Just to elaborate on these - posted in a hurry.
Only Theatre of Pain is without a doubt my favourite non-metal album. Probably the most anti-religious album you'll ever hear outside of the metal genre. Rozz Williams portrays his message with amazing imagery in the lyrics, the seething anger and satire directed towards organised religion is tangible, but always beneath the surface, never too much in your face and never predictable or generic. The guitar riffs are haunting and atmospheric...everything about the album is perfect.

Catastrophe Ballet is pretty much a more chilled-out version of the above. Not a lazier version or anything, just more relaxed, less rough round the edges, but equally atmospheric.

Floodland - may be a stereotype to say it, but no goth rock album even comes close to this - and I'm saying that as a fan of that genre who appreciates many different bands and albums within it. The range of songs on this album are incredible. I value diversity on an album almost more than anything (aside from the obvious) and this album delivers perfectly. Some of the most danceable songs ever made (seriously!) are on this album, alongside brooding, haunting numbers like Driven Like the Snow and Colours. With ballads like 1959 and the epic opening track in the mix as well, I just never get bored of this record.

The Downward Spiral - probably needs no introduction here. Just an assault of raw emotion from beginning to end. Pretty timeless, I feel. Eraser is probably my favourite track. Dead Souls, the Joy Division cover on the Deluxe Version, is awesome also.

The Fame Monster - best pop album I've ever heard. Again, the diversity in this keeps me hooked. Love songs like Speechless, the best clubbing song ever in Telephone and filthy beats in tracks like Teeth make this one of the most enjoyable albums in my collection.

Adios - Just a very underrated, very fun album, full of attitude. KMFDM's best, IMO.

Me and metal didn't talk for a while when I first got into this.

I would give The Good Son by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds full marks. This record is a lot less dark then their other albums from that era, but this proved to be a good thing in the end. The strings are beautiful and every song is great. I could see why a lot of people don't like the first track but I thought it was great.

Firstly, my favourite rap albums.

Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
Eminem - Marshall Mathers LP
Dre - 2001
NWA - Straight Outta Compton. Over 20 years on, and the beats and rhymes on this album still hold their own against any other shit.
NWA - 100 Miles and Runnin' EP
Ice T - Power
Geto Boys - S/T
Geto Boys - We Can't Be Stopped
Suga Free - Street Gospel
Public Enemy - Apocalypse '91
Ice Cube - Death Certificate
Ice Cube - The Predator
Handsome Boy Modelling School - So, How's Your Girl?
Cypress Hill - S/T
Cypress Hill - Black Sunday
Cypress Hill - IV
D12 - Devil's Night
Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
Mix Master Mike - Anti-Theft Device
Gravediggaz - 6 Feet Deep
Too Short - Chase The Cat
Run DMC - Tougher Than Leather


Moving on...

Radiohead - OK Computer. Absolute classic, great CD to go to sleep to as well.
The Strokes - Is This It
Tom Waits - The Heart Of Saturday Night
Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction. Probably my favourite album of all time.
Guns N' Roses - Lies. Enjoy the covers on side A, and 4 of the best on side B.
Motley Crue - Dr Feelgood
Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet
Aerosmith - Pump
System of a Down - Toxicity. When this came out I bought it on cassette and cranked it in my walkman for months.
Serj Tankian - Elect The Dead Symphony. My album of the year last year, and the DVD fuckin rips too.
Nirvana - Nevermind. Nothing needs to be said here, everyone knows this album.
Faith No More - The Real Thing. Man how good was Epic when it came out, and of course almost every other track on this album is a pearler.
Pearl Jam - Ten.
Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Alice In Chains - Facelift
Alice In Chains - Dirt
Alice In Chains - Unplugged
Alice In Chains - Sap
Mad Season - Above
Dinosaur Jr - Quest
The Blues Brothers OST
Dj Shadow - Endtroducing.... This CD isn't in the Guinness Book of World Records for nothin'.
Muse - Showbiz. A bit of a girly one, but I definitely enjoy this from start to finish.
The Herbaliser - Remedies. I used to listen to a lot of Trip 'Op, and this is one of the albums that got me into that style. Beats a-plenty.
Dr Octagon - Dr Octagonecologyst. Kool Keith on the mic, + Q-Bert on the wheels of steel = winning combo
The J.B's - A Funky Good Time - Anthology

Done.

