The 50 Greatest Metal Albums Ever
Written by Joe Daly
Sunday, 14 August 2011 05:00
Metalheads know that the best thing about heavy metal is that the rules don’t apply to it. While classic rock is rife with formulae and commercial measurements that are used to distinguish great albums from lesser efforts, metal not only ignores those criteria but its constant makes it impossible to measure with any one stick. As soon as rules start to form around a metal genre, three offshoots emerge and smash the old rules across their knees. As soon as the mold starts to harden, someone comes along and smashes it to bits. Death metal, grindcore and industrial metal are all responses to styles that had become stagnant.
Atop the sturdy foundation of electric blues, the edifice of rock and roll was built. Over the years, classic rock’s most vaunted releases have uniformly incorporated this foundation into their blueprints, adding some flourishes here and there, mixing in the odd jazz scale and occasionally dipping their toes in more exotic sounds, but overall, all hallowed classic rock (and hard rock) albums incorporate the following elements:
1. Guitar-driven rhythms
2. Iconic vocals
3. Memorable lyrics
4. High-quality production (a standard which continues to evolve)
Even punk and alternative genres and all their bratty sub-genres have fallen in step with paradigms that have changed little over the past twenty years.
Metal, on the other hand, has been reinvented so many times that even its founding bands are now classified as “classic rock.” Time rolls on and it takes no prisoners. Sam Dunn’s preposterously entertaining movie ‘Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey’, illustrated just how viral metal has gone in his now-famous chart that gives only a high level view of the ever-stretching roots of metal.
The question arises – if metal is constantly changing, then what makes a great metal album? More simply, without a measuring stick, how can we say that anything has gone above and beyond? Without a mold, how do we know when someone breaks one?
Reviewing someone else’s Top 25 Metal Albums of All Time list recently, it struck me that despite the radically different music represented in the list, there had to be some constants – there had to be certain characteristics shared by most, if not all of the greatest metal albums of all time.
So I compiled a list of the 50 greatest metal albums ever and started digging into the guts of the records.
I know, I know – you just sat up straight when you read the word “list.” Nothing simultaneously delights and enrages a music fan like a list. Even when we want to agree with a list, we are genetically wired to call bullshit, to say it’s incomplete and to fill ourselves with fury and outrage that the compiler has had the big brass balls to exclude this band or that band or even worse, to place one band ahead of another, when even my girlfriend knows that the first band is sucky and derivative, and…
Well, you get it.
So listen closely:
This is not a list.
I repeat:
This is not a list.
It is more accurately described as a group, because I have avoided ranking (at least intentionally) the selections. I wanted to find the best trees in the world, throw them into a field, and check out the forest. I wanted to find trends, traits and characteristics across these albums that might reveal some of the less-obvious characteristics of a truly great heavy metal record.
But first I had to decide what my guidelines would be. Here they are:
I made my own list of the top 20 metal albums and then scoured the internet for other lists to account for different tastes and opinions. These lists were generally 70% in agreement with each author revealing his or her preferred genres in their fringe selections. My final list includes just over 50 albums. I will include my list at the end of the article. Don’t be offended if you see a band or album that you feel is unjustly missing from the list. Remember, I’m looking for trends, not making a definitive list. One or two albums won’t alter my findings by any measurable amount.
AC/DC counts as metal, even though today they are squarely in the hard rock category. Simply put, they influenced too many musicians and therefore too many bands’ sounds to be ignored.
I would only see what trends emerged – my findings do not apply to all of the albums in my sample group.
Where I looked at chart positions, I only looked at the US and UK charts. While it was tempting to factor in European and South American charts, the significant majority of music sales occur in the US and UK, so for expedience I focused on those two countries.
I only looked at original releases. A staggering percentage of the greatest metal albums have been re-released with extra tracks as bonus material. An album makes its mark on the day it is released and it lives or dies from that point.
To waste space telling you that a metal masterpiece is full of gravity sized-guitars, explosive choruses and themes of rage and rebellion would be as enlightening as telling you that what makes a triumphant pizza is sauce, cheese and crust. I am avoiding discussions of the more obvious properties of heavy metal (distorted guitars, dark lyrics, machine gun drumming, etc.), as these properties can be found on any metal record in some measure.
Having rolled up my sleeves and dug through the guts of nearly 40 hours worth of metal albums, I found that to get the party started, it is far easier to illustrate what is not essential to a classic metal record.
