Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time, The

Copyright © Martin Popoff, 2004

Published by ECW Press

2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Popoff, Martin, 1963–

The top 500 heavy metal albums of all time / Martin Popoff.

ISBN: 978-1-55490-245-3

978-1-55490-600-0 (PDF); 978-1-55022-600-3 (print)

1. Heavy metal (Music) — Discography. 2. Rock musicians— Interviews.

I. Title. II. Title: Top five hundred heavy metal album of all time.

ml3534.p829 2004 781.66 c2003-907312-2

Editing: Michael Holmes

Cover and Text Design: Darren Holmes

Print Production and Typesetting: Mary Bowness

The publication of The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time has been generously supported by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

Thanks

Mikael Akerfeldt, Eric Alper, Terry The Stalker Auciello, Angie Aue, Anna, John and Karen at The Aylmer Express, Ed Balog, Marco Barbieri, Tracy Barnes and www.hardradio.com, Carl Begai, Mike Bell, Greg Below, Dennis Bergeron, Paul and Sandy Bergeron, Keith Bergman, Cathy Bernardy, Mike Blackburn, Al Block, Matt Bower, Ron Bozich, Brave Scotty Cairns, Adrian Bromley, www.bwbk.com, Terry Brown, Chris Bruni, Peter Burnside, Mitch Capka, the ever capable gang at Century Media, Aaron Brophy and the good folk at Chart, Chip, Jen, Mark and Brett at Chipster pr, Ian Christe, Classic Rock, Jeb Wright from Classic Rock Revisited (www.classicrockrevisited.com), Brian Coles, Rob, Ric, Pat and Steve at Collector’s Guide Publishing, Monte Conner, J.D. Considine, Eric Coubard, Neil Cournoyer, Patrick and Dave Harman at Crook’d Records, Bob Daisley, Neil Deas, Phil Dellio, Paul Di’Anno, Ronnie James Dio, Mike Drew, Earache, Jack, Mary, Jen, Nadine, Joy, Tracey and Michael at ecw Press, Chuck Eddy, ej, Anastasia Saradoc and the the staff at emi, Andreas at The End, es3, Scott Floman, Charles Florio, Tommy Floyd, Simon at Fusion, Alan Gilkeson, Jim and Derek at www.gemm.com, Roger Glover, Ilia Gnatiuk, Kerry Goulding, Gritz, Jeremy Hainsworth, the Harasins, Ken Harker, Lea Hart, Paula Hogan, Tom at Hypnotic, Greg Loescher at Goldmine, Mark Gromen, Allan Grusie, Guitar World, Michael Hannon and the best power trio in the world American Dog, Devin and Tracy at HevyDevy, Paula Hogan, Hoz, Maurizio Iacono, Jim, Bob and Eric at InsideOut, Billy James, Peter Jelic (and Anna), Montreal dynamo Mitch Joel, Kevin Julie, Carol Kaye, Paul Kennedy and Krause Communications, Jeff Kitts, Alan Klit: best guitarist I ever played with, Chuck Klosterman, Borivoj Krgin, Liisa Ladouceur, Blaise Laflamme, Hugues Laflamme, Felix Laflamme, Mitch Lafon, Dale Lammers, John and Steve Larocque, Anne Leighton, Dave Ling, Lion Music, Scott Hefflon and Tim Den at Lollipop, Dan The Mouth Lovranski, Dave MacMillan, Matthias Mader at Iron Pages, Dan and Pete at Magna Carta Records, Kai Mahi, Jasun Mark, Maxine & Fred (keep those emails coming!), Michael and Deb at Mazur pr, Joel McIver, Richard Meltzer, Brian Slagel, Mike Faley, Tracy Vera and the staff of Metal Blade, Liz and Metal Maniacs, Metal Sludge (www.metal-sludge.com) — I’m good for three times a day: sad, Metal Update, Bob Nalbandian, Jess and Victoria at Neat/Edgy, Noel E. Noel, Shelley Nott, Nuclear Blast, Meredith Ochs, Brian O’Neill, David Orsini, Outsider, Karen Pace, Jon Paris, Stephen Pearcy, Jizzy Pearl, David Perri, Bill Peters, Steve at phd, Greg Pratt, Record Collector, Bryan Reesman, Pellet, Carl and the Relapse crew, Alex Ristic, Claudio and the staff of Roadie Crew, Henry Rollins, Mark Roper, Corey Rotman, Ryan and Savrena, Jon Satterley, Geoff Savage, J.J. at Scrape, Adam Sewell, Garry Sharpe-Young, Dale Sherman, Andy Shernoff, Jackie Short, Stas and Igor at Silver Discus, Rose Slanic, Aaron and Wendy Small, Sony, Dan ‘n’ Matt Kieswetter at Space In Your Face, Rosie at Spitfire, spv, Marcus Tamm, Adem Tepedelen, Nick Tosches, Forrest Toop, my bandmates in Torque: Sammy, Mark & Rader, Kurt Torster, Sue Tropio, Underdogma, Universal, Unrestrained! (www.unrestrainedmag.com), Jamie and Sharon Vernon, Matt Walker, Mick Wall, Bill Ward, Steven Ward, Joanna Dine at Warner, Adam Wasylyk, David Weinsier, Marc Weisblott, Ken Witt, Josh Wood, Scott Woods.

And hey, thanks to the hundreds upon hundreds of you crazy metalheads who sweated bullets, pounded the table, pounded back beers and after all was said and drunk, sent in lists. I could tell most of you put a lot of thought into this, given the intro and outro pontifications, as well as the vast number of usually quite profound mini-reviews many of you stuck in to support your entries, as well as the many overflowing honourable mentions. They made for great reading and more than a few hearty laughs. Thanks again for hailing the heavies...

Acknowledgements

Once again, thanks go to my father, Harry Popoff, for cranking up the machinery yet again, and happily diving into the task at hand after compiling, sifting and sorting 4500 songs for the songs book from last year. This time he had to perform the same database functions for full albums — fortunately, about half as many different albums, but unfortunately, about 30% more poll results! Once more, thanks Dad for doing all this. I hope that at least some of your’s and mom’s work ethic and wisdom gained has rubbed off on me.

Special Thanks

Most of the artist quotes throughout this book are from interviews I have personally conducted with the rock dude concerned. I wanted these quotes as fresh as possible and I wanted them to come from my archives. It’s a point of pride.

However, my deepest appreciation goes out to two buds, for kind permission to snag a few from their chats with rock stars:

Drew Masters, through his legendary M.E.A.T. magazine was an essential Torontonian and Canadian source of international metal info from the late ’80s into the mid-’90s. One of the things that was fascinating to me in flipping through the legacy was how deeply he felt about trumpeting the plight of homegrown independent acts, dozens upon dozens of hopefuls getting their most treasured encouragement in the pages of M.E.A.T. Drew was, in fact, one of my biggest influences in terms of getting me into this rock journalism business in the first place. Heavy hails are in order. Drew can be reached at drewmasters@sympatico.ca.

When Drew moved on, one of his staffers, Tim Henderson, started up Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, a decade later recognized as one of the top metal mags in the world, with a website (www.bravewords.com) that is also award-winning. Through his many efforts, Tim is probably the single most influential promoter of metal in the world today. Hails to Tim and his staffers who, like Drew, have also been so kind as to let me snag a few quotes from their interviews with some of these longhairs and bald guys.

And finally, thanks to my families for the understanding and patience in letting me do this crap for a living: Beth and Trevor; Mom, Dad, Brad; my large, extended family to the east! Thank you all.

Introduction

Now class, to begin, I don’t want to refer to it too much, but as some of you might know, last year we went through this whole exercise with a similar aim in mind, to ascertain with abstract Platonic ideal certainty, and through statistical democracy, what the top 500 heavy metal SONGS of all time might be — a matter of great importance, to be sure. Done deal, and it was a blast doing it . . . maybe not for you faithful chromium steel soldiers who had to sweat the lists, but for me, ’twas very cool gathering the quotes, shooting my mouth off, commenting on all these silly anthems to which we pledge power-chord allegiance.

So now it’s up the macro ladder, leaving the three-minute pop format for something with more meat on its bones, the full record. Ain’t planning to rattle on too extensively about how this all worked, because as you flip and dip, chipper as Bambi, into the pages following this personal message from the Organizer, you’ll quickly surmise the lay of the land. The most important thing you must know before you proceed is that the final ranking of these rank musical pieces fell out of a huge poll, thousands of votes distilled down to a gleaming, steaming 500 platters that matter. So the order is yours, dear public: you, the mighty throngs of metalheads getting to choose the actual songs, myself, submitting a list just like you, for the mainframe of metal to munch on. But, of course, I got my revenge when it came to writing about your hallowed 500, not always toeing the party anthem line, reviewing as I saw fit the tracks on the meatrack.

It was very cool gathering these lists and eventually seeing the Answers. Man, we used to sit around and do crap like this for hours on a Friday night, spinning mountains of tunes, chewing through notepads, as the simmering late ’70s gave way to four years of unabated metal mayhem lasting well on nigh through the first four years of the ’80s.

Having said that, the best part of all this was gathering a cool quote from the rock dude himself (and Doro, Tarja and Anneke). Going back a few years, I’ve amassed an archive of interviews, so for a lot of the winners I already had whimsy from the wieners. But once this project took hold, whenever I had someone on the line talking about their new stuff for the periodical places I regularly write for, I’d hit ’em up on the old stuff. It’s funny, you get all types. Some loved talking about these classic albums for which they will be remembered; others didn’t. Some had gaily effervescent and insightful things to say; others couldn’t remember much about their back catalogue — on occasion, not even the order in which the albums came, on other occasions, which big hits fell on which big album. As well, when I went outside for a quote (about 20% of the time), I took it as a personal badge of honor not to use quotes from outside a small circle of consenting friends. This way, I very much doubt you are seeing comments that have shown up in other books, save for a scant few I personally used in one of my own! What I’m saying is that this stuff is pretty fresh, and in most cases, spankin’ new, straight from my unused blabber ranch. You’ll find they aren’t all about the album at hand, which would have been the ideal quote, and you’ll even find a handful that have no quotes whatsoever. Fine, so be it. In these cases, I didn’t get anybody from the band willing to yak at unimportant ol’ geeky list-gathering me, not that I went out of the way to track down absolutely everybody. And you’ll notice that in some cases, I basically didn’t have enough good quotes to cover the number of albums the band kicked into our ranch of 500, so some of that band’s entries got ’em, and some don’t. Finally, please be cognizant of the fact that the lion’s share of these quotes find the artist looking back wistfully or wincingly, whilst some are framed in present-tense terms, but lifted from an interview that took place at the time of that record’s release.

One interesting note: scanning both master lists, I’d have to say that the albums book came out much heavier, more extreme, than the songs book. There are bands in here with two, three and maybe more albums that didn’t even make the songs book once. My only explanation for this is that with extreme bands (death, black, thrash, grind), you most definitely don’t get singles and you quite often don’t get anthems, and you only sparingly get hooks. So (he says gingerly, tentatively), maybe extreme metal is more of an album or even a band experience, than a phenomenon where key tracks get pushed forth and into the memory circuits of headbangers. And, yeah, I guess, back to the concept of singles, I guess what you have is a situation where more commercial metal through the ages could have been, and has been, played on radio, repeatedly, relentlessly or at least sparingly, whereas only underground college stations would ever dare play the more extreme stuff, which also has the distinct disadvantage of relying on underfunded (i.e., no payola money) independent stations for airplay. In any event, here’s a few of the bands who did quite well here in the albums book, but were barely, or even not at all, represented in the songs poll book: Cradle of Filth, Death, Dimmu Borgir, Emperor, Entombed, Kreator, Morbid Angel, Opeth, Paradise Lost, Trouble, Voivod. In addition, to fill out our thesis (granted vaguely), there were a bunch of super-heavy bands that got into the pages that follow with one album, but were hopelessly without hope and hope-void when it came to the songs tome.

As a few notes of stylistic explanation, within the body text only (i.e., not the lists, headings, appendices, etc.), albums are bolded, songs are italicized, with every major word in a song or album title capitalized. Sod the convention out there, if indeed there is one. All of those single and double quote marks simply strike me as messy. With respect to label and year of release, I’ve tried, hopefully with very few errors or inconsistencies, to stick with the label name at country of origin (some may be U.S. parent org.) as well as the date of release for that heavy home territory. Points is points, and like I say, it’s a little complicated how they were calculated, based on the four ways almost all the lists came in (ten ranked, 25 ranked, ten unranked, 25 unranked), not to mention the slightly subjective mathematical adjustments that needed to be made the odd time someone sent a list of 14, or said the top two were a tie, or the top five were ranked while the rest weren’t. You have no idea what people will come up with . . .

You will see some lists from the artists as well, and these are all unranked, an understandable byproduct of spontaneous, verbal replies from clearly shocked road warriors confronted with such a thumb-twister of a query. I mean, most of these were collected on the fly in interviews, on the phone, backstage, on the bus, or sometimes during bowel-looseningly loud sound checks, although some were email answers (Bloody ’ell, you keeners!). Finally, you will see, scattershot and guttercat, pretty pictures of some of the albums that deck our hallowed halls. I have no idea why I’m telling you this last particular point, as if you somehow need to be warned.

In any event, rock forth with metal might and metalcore and all that jazz; keep flippin’ and hopefully flippin’ out at some of the cool stuff some of these guys say about their records. Email me at martinp@inforamp.net with any comments you may muster, or check out my site www.martinpopoff.com for more info on the dead-similar songs poll book and other stuff. Salut!

Martin Popoff

1 MASTER OF PUPPETS / Metallica

6585 points (Elektra ’86)

Greatest heavy metal record of all time, you say, and man, Master of Puppets has been deemed so by a skull-fryingly large margin. Alas, Metallica found themselves third-time lucky with this celebrated song-heavy symphony of scrapes. And I do mean third: Kill ’Em All was instantly recognized as the work of a band with more fire in the belly than anything flashing fast as of yet. Ride the Lightning was a completely unexpected and pleasantly surprising step up in sophistry for the band (and my superlatives belong there, for I personally think it’s a bolder creative triumph than Master). Ergo, there you go: Metallica had arrived — at least in the hearts of us grim underground pounders — long before Master of Puppets arrived. They were the best at the newly intensified metal sound: the fastest guns, the youngest of spirit, the most optimistic of possibility. Strange year, 1986. Bad year, really. Metal was in a malaise, adrift, a transition. Indeed, playing Master, one surmises (without denying its brilliance) that it feels like the work of a more exciting year, say 1984. As a result, it is 1986’s industry-eclipsing highlight, a ruthless piece of work when nothing and nobody was working too successfully on a creative level. The album succeeds first through the forceful midriff-pounding cannons of Fleming Rasmussen’s merciless midrange tones. There is a crowd, center-stage, at the front, the space between band and fan compressed, diminished, erased. In this hotspot, the Bay Area’s favorite denim-clad devils go about their business thrashing the daylights inside and out of the new extreme metal, recasting it as something one is able to process and make pleasurable; the thrash is compacted, impacted, punky but crafted to a puerile polish by the quick right hand of Hetfield. And speaking of James, what you got out of his booze-splashed craw was a vocal that was simultaneously extreme and personable, a sort of redneck howl from a guy that was cognizant of his genre’s quandary with respect to the fragile balance between anguished vocal-chord grinding and the minefield of melody. So there he was, croaking and crooning his way through an assortment of large, dry, loveable songs, each an anthem (save for anthem-abdicating instrumental Orion), each deliberately dotting a plectrumed place on the thrash landscape, from the old-school blast of Battery and Damage, Inc., down through stuffed-full metal mannas like the title track and Disposable Heroes, decelerating now through the shaggy crags of The Thing That Should Not Be and Leper Messiah, wasting away at the restless resting place of Welcome Home (Sanitarium). Of course, that isn’t the record’s sequence (Master of Puppets is organized cagier than that. Synopsis: run in, run out), but that exercise gives you a sense of how much ground is covered on this album, all with an impressive unity that makes you forget the little bits of production — f’rinstance, the fact that the record begins with acoustic guitar. So there you have it . . . but it’s not exactly tidy. You have what is now the dominating metal band on the planet, making their third great record in a year neither here nor there for the genre as a whole, with the real, fresh, virginal excitement already having run its course over the two records the band had already released. Master of Puppets is also the work of a band that has lost, in a disheartening gradual slide over a long half of its long existence, a lot of its good will with the fans. Still, it won the whole damn thing, pointing to a maturity in our poll respondents to put aside the value-shifting vagaries of the sands of time and reward pure, unadulterated headbanging done righter than right.

Lars Ulrich on Master of Puppets . . .

"It’s kind of interesting talking about your previous records when you are in the middle of making another one; it’s like different perspectives. But Master of Puppets, in some way, is probably the most concise one of the first four. With Lightning, we were starting to shape our sound. With Justice, we took it too far. But Master of Puppets is the most concise of those . . . for better or worse, the most concise. To have it considered No. 1 is obviously a pretty amazing thing. I have a lot of respect for that record. It’s difficult for me to rate them. I can’t say Master of Puppets is better or worse than any of those records — they each are completely their own thing. Master of Puppets is obviously the record where it started breaking. When I think of that record I’ll always think of the Ozzy tour, the stage set with the crosses; I’ll always think of Cliff. Any time anybody asks me about records there’s all these memories that come into play. And you know, I know this is like the oldest cliché in the book, but those records become time capsules; they become mile markers of your past. When I think of that record I think of being in Denmark drinking Danish beer, all this shit [laughs], recording at Sweet Silence. I realize now, sort of two-thirds of the way through making a new record . . . we sat around today with our manager and talked about a bunch of stuff and it’s really hard to objectify or be objective about our own stuff. I let other people rant and rave about the merits of the records and give opinions, but I have to say it’s a record that I’m incredibly proud of. It seemed to just sort of come together. We were honing it on Lightning, and Puppets came the closest to a bull’s-eye for that type of stuff. And then on Justice, I think it became too bloated and too introverted."

2 THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST / Iron Maiden

4760 points (EMI ’82)

In some manner, The Number of the Beast is less of a confident rock-starry thing versus the anchored heft of Killers. There’s a frantic quality that points to the naiveté of the debut, perhaps fueled by the cracked-open world of wonders that presented itself through the acquisition of a lead-singing, finger-pointing, pint-sizing dynamo in leg warmers called Bruce Dickinson. But three records runnin’, Maiden’s advantage was their track-to-track variation, each anthem an island, many with a nugget of novelty (look to spiffy intros and look to well-defined themes), all featuring a chemistry born of the band’s odd, fat-stringed leadership structure. Lowlife lowlights for me are the two most popular songs, Run to the Hills and the sweet-and-sour title track, but much of the rest steams and redeems — The Prisoner, 22 Acacia Avenue and bristling, bustling epic Hallowed Be Thy Name being particularly . . . crafty.

Bruce Dickinson on The Number of the Beast . . .

"I’m not sure it’s still the favorite, but it is certainly the most notorious. What’s that word? It’s a ‘seminal’ album [laughs]. In other words, it’s the album that really started the whole darn thing in the eyes of a lot of the people on the planet. And while diehard Maiden fans know the thing was well underway with the first couple of records, the third album of any band is always kind of a make-or-break situation. If the band is doing really well with its first and second albums, and doesn’t do a great third album, there’s a kind of profound sense of disappointment that very often may mean the beginning of the end. But a really great third album can kick everything into gear, and in our case it was a great record. That really set the scene for the albums that followed. I mean, likely for us, we followed it up with an album that in my opinion, is actually better. But of course, albums are not just about music, they’re also a product of their times. And Number of the Beast, because it occupied a space and achieved such a legendary status by virtue of its position in the career of the band . . . it would be very hard to dislodge that. But in my opinion, Piece of Mind is a superior record."

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden:

AC/DC — Highway to Hell

Rainbow — Rising

Led Zeppelin — II

Jethro Tull — Aqualung

Deep Purple — In Rock

Deep Purple — Made in Japan

Deep Purple — Burn

Black Sabbath — Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath — Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Judas Priest — Sad Wings of Destiny

3 REIGN IN BLOOD / Slayer

4363 points (Def Jam ’86)

Artfully inspiring seeing this short slapper of a neck-snapper vault to No. 3 on our list, Slayer turning on their love light, leaving behind the somehow stuffy, manacled sound of old for what is real, raw, bloody, groovy and oddly personable, the heaviness and danger and chaos of the band tumbling and tangling while they knock the daylights out of rock history in under 30 minutes. Reign in Blood is the cusp album for the band, one that contains the brushfire of the original premise, but also the songful breakthrough of the pair of realization albums that would follow. As others thrashed around them, Slayer suddenly found themselves with a sound and a chemistry built from a defiant and ingrained self-confidence, smarmy laziness, and a refreshing disdain for much heavy music outside of what their own power-plant generated. These habits perhaps accidentally and randomly crossed paths to create a record that is the dark document at the top of the putrid pile known in umbrella terms as extreme metal, or more accurately thrash, a term in total that works out to be less nasty than what these irrepressible God-killers would embody.

Tom Araya on Reign in Blood . . .

"On Reign in Blood, we went in and recorded the songs and we were finishing up doing the mixes and final takes, and I looked up and they had the totals, the list of songs, and it had 28 minutes. And I’m like ‘Is that the right time? Is that the total time for all the songs?’ And Andy Wallace looks up and goes, ‘No, no, there must be a problem. That’s not right. That can’t be the total time. Let me check.’ You know what I mean? And then he’s like, ‘No, that’s the total time.’ So we were kind of shocked, so we looked at Rubin and we told Rubin, ‘Well, ten songs constitutes an album, right?’ ‘Yup.’ ‘We’ve got ten songs on this record, right?’ And he goes ‘Yup.’ ‘Is there problem?’ ‘Nope.’ [laughs]. So that was it, end of discussion. And I’m like, ‘Cool.’ And then you know, every album after that, we don’t really pay attention to the time. We just sort of write songs and put them on an album. If we like them, they go on, if we don’t like them, they don’t go on tape."

4 RIDE THE LIGHTNING / Metallica

4049 points (Music For Nations ’84)

I still prefer this cusp record over winner of the whole chicken chimichanga with half-price pitchers, Master of Puppets, because there’s an excitement of discovery here that is merely the discovered two years and many metal worlds later. Ride the Lightning is the place where metal was reborn, or more specifically, where extreme metal became art and more specifically again, where extreme metal discovered the abstract elusive artistry of hit songs, an effect due in large part to the tuneful, musical drum style of Lars Ulrich, who had begun to craft sparse, non-obvious fills that stick in the mind long after the next double-bass flurry has erupted. Whether bludgeoningly fast (Fight Fire with Fire, Trapped Under Ice), mountain-movingly slow (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Fade to Black), or two speeds at opposite ends of mid-velocity’s sweet-spot (Escape and the note-stuffing Creeping Death), Metallica were well beyond the dependent, one-dimensional riff-centricity of Kill ’Em All, crafting anthems that lesser banged heads could potentially love, or at least untangle. The impressive result was an album where the eight parts did not need the cooperative of the whole, where each song was a city state expanding the definition of extreme metal, allowing those unattuned to such caustics to enter this harsh world piecemeal, one toe at a time, one hook leading to the next, the picture becoming clearer, less disorienting and less foreign with each connection made.

Lars Ulrich on Ride the Lightning versus Master of Puppets, productionwise . . .

"Both of those are recorded at the same place but mixed by different people. I think I might like the mixing on Ride the Lightning a little better than Master of Puppets. I thought on Master of Puppets the mixing was a little. . . . There’s a lot of reverb on a lot of things. Sometimes I think it sounds a little watered-down. But I think the performances are better on that album. On Master of Puppets, we had our chops together a little more and we were a little more rehearsed. On Ride the Lightning, we were more like writing in the studios where we were recording it. Things like For Whom the Bell Tolls are quite difficult for me to listen to, especially for the drums and stuff. I can hear the tentativeness in the drumming. We wrote it, like, the day before or something like that. When I hear it now I somewhat cringe [laughs]."

5 BACK IN BLACK / AC/DC

3900 points (Atlantic ’80)

AC/DC had been working on this album in London when Bon Scott died, but it’s near impossible to picture him singing these songs that have so indelibly joined the rock lexicon the way they are. Brian Johnson was in possession of pipes as hair-raising as Bon’s, but the listener felt a greater sense of unease listening to Brian, who regularly sounded like his voice might blow out, fleshy bits coughed up and squirming like eels mid-stage as the pint-sizers crowd around dumbfounded. But the band behind him was a different one than that of Highway to Hell — sounding rounder, warmer, bluesier, more sophisticated — packing riffs that fused to the rhythms, riffs that were more note-dense. Songs therefore became synergistic with each other, part of an oddly somber party, a book with chapters each imbued with dark humor, some of it imagined, some of it simply slathered flat black on the mind as blank stares fixated on that nihilistic album cover.

Malcolm Young on Back in Black . . .

Should you carry on with the name? All sorts of thoughts went through our minds. We were just sitting around not doing anything, because of respect, too, you know, and not knowing and not caring. We just got a hold of each other one day and just said ‘Look, we’ve come up with lots of music before Bon died, so why don’t we just get together and sit down and at least . . . at least we can do something; we can play guitar.’ So we did that and a lot of good music came from that. Because something kicked in there. We didn’t have to do it, but inside, there was stuff coming out that probably wouldn’t have ever appeared. It made us grow up really quick, I think.

6 PARANOID / Black Sabbath

3326 points (Vertigo ’70)

Distilling their ideas into riff-wrapped nuggets, Sabbath create, painfully early, their tombstone and testimony, Paranoid becoming the timeless turtle of the catalogue, its title track, War Pigs and Iron Man supporting an overrated cast of slovenlies. But despite the record’s unevenness, and despite its toneless and hard production chill, it is, in total, a sequence of events revolutionary at the time, Sabbath, along with Deep Purple, creating heavy metal as we know it, only gradually but quite thoroughly, as it exists today. The record feels and creaks as old as the debut, but it does indeed get serious about overhauling previous conceptions of power chords and their potential stacking and configuring, whether by hook, crook or accident. And it obstinately remains the sales leader of the catalogue, despite considerably more impressive creative triumphs later on.

Bill Ward on Paranoid . . .

"I think Paranoid represents the late ’60s, and where we were in the late ’60s, because a good portion of the material on Paranoid was actually starting to be written, or was written, in ’69 or ’68. We started writing together in ’68 and it might have even been earlier than that — ’67. For that album cover, first of all somebody came up with the picture and we were like, ‘Hmm, OK, alright, not too bad.’ But I believe the working title for that album was War Pigs, and Warner Brothers didn’t want it to be called War Pigs, which would make sense at the time. Record companies have to take care of how they look and everything. So I think that cover was based on War Pigs, and then they changed the name to Paranoid [laughs]."

7 OPERATION: MINDCRIME / Queensrÿche

3114 points (EMI ’88)

It took a while to sink in, but once it did, Mindcrime broke the band big, surprising, given its seedy-yet-futuristic storyline and a sense of auditory smother that doesn’t let up through a belabored mash of songs and segues. But Mindcrime has become bigger than its britches, now entering the metal language as the first name in concept albums, often called the best of all time. A thirst for metal was parched with this album, the band reversing the tech jets on the ill-received Rage for Order album and rocking quite hard, quite often. I still find the production cold, but there’s no denying the wrenching twists and turns of the band’s twin guitars, Wilton and DeGarmo showing why they’re the Maiden-slayers of the high-rent district.

Geoff Tate on Operation: Mindcrime . . .

"Mindcrime really was an interesting situation. We had been on the road with Rage for Order, and Chris and I had been talking about trying to write a conceptual piece. We didn’t quite know what it was, but we had some music that ended up being Suite Sister Mary. It was sort of a long involved piece and we were working on this on the road and talking. When the tour ended, I went up to Montreal to live for a while. I was staying up there and I met some people and I hung out with Quebec separatists. I can’t remember how to describe them; there’s a name for it. These people were trying to separate Quebec from the union of Canada. They were pretty interesting, although pretty extreme. So I met and associated with them. And I was tossing around the experiences of the last tour. One night, it was snowing and I had run out of cigarettes, so I got on all my heavy clothes to walk down to the corner and get some smokes. And when I got there, I bought my smokes, came outside, unwrapped them, and was having a cigarette when I saw this Catholic church across the street. And I had this really strong desire to walk in there. So I did, and I sat down, and I was kind of looking around and sinking into the vibe when all of a sudden I started getting this musical idea in my head, and it got very strong, and all these words started swirling around and I had the idea. I raced home and I just started writing, and in about three hours I had outlined the entire story and written the first verse and chorus to the song Operation: Mindcrime. And that just got the ball rolling. When I got back to Seattle in March, I presented the idea to the band and none of them really got it. They didn’t like it at all, and I was really upset because I really thought this was a strong idea and I really wanted to pursue it. The next day Chris called me up and said ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about that idea. I think what we need to do is talk more about it. Come over to my house and maybe we’ll write some stuff.’ And I did and we started talking about it and the idea started rolling out and Chris and I really came up with some musical ideas at that point and we honed in on the storyline with a little more detail. And then with him and I presenting it to the rest of the band again, they all bit on it and we started working on it."

Andrea Cantarelli from Labyrinth:

Queensryche — Operation: Mindcrime

Iron Maiden — Powerslave

Metallica — Master of Puppets

Savatage — Gutter Ballet

Helloween — Walls of Jericho

Anthrax — Spreading the Disease

Slayer — Reign in Blood

Deep Purple — Fireball

Led Zeppelin — III

Blue Öyster Cult — Agents of Fortune

8 PIECE OF MIND / Iron Maiden

3077 points (EMI ’83)

If The Number of the Beast is the emotional favorite of the fans, Piece of Mind is the choice when cooler heads prevail, when pen and paper are pulled out and diagrams are drawn up. This is Maiden’s first record with a clear sense of itself, the one where the rhythm section provides ironclad backbone, Steve and new drummer Nicko McBrain (ex of Pat Travers) creating a lively but responsible backdrop for thick, substantial songs that play out one by one with the force of a long, captivating drama. No longer the scrappy underdogs nipping at the heels of Priest and Sabbath, Maiden conduct themselves like a stadium act, from the visuals all the way down, guitars on a mission, Bruce easing into his role as flashpoint of the blade.

Bruce Dickinson on Piece of Mind . . .

"Well, I think we got a huge impetus from Nicko coming into the band. We were just on a roll in terms of the music. There was just so much confidence in the band after the success of Number of the Beast. We felt we could do anything. And we really set out to do some interesting stuff on that record and I think we succeeded. I think it was a great album, my favorite of the catalogue."

9 VAN HALEN / Van Halen

3008 points (Warner ’78)

Heat. That’s the first thing one thinks about when discussing Van Halen’s massive, artful, eventful, youthful debut album. As well, Van Halen is the first, flashiest and fastest record that comes to mind when headbangers pontificate the best debut platters that matter of all time. The album contains an astonishing number of hard rock styles and speeds, from the slice and dice of Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love, Atomic Punk, I’m the One and On Fire, to the slow, simmering chugs of Little Dreamer, Jamie’s Cryin’ and Runnin’ with the Devil (as you can see, there’s too much livin’ to do to worry about every last g). Fleshing out the fun, adding dimension, we get a sizzling Kinks cover, and the most fabled guitar solo of all time, Eruption, which single-handedly kicked off the shred revolution put aside when Jimi died. Lively, but not nearly as live as subsequent records, Van Halen was also less the showcase for Ed or Alex and more about the sturdiness of the songs, sturdiness being an adjective that would apply for the first and last time right here, that solidity replaced with uneasy, unstoppable, spontaneous bursts of chemistry from this day forward.

10 APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION / Guns N’ Roses

2963 points (Geffen ’87)

Man, I was never a big fan of this record, or more accurately, I got involved upon release (it wouldn’t become a hit for nigh on a year), participated with a level head, dug these songs, became sporadically glassy-eyed at these choruses, played it a bunch, but never in my wildest exaggerations thought it was one of the top five or ten of the whole hair movement, let alone wot our poll’s saying: tenth best of all time. Appetite for Destruction is a charming enough record, however, containing songs that tie off with a big red bow, the past and present of a certain stream of rock ‘n’ roll, basically Elvis to the Stones to Aerosmith to Sunset Strip rock, spiced, by the nomadic new wavers in the band, with punk’s applecart-upsetting punch. And Axl, of course, has pipes for miles, the man-legend singing like a slithering snake while the band’s secret weapon, their rhythm section, pound out garage-rock dreams. O’ertop and between legs, Slash plays classic rock guitar with a certain something that makes these songs flex just to the point of breaking but never beyond, the man also coming off as a punchy, streetwise improvement on the circular reasoning of Joe Perry. Still, that’s all I’ve got to say — pretty dispassionate, nonchalant praise for an album with five huge hits and sales well into the eight figures, an album that is a friggin’ religion to some pretty smart rock writers. Given the band’s squalid and desperate authenticity, it’s a miscue on my part that I would find this record a disconnect, sorta derivative and corporate, but that feeling washed over me the minute I saw and heard the thing. And then, given the juggernaut it became, man, there was no way to reverse any of those sorts of thoughts. So, yeah, to this day, my opinion of this album’s never wavered from an even-keel luke: I think Appetite’s like . . . just all right. What an idiot, huh?

Duff McKagan on making Appetite for Destruction with Mike Clink . . .

"Clink is great because we had gotten the record deal and it was time to get a producer. All kinds of different people, like Paul Stanley from Kiss, wanted to do the record. But he wanted Steven to add all these drums and wanted to change the songs and we were like ‘Fuck that,’ you know? And there was another guy, Spencer Proffer, that big drum sound? We had gone in and done some demos with him. You know, he was a nice guy but he put Steven on a click track, number one, and we did Nightrain I think, and it sounded so sterile. It didn’t sound like us at all. His big drum sound and all at crap. So we didn’t do that. And finally Clink came down to our rehearsals, and he was a guy who had engineered a couple of Triumph records and nobody had heard of Mike Clink. But he came down and recorded us on his eight-track and it sounded killer! He didn’t try to change the songs; he didn’t try to do anything. And he says, ‘Well, it sounds good. Do you want your record to sound anything like this?’ And he just played us back. ‘OK, perfect.’ With respect to making the studio feel like home? No, no way. You know, we didn’t know enough about studios to know to put a fuckin’ vibe into a studio. Really, our main concern was having some booze . . . getting songs down. We were really serious about our music. As long as we had a couple fifths of something. Food wasn’t really an issue. We really didn’t care about what anything looked like. We didn’t have naked girl pictures up or anything like that. I think we had a bunch of nasty magazines and stuff. We didn’t know you could like . . . man, this was a really nice studio. We didn’t know you could put up anything of your own there. Had we known that, you know, we might have done something."

11 RUST IN PEACE / Megadeth

2911 points (Capitol ‘90)

Bloody ’ell, No. 11 mates, and that ain’t no more Mr. Nice Guy, Mustaine getting his just punishment due for creating what is the highest fidelity, technically most intellect-clad thrash album of all time — or at least its time — given the fact that everything is improved upon if the harsh light of logic is applied. But the heart knows that this was a magic molten moment, Megadeth for a brief instant the kings of metal, able to create shredly deadly note flurries while somehow making the whole electricity bath boil and groove like a metalhead beer bash. The production job positively showers sparks and the songs, for the most part, or at least in crucial recurring doses, come lovingly wrapped around platinum-powered riffs forged at the hands of a major metal contributor. And finally, the band, half new, half old, shake their performing beings to the roarcore, turning in a mens(z)a mosh that is brisk, expertly measured, and always graphically inspired.

Marty Friedman on Rust in Peace . . .

"I may have to agree with all the fans and say that the best record, of all the time I was in the band anyway, is Rust in Peace, just for sheer excitement and chemistry. It was more like a test than anything else. Nick hadn’t recorded anything with the band and I hadn’t either. It was like two very new guys. Nobody knew each other or what we were going to do, so everybody was just playing their ass off and it was done really traditionally. It wasn’t recorded with a lot of effects or anything, just straight-ahead, balls-out dry. It had a great impact and it was a good representative record of what we were doing at the time. But you can’t repeat that again. It wouldn’t nearly be as good."

Nick Menza from Megadeth:

Led Zeppelin — Physical Graffiti

Rush — 2112

Van Halen — Van Halen

Judas Priest — Screaming for Vengeance

Scorpions — Blackout

The Michael Schenker Group — The Michael Schenker Group

Pink Floyd — Dark Side of the Moon

King’s X — Gretchen Goes to Nebraska

Metallica — Master of Puppets

UFO — Obsession

12 SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE / Judas Priest

2780 points (CBS ’82)

Uh-huh, No. 12. Right. There are four songs on here — (Take These) Chains, Pain and Pleasure, Fever and Devil’s Child — that seem to have been dropped from the collective radar of folks so flagrantly irresponsible to vote this record of half-truths so far up the ying-yang. And it ain’t like You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ is the zenith of metal accomplishment either. Anyway, this is a democracy (not this part, just the voting . . . heh heh), and the people have spoken. ’Course, one could argue that any record that opens with two-fisted beer pounders as strong as Electric Eye, Riding on the Wind and Bloodstone, and then lights up side two with the title track from Hell, deserves a slap on the buttless leather chaps . . . but No. 12? Oy vey, I need a quiet lie-down.

Ian Hill on Screaming for Vengeance . . .

"We got lucky with that one, as it contained You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’. That song was very much an accident. We recorded a lot of the material in the Mediterranean. We went to Orlando, Florida and mixed the album and discovered we were a little short on time. We did our best to get something together, a bit of an album-filler. That is very unusual for us because we never take that sort of attitude. It was that song, and it was written and recorded within hours. It was an afterthought. It might have been because it was so spontaneous and fresh that American radio picked up on it and the next thing you know it was being played all over the place. It was the song that broke us in a big way in the States. Everything that followed really owed itself to that song. It was conceived at the end of recording. We were mixing down and we thought that we could do with another three or four minutes. It’s the spontaneous things that are sometimes the best."

Glenn Tipton from Judas Priest:

Aerosmith — Rocks

Black Sabbath — Mob Rules

Led Zeppelin — Presence

The Who — Tommy

Sepultura — Arise

Savatage — Gutter Ballet

Pantera — Vulgar Display of Power

The Cult — Beyond Good and Evil

Warlock — Triumph and Agony

Primal Fear — Primal Fear

13 POWERSLAVE / Iron Maiden

2727 points (EMI ’84)

Juiced on the nervous energy of Piece of Mind’s creative success and the manic panic of the subsequent metal-mad tour, Powerslave offers more of the same without the excitement of discovery. That said, an upchucking overflow of unstoppable talent and electric chemistry blusters through the proceedings, resulting in a handful of classics, 2 Minutes to Midnight and the title track most notably, with Rime of the Ancient Mariner proving that long-dong metal songs can work, drawing the listener into caring about the celluloid movements and quite simply, more verses. Lacking the cohesion of Piece of Mind, Powerslave nevertheless provides adequate holdover, ending for most Maiden’s golden period with a happy late Saturday night headbang, followed, deep into Rime, by a nagging sense of Sunday worry.

Adrian Smith on recording Powerslave . . .

"We were pretty well-behaved actually. It was a fantastic environment, in some ways, to work. It was beautiful; we had apartments right on the sea. The studio was right there. It was very isolated. Every now and again we would get what we would call island fever, and we all had to go into Nassau and party for a couple of days. But we did manage to get quite a bit of work done amongst all the fun. Not much arguing about anything. I think that might have come a little bit later [laughs]. I think at the time we were kind of riding a wave and having a great time and flying high. It was sort of the same arrangement as Piece of Mind. We had a process set up, we would go to Jersey and rehearse for a month or six weeks and then go to the Bahamas for a couple of months and then go mix it. It was about the same, three months. I always find Piece of Mind very, very dry. There are some great songs, but it’s a bit hard to listen to now. Powerslave is a little bit smoother, I think. It was on the way to where we were going with Somewhere in Time."

14 BLACK SABBATH / Black Sabbath

2726 points (Vertigo ’70)

Probably more people would call this the first heavy metal album of all time, over a scatter of other choices closely concurrent, slightly previous, deliberately directed that way or wonderfully accidental (fill in the blanks). But man, the opening chords of Black Sabbath (triple witching thereof) just say it all, Iommi thenceforth feeling, reeling and finding his way somewhat blindly through a variety of metal milestones. Ergo there goes The Wizard, N.I.B. and, and . . . What was the question? ’Scuse me, I couldn’t find any more songs, which is why I always politely pass and bow instead to the riff-huggers mugging Paranoid. Still, Iommi packed just enough power chords on his back amongst all the bog-sitting on this record to establish a new music in a way Zep cared not to. And for that, plus what quickly followed over a whirlwind three years, the Sabs will forever be the masters of blast mechanics.

Bill Ward on the Sabbath vibe . . .

I love Led Zeppelin and I totally admire John Bonham as a percussionist, but Robert’s lyrics were kind of like love lyrics. And that’s not a put-down. But Ozzy was screeching his balls off singing, ‘What is this that stands before me?’ And we were serious about it. It was a very serious band as well as a happy band. But those lyrics meant the world to us. They did then, and they still do. So I could hear some really good rock units forming, but I always felt we were the odd band out. We’d come in under the gun all the time and I just loved it [laughs].

15 BLIZZARD OF OZZ / Ozzy Osbourne

2618 points (Jet/CBS ’81)

In total, unusual, personable, unexpected, Blizzard of Ozz is one of those records that really is a synergistic and odd outcome of four separate and distinct artists. Ozzy’s voice is in a rock pigpen of one, Kerslake hits hard, Bob Daisley writes with an eccentric, skeletal, inside-out frame-building flair, and Randy is one of those true guitar gems who sounds like no one else, in possession of a rare ability to stand aside and attract attention, to dominate while making sure the disparate elements are brought together, introduced and fast-friendly. The outcome is an album filled with grounded yet airy rock songs that are modest yet anthemic, the definition of inclusiveness. The album has flaws where Diary of a Madman doesn’t, but those flaws create an underdog atmosphere in which Oz and his fans can see eye to eye. No Bone Movies indeed.

Bob Daisley on assembling the Blizzard of Ozz line-up . . .

I went to a gig in London, and there was a band called Girl playing, and that was the band Phil Collen had from Def Leppard, and they were a Jet Records band; my band Widowmaker had also been on Jet Records. I went along just to see if I’d see any friends from Jet Records, and to have a look at this band Girl, and I was looking for work myself. And I thought, ‘Well, it’s always good to put yourself around and see who’s about!’ I met Arthur Sharpe, who had been working for Jet Records. It was Arthur Sharpe who introduced me to Ozzy, and Ozzy told me he was about to form a band and would I like to go up to his house in Stafford and have a play, and he’d get a couple of local musicians in. So I went up there, and he knew that I’d just come from Rainbow. He said he liked my playing a lot and would I be interested? And I said yes I’d be interested in getting a band together with him, but I wasn’t so sure about the local drummer and guitar player that he’d got in, and he said ‘OK, leave it to me! Hang on a minute.’ And he walked out of the room, and walked into the studio that was in his house and said ‘OK guys, it’s not working out, now pack up your stuff and go!’ [laughs]. And that was the way he told them, which I thought was quite funny. Then he got on the phone to Jet Records and spoke to Arthur Sharpe and said ‘Bob and I get on like a house on fire, and the fire brigade’s just left!’ And we went from there. He said he knew a great guitar player that he’d met in Los Angeles called Randy Rhoads, so Jet Records flew Randy over and we started auditioning drummers and we were on our way. I would certainly say that it’s a strong possibility that if Ozzy had not been surrounded with the people he had at that time it may not have got off the ground, because his reputation wasn’t that great at that time — Ozzy had a reputation of being into drugs and getting boozed up and getting out of it, and that’s part of the reason why Sabbath fired him. Randy was a very dedicated musician; he practiced a lot, he was very into music. He was a very young, up-and-coming guy. I think he got an award in about ’82 or so, I think as one of the ‘best new talents’. He certainly was, and still is, an influential guitarist for that sort of music, and he certainly had a lot to do with the success of Ozzy’s career as well.

16 HEAVEN AND HELL / Black Sabbath

2552 points (Vertigo ’80)

This album will always be considered a direct hit, an obvious classic. But there will always be that nagging part of you that says it was all too obvious, this version of the band lacking the pathos of the Ozzy years. Aside from an utterly soggy and near-suicidal Bill Ward, the boys were just too together — almost smug — writing gleaming machines on which Ronnie would hang his glaringly non-Ozzy, non-Sabbath wizard’s hat. So to be simplistic and a bit daft about it all, you almost have to consider this, not the work of a different band, but as a Dio album, Martin Birch’s clarity and the immediacy and uniformity of the songs and their arrangements taking the disaster-prone Sabbath out of the equation, leaving us with, like I say, a great Dio album. As a final footnote, I’ve always approached this record — despite the full-on every track compromise of death-looming artistry — as a collection of five absolutely top-flight metal songs, with Lady Evil being a bit too Ron and Walk Away and Wishing Well being too happy. The rest though? Man, very tasty fast food, so close to classic and yet ever-so-slightly empty.

Ronnie James Dio on Heaven and Hell . . .

"It’s my favorite album from my past. And it’s not just the music, it’s all the things that went together with it. You know, the reason it was made, how difficult it was to make, the time it took, the people involved, the changes while we were doing it. That’s what made the difference, I think. It was an album, again, that started a cycle for hard rock music, and I’m very proud of that. The guys had a couple of riffs and things that they had done because they had been rehearsing with Ozzy. It was going to be their 10th anniversary. They had a studio in the home that they were living in; they had knocked some things out. When I first actually met them physically — Geezer, Bill and Tony — they said, ‘We’re in the rehearsal place. Do you want to have a listen at this thing we’ve been doing?’ So they played something for me and Tony said, ‘Do you think you can do something with that?’ I said, ‘Give me a few minutes and I’ll see what I can do.’ In 15 or 20 minutes I wrote Children of the Sea with them. I think Tony had another riff that they had been working on; I don’t remember what that one became. Then Geezer left and it became just Tony and myself and Bill. Tony and I started writing everything else after that. Geezer came back just to play on the album. It was all written at that point with the exception of Neon Knights. We had all the material that was going to be on Heaven and Hell with the exception of Neon Knights. What happened was that Geezer had come back and we needed one more song and we were in France and we wrote that one. All in all, the material was new. That album actually became successful for a reason other than the fact that it was good! All of the sound technicians started playing it during the intermissions at gigs. People were going, ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s the new Black Sabbath!’ Everybody just rushed out and got it and drove it up to the top."

17 HOLY DIVER / Dio

2431 points (Warner ’83)