10 Best METAL Albums of ALL TIME!
Is there a more guitar-centric genre in music than metal? I don’t think so, and no other style demands so much from its six-stringers, nor holds them in higher esteem. If you play rock music on your guitar, I expect you’ll have a lot of love for metal’s leading lights, be they rhythm warriors or shred masters.
Metal comes in many forms. I investigated this in my Metal Sub Genres blog (check it out if you haven’t already!) but today looks at the entire world of metal as a whole.
Indeed, I aim to bring you the best metal albums ever recorded. No easy task, and for one reason that quickly became clear to me: most top metal bands have several great albums, each of which is equally influential and deserving of a spot here in today’s list. Black Sabbath have about 5 classics, and Metallica have too. Well, maybe four…
Anyway, my only rule here is that each band or artist gets only one entry. Given how many great metal albums exist out there, I believe that's a fair way to achieve our goal today, don’t you think? Also, I’m not going to impose any hierarchy here: there’s no number 1, because that’s a matter of personal taste. Hopefully, these 10 entries are all indisputable classics, immense records that belong together on the pantheon of metal greatness.
Okay, let’s see what made the cut! Onwards!
The Best Metal Albums Ever at the Glance
Vulgar Display of Power - Pantera
Destroy Erase Improve - Meshuggah
Rust in Peace - Megadeth
Before Dave Mustaine became a bit of a grumpy cartoon character, he was a vital force in 80s and 90s metal. I feel like his Metallica days aren’t even worth mentioning here (even though I just did) since his accomplishments since then have been so significant.
Megadeth have a body of work that is often rich in treasures, but Rust in Peace stands out quite clearly from the rest. It just has that ‘thing’ that all game-changing albums have: a mixture of accessibility and complexity, along with that hard-to-pin-down feeling of greatness that just permeates the record.
Dave was on fire here. Marty was on fire here. Rust in Peace has some of thrash’s best ever guitar work, from the effervescent opener Holy Wars to the jaw-dropping Tornado of Souls. Some call this the best metal album ever, and I find it increasingly hard to disagree. Satirical newspaper The Onion perhaps put it best with this headline:
“Humanity Still Producing New Art As Though Megadeth’s ‘Rust in Peace’ Doesn’t Already Exist”.
Powerslave - Iron Maiden
My personal opinions don’t matter too much here, but for me, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is Iron Maiden’s best album by a mile. That said, the addition of keyboards and poppier songwriting mean that it is perhaps not their best metal album, and that is after all what we are here for today! The metal!
Therefore, Powerslave gets the prize. Why this one? Because of the humongous title track, the badass cover art (in metal, the cover definitely counts! Are you kidding?), the inclusion of one of the band’s very best key changes ever (the chorus of Aces High is superbly dramatic) and, possibly the most metal thing they ever did - an epic 14 minute rendition of S.T. Coleridge’s horror-poem Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Who but the Maiden could pull that off? It’s huge, it’s audacious: it’s Iron Maiden at their hair-raising, deliriously OTT best.
Vol 4 - Black Sabbath
Are you one of those people who think that Paranoid is Black Sabbath’s best album? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t agree!
There’s a fun debate to be had (which I won’t be having) about the relative merits of Master of Reality, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Vol 4, but I believe this one is their strongest collective group of songs. It has Snowblind AND Supernaut, people!
Also, the backstory is class: the band decided to get away from meddling record label execs by renting out a mansion in Bel Air. According to bassist Geezer Butler: “The album cost $65,000 and we spent $75,000 on coke”.
They don’t make ‘em like they used to!
Master of Puppets - Metallica
Thrash masters Metallica have at least 4 ‘best metal albums ever’ in their discography. I don’t think it’s playing it too safe to single out 1986 masterpiece Master of Puppets for inclusion here, though. Aside from the Black album, this is the one that has played the largest part in culture, from its initial run (which solidified ‘Tallica’s reputation as big deals on the metal scene) to its re-emergence thanks to one pivotal scene in TV show Stranger Things.
There can’t be many metal maniacs out there who don’t love the likes of Battery, Welcome Home (Sanitarium) and the incredible title track, plus choice deep cuts such as Disposable Heroes and the Lovercraft-referencing lurch of The Thing That Should Not Be. In short, it’s comfortably one of metal’s best albums.
Vulgar Display of Power - Pantera
Talking about Dimebag, Pantera fans seem to be quite divided on what record marks their greatest. Whilst I personally lean towards Far Beyond Driven, I have a feeling that Vulgar Display of Power is their true masterpiece.