The Flaming Lips - Zaireeka

Excellent album. It has wonderful flowing melodies to accompany the strange lyrics that it produces.

Well, I have one that's awesome:

Vinalög - Friðrik Ómar and Jógvan Hansen
It's a two-CD full-length release that features both singers performing many traditional/well-known Icelandic and Faroese songs. Friðrik Ómar performs in Icelandic, Jógvan Hansen does the same but in Faroese. Also, the songs are translated from one language to the other: Icelandic songs were originally composed in Faroese, and Faroese songs were originally composed in Icelandic. They are all folk/pop/ballad style, but they sound quite nice.

Well, everybody already knows I'd give 100% to Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version, which I (obviously) think is the greatest album of all time. This album is too massive for me to possibly try to elaborate on, so I won't bother. However, I recently discovered the *other* best album ever, and I feel I can explain it a bit:

Evan Parker, Derek Bailey & Han Bennink - The Topography of the Lungs

I'll probably get laughed at for this, but I don't care. This is the best music there is. Evan Parker on sax, Derek Bailey on guitar, Han Bennink on drums, all free-improv craziness. All of these musicians are brilliant in their own right, but Han Bennink is what makes the album in my opinion. His drumming is unmatched, and he tends to include a lot of foreign objects on his set, and sometimes getting up and banging on random things in the room, even picking up his own sax at one point and playing it! Not to mention his odd vocal freakouts when he's going extremely fast (his screams and grunts are hilarious, but they're way in the background, so you gotta listen for them). Derek Bailey sounds mostly like he usually does when he's on his own (although I doubt many people on here know of him), but here he's a lot more subtle. He sort of just noodles around in the background, and he does some really cool feedback stuff on the first track. I just love the texture he adds to the music. Evan Parker's sax is probably the most up-front instrument in the mix, along with the drums. Parker has a strange way of playing his instrument; after a while it doesn't even sound like a saxophone anymore, just nonsense squealing, but he does play some awesome stuff throughout. One review I read describes it "as if he just ran a marathon and is completely out breathe, and is struggling to get sounds out of his instrument". I couldn't put it any better.

This album is difficult to understand, but it has a unique atmosphere that no other album I've heard matches. The music is hyperactive and frantic (save for some slower parts), and yet everything sounds so subtle, like ambient music. You can forget the music is even playing sometimes. But this is an album I can listen to over and over again and not get sick of. I haven't had feelings like this for any album except for Earth 2, until now. The first track alone is worth 100% to me, it's about 20 minutes long, and most of the greatest moments on the album are on it. Once you hear it fully, you know you will never need another piece of music ever again.

Alright, well, I tried.

Of non-metal albums I would give The Dopamines - Expect the Worst and Parasites - Solitary. Absolutely great pop-punk.

The Who - Tommy

Supertramp - Breakfast in America

Journey - Infinity

Boston - Dont Look Back

I'm a bit skeptical with people giving huge lists of albums that they would rate 100%, not just in the high 90s, but having ten or twelve albums rating at the maximum you could possibly give seems odd to me.

I'm not sure if I have many albums, if any, no matter what genre that I'd rate 100%, but there are definitely a few that come close. One contender would be Everything Everything's 'Man Alive' album that was released in 2010. It's certainly an odd album, one that I don't really have the expertise in general rock to classify. It's a kind of arty-indie pop laced with a lot of synth and sound effects with a unique vocalist and weird as fuck lyrics. I just find the album to have a really good atmosphere, it's quite spacey. I'm not even getting annoyed at the lack of guitar in the album.

I'd also follow the trend with Pink Floyd, with Dark Side of the Moon being an absolutely phenomenal album, it's almost like a religious experience going through that, every member of the band does a phemonemal job, with the vocals, keyboards, sampling and guitars all being at their peak. If any album was going to get 100%, it would probably be either this or Wish You Were Here. Other non-metal albums that come rather close would be Placebo's 'Without You I'm Nothing', Foxy Shazam's self-titled album, which is just really theatrical rock with a clear Queen influence, but also using a trumpet! On that note, 'Queen II' and 'Sheer Heart Attack' are also albums I'd rate in the high 90s, along with De La Soul's '3 Feet High and Rising', QOSTA 'Songs For The Deaf', Jeff Buckley's 'Grace' and Immortal Technique's 'Revolutionary Vol. 1'

A bit surprised at the three or so love posts for later Supertram like Breakfast in America. It's ertainly an ok pop album but nowhere near as haunting and painful as the debut or as grand and huge as Crime of the Century, the latter being maybe one of the best rock albums of the 70s, and that's generally my favourite decade for music!

