This article originally appeared in the September 2002 issue of SPIN.
From Black Sabbath to Korn, here is the definitive list of records to break your mother’s heart (unless your mother happens to be Lita Ford).
40. Spinal Tap – This Is Spinal Tap and Tenacious D – Tenacious D
Metal’s tough to satirize—even when it’s not actively tongue-in-cheek, it’s self-parodic. As Spinal Tap, actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, deadpan as Stonehenge monoliths, bluster through eerily plausible “hits” like “Hell Hole” and “Sex Farm,” burlesquing every metal cliché in existence. The more stripped-down Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) swing a bigger schtick: absurdism, penis jokes, and the most heartfelt tribute to Black Sabbath’s second singer ever written.
39. Kid Rock – Devil Without a Cause
The first rap-metal icon who actually seemed to like metal, the pyrotechnic, dwarf-tossing, greasy-cheese-burger-guitar-solo sense of the term. (Fred Durst’s love of Tool doesn’t count). The Kid kicks outlaw clichés like he invented ’em on the slow-ridin’ hit “Cowboy,” but the real pimp-ring gem is “Only God Knows Why,” where the American bad Ass flips everybody the “Freebird.”
38. System of a Down – Toxicity
Second album from L.A.’s finest Armenian-American metal band. Singer Serj Tankian trips out on the joys of jumping around and the mysteries of jet pilots smiling over the bay; the band slams no-nonsense riffs into half-remembered melodies that make them sound like Sepultura from the old country. A bout instrument that still cuts like an X-Acto.
37. Skid Row – Skid Row
Whether you’re facing prison time (“18 and Life”), rebelling against amorphous authority figures (“Youth Gone Wild”), growing despondent over lost love (“I Remember You”), or merely showing an interest in huge breasts (“Big Guns”), quasi-femme frontman Sebastian Bach understands you. A peerless concept album about being young, kicking ass, and having excellent hair.
36. Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun
A desert-fried, punk-damaged translation of neo-Sabbath doom, Blues balances guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri’s avalanche rumble with Brant Bjork’s Norse-god drumming. The album that packed the bong for countless stoner-rock bands to follow, including Home and Oliveri’s Queens of the Stone Age.
35. Ministry – The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste
On which heroin cowpoke Al Jourgensen ditches ’80s death-disco for self-destructo industrial metal, a sound somewhere between chocking the chicken and strangling an android. Songs like “Burning Inside” and “Thieves” administer DIY tonsillectomies; the grinding dirge-dunks “Never Believe” and “Cannibal Song” are Black Sabbath for the Sega Age.
34. Ratt – Out of the Cellar
On their major-label debut, these L.A. ozone-layer-depleters give Cheap Trick‘s glitter-cannon pop craft a Dumpster-diving makeover. “Round and Round” and “In Your Direction” are the kind of swashbuckling doofus-metal anthems Dirk Diggler from Boogie Nights was too stupid to write; Ratt‘s Stephen Pearcy is just stupid enough.
33. Danzig – Danzig II: Lucifuge
Producer/metal tastemaker Rick Rubin brings out the bell-toned tenor of former Misfits and Samhain vocalist Glenn Danzig, not to mention his wounded heart. A burly torch singer undone by his sympathy for the devil, Danzig channels Roy Orbison on “Tired of Being Alive”; “Long Way Back From Hell” hollers the blues from the lonely end of AC/DC’s highway to you-know-where.
32. David Lee Roth – Eat ‘Em and Smile
Diamond Dave’s first solo album is actually the last great Van Halen album: disco-metal in the epicurean spirit of Diver Down, mathematically shredded by guitarist Steve Vai and blasted by Roth’s elephant gun. Dave butchers “That’s Life” at the end, but it makes perfect, beautiful sense—if he’s not the hair-metal Sinatra, who is?
31. Deep Purple – Machine Head
Recording on the shores of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva, these hollow-eyed British stoners shred (occasionally), boogie (intergalactically), show off their huge organs, and contribute thoroughbreds like “Highway Star” and “Smoke on the Water” to classic rock’s table of warhorses. Moral: It’s all fun and games until “some stupid with a flare gun” burns down the Swissötel.
