Nice list. My first thought was to add Fields Of The Nephilim - Zoon to the list!

Hmm...and maybe Shining - Blackjazz?

Nice idea for a list! Just wish it was a tad longer, but I guess it's a rare phenomenon.
Also, maybe someone can do the reverse: non-metal albums by metal bands. Probably easier to fill up.
I second Nephilim - Zoon, by the way.

Zoon is not a FotN album though, strictly speaking.

Written by nikarg on 20.10.2021 at 13:29

Zoon is not a FotN album though, strictly speaking.

Didn't know that, can you elaborate?

That Circle album is not a Circle album, by the way. It was a joke/project of brand leasing: the original Circle took the name Falcon to release a hard rock/NWOBHM/AOR album called Frontier (would actually fit this list, ironically), while they lent the name Circle to a new band comprising members of Stench of Decay and Speedtrap. So they're really not the same band, although Circle later took their name back.

Apparently, the idea was part of Mika Rättö's master's thesis on how to ruin a band brand.

This is the "real" Circle at the time:

Written by Zap on 20.10.2021 at 13:59

Written by nikarg on 20.10.2021 at 13:29

Zoon is not a FotN album though, strictly speaking.

Didn't know that, can you elaborate?

Fields Of The Nephilim disbanded and McCoy released Zoon under the moniker Nefilim. The album has very little in common with the music FotN did. It is a somewhat similar situation to The Sisters Of Mercy vs Sisterhood and the Gift album.

How about... Poppy!!

Written by Karlabos on 20.10.2021 at 23:50

How about... Poppy!!

I'm probably gonna have to wait at least another album before figuring out if it's a genre tourism detour into metal or an actual change of direction. So far she had heavy song on at least 5 releases.

Written by nikarg on 20.10.2021 at 20:34

Fields Of The Nephilim disbanded and McCoy released Zoon under the moniker Nefilim. The album has very little in common with the music FotN did. It is a somewhat similar situation to The Sisters Of Mercy vs Sisterhood and the Gift album.

Right, so Metal Storm just lumped it all in one profile. Good to know. I discovered this band through MS and as far as I remember it was always this way, so never thought twice about it.

Written by nikarg on 20.10.2021 at 20:34

Fields Of The Nephilim disbanded and McCoy released Zoon under the moniker Nefilim. The album has very little in common with the music FotN did. It is a somewhat similar situation to The Sisters Of Mercy vs Sisterhood and the Gift album.

Randomly came across this again. Yeah, it wasn't released as such, but to be fair, quite a bit of the Zoon sound made its way into Fields Of The Nephilim's Mourning Sun, most notably "Xiberia", but the whole album has quite an industrial metal vibe to it (particularly the drums, but also many bass and guitar riffs, not to mention the borderline-growled vox), so I still tend to see it as an integral part of the band's development.

Depending on where to draw the line, I'd say even Mourning Sun has enough metal in it to qualify for this list. Perhaps Danny Elfman's industry rock/metal album Big Mess as well. Finnish rock bands often flirt with metal too, CMX is a pop/prog rock band but much of Pedot sounds like King Crimson's Larks' with a hardcore punk attitude, and the pop/punk band Apulanta dabble in alt/nu metal now and then, particularly on the excellent Eikä Vielä Ole Edes Ilta, but yeah, all of these examples interpret the term "metal album" quite generously...

It's indeed a lot harder to think of proper metal albums released by non-metal bands than the other way around.

You forgot the most infamous of them all: Lulu. Only applicable to Lou Reed obviously.

Groups like Front Line Assembly and Skinny Puppy have dabbled in industrial metal on certain albums, but I personally wouldn't call them metal bands. FLA's Millennium would qualify in my opinion.