A great metal album:
Does not need a flashy producer
Sure, Rick Rubin produced Slayer’s ‘Reign in Blood’, which tops many lists as the greatest metal album of all time. But can you guess what other album gets a lot of number one votes? You got it – Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’, produced by Denmark’s Flemming Rasmussen.
Who?
Exactly.
Rasmussen was the 26 year old co-owner of a studio in Copenhagen when the boys from Metallica rolled through to record what would be ‘Ride the Lightning’. Rasmussen had produced Rainbow’s 1981 ‘Difficult to Cure’ album, so this was not his first rodeo. However, he had never heard Metallica until they began playing in his studio, which makes his effort all the more horns-worthy, because he took four guys whom he had never met and from them coaxed one of the greatest heavy metal assaults in humanity.
The band (and the record buyers of planet Earth) liked the results so much that they brought him in for the next two albums, ‘Master of Puppets’ and ‘…And Justice for All’, both of which appear in the list.
So you don’t need a Rick Rubin, a Bob Rock or even a Mutt Lange – you just need a cat who gets where you’re coming from and who’s got the balls to stand up to the band when they’re bringing anything beneath their best.
Does not have to come from the ’80s; Black Sabbath, ‘Paranoid’ (1970); Megadeth, ‘Rust in Peace’ (1990)
The ’80s were the greatest decade that heavy metal and hard rock have ever seen. Oh sure, Culture Club and Michael Jackson were laughing all the way to the bank as the dance clubs of the world were stuffed with coked-out yuppies marveling at how affordable the new cell phone rates were ($6/minute). But that was the commercial side of music – over on the dark side, the most timeless and groundbreaking metal ever heard was being churned out on the fringes. And we’re not talking about Poison and the hair band craze – we’re talking about Iron Maiden, Metallica, Dio, Helloween, King Diamond, Overkill, Saxon and Megadeth. In fact, nearly 70% of the albums in my list were released in the ’80s.
It would be easy and grotesquely unfair to write off the music before the ’80s as classic rock precursors to metal, just as it would be nothing short of criminal to write off the metal of the past 20 years as derivative. People who complain that non-80s metal is sub-par are probably the same cats who used to pay $6/hour for their lunchbox-sized cell phone.
Metal was born in 1968 with Blue Cheer’s ‘Vincebus Eruptum’. In the ’70s, Black Sabbath took the Cheer’s sound all the way up to 11 and became metal’s pioneers with a trio of albums that changed heavy music more profoundly than anything to date (‘Black Sabbath’, ‘Paranoid’, ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’). The ’70s also saw essential releases from Judas Priest, Rainbow and Deep Purple that stand up astonishingly well even amid today’s digital production techniques.
Pantera kept metal’s flag flying in the ’90s, with one middle finger extended to the shoegazing grunge crowd and another towards the “alternative” revolution which was about as alternative as the Banana Republic.
The new millennium has seen bands like Mastodon, Opeth and Trivium contribute essential advancements to metal that not only advance what Blue Cheer started over 40 years ago, but that suggest mind-blowing possibilities for the bands to come.
Does not need a strong or recognizable image
Dave Mustaine, with his ginger curls and perma-sneer can hardly get to his car in the morning without being recognized and gawked at. Same with Kerry King and his tattooed dome and oversized shades. There are some metal musicians who, intentionally or not, have acquired notoriety that extends beyond metal – through their looks or dirty deeds, their personae have extended out into pop culture, and they are therefore recognizable to people who couldn’t tell the difference between an Ozzy-era Sabbath song or one off of the Mob Rules.
Whether it’s leather-clad Rob Halford on his motorcycle or Lemmy’s Confederate hat and handlebar mustache, some metal guys live a pretty mainstream life.
Then there are the guys in bands like Testament, who could wear stickers that say “HELLO! My name is… Chuck… and I’m in Testament” and they’d still have to wait in line to get into the movies. Same with bands like Venom, Helloween, Accept, and Fate’s Warning – they are generally unrecognizable to anyone but their families and most ardent fans, yet they anonymously released spectacularly brutal metal epics that continue to sell, even though 99% of music fans wouldn’t recognize the bands if they were lying on their front lawn.
Critically, these bands show that explosive new music will stand on its own, apart from the trappings of looks or image.
