Ten Greatest Metal Albums/CDs of All Time

I love the exercise of choosing a list of the ten best of anything. In music criticism, these are mandatory, and usually presented as definitive. The fact of the matter is, "best" is an elusive quality, and it is situation dependent. The best metal album for a road trip might be Judas Priest (depends upon whether the listener cares about lyrics), and certainly not something like Emperor or Enslaved, because all the nuances of the latter would be lost over the road noise. Some of you have quieter cars, I suppose.

"Greatest" is a little easier to justify. It is the intersection of personal impact and cultural resonance. It implies grandiosity. PT Barnum did not create the "best" show on Earth, that was probably in some Gran Guignol theatre at the time, or perhaps in some Irish Pub, with traditional instruments, but he certainly made the Greatest Show on Earth.

So...in later posts, I will rank on other axes. I am leaving out the protometal, and other bands arguably classed as stoner rock or hard rock. Motorhead is, by convention considered to be a metal band, though Lemmy has denied this, listeners define genres, not musicians.

Here are my estimation of the ten greatest, in terms of their originality, their impact on their audience since the album was released, an on their success as an artistic statement. This is not actually my top ten favorites, certainly not the ten most interesting, or the ten i would most want to listen to in a dark basement doing drugs. Those lists come later.

Number Ten.

Judas Priest. Stained Class. One of these had to be a Judas Priest album, it was just a matter of which album, and which place on the list, such is how well regarded this band is in the minds of metal listeners. I actually listened through every great Judas Priest album before writing this, because though they are one of the greatest metal bands of all time, I am only now getting into them. Earlier in my life, I was always after something more intense, weirder, more cerebral, bleaker, druggier. It is either this one, or Screaming for Vengence, both are amazing, actually, especially if one accepts Rob Halford's thesis that lyrically, less is more.

Number Nine.

Motley Crue. Shout at the Devil. If you do not accept Motley Crue as a metal band, because hair metal is stylistically too much of a departure from metal's fundamental aesthetic, insert Children of Bodom's "Follow the Reaper" in this slot. A person cannot argue the Cru's impact on metal, or its listeners, however. This album is amazingly successful at what it tries to do: convince the listener to spend all their money on drugs and strippers. I like drugs and I also like strippers, and though it took me a while to warm up to this album personally (it was too popular in high school among people that used to beat me up, or threaten to do so), it is a masterwork.

Number Eight.

Guns n' Roses. Appetite for Destruction. As with the Motley Crue, if you do not consider hair metal to be a valid category of metal, insert Kreator's "Pleasure to Kill"in this slot. If you favor keeping one, and jettisoning the other from the list, you are not playing the game right. Both are hair metal acts. This one is even darker, even more powerful, grittier. It is the apotheosis of its genre, a time when mainstream radio stations played certain metal albums in heavy rotation.

Number Seven.

Bathory. Hammerheart. This is by no means an obscure band. Bathory are widely recognized to be important pioneers in the genres of Black Metal and Viking Metal. Still, this album sold many less copies, and was created by a band that was in many ways a single person's pet project, and in fact, never played a live show. I could keep writing about this band for pages, but suffice it to say, the genres of Black Metal, Viking Metal, and Swedish Death Metal originate with Bathory, and largely from this album. A nod belongs to Celtic Frost here, an equally influential band, more musically diverse, but less insane and driven in their artistic ambitions, as the progenitor of the black and evil stuff.

Number Six.

Motorhead, Ace of Spades. I hear that Lemmy does not actually think of Motorhead as a metal band, but I have never met a fan that agrees with him. Lemmy, if you are reading my list, Pantera's "Vulgar Display of Power" would be up here if not Motorhead. This album is the ultimate provocation for a person to go out, playing this album on the car stereo, and beat the living crap out of some dickhead that desperately deserves it, preferably while drunk.

Number Five. Slayer Reign in Blood.

At the time of its release, this was the heaviest album ever made, by far, and there would be no Death Metal were it not for this album, a thrash album, but the progenitor of so many things to come.

Number Four

AC/DC. You are, no doubt, anticipating these caveats by now. AC/DC do not actually regard themselves as metal, and their sound is basically a hard rock sound with metal overtones. If this does not count as metal to you, put Emperor's "The Nightside Eclipse" in this slot. This is the apex of the hard rock sound, chunky, clean in its execution and dirty in its subject matter. It is anthem after anthem to the rockandroll life style. A strip club, a six pack, Jack Daniels, power.

Number Three.

Iron Maiden. Number of the Beast. This album was actually panned by mainstream rock critics, at the time it was released in 1982. This is actually justified, if a music critic adheres to the elitist and inflexible notion that rock music, metal included, must adhere to some vestige of its roots in the Mississippi Delta. This album is an incredible departure from the likes of Led Zepplein and even Black Sabbath in that the inspiration for its songs was rooted solidly in fantasy and unreality. There is no song on this album that even remotely corresponds to the life of any of its listeners. This is an attribute of metal, as a genre of music, that ensures that it will always have its adherents, no matter what the current trend in music. For most contemporary manifestations of the genre, metal is escapist. Iron Maiden cross imaginary landscapes like no other band, before or since. No subject is too big for a song: Alexander the Great, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, the Battle of Britain. My personal favorite Maiden album is actually Killers, for reasons I will probably elaborate in another post, but as for their greatest, it is probably either this, or Powerslave, an equally amazing album, but less original only for the reason that it came later, and Maiden stuck very true to form after this one.

Number Two.

Black Sabbath, Paranoid. Critics who call Black Sabbath the first metal band are advocating the only truly reasonable position on the matter. Though Deep Purple and Blue Cheer ventured into dark territory, they did not stay there like Black Sabbath, nor did Led Zepplein, whose musical diversity was truly astonishing, and ventured boldly into pieces that included the first Viking metal song. Black Sabbath, however, invented a dark sound so constantly referred to by later metal bands that they are the progenitor of almost everything we recognize as fundamental to the genre. This piece is probably their greatest album. It was amazingly popular for its day, and possessed an intensity and originality never seen since its release in 1970.

Number One:

Metallica. Master of Puppets. This is on everybody's list, often in the number one slot, for a good goddamned reason. It is an incredible, groundbreaking work. Each song has a resonance, a genius for rhythm and texture, an intellectual clarity, that resonates every bit as strongly today as it did in 1986, when it punched a hole in the conventions of the time and drove a shit ton load of bricks through it. Ride the lightning might actually be better artistically, and my personal favorite is actually And Justice for All, because I love the intricate melodies and outright bleakness of the lyrics, but this is certainly the greatest.