10. Judas Priest – British Steel
K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton’s massive twin-ax hooks and Rob Halford’s righteous hooligan lyrics partied hard, loved harder, and brought Priest as close as possible to mainstream rock without sacrificing metal’s leathery odor. The pop pinnacle of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
9. Tool – Ænima
With grunge in its death throes, these stinky-fingered Hollywood gnomes revived: a) the two-song LP side (what, you bought it on CD?); b) the acerbic ranting of deceased comedian Bill Hicks; and c) labyrinthine, proggy-assed concept albums. Singer Maynard Keenan gives Rollins-style angst a Robert Smith makeover; guitarist Adam Jones steers art-thrash over the dark side of the moon.
8. Kiss – Alive II
Every hipster claims to adore Alive!, but this sequel captures Kiss at the height of their kabuki powers, incinerating “Detroit Rock City” and “Calling Dr. Love” like dinosaurs from the planet Lovetron. Hirsute frontman Paul Stanley has said that this double LP is “as live as it needs to be,” which probably means “not very.” But who digs Kiss for their integrity?
7. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II
Before metal was metal, it was everything else. Jimmy Page‘s expressway-to-Stonehenge breakdown on “Whole Lotta Love” is a freight train to No Wave; “Heartbreaker” beats Sabbath to sludge by a year; “The Lemon Song” pulls Moby‘s break-beats-and-field-recordings trick 30 years early (no Pro Tools, so John Bonham just belts Robert Plant in the ‘nads till the juice runs down his leg); and “Moby Dick” still kicks the Melvins’ asses.
6. Van Halen – Van Halen
California surf-rock for kids in Nebraska who wanted to run away to New Jersey, Van Halen was metal as universal pop—loud (but not too loud), fast (but not too fast), heavy (but not too heavy), and funny (at least on side 2). David Lee Roth sings like he’s trying to nail your kid sister (which he is), and the rhythm section is almost robotically perfect. Oh, the guitar player ain’t bad, either.
5. AC/DC – Back In Black
Producer Mutt Lange gives Angus Young‘s Zen-perfect riffs a platinum sheen, and pub-primed singer Brian Johnson ably fills the late Bon Scott’s trousers. Every song shrieks pure meathead rock, but for three and a half flawlessly lewd minutes, “You Shook Me All Night Long” makes being a meathead the acme of sexy cool.
4. Metallica – Master of Puppets
These bare-knuckled Bay Area thrash kings imagined “speed metal” as a stark urban landscape and redefined the architecture of the power ballad. James Hetfield‘s rhythm guitar chisels a concrete jungle, then his Jagermeister-soaked bark reduces it to rubble. Cliff Burton’s bass provides the shadows; Kirk Hammett’s eerie, elegiac guitar solos bring the light.
3. Black Sabbath – Paranoid
They sounded way scary, but Sabbath were really just working-class yobs from Birmingham, England, who acid-tripped over the formula for Pure Evil Rock and figured writing doom-saturated anthems about war, fairies, and robots beat punching a clock at the steel mill. On Paranoid, Tony Iommi’s guitar and Bill Ward’s drums wrestle in the mire, Geezer Butler’s bass simulates a herd of iron men trampling the countryside, and Ozzy’s bad-mood-rising bellow blots out the sun.
2. Led Zeppelin – Untitled (Alias “Led Zeppelin IV” a.k.a. “Zoso”)
Led Zeppelin‘s fourth studio album—1971’s unnamed “Zoso” (so called for the enigmatic symbols on its cover)—is the most famous hard-rock album ever recorded, not to mention a watershed moment for every grizzled old man who’s ever carried a bundle of sticks on his back. “Zoso” is not Zeppelin’s best album (Houses of the Holy) or their heaviest (Physical Graffiti) or even their “most metal” (Led Zeppelin II). However, it’s the defining endeavor for the band and the genre it accidentally created. Epic, ethereal, and eerily sexual, “Zoso” is the origin of everything that sounds, feels, or even tastes vaguely metallic, except maybe Metallica and that metal sludge from Scandinavia (which derives from Black Sabbath‘s Vol 4).
1. Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
The singer is a paranoid redheaded Midwesterner with an eight-octave throat and a white leather suit, and he’s too cool to realize he can’t dance. The longhaired guitarist plays blues/metal/punk/jazz/thrash riffs at Keith Richards‘ pace; the shorter-haired guitar player smokes cigarettes and gets in fights. The bass player is from Seattle, before it became cool. The drummer thinks he’s in a disco band. And it all sounds like Hollywood at 2 a.m., only genuine and dangerous and absolutely necessary.
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