It was on February 13, 1970 that the genre of heavy metal was officially born. While its blueprints had already been laid down by the likes of Zeppelin, Blue Cheer and Coven venturing further into the heavier underbelly of rock'n'roll, Black Sabbath crystallised the sound and feel of metal into something tangible - something terrifying and altogether heavier than anything we'd heard before.
Over five decades later and metal remains as fearless, boundary pushing and feared/revered as ever, its journey taking on all manner of twists and turns with Sabbath's debut, through the NWOBHM, thrash, the extreme outer limits of death and black metal and the nu metal explosion that followed some years later. From metal’s original earthquaking anthems to the modern classics that are pushing things forward, this is the soundtrack to a musical revolution that has lasted 50 years and counting, courtesy of the 100 songs that changed the genre forever.
1. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath, 1970)
This is where it starts: with pouring rain, a clanging funeral bell and a crack of thunder. Six minutes and 20 seconds later, the whole of heavy metal’s future is mapped out before us. Sabbath weren’t the first band to weaponise the blues – Led Zeppelin had released two albums by the time the Sabbs’ debut came out – but they were the ones who fully realised its pure malevolent power.
More than 50 years on, Black Sabbath sounds like a revolution at quarter-speed: that never-matched opening Iommi riff, the boundary-pushing occult imagery, Ozzy’s descent into madness as the song picks up panicked speed (let’s not forget that, like so many Sabbath songs, it’s a cautionary tale)... it all became as important to metal as breathing. People had heard ‘heavy’ before, but they’d never heard it like this. Things truly would never be the same again. DE
2. Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin III, 1970)
‘Valhalla, I am coming!’ With those four words, Led Zeppelin launched the dragon-prowed longship that would eventually lead to waves of invasion by axe-wielding Viking metal bands. The scything guitars and insistent rhythms recall the threshing oars referenced in the lyrics, but it’s the evocative imagery more than the actual music that really set the scene for every other Norse-obsessed band to follow.
Enslaved are the most prominent such act to have paid tribute, with a cover of the song played live on Norwegian TV, though the classic riff and Robert Plant’s iconic wail also implanted itself into the wider metal consciousness, which is why the song has also been covered by everyone from Dark Angel to Stryper. PT
3. Kiss - Rock And Roll All Nite (Dressed To Kill, 1975)
Rock’n’roll needed nobody’s permission to party, but Kiss gave it anyway with the exuberant final song on their third album. Its simple message – rock’n’roll all night, party every day – became the handbook for a million teenage rebels who dreamed of getting loaded and living like their idols (ironic, given Gene Simmons claims never to have been drunk).
The studio version was a moderate hit in early 1975, but it was the live version from the same year’s career-making Alive! album that rocketed Kiss’s previously stuttering career into the stratosphere – the start of a journey that turned them into one of the biggest bands and certainly the biggest brand in history. Without it, the Kiss empire - and modern merchandising – could have looked very different. DE
4. Rainbow - Stargazer (Rainbow Rising, 1976)
Rock had reached for the epic before, most notably via Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, but the centrepiece of Rainbow’s second album was something else. Former Deep Purple guitarist-turned-Rainbow leader Ritchie Blackmore approached this towering, eight-and-a-half-minute masterpiece like a classical composer, layering on the drama and grandeur as he constructed his magnificent musical edifice.
But it was singer Ronnie James Dio who breathed life into it with a magisterial performance that made lyrics about wizards and rainbows seem like the most logical thing in the world. Metal’s lifelong love affair with the fantastical began here, and Stargazer remains the benchmark by which all subsequent epics should be judged. DE
5. Van Halen - Eruption (Van Halen, 1978)
There are multiple reasons why this landmark sub-two-minute guitar solo-cum-Eddie Van Halen showcase was so transformative. It bridged the disparate worlds of hard rock and classical. It introduced two-handed fretboard tapping. It’s inarguably one of the greatest and most recognisable guitar solos of all time. It inspired next-level shredding. And before Smells Like Teen Spirit, it made hanging out in music shops on Saturday afternoons the most obnoxious experience since Stairway To Heaven.
Fact of the matter is, Eruption had to be strong-armed onto the album by producer Ted Templeman and it’s not even Eddie at his best, at least according to the man himself. “I didn’t even play it right”, he told Guitar World magazine. “There’s a mistake at the top end of it. To this day, whenever I hear it, I always think, ‘Man, I could’ve played it better.’” Good lord. KSP
6. Judas Priest - Exciter (Stained Class, 1978)
“If you ask me what the first thrash metal song was, it’s Exciter by Judas Priest,” Exodus/Slayer guitarist Gary Holt once told us, identifying the track that kickstarted the hyperactive one-upmanship that dominated 80s metal. “We just set out to write the fastest track ever written,” K.K. Downing told author Martin Popoff of Exciter’s modus operandi in 2007.
