tastes it represents in a book entitled "The Best Jazz EVER."
Rating: 
Summary: ROXXXXXXXXX
Review: Funny, incisive, rocks rocks rocks. Gets some things right (70s AC/DC >>> 80s AC/DC including - esp. - Back in Black), gets some things wrong (underrates -fill in blank-), who cares: it's a good read. All the one star whiners and grammar police below need to go to a party, meet a girl, get drunk, live. Maybe think about joining a gym, getting contact lenses, investing in better clothes (sweatpants really shouldn't be worn that much dude), dressing yourself, getting a job, moving out of your mom's basement. In the meantime stop having nervous breakdowns over how some book doesn't uphold whatever precious orthodoxy you've wrapped your identity in. Get it together. KORITFW.
Rating:
Summary: Puh-Leez Tell Me This Is A Joke
Review: I snipped the title of my review from a quote from SpongeBob SquarePants, but it fits the book perfectly. When I saw this in my local bookstore, I immediately bought it, without thinking of looking inside. I rushed home and began to read. With horror, I that the wrong cover had been put on the book. I looked at the flap. No, it said 'Stairway To hell'. But in horror, I realized that this so-called metalhead was calling Prince and Neil Young metal. I was so outraged that I threw the book across the room. How could this guy call such artists metal? Another thing is, the book was completely devoid of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne (Gasp!), and I'm pretty sure there are no Scorpions albums in there. This book is an embarrasment. Half of the artists in here are not even rock, let alone metal. There are a couple of good albums in here, but get something else in stead.
Rating:
Summary: Author is too cool for school
Review: I think this author is too concerned with appearing "highbrow". He constantly tries to be clever, which gets annoying soon. Also, his entries in these best 500 albums mostly are bands few are familiar with (and most don't seem very metal). I take issue with most of his choices as well- Metallica albums are buried around the 200s. Iron Maiden and Judas Priest have no albums here. But Kix has 3 in the top 30. And Poison is in the top 100, too. Interesting. Obviously, the author has very different tastes from most metalheads I know. I would recommend the Popoff book much more than I ever would this one.
Rating: 
Summary: I guess I have to eat my words.
Review: I wrote a very negative review in here a few months ago. That was my initial reaction after buying the book. While I still stand by my criticisms and understand the other reviewers negativity, I must point out some very positive aspects about this book. For late 60's/early 70's heavy metal this is the most comprehensive book you will ever find. I have hit the stores digging up all sorts of obscure gems by Dust, Bull Angus, Bang, Highway Robbery, ect. He does give credit to just about every artist/band that has contributed anything important to heavy metal in the first 20 years of its inception. Chuck Eddy really did his homework. Even though he claims to dismiss Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, he does seems to mention them a lot throughout his book! The book is a challenge for anybody who professes to have a vast rock and roll knowledge, since he will make you work hard to pick up his constant references to other artists and/or songs within his reviews. Thanks to him I discovered interesting bands like The Angry Samoans, The Godz, and Stray Dog. Now as far as the non-metal inclusions go (i.e Teena Marie, The JImmy Castor Bunch, Prince) understand that he is selecting albums which contain songs that are close enough to the heavy metal spirit to be enjoyed by a headbanger. I had to respect the guy when I noticed that he included "The time has come again" by the Chamber Brothers. This is an obscure gem that I have loved for years; since the group gets labeled as "60's psychedelic soul" I had failed to see that the main reason I liked the title song was because it was so heavy. I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to look beyond the surface. I mean... I you already like Metallica why do you need anybody to tell you how great they are?