Need not come from a major label
Iron Maiden’s run with EMI has been one for the ages. EMI released their debut, ‘Iron Maiden’, in 1980 and thirty years later, Maiden released their 15th studio album with that label, for a total of 28 albums together.
But while most of the albums in the list have been released by a major record label, many of the genre’s most definitive releases have come from indie labels run by people who loved metal as much as the bands playing it.
Brian Slagel was a guy who ran around Orange County back in the ’80s, grooving to NWOBHM tapes with his buddy Lars Ulrich and a small group of ferociously dedicated metalheads. They would drive halfway across the county to find rare bootlegs from bands like Angel Witch and Saxon. In 1982, he decided to start his own label to help promote some of the genre’s underrated achievers like Metallica and Ratt. In 1983, this upstart label released Slayer’s ‘Show No Mercy’ album, and ‘Hell Awaits’ two years later. These dispatches set the stage for their subsequent releases on Def Jam (‘Reign in Blood’, ‘South of Heaven’), but without the faith of Slagel and the investment of Metal Blade, what would have become of Slayer?
New York’s Megaforce records had an even more unlikely beginning, signing up acts like Metallica and Anthrax while co-founder Jonny Zazula was finishing up a sentence in a halfway house. Megaforce promoted metal acts through the savings and dwindling credit of Zazula and his wife, releasing classic albums from bands like Overkill, Testament, Anthrax, Metallica and Ministry.
Sure, the deep pockets and marketing machinery of a big label is the preferred home for any band, metal or otherwise, but our list of classic metal albums establishes that to roll out a masterpiece, all you need is a small label with lots of heart and a briefcase full of guts, and the music will lead the way.
Does not require great vocals
Of the list, this is perhaps the most obvious. Sure, guys like Bruce Dickinson, Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford have informed the definition of metal with voices strong enough to float container ships. But for every guy like Dio there’s a Lemmy. For every Dickinson, an Ozzy. Simply put, a traditionally strong voice is negotiable when it comes to releasing a supreme metal record.
The key to the success of a sub-par vocalist is that the music must serve the singing, and not the other way around. Motorhead’s speed metal frenzy and playful, often disposable lyrics make Lemmy’s voice not just listenable, but iconic. Same with Ozzy, who couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles on each side, which is why he double tracked his vocals on his solo albums – to beef up a glaring weakness. But the band, led by Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley, wrote songs in Ozzy-friendly keys and with an overall sound that made Ozzy shine, lumbering vocals and all. Ozzy is one of the greatest examples of someone who has brought minimal raw talent to the table, but who has more than compensated for his shortcomings with a mixture of hard work and a supporting cast of audaciously talented musicians.
Need not contain offensive, close-minded lyrics
“It’s loud and stupid.”
That’s what you hear when people who don’t like metal attempt to justify their position. Now, we can gladly concede the loud part – metal is best enjoyed at towering volumes that tend to push back the fuzz on your eardrums. Fine.
The “stupid” part, however, is a grossly inaccurate stereotype propagated by people outside of the know – people whose idea of heavy metal is the image of poufy-haired Bret Michaels and his zippy little band of crossdressers who wrote songs about good times and obese women and whose deepest song was a straight-faced ballad about roses having thorns.
Sure, my list of metal albums contains plenty of songs that extol the sublime pleasures of wine, women, song (and quite often, heroin). But those themes are squarely in the minority amid an ocean of truly eloquent and enlightened lyrics that speak of rebellion, rage and freedom. Metal is cathartic and often that release is couched in short and simple bursts of emotion. But within these often-heated emotions beats the heart of every fan to ever slip on a set of headphones.
Queensryche’s ‘Operation Mindcrime’ is only one of the many examples of thought-provoking, creative ideas presented though the medium of shotgun blast metal. Oppression, insurrection, truth and emotions are explored as well as any twentieth century novel.
Other albums such as Maiden’s ‘Powerslave’ and Slayer’s ‘Reign in Blood’ confront historical atrocities through anthems that are as bruising as they are poetic.
Does not require intellectually-rich themes or lyrics
Having established that influential heavy metal need not involve dumbed-down odes to buffoonery, we must also point out that metal isn’t exactly curing cancer, either. AC/DC, Motorhead, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are all examples of bands that have released profoundly influential metal albums that unapologetically praise the exquisite joys of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
This isn’t to say that lyrics aren’t important to a metal album – as long as the lyrics reflect the band’s integrity and serve the music, heavy metal can talk about whatever it damn well wants.