Opening the Stained Class album, it certainly delivered on that promise. Les Binks’s double bass dexterity and rapid-fire fills propelled the song with such infectious momentum, it changed how drummers drum, while the intensified tempo, along with Glenn Tipton/K.K. Downing’s triumphant mid-song twin-harmony fanfare and Rob Halford’s ascending shrieks, confirm Exciter as the point where Priest truly became the beast we know and love, gears constantly shifting, advancing a new set of standards for metal’s 80s future. CC
7. Motörhead - Overkill (Overkill, 1979)
'Only way to feel the noise is when it’s good and loud...’ Motörhead didn’t just find their sound with their second album, but set a new pace for metal, covered by everyone from The Damned to Metallica.
The song’s now-iconic double bass intro was a result of Philthy Animal Taylor practising in the studio, the drummer explaining in the documentary The Guts And The Glory that he was “just trying to get [his] co-ordination right”. Overkill was also the final song the band ever played, its frantic racket a fitting send-off for the band that were – for a time at least – the loudest noise on the planet. RH
8. Killing Joke - Wardance (Killing Joke, 1980)
Killing Joke’s debut single marked a hither to unexplored area where post-punk bled into tribal metal with a bleak industrial clatter. It was particularly influential on the industrial metal scene to come, with Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and Godflesh among others owing a huge debt to the song. The influence goes deeper though, slicing through every metal band with a penchant for dense, unstoppable grooves.
The likes of Metallica, Soundgarden and Faith No More have acknowledged their debt to Killing Joke, while groove metal pioneers like Helmet and Prong borrowed heavily from Wardance’s apocalyptic drive. “It’s what gave us this reputation of having this bludgeoning assault”, KJ bassist Youth said of the song, neatly summing up its enduring influence and appeal. PT
9. Saxon - Wheels Of Steel (Wheels Of Steel, 1980)
By the end of the 1970s, many of metal’s original gods were old, bloated and out of touch. It took Saxon to usher in the new decade and bring things back to where they belonged: the streets. A bunch of bluff, unpretentious Yorkshiremen, these NWOBHM first wavers made music that sounded like it had simultaneously been forged in the factories of their native Barnsley and acted as a euphoric release from the drudgery of daily life.
Wheels Of Steel was a Barnsley Born To Be Wild – a barnstorming petrolhead’s fantasy of hurtling down the open road at 140mph, flipping the bird to “motorway pigs” and the world in general. “I don’t take no bull... shit!” hollered Biff Byford, like Jeremy Clarkson in silver spandex trousers, as the song screeched into the UK Top 40, leaving smoking tyre marks in its wake. Metal was back in the hands of the working class. DE
10. Bad Brains - Pay To Cum (Pay To Cum single, 1980)
If punk lit a fire under metal, Bad Brains strapped a rocket to it and shot it into the sun. Clocking in at less than two minutes, their 1980 debut single, Pay To Cum, was a blast of hyperactive lightning, pushing the genre to almost absurd speeds. With less cowbell and more speed, it helped plant the roots of hardcore punk, and with it thrash metal.
Bad Brains bridged those worlds, inspiring everyone from Minor Threat to Metallica, Killswitch Engage and Dave Grohl among countless others, occasionally popping up on bills with the likes of Slayer to remind everyone who did it first. “All the metal dudes could play and had pretty girlfriends”, bassist Darryl Jenifer concedes. “But they started coming to our shows and saw how energised little bald punk kids were, and realised they had to get up and get on it!” RH
11. Iron Maiden - Running Free (Iron Maiden, 1980)
The term New Wave Of British Heavy Metal was coined by Sounds magazine in April 1979, but it took almost a year before this blossoming movement got its first great anthem. Kicking off with a sped-up glam rock drumbeat, Iron Maiden’s exhilarating debut single fused the energy of punk to metal’s outlaw spirit. ‘I’m running wild, I’m running free’, howled 21-year-old Paul Di’Anno, offering a glorious escape from the dole queue hell of turn-of-the-80s Britain.
