As part of a new feature here at Blog Rocking Beat, we reached out to Baltimore-based rockers, Charm City Devils, to find out if one would step up to the mic and share with us the five albums that changed their life. As luck would have it, singer, John Allen (no stranger at stepping up to the mic) accepted our offer.

With our further ado, then, here are the five albums that changes John’s life:

Led Zeppelin(self-titled): Jimmy Page set out to show shades of light and dark and achieved it in spades! From the bombast of “Communication Breakdown” to “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” he managed to rock out and mellow out—sometimes within the same song! They pioneered the sound of heavy music. In addition to writing great music and arrangements, his production has held up ever since.

KISS Alive: This album could be the one that started me on this path of wanting to rock people’s faces off! I pictured myself playing at the L.A. Forum or Cobo Hall singing “Cold Gin”.

Motley Crue Shout At The Devil: I loved Too Fast For Love, but Shout At The Devil had “Looks That Kill” and “Red Hot”!

Deep Purple Made In Japan These guys could play their asses off and Ian Gillan’s screams in “Child In Time” can still compete with anything any screamo singer can do today!

Metallica Ride the Lightning: We used to drive around in my first car listening to this record over and over trying to figure out if there were 100 or 200 guitar tracks recorded on there (yeah we were pretty stoned). The guitars sounded so massive and so good we hoped one day we could sound that good!

There you have it, folks. And to see just how these life-changing albums playes out in the Charm City Devils sound, check out their newest album, Sins, out now.