Your Top 10 Metal Albums of All-Time

siLLy puPPy wrote: Kill Em ALl the beginning of metal? OMG. Are you serious? Metallica didn't even release the first thrash much less metal. Both Sodom and Holy Moses released thrash metal before Metallica. Bands like Sir Lord Baltimore were designated heavy metal as early as 1970. Much heavier than Sabbath, Zeppelin and DP. Kill Em All came out in 1983 the same year as Hellhammber's blackened thrash. As far as NWOBHM most certainly metal, the first album came from Quartz in 1977. Several bands jumped on board and led to Iron Maiden's 1980 debut. NOT hard rock anymore. Motorhead was clearly speed metal as was Running Wild, Atomkraft and Venom well before Metallica. So your claim is incorrect.

I have considered metal to be a form of rock. A form of rock that grew out of classic blues-based hard rock.. in a way it could be called post-rock, and then post-metal could be called post-post rock. I once was told that metal has nothing to do with rock, which I thought bizarre. I wonder if any thing metal developed which has no rock roots. Of course earlier metal bands influenced later metal bands, and perhaps some stuff that sounds metal could have come directly out of, say, a natural evolution of Chinese Opera rather than a metal take on Chinese Opera.

One thing that complicates things a little I think is that between Black Sabbath's early stuff and Sad Wings of Destiny, there really isn't anything that's widely accepted as metal to my knowledge. That's a gap of half a decade. Ok, we can thank Gull Records that Rocka Rolla turned out that tame, but still. Compare that to most genres, where 5 years after the first widely accepted album you might already be in decline (the bulk of classic prog rock was released within years of ITCOTCK).

MikeEnRegalia wrote: siLLy puPPy wrote: Kill Em ALl the beginning of metal? OMG. Are you serious? Metallica didn't even release the first thrash much less metal. Both Sodom and Holy Moses released thrash metal before Metallica. Bands like Sir Lord Baltimore were designated heavy metal as early as 1970. Much heavier than Sabbath, Zeppelin and DP. Kill Em All came out in 1983 the same year as Hellhammber's blackened thrash. As far as NWOBHM most certainly metal, the first album came from Quartz in 1977. Several bands jumped on board and led to Iron Maiden's 1980 debut. NOT hard rock anymore. Motorhead was clearly speed metal as was Running Wild, Atomkraft and Venom well before Metallica. So your claim is incorrect. I did not mean this one album in particular. I mean Kill 'em All as one very well known (and over-hyped) album that was part of a new wave of metal which emerged from the NWOBHM. I'm sure there were underground bands that were quite heavy in the 70s. Again, I am saying that there was this early phase in the 70s that lead to the NWOBHM which then led to a third phase of metal in the 80s. With each phase the bands turned farther away from Rock/Blues, and I would say that on albums like Kill 'em All, there was finally sufficient difference that Metal could be said to have become a new main genre. As far as Kill Em All POPULARIZING a more extreme sound in metal then i agree with you totally. Metallica did indeed bring extreme metal to the masses which allowed the gazillion other bands to follow. As for Motörhead having been speed metal - yes, historically that is correct. By the historical definition, Speed King by Deep Purple is Speed Metal. Having grown up in the 80s, that sounds ridiculous to me. It only makes sense when you accept the division between classic/proto/early metal, all of which was still rooted in Rock and which Speed Metal was part of, and modern metal, which then had its own bands that played fast and were called Power Metal, and sometimes also Speed Metal. I've never heard anyone call anything from Deep Purple speed metal. I wouldn't call anything from DP metal at all. THEY were a hard rock band with prog influences. Speed metal started with Motorhead and was ramped up with bands like Venom. All those other subgenres didn't emerge until the 80s. Like it or not, but musically there is a striking difference between most post-NWOBHM metal bands and classic bands of the 70s that were authentically called "... Metal". Yes of course but my point is that the term HEAVY METAL referred to bands like Sir Lord Baltimore, Budgie and other heavier bands that were harder, faster and heavier than solely hard rock bands like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. While the distinctions are often blurred with most 70s heavier bands because they hosted some tracks that are now considered metal and some that are now considered hard rock as well as other tracks that were neither but just classic rock. The term was invented in the 70s and applies to those earlier bands. Just because more extreme bands came later doesn't detract from the fact that the term applied and still does to the first wave of heavy metal bands. On RYM most 70s acts are labeled both HEAVY METAL and HARD ROCK precisely because they usually dabbled on both sides of the fence. It wasn't until the NWOBHM where the hard rock was replaced by a consistent metal sound. Of course you can put it all under one umbrella if you insist, but that becomes quite confusing, and as I pointed out, not even metal-archives.com do it. Or you make some sort of division between classic (rock-based) and modern (metal-based), as I am suggesting. It's up to you  No it's not up to me. I'm going by what has been recognized as the standard classification system. I didn't make any of this up, i'm merely going by what has been deemed the proper terminology and what continues to be by most. siLLy puPPy wrote: 70s heavier rock is early metal. I call it first wave metal. Doom metal is metal too and Black Sabbath fit the bill perfectly. Yeah, 70s hard rock and heavy metal are very difficult to distinguish but there were some metal bands then. Exactly. this "first wave metal" was still "just" heavy rock. Some really awesome releases, one of my absolute favorite albums of all time are among them (e.g. Deep Purple - Machine Head). But still firmly rooted in Rock. Yes, Doom Metal is metal, too - but on the Sabbath debut only one track is Doom Metal, and still rooted in Rock to a great extent. That's my point exactly. Many of the 70s bands were BOTH heavy metal bands and hard rock bands at the same time depending on the track. I see these 70s hard rock albums as Rock. The release title "Deep Purple IN ROCK" is a clue  IN ROCK referred to the fact the band was carved in stone on the cover. It tells nothing of the music inside! It also signaled a dropping of the orchestral prog shtick and a move into a more mainstream rock sound. My favorite album by them for sure.