It's probably time I gave Christian Death a proper listen...in the 90s I thought I didnt' enjoy them but yes, that was a long time ago...

It's nice that metal can be so forgiving.

Nah, I have/had a friend who was into this band and drove me insane playing their stuff all the time.

Only 1 album gets 100% from me, and that is "Orchid" by Opeth.
However, I listen to a range of music outside of metal, and these are some of my favourites which would get marks in the very high 90%'s:

The Black Crowes - Shake Your Money Maker
The Cult - Ceremony
The Cure - Disintegration
Depeche Mode - Violator
Faith No More - King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime
Fields Of The Nephilim - The Nephilim
George Michael - Older
Gino Vanelli - Brother To Brother
Jamiroquai - Travelling Without Moving
The Mission - Gods Own Medicine
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
The Sisters Of Mercy - First & Last & Always
Stone Temple Pilots - Core
Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
16 Horsepower - Sackcloth 'n Ashes

The reasons is the same for all of them. Consistently well written songs arranged to best showcase the albums ebb and flow, but with no filler or poor tracks, maintaining the right mood throughout.

Anything from Pink Floyd in the 70's

Big Chocolate - HiLion
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Lustmord- Purifying Fire
Korn - Korn
jj - jj no. 3
Guns n' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
Nobuo Uematsu - Final Fantasy 6 Soundtrack
Koji Kondo - Ocarina of Time Soundtrack
Martin O' Donnell - Halo 2 Soundtrack
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
Masashi Hamauzu - Final Fantasy 13 Soundtrack
Damjam Mravunac - Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Soundtrack
Offspring - Ixnay the Hombre
Faunts - M4
Breaking Benjamin - Saturate

I too do actually enjoy Korn's first album, but can you give some reason as to why you find the album itself flawless? It's a good album, packed with emotion and not your typical mallcore rubbish, but giving it '100%' is a bit of a stretch to say the least. Breaking Benjamin too well.. I fail to see a lot worthwhile in their music, let alone them making a 'perfect album', could you perhaps explain these two choices?

Current 93 - Thunder Perfect Mind
Kraftwerk - Radio-Activity (I fucking love this band - anymore Kraftwerk love out there?)
Fugazi - Repeater (the first album I ever owned on vinyl, as well as a staple band from my teenage years. Steady Diet of Nothing would fit here too)
Depeche Mode - Violator
Christian Death - Only Theatre of Pain (nice to see that others agree!)
Laibach - WAT
Mum - Yesterday was Dramatic Today is OK (great Icelandic electronica)
NIN - The Downward Spiral (flame away, but I'll always defend liking NIN)
Tom Waits - Real Gone
The Pogues - Hell's Ditch
The 3rd and the Mortal - Tears Laid in Earth
Worm Oroborous - S/T

There's more of course, but I'll just leave it at that.

well:

Koro - 700 club EP
7 minutes of the best 80's hardcore produced

Husker Du - Zen arcade
I find my self enjoying these a lot, the AltRock parts as well (pink turns to blue is one of my all time top songs) really solid and good effort by them

Orchid - Dance Tonight! revolution tomorrow
melodic chaos, lights out still give me shivers

Melvins - Gluey Porch Treatments
defined several genres to come. I can listen to this in loops

Their stuff with Valor is really inferior to the previous albums with Rozz Williams. They kinda descended into predictable cheesiness once Williams died.

I didn't listen to "Real Gone" yet, but it's interesting to see Waits latest release mentioned. Can you explain why this is your pick from Waits' discography?

That múm album is really good, was one of my choices for this thread, too. I also have "Summer Make Good", but it's certainly not even to their debut.

I checked out Circa Survive on Youtube because I was intrigued by the cover art ha. So far I'm pretty much digging it. cool band!

