Some artists make it pretty difficult to judge what kind of music they play based solely on their album covers or titles. However, these artists made it pretty simply to figure out by including the name of their genre in the album title.
1. Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)
Avant-garde saxophonist Ornette Coleman was apparently so confident in the groundbreaking qualities of his music that he knew it would change jazz forever, even naming his 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come.
2. The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966)
The 13th Floor Elevators were one of the first (if not the very first) bands to have been described as "psychedelic," in no small part due to the title of their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.
3 & 4. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports/Ambient 4: On Land (1978/1982)
Brian Eno is considered the godfather of ambient music, and though he debuted the style on 1975's Discreet Music, in 1978 he began his four-part "Ambient" series, starting with Ambient 1: Music for Airports. The only other album in this series to use the word "ambient" in the title is 1982's Ambient 4: On Land.
5. Venom - Black Metal (1982)
Though Norway's infamous black metal scene wouldn't kick off until the early '90s, one of the genre's original blueprints came in 1982 with the release of Venom's Black Metal album. Though the album is more indebted to thrash metal, its lo-fi sound and Satanic themes would become defining traits of black metal.
6. Anthrax - Fistful of Metal (1984)
Since New York thrash metal band Anthrax shared their name with a British punk band from the early '80s, it's a good thing that their debut album Fistful of Metal explicitly identified them as the metal Anthrax, not the punk Anthrax.
7. Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come (1998)
In an homage to Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, Swedish hardcore punk band Refused titled their third album The Shape of Punk to Come, and just as Coleman's album did for jazz, it would radically alter the face of punk music for the 21st century.
8 & 9. Japandroids - Post-Nothing/Celebration Rock (2009/2012)
Though "post-nothing" and "celebration rock" aren't genres that you can look up in a record store, these terms perfectly describe the joyous, uncomplicated, and unpretentious sound of Vancouver duo Japandroids.
10. Hunx and His Punx - Street Punk (2013)
Though Hunx and His Punx have the word "punk" right in their name (well, almost), their earlier albums were more indebted to '50s bubblegum pop and rock 'n' roll than actual punk. Their most recent album Street Punk, however, is gritty and angry enough to live up to their self-given "punk" label.
What other albums have their genre name in the title? Let us know down in the comments section!
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