Does not require radio play
There are a thousand reasons why commercial radio hates metal, from the scary album covers that scare parents to the seven minute songs that eat up valuable advertising minutes. Yet without the benefit of friendly DJs and prime time programming slots, metal’s most enduring albums have sold millions. While word of mouth has been critical to the success of albums by King Diamond and Saxon, these albums have ultimately risen to critical heights on the backs of long, hard, ass-breaking tours.
With the commercialization of the Internet came an onslaught of streaming radio stations that were no longer advertiser dependent. From the leviathans of Sirius and XM to independent mainstays like HardRadio, metal is finally receiving the airplay across the globe. Still, the people looking for and tuning into these specialty stations and programs have already been converted- metalheads looking for more metal. But true metal has no place in the mainstream, anyway. There are too many rules to follow to get a precious slice of commercial radio and by definition, any album that has been crafted to appeal to mainstream radio is by definition, not metal.
Does not need bass
From Geezer Butler’s anthemic, monolithic bass lines to John Myung’s unrivaled technical proficiency, the bass has evolved in the field of heavy metal much in the same way that the wheel has evolved in the field of transportation. It adds more than rhythm now – it adds melody and compositional complexity that goes far beyond anything that was happening in metal’s early days.
That being said, if there’s one thing that we learned from Metallica’s ‘…And Justice for All’, it’s that a great metal album doesn’t need bass.
Flemming Rasmussen, who produced that album, watched Jason Newsted record all of his bass parts for that release, describing his efforts as nothing short of “brilliant.” Yet as we all know by now, egos and circumstances (the still-recent death of Cliff Burton), conspired against Newsted’s efforts, with the band virtually mixing his parts until they are barely detectable. Yet the album 
continues to stand among that band’s top efforts and rests comfortably in my Top 50 list below.
Here are some of my other findings. Bands who are looking to record the next metal masterpiece should pay close attention to these:
Great metal albums don’t show the band in the cover art.
With a small handful of exceptions, almost every classic metal album in my list has a graphic for the cover instead of a picture of the band. Musicians age and even metal fashion can be fickle, but a good graphic, like Iron Maiden’s Eddie or Megadeth’s Vic Rattlehead, are timeless.
40 of the 53 albums featured graphics as cover art. Of the remaining 13, many were altered photographs that were manipulated to the point of looking like paintings. Three, the two Ozzy albums and Motorhead, were nothing but camp.
The best metal in the world comes from either the US or the UK.
I can hear the black metal crowd cursing me already, but a review of the top albums shows that just over ten percent of the top metal albums have been released outside of the US and UK. Australia, Germany, Denmark and Sweden are the remaining countries.
Somewhere in Iceland, a Dimmu Borgir fan is shaking his fist in my general direction…
Timeless metal albums are meaty.
The average album length was 45 minutes. Most albums fell in between 40 and 45 minutes. Bands like Slayer and Motorhead came in well under the mean, while Mastodon’s ‘Blood Mountain’ took the crown for longest classic metal album, ticking off over 68 minutes of brain-melting prog metal.
So if you’re a band looking to enter the Valhalla of Metal Greatness, be prepared to give your fans their money’s worth.
Metal by numbers (of songs) – Cookie, Cookie, Cookie!
40 of the 53 albums had between 8 and 10 songs. Ten albums contained more songs and only three contained less. It stands to reason that if you want to make a statement with your album, the sweet spot is between 8 and 10 great songs. Avoid increasing the total with filler and you might just have the next monster release.
The US will like you, but the UK will love you.
Not all of the albums in the list made the charts (only 8 albums failed to chart in either the US or the UK), but out of the ones that did, only 8 charted higher in the US than in the UK. You’re dying to know, aren’t you? Fine – here they are:
Metallica – ‘Master of Puppets’, Queensryche – ‘Operation Mindcrime’, W.A.S.P. – ‘W.A.S.P.’, Megadeth – ‘Peace Sells But Who’s Buying’ and ‘Countdown to Extinction’, Scorpions – ‘Blackout’, Overkill – ‘The Years of Decay’, Mastodon – ‘Blood Mountain’
Don’t agree? Head over to the Uber Rock Soldiers messageboard or the Uber Rock Facebookgroup to vent your anger and give us your ideas on what are the greatest metal albums ever!