Why would anyone give you shit over this? That album is clearly at least a 100%

Amazing album. It's a shame the term "screamo" nowadays describes a style much shittier than the one played here.


System Of A Down - Hypnotize
I consider this album a masterpiece, and pretty underrated from metalheads. I blast it at least once a month for the last 5 years, and I still love it. Every single track is unique. There are some pretty thrashy songs like Attack and Tentative, hard/alternative rockers like Kill Rock n' Roll, Hypnotize and She's like Heroin, experimental/metallic songs like Dreaming, Vicinity Of Obsenity, Stealing Society and U-FIG and the poppy rock ballad Lonely Day. Then, two masterpieces: a full metal EPIC, Holy Mountains and Soldier's Side, which makes me shiver every single time.

System Of A Down - Toxicity
I was a confused, whether or not to write about this album. The topic's title is "Non-Metal Albums That You'd give 100%", and I consider this album a thrashy heavy metal album.

The Human Abstract - Nocturne
Amazing album, full of neoclassical melodies, awesome beatdowns, great guitar solos and a really good mixture of clean and harsh vocals. Their new album, Digital Veil, may be even better, but I can't be too sure about it, as I have only listened to it a few times.

Discharge - Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing
Not much to say about this record. D-beat is good, eh?

''Sheer Heart Attack'' and ''A Night At The Opera'' - Queen
Wow, both are perfect albums, specially Sheer Heart Attack, with many genres in all the songs of the album. And with the other, i was thinking ''Bohemian Rapshody'' was the most worth, but i change mind. ''Sweet Lady'' is now my favorite song of the album. But it's really difficulot to say how impressive these albums are. And more yet to choose albums.

I don't know, something about Jack Off Jill's "Clear Hearts Grey Flowers" really stood out for me. The songs Fear of Dying, Strawberry Gashes, and Rabbiteen were nice. Unfortunately if shit could make a sound, than that would be the rest of album.

Mer de Noms or Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle

They're just so atmospheric

I thought I posted in here, but I guess not. I like plenty of non metal stuff (who doesn't?), but the only album I'd give 100% is The Mechanical Hand by HORSE the Band. It is without a doubt my favorite album of all time. I know it's only six years old but I fell in love with it instantly and the first pangs never dwindled away, I still love it just as much as I did when I was 15. Prior to this album, they were essentially really noisy hardcore with synths, and after this album they got really experimental and started making really weird, mind bending stuff that never quite sat well with me. The best songs from later albums are the ones that sound like they could have been on The Mechanical Hand (Face of Bear, HORSE the Song, Hyperborea). This is really their most unique album and it's something that no band will ever be able to imitate. The stuff here is as intense as it is majestic, the melodies share the spotlight with the batshit insanity absolutely perfectly, and the 8 bit sounding keys never come off as gimmicky. Winneke is a straight up madman, and his lyrics can come off as silly sometimes but they're usually allegories for some really disturbed shit, it's about on par with City in terms of insight on a mentally disturbed man's mind. I get really pretentious when I talk about this album, I know I see shit that isn't there just because I've read so much into it, but I wouldn't have dissected it so thoroughly if I wasn't so head over heels in love with it. I've actually yet to find more than one metalhead who is also a big HORSE fan, but I couldn't care less. My favorite album ever.

I'm going to have to go with Melt-Banana - Teeny Shiny. It's such a wacky album, and a pretty good mix between their more grinding material and their poppier sensibilities. I'm still saving up to get their earlier albums, so that might change, but their style of noise rock is pretty fun overall.

Marillion - Marbles (2004)
Camel - Dust and Dreams (1991)
AFI - Black Sailes in the Sunset (1999)
Yes - Close to the Edge
Gentle Giant - Octopus
Def Leppard - Hysteria
GNR - Appetite for Destruction
Michael Jackson - Thriller

Despite the fact that Devil Doll is listed on Metal Archives I don't consider them metal at all. That being said I'd give Dies Irae and The Girl Who Was Death a perfect score.

oh, I'm pretty sure I've never even heard Christian Death without Williams, it's just that it was the 90s when I was first exposed to ...well, a hell of a lot of music. I periodically think of visiting stuff I once dismissed as sometimes a listen can be only cursory or else I've found a path that seems to indicate I eight enjoy something more.

Forgot one in my earlier post here some time ago:

Billy Idol - Cyberpunk

Among even many of his fans this album is often getting bad reviews but I can't help but love it from start to finish. This album was some kind of ahead of it's time imo and I often wonder how a re-release with the now available technical possibilities would sound. But that's just a sidenote. The album as it was released just captures me and creates fantastic head-cinema for me.

That album is way awesome. Especially on a cloudy day. Apparently the guys in the band were way influenced by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind during the writing of this album. I finally got around to seeing the movie, and after watching it the album became even better than it already was. Just gives more depth to the songs.

Anything by The Smiths (Favorite band as of January 2011)
Slip it In by Black Flag (Their best album imo)
Generic by Flipper (More depressing then any funeral doom/dsbm band ever)
Lifestylez ov da poor and dangerous by Big L (Big fucking L)
Apollo Kids by Ghostface Killah (Although he doesn't make any sense, GFK never needs to in my eyes.)
The Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox (The Beats are some of the best, rhymes are too)
Always Was, Is and Shall Be by GG Allin and the Jabbers (Best GG Allin album, great songs to sing along)
Meat Puppets II by Meat Puppets (Good stuff)
What Makes a Man Start Fires by The Minutemen (Anything album by minutemen could, I just chose my favorite one.)

Being an FF fanboy myself, I must admit these are pretty damn good. Dancing Mad from the FF6 soundtrack still stands as one of my all time favourite songs.

I went to the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert in Sydney just over a month ago it was really good, they performed the Maria & Draco Opera and Terra's Theme from the FF6 soundtrack as well as Blinded by Light(my favourite off the soundtrack) and Fabula Nova Crystallis from the FF13 soundtrack. They also played Clash on the Big Bridge from FF5 which was a really nice surprise, seen as that's another of my favourite songs.

I'm still hoping for the day that they come back to Sydney again with Dancing Mad in the setlist though.

Another for me is War by U2. Adam Clayton is one of my favorite rock bassists and I love hearing the rhythms on this album. Every song on this album is very catchy and melodic..simple and passionate. The Edge is a great guitarist and I love his Fripp-ish licks here. I might also be inclined to rate the live album Under a Blood Red Sky a hundred too. It was probably the first concert record i ever got into. After these albums, the band went to shit with commercialized self-right righteousness.

I just checked out Vontra d Arte by a band called Corde Oblique, who are from Italy. It is a perfect mixture of piano, acoustic guitar, stringed instruments and both male and female vocals. Its usually labeled as neo-folk but it sounds completely unlike DI6/Sol Invictus/Orplid/Darkwood ect.. Really one of the best albums I've heard in a long time. The instrumentation is beautiful, evoking an old-world European atmosphere. The female vocals are beautiful and the male ones are done quite well, too. They've got everything on this album just right.

So many to choose from. But I think it would be Wardruna - Runalojd Gap var ginnunga

Gallows - Grey Britain
Probably the last great hardcore punk record.

Nobuo Uematsu - Final Fantasy I through XI (and some of X since he didn't make all of the music for that one)
Quite possibly the biggest musical influence for myself.

Akira Yamaoka - Silent Hill 1 through 4
Not a huge fan of the music in anything after that, though they aren't terrible or anything.

Takeharu Ishimoto - Final Fantasy 7: Crisis core
He truly did an amazing job with this game, a good surprise.

Yasunori Mitsuda - Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross
Do I really need to explain this one...?

Masashi Hamauzu - Final Fantasy XIII
Still can't believe this game turned out to be one of my favorite in the series, it's good I gave it a chance because there isn't one thing I dislike about this game, ESPECIALLY the music.

Basil Poledouris - Conan the Barbarian
Really an underrated soundtrack from a great composer, R.I.P.

Jesu - Lifeline and Silver
I don't think I can really call those Metal releases so I'll add those to the list.

Zhong Chi - Easy World
Not sure how many people know about her, but this album really is a great post-rock / trip-hop / sort of poppy sounding album.

Buckethead - Colma
The track Whitewash is reason enough, beautiful and warm album by the typically all over the place musician.