The single bovver-booted its way into the UK Top 40 on its release in early 1980, though its influence spread much further – a Danish teenager named Lars Ulrich was just one of countless young rock fans paying attention. DE
12. Girlschool - Emergency (Demolition, 1980)
Seventies metal was, frankly, a bit of a sausage fest. But with their 1980 debut, Demolition, South London’s Girlschool helped level the playing field. Metal’s first all-female group, Girlschool emerged from the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal with a punk-inflected, pacy metal sound, their debut single Take It All Away impressing their contemporaries enough to land them tours with Motörhead and Budgie.
While it wasn’t the highest-charting single from Demolition – that was their cover
of 60s rockers The Gun’s Race With The Devil, which reached No.49 – Emergency was the wider public’s introduction to Girlschool, and a statement that metal wasn’t exclusively a boys’ club anymore. “There were a lot of boys in bands, but they never made us uncomfortable,” guitarist and vocalist Kim McAuliffe told Hammer in 2021. “We’d have kicked their arses if they did.” RH
13. Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train (Blizzard Of Ozz, 1980)
When Ozzy Osbourne was booted from Black Sabbath on April 27 1979, by his own reckoning he was “unemployed and unemployable”. But in August the following year, the singer was bouncing back with an all-new band, wunderkind guitarist Randy Rhoads helping cement Ozzy as a star in his own right.
It was a miraculous comeback, not least because the singer had spent three months on a coke-and-booze binge. Rescued from self-destruction by future manager and wife Sharon Osbourne, Crazy Train didn’t just bring Ozzy back, it reinvented him. Ozzy’s maniacal laugh in the track’s intro highlighted a playfulness that stood in stark contrast to Sabbath’s doom-and- gloom, and Randy’s exuberant riffs helped shift heavy metal from arenas to something fit for stadiums. RH
14. Black Flag - Rise Above (Damaged, 1981)
It’s open to question who the very first hardcore punk band was, but there’s no debate as to who defined the sound in its purest form and solidified the independent ethos on which the scene was built: Black Flag. And nothing encapsulated them like Rise Above, a pummelling blast of noise, attitude and barked lyrics, the latter courtesy of frontman Henry Rollins.
The Los Angeles band had paid their dues for several years by that point, battling the authorities and sometimes even their own fans, and the message that ran through Rise Above was hard-earned: it’s not that punk rock can flourish outside the mainstream, it’s that it should. It galvanised the underground, laying the foundations of a hardcore scene – and a lifestyle – that endures to this day. SH
15. Discharge - Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing (Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, 1982)
Discharge were the UK punks who changed extreme metal at an atomic level. While the parallel New Wave Of British Heavy Metal was booming, the spike-haired Stoke-On-Trent four- piece were pushing music beyond its established boundaries with Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing’s cataclysmic assault.
This was barely recognisable as the kind of punk that had emerged midway through the 70s – melody was replaced by screaming, atonal guitars, tuneless hollered warnings about how people were willingly being led to their doom by the powers-that-be, and the immortal ‘d-beat’ rhythm that would become Discharge’s signature. From Napalm Death in Birmingham to Metallica in the Bay Area to Sepultura in Belo Horizonte, a generation of musicians would rally to its ragged flag. SH
16. Venom - Black Metal (Black Metal, 1982)
From the ridiculous opening din of a chainsaw cutting through a studio door, sweeping away the listener with delirious momentum, Venom launched their second LP with a rallying cry for growing legions of morbid noise freaks.
The roll call of acolytes queuing up to cover this seminal work over the years - including Mayhem (formed when guitarist Euronymous and bassist Necrobutcher discovered a mutual love of the Black Metal LP), Cradle Of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, Vader, Voivod, Destruction, Sigh and Hypocrisy - makes plain the debt that metal owes to the visionary self-belief and chutzpah of Cronos, Mantas and Abaddon, cast in stone on this song that launched a movement. CC
17. Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized (Suicidal Tendences, 1983)
How different would things have been if Mike Muir’s mom had given him a Pepsi? Institutionalized (‘mom just give me a Pepsi, please’) was an innovative vanguard of a track. Not only did these Venice Beach street rats re-jig conventional songwriting structure by having original guitarist Grant Estes wail away on a perpetual motion machine of lead guitar – despite being written by bassist Louiche Mayorga – and spark the introduction of vocalist Mike’s ranting preacher-man persona, it signalled the moment when hardcore punk moved beyond one- dimensionality to inject a breadth of emotion, mood, tempo and skill.
It emerged as a progressive oasis from a sound/scene already cannibalising itself, elbowing its way onto a nascent MTV in the process. Institutionalized moved