Albums You Hated On First Listen, But Grew to Love

Has there ever been an album that just did nothing for you the first time you heard it, but that album has grown on you? I have had more than a few.

SEPULTURA: MORBID VISIONS
The most obvious of these is Sepultura's Morbid Visions. I first heard this album when I was just beginning to get into Sepultura. Of course at the time, Sepultura was more of a groove/nu-metal band, so when I heard this proto-blackened death metal album, I was shocked and frankly disappointed. However, over the years, this has become one of my favorite Sepultura albums. Its rawness and brutality is the reason.

SAXON: INTO THE LABYRINTH
One of the biggest bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the late 1970's/early 1980's, Saxon is also one of the few bands from that scene to have put together a long and productive career. Nevertheless, for some reason I was just not totally impressed with this 2009 release upon the first time I heard it. However, its catchiness eventually caught up to me. This is not a completely metal album, more of a borderline hard rock/metal album and that's probably what caused me to dislike it at first.

EDGUY: TINNITUS SANCTUS
German power metal band Edguy is kind of a weird group. I expected something along the lines of Primal Fear, Blind Guardian, Helloween, or Gamma Ray when I picked up this album, but that is definitely not what I got. What I got was something similar to Saxon's release, more of a hard rock style with little to none of the typical elements associated with German power metal. It was their sense of humor and their ability to write a good song that drew me in after my initial disappointment.

VANDERHOOF: VANDERHOOF
This was an album I received in a lot of cut-out CDs I bought from a seller on ebay one day. It was not one of the main drawing points, and in fact I had never heard of the band. Vanderhoof is the side project of Kurdt Vanderhoof, guitarist for Metal Church, so I expected something similar to Metal Church's style. Vanderhoof though was created for the guitarist to play a style more along his main influences, which was Deep Purple-style hard rock/heavy metal. It took some getting used to as I was never the biggest fan of Deep Purple, but this album really is pretty damn good.

GARDENIAN: SINDUSTRIES
After hearing their Soulburner album, I decided I kind of liked Gardenian's brand of Swedish melodeath. It was poppy and infectious, but still pretty decent, so I picked this album up cheap. This was a complete departure though, experimenting with progressive song structures and longer songs and abandoning many of the more accessible elements of their sound. The album was challenging and different, but eventually that is what appealed to me. To the point that I realize this is the better Gardenian album.

Let's open it up. What do you think?