I must say Joe, your taste varies alot. I like it.I looked up those bands, great stuff, I'll look to download it.
Electrasy - Cosmic Castaway is very catchy, I love it.
Just 9 bands (not counting the honorable mentions)... heck, if I took the time, I could write a whole book describing my favorite bands! Hehehehehe!
For one, Black Sabbath is up there, not just because of being a great band by themselves, but for inspiring others. Thergothon is up there, because they started the funeral doom genre, along with the band Funeral (Norway) that came about later, which in turn influenced early Mournful Congregation - my favorite funeral doom band. Of course, there would probably be no funeral doom if there were no doom metal, so the pioneers of that genre include Pentagram from the 70s and of course, Black Sabbath. The first track of their first album is the first DOOM riff!
But then there are bands that took the heavy rock (as it was described back then) played by Black Sabbath and to some extend Led Zeppelin, even The Who and The Beatles are credited with some early heavy metal or protometal songs, and evolved it into something heavier and faster. Budgie and Thin Lizzy are early influences for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Judas Priest practically invented speed metal, and some say they helped the Thrash metal genre evolve when they took their speed metal songs and played them faster and harder in a live environment for the Priest in the East live album. Overkill, Venom, Hellhammer, Mantas and Possessed are early bands that helped further along thrash (Overkill), black (Venom and Hellhammer) and death metal (Mantas and Possessed), which are three of the biggest extreme metal genres.
The thrash metal route quickly exploded with several notable bands forming between 1980 and 1983 - including Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Exodus and so on.
The death metal route also took off - Possessed released Seven Churches in '85 and Mantas changed their name to Death, releasing Scream Bloody Gore in '86. These early players helped later bands such as Obituary, Cannibal Corpse and the legendary Morbid Angel rise to fame. Cannibal Corpse was even featured in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective... because they are one of Jim Carrey's favorite bands.
Black metal went from Venom's NWOBHM such as Welcome to heck in '81 and Black Metal in '82. This influenced a band called Hellhammer that took the Venom sound to the next extreme, with the demo Satanic Rites in '83 and Apocalyptic Raids EP in '84. Hellhammer heavily influenced two early black metal bands, Bathory and Mayhem. Bathory released their debut in '84 and Mayhem released their first demo in '86, followed by Deathcrush in '87 and a ton of drama between them and Varg and Euronymous and blah blah blah before releasing De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in 1994 (but by then, black metal had already taken root and exploded)
Heathen has been a recent favorite band of mine because they just released their first new album in 18 years! They are thrash metal, early stuff had elements of speed metal and are often described as the band Metallica should've become after And Justice For All (instead of delving into modern rock and losing their metal roots for the Black Album, Load, Reload and St.Anger) - The Evolution of Chaos sounds more like a progression of Bay Area thrash and has some audible Exodus influences from Lee Altus playing in Exodus since 2005.
Death metal influenced funeral doom, some critics of the genre claim it to be merely death metal played at a very slow pace. Not really true, but death/doom was the major influence on Thergothon, who took the death/doom sound to the next extreme.
Black metal also influenced a second generation of funeral doom that mixes the slow tempos and heavy guitars with black metal - Nortt, Abyssmal Sorrow, Dictator, Furva Ambiguitas, The Austrasian Goat, Wither, Funeral Mourning, Blood of the Black Owl are just some of the bands that I love that play this sort of music.
So when I say my favorite band is Mournful Congregation, I acknowledge that this also means my favorite bands include Thergothon and Funeral, as well as their influences which probably included bands like Winter, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Anathema, who were influenced by Black Sabbath and death metal at the time... death metal being influenced by thrash, which was influenced by Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Venom and so on, who were all influenced by Black Sabbath to a degree... and Black Sabbath was influenced by the 60s blues/rock fusion and guitarists like Jimmy Hendrix. Their influences could be stretched farther back, with blues coming about in the late 19th century and rock coming about around the 40s and 50s as rock and roll.
And this is just the metal side of the spectrum. Eiffel 65 probably can trace their roots to House music, electronic music of the 80s, Disco and even Musique Concrete and Frank Zappa.