Rating:
Summary: Hell of the Ignorant
Review: Let me first start off that this book was made in 1991, so no Korn, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Etc. So if your looking for that, just look away right now. But the fact that it was made in 1991 doesn't excuse it from the fact of how bad it is. This Chuck guy says tries to cover whatever could have been metal at it's time (I.E. Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin) and whatever he considers to be metal. I'm sorry but he can't do this. Over half of what is in this book isn't even metal. Hair Metal is Not Metal! Poison is NOT Metal. There isn't any Iron Maiden, Sepultura, Judas Priest, Ozzy's Solo Career, Etc. The Fact that this guy tries to come across as a smarta$$ or above the thinking of others doesn't help either. After record number 50 you can't even tell if he's talking positive or negative about it. Often times it sounds like he's bashing it. And just what does this guy consider Metal? Well let's take a look at the top ten.
1. Led Zeppelin-Zozo
2. Guns N' Roses- Appitite for Disaster
3. Alice Cooper- Geatest hits
4. Aerosmith- Toys in the Attic
5. Kix- Kix
6. New York Dolls- New York Dolls
7. Lynyrd Skynyrd- Second Helping
8. Neil young and Crazy Horse- Rust Never Sleeps
9. Teena Marie- Emerald City
10. The Jimmy Castor Bunch- Phase Two
If your not convinced that this Chuck fellow doesn't/didn't know jack about Metal, I'll add insult to Injury.
Metallica's first appearance is Master of Puppets at the 166 Mark.
Only Slayer's Hell Awaits (477), and Reign In Blood (472) make appearance in the book as any kind of Satanic records, he also speaks pretty negative about them.
The B*tth*le Surfers Make the 128 spot. I love these guys but they ARE NOT METAL. They fall more into the Punk/Alternative area.
While he does also list AC/DC, Celtic Frost (A lot), Black Sabbath and Motorhead. The good, doesn't outweigh the bad, as he lists Husker Du, Queen, Pink Fairies, The Who, Prince (?), The Ramones, Deep Purple, and Grand Funk Railroad. And while I hate them, I was surprised that Cannibal Corpse wasn't listed in a book of 500 "greatest metal records". I hope this helped. Avoid at all costs.
On the back cover (on my version) Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone says that you will throw the book against the wall a time or two. This is because the book is filled with so much [fill in the blank] that you can't help but summon up the rage to destroy this book. I can't because I rented mine from the local Library. Yeah, that's right, I didn't blow $15 on this monstrosity.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: Probably more entertaining than informative, at least Chuck Eddy has a sense of humor in his reviews which often can't be taken all that seriously. I understand this is an updated version , so my comments are based on the original that I'm more familiar with. Kudos to Chuck for giving recognition to a lot of records that get passed over as "not the best" by certain artists just because they didn't have hits (he rates Sabbath's 'Sabotage' as their best, good move)but to their real fans are the best musically. His recognition of very obscure yet important and influential artists like George Brigman and Split is commendable, and shows he has done his homework. He does go out on a limb including what a lot of people wouldn't necessarily call metal artists, yet finds a way to make them relevant to the subject. A very different read.
Rating:
Summary: A Must (To Avoid)
Review: When Chuck Eddy wrote this, he was a regular at The Village Voice....thus I knew what to expect from STAIRWAY TO HELL. For those unfamiliar with the Voice, two rules apply: 1) No matter what the 'subject' is, it's ALWAYS really about sociopolitics 2) Any Voice writer purporting to dig metal is ALWAYS a poser pretending to dig metal...as a jumping-off point for looka-me essays showing off their sneering superiority to the music and its fans Eddy's a good writer, but he's also a phony. His intention with this book was subversive - to sucker Judas Priest & Megadeth fans into buying this so he could slyly steer them towards punk & hardcore bands. As if those of us who don't write for The Voice and drink at dives on Ave C are too dim to tell the difference. Bad job all around. One add'l note: I'm no metalhead, and if anything I share a lot of Eddy's disdain for bands like Iron Maiden. But a book so titled (and expressly target-marketed to the metal fan) should play fair with its audience: this one blows a raspberry at its readership after suckering it out of the cover price. Let's see a critical history of hip-hop that blows off Wu-Tang & Ice Cube in favor of Jimmy Osmond's "Killer Joe" & Blondie's "Rapture" and see if the critics respond with the same hosannas...
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