^ I'm just trying to use these labels in a consistent way. "Metal", in its essence, stands for a certain way to structure music that is different from (or sometimes even diametrically opposed to) the way things are done in "Rock" music, and it has to do with (but is not limited to) a rejection of Blues/RnB. It began in the 70s, gained more momentum with the NWOBHM, and then came into full bloom in the 1980s. That's just the objective facts, and I suspect that most participants in this thread agree. Where we differ is where/when we would draw the line between releases that are still in the "Rock" domain (with some Metal traits) and those that are in the "Metal" domain (with some Rock traits), or whether we would even want to make such a distinction. And that's a really subjective call. Ultimately the music is more important than the labels of course. 

These 10 are up there for me but not absolute.

Metallica - Master of Puppets
Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime
Corrosion of Conformity - Blind
Tool - Lateralus
Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast
Motorhead - Orgasmatron
Anthrax - Sound of White Noise
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Warrior Soul - God, Drugs and the New Republic
Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

Edited by The Anders - July 17 2023 at 03:58

siLLy puPPy wrote: 70s heavier rock is early metal. I call it first wave metal.

siLLy puPPy wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Kill 'em All could very well be the beginning of "Metal", while the 70s laid the foundations with their "Heavy Metal" albums: Rock/Blues -> Heavy Rock/Blues / Hard Rock ->  New Wave of British Heavy Metal -> (Modern) Metal ->  Thrash Metal / Death Metal / Black Metal / ... Kill Em ALl the beginning of metal? OMG. Are you serious? Metallica didn't even release the first thrash much less metal. Both Sodom and Holy Moses released thrash metal before Metallica.

But come on a couple of primitively recorded german cassette demos weren't game-changers like Kill 'Em All was. Your revisionist way of thinking is nice for shining a light on overlooked bands and stuff, but not helpful in understanding music history. Era defining albums is rarely about being the very first, but the first that was widely listened to and the most influential. As with In the Court... or Bitches Brew before - for Prog and Fusion. Anyway I just wrote what I mean when I state just "metal" - and don't specify any further like with "heavy metal". If someone tells me "I listen to a lot of metal" I will associate with another kind of metal than someone saying "I listen to a lot of heavy metal".

^ And their opinion differs slightly from the folks at metal-archives.com. The emerging picture that is consistent with most viewpoints is that there were different phases of metal: