Okay, this is it. I can’t put this off anymore. The channel’s been around long enough that it’s time for me to give my first Top ___ list. You know, I was just watching Finn McKenty’s Best Metal Albums and I’m like, you know what? I really need to get over myself and just get this done.
My lists are usually from the Top 20 to the Top 100, so this is really tough. I spent more time picking out my shirt than I did writing this because I wanted this to be, you know, like honest. You know, I’m asked the question and boom, I come up with it. I know I’m going to second guess everything. I really hope you second guess everything, too.!
These are what I think are The Twelve Greatest Albums in Heavy Rock/Metal by Decade. I picked the two best albums for each decade, just to give it a little spread. Below is the YouTube video for this list, which has slightly different commentary. We hope you check it out as well!
The Twelve Greatest Albums in Heavy Rock/Metal History, by Decade
The 70’s
It didn’t really begin in the 1970s. The 1960s had a variety of heavy bands, each one getting heavier and heavier. Hendrix, Cream, Mountain and even Steppenwolf laid down the template for proto-metal. 1970 is when it all came together, with bands releasing entire albums defined by their heaviness instead of just single songs, like the Beatles’ Helter Skelter. In hindsight, it probably all looks inevitable. But if you were there, if you were listening to the music when it was first coming out, it felt impossible. These are two of the albums that I think represent some of the variety in 1970s Heavy Metal…
1. Black Sabbath.
Of course, Black Sabbath is the first band on this list.
I actually chose Sabotage because I feel like Sabotage it’s neutral territory, combining all the heaviness with the more complex arrangements they’d been experimenting with. Something very interesting was happening in 1975 when they came out with this album, and music of all sorts was about to splinter into different directions.
From many points of view, it’s one of the very first progressive metal albums, along with King Crimson. Symptom of the Universe is one of their most complicated arrangements, along with Megalomania and The Writ. I could have gone with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, but in the end I think this is the best representation of peak Black Sabbath. Sabotage is the best produced of the original era of the band, and it’s the best Ozzie’s voice has ever sounded.
King Crimson: Red
King Crimson, Heavy Metal?
Yeah, they invented heavy progressive metal. There’d be no Tool, there’d probably be no King Bastard, there might not even be an Elder if it wasn’t for these guys. A lot of what you listen to, it wouldn’t sound the same if it wasn’t for Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Bill Bruford. Fripps riffs are incendiary, Wetton’s growl on his bass never sounded better, and Buford is in absolute beast mode.
This album is heavy from the gate, and an invitiation for future bands to take it even heavier.
1980’s
For a lot of people I know and respect, the 1980s is when heavy metal became…Heavy Metal. The sound was becoming refined, and instead of one or two bands defining the sound, it quickly became hundreds. These two bands are on opposite side of the spectrum, one disciplined and highly refined while the other one was going in five or six different directions at once. There was a lot of great music in the 1980s,
Iron Maiden: Number of the Best
1980s my first choice isn’t really all that tough, and I don’t see this being controversial. I think this is probably the number one heavy metal of all time, and I’ve seen it on plenty of lists.
Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast is probably when modern Heavy Metal came of age. Heavier than Judas Priest, and even more experimental than Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden has dominated ever since this album came out.
Celtic Frost: Into the Pandemonium
There really was nothing like Into the Pandemonium existed on the planet when this came out, not even i n the Celtic Frost catalog. Emperors Return, Morbid Tales, and To Megatherion are all groundbreaking and highly influential. But this is a departure for Celtic Frost, with major changes to the vocal style and the introduction of avant-garde concepts like electronic beats and operatic singing. It was not exactly well received by their rabid fanbase at the time, but it’s legend continues to grow decade after decade. Black Metal, Death Metal, even Thrash owe a huge debt to Celtic Frost, blazing a trail the remains relevant to this very day. Uh!!!!
1990’s
Was there a better decade for heavy metal overall than a 1990s? Everything started to come together and split apart at the same time. The birth of so many genres, the influence of so many bands. There are literally thousands I could choose from, Ministry to Helmet and everywhere in between. But for me, these are the two albums that best represent what I was listening to back in the 90s.
Kyuss: Welcome to Sky Valley
I think of Welcome to Sky Valley as the album that launched 1000 bands. Almost everything I listen to nowadays can be linked back to Kyuss’ most iconic album. . It redefined Heavy for myself, and millions of people around the world. And when I say heavy, I mean HEAVY! I’ve blown two pairs of expensive high-end speakers with the opening track Gardenia, which is why I now use a subwoofer or keep the volume way down.
Welcome to Sky Valley has everything from crushing rips to delicate, wind swept passages that evoke the high desert. Frequently duplicated, never replicated: this is the sound of Stoner Rock becoming Stoner Metal.
Acid King: Busse Woods
Look, she’s not a shredder. She’s not Yngwie Malmsteen. She’s not going to blow you away with Kirk Hammett type arpeggio’s. But when Lori S. plugs her guitar into a fuzz pedal and into an amplifier, and she becomes the Muddy Waters of heavy metal. She can do so much with the chords she chooses, how she plays them, and how the whole album flows together. Acid King is without a doubt one of the most underrated, under-appreciated Heavy Metal bands of all time. For my money, they are the architects of the whole idea of Stoner/Doom Metal, and the first to really put the whole thing into a cohesive package. And Busse Woods is when Acid King became legend.
2000’s
Nearly 25 years later, the 2000s still feel very strange to me. I can’t keep track of all the genres and sub-genres that formed the many tribes in Heavy Metal. To be perfectly honest, I tuned out a lot of it and focused on Prog and the first band on this list.
Opeth: Blackwater Park
Opeth is where King Crimson and Celtic Frost were pointing to, at least in part.
You’ve got black metal type blast beats going on there. You have you have Michael’s world class best ever growling of vocals, and a rhythm section on fire. While Mikael Akerfeldt was obviously listening to those bands, there’s far more to this album than just obvious references. Collaborating with Stephen Wilson on production, Blackwater Park took underground heavy metal to an entirely different plane. The entire album is a relentless sonic journey, vacillating between violent aggression and pastoral calmness, only to have it all distilled into the epic title track.
YOB: The Great Cessation
Frankly, I don’t think heavy’s been handled quite the way YOB handles it. I mean, there’s heavy. There’s slayer heavy: which is really loud and aggressive and fast. Then there’s YOB heavy. It feels like it weighs two or three tons, and it’s impossible to carry that burden. The Great Cessation is Progressive without being noodly. It’s oppressively heavy, but there’s a lot of spiritual meaning underneath it all that’s rare in extreme music. I could pick almost any YOB album, but this is the one that punches me in the heart the most.
2010s
If I mostly skipped the music in the 2000s, I more than made up for it in the 2010s. Streaming quickly became my delivery method of choice, and the sheer volume of music available with services like Spotify, Tidal and all the others was staggering. I quickly became reacquainted with Stoner/Doom, and have not turned back since.
Elder: Lore
Elder turned the heavy underground on its ass when it released Dead Roots Stirring in 2011. It was one of the most originally heavy albums in recent memory. In 2015, when they released Lore, it was so unexpectedly refined that is seemed to change the entire heavy underground overnight. Stoner/Doom wasn’t the same after Lore. There was a sense that anything was possible, and ever since then we’ve had a steady stream first rate bands, from King Buffalo to REZN, taking chances and developing their own take on a new, progressively heavy version of Stoner. I think it all started with Lore.
Spaceslug: Lemanis
The first time I heard Spaceslug’s Lemanis, I stopped what I was doing halfway through the album and started it over again. Another punch in the heart, song after song. I had never heard Space Rock so heavy, so darkly psychedelic. We can argue about which Spaceslug album is really the best, but I have to go with this one because it was the first. I still thing of them as the Steely Dan over Stoner/Doom, because their studio work is so sublime. Year after year, they’ve maintained consistent quality, refining their distinctive sound rather than veering too far away from it. Literally stellar!
2020s
My friend Sunil Singh, in his book Sonic Seducer, claims that this is the true Golden Age of Heavy Rock. I couldn’t agree more! The decade isn’t even halfway over yet, but album after album are chipping away of what I consider the greatest albums of all time. The two I’ve chosen are my current favorites of the decade, but I can think of about 30 more albums I could choose.
Sergeant Thunderhoof: This Sceptered Veil
Trigger Alert: Dan Flitcroft is the best vocalist of this generation. He’s a cross between Chris Cornell and Rob Halford, but with a distinctive voice all his own. Mark Sayer is the most criminally underrated guitarist of this generation, able to produce powerful chords and rhythms with the ability to pull off some of the most technically proficient, yet emotive, guitar lead you’ve ever heard. This all means that Sergeant Thunderhoof’s This Sceptered Veil is the greatest album you’ve probably never heard. Heavy, epic, thundering and at times seductively gentle, this is one of the rare perfect albums in the history of Heavy Rock/Metal.
Ritual King: The Infinite Mirror
It’s too early to come up with an accurate list for a decade that’s not even half-over. But The Infinite Mirror feels like an album that’s taken the best from most of the other albums on this list and melded it all together into something exciting and different. These are long form, blues based songs with a little bit of jam, a definite progressive bent, and moments of sublime heaviness. It’s also one of the best recorded albums of the past 20 years or so. Every note of the guitar and bass feels real, alive through an excellent pair of headphones such as the Sennheiser HD-800S’, which generally put any imperfection into a glaring spotlight. The vocals are easily one of the best parts of the album, but then everything is one of the best parts of this album. If you haven’t heard it yet, I strongly recommend it. Especially if you’re a fan of King Buffalo or Elder. You won’t be disappointed!
Conclusion
That wraps up my first attempt at a Top ____ list, even if I did cheat a bit and only choose two albums from each decade. I definitely don’t mean this as some end all, be all list that everyone should know and appreciate. I think I nailed it quite a few times, but other times might seem like really curious choices.
Speaking of which: We’re curious about your choices: What is YOUR Top _____ list for Heavy Rock/Heavy Metal? Let us know!
Here’s the playlist for this list. Sadly, Acid King was not available. Tidal links take you to Spotify, Apple Music, etc. if that what you use for streaming: 11 Of the Greatest Albums