From its ‘statement’ cover art to its defining summation of the band’s influential groove-based metal sound, Vulgar Display of Power is 53 minutes of unrelenting metal perfection. Moments like This Love offers light and shade to pulverisers like Mouth for War and Domination. It goes without saying of course that the guitar work is impeccable, eccentric and inspiring in roughly equal measures.
Painkiller - Judas Priest
Not many bands hit their creative peak decades into their career, but British metallers Judas Priest already had 21 years and 11 albums behind them before Painkiller hit in 1990. This was actually vocalist Rob Halford’s last with the band for 15 years, though that now seems to have been a bizarre misunderstanding rather than any beef that occurred during the creation of this album.
Painkiller gallops out of the starting blocks with the bruising title track, a highly concentrated blast of cauterising metal that begins with a furious drum intro and finishes with hair-raising screams of “Pain! PAAAIN! Kill-ah! KILL-AAAAHHHH!!!!” As dramatic metal goes, it’s pretty difficult to top. And that’s only the first track!
When an album contains song titles such as Hell Patrol and then Leather Rebel, you can tell right away that there’s no room for compromise.
Korn - Korn
It might be difficult to perceive, unless you were a metalhead at the time, just how seismic a shift in heavy music Korn caused when they released their debut album.
Hair metal had been defeated by Grunge, but things were already changing out in Bakersfield, California. Korn’s debut was released in late 1994, changing the game completely, and unwittingly creating the Nu Metal genre. Korn’s songs were slower, influenced by hip hop beats (without directly copying them), and the sounds were both much lower and more gnarly than before.
Korn guitarists Brian ‘Head’ Welch and James ‘Munky’ Shaffer utilised the almost-forgotten Ibanez Universe 7 string guitars for their extra depth, and employed them in ways that were miles away from their intended shred application. Korn brought around a new vocabulary for metal, both with sounds and with subject matter. They also did it all with great tunes. How could they fail?
Reign in Blood - Slayer
Some metal bands enjoy writing long, sprawling, labyrinthine songs to convey their message. Thrash legends Slayer take the opposite route: their entire Reign in Blood record lasts for roughly half an hour. 10 songs - including the terrifying Angel of Death - in 30 minutes, which only concentrates the intensity.
From Tom Araya’s impassioned screams to Kerry King and Tim Hanneman’s ferocious riffing and piercing divebombs, this was the sound of hell as told by one of thrash metal’s Big Four.
Seasons in the Abyss came close to making this list, but seriously: how can Reign in Blood not be on everyone’s top metal albums list?
Destroy Erase Improve - Meshuggah
Korn changed the metal game in a way that caught on very quickly, establishing the Nu Metal subgenre in a matter of months. That scene had its day and melted away, as all scenes do - but at the same time, something else was happening in heavy music.
It’s actually hard to accept that Meshuggah’s Destroy Erase Improve was released 30 years ago! Bands today are still catching up on some of the ideas presented in this 1995 album. It was certainly ahead of its time, but happily, metal fans still clicked with it - albeit in a much more underground way than with the likes of Korn - and so its influence slowly spread.
Nowadays it is regarded as the landmark album it genuinely is, with tracks like Future Breed Machine laying out a blueprint for all cutting edge metal - extreme or otherwise - since.
The Blackening - Machine Head
Machine Head’s 1994 album Burn My Eyes is rightfully known as one of the best debuts in metal history, but the band took a few unusual turns in their career afterwards. From the rap-metal moves of The Burning Red to the stylistic ‘blip’ of Catharsis, Machine Head certainly have a patchy - if ambitious - back catalogue.
The Blackening, though, was a huge line drawn in the sand for the band. Complex, furious and filled with righteous venom, it stomped like an angry bull over the over metal releases of 2007. Any band who writes a tribute to Dimebag Darrell (Aesthetics of Hate, a song which also criticises William Grim’s notorious article) gets the thumbs up in my book, anyway.
Solid Metal
It’s obviously too hard to reduce all of metal to ten albums, isn’t it? There’s no room for Death and Black metal sadly, nor for significant metal records such as Sepultura’s Chaos AD or Anthrax’s Among the Living. The list should perhaps have included Slipknot’s debut, and numerous other great records from amazing artists who deserve the recognition.
Such is the way. What did you think of the choices, though? Are your metal allegiances pacified or incensed? Not all of the choices are equal, but then everything is a matter of taste. What I can tell you is that each of these ten records are stone cold classics, and essential to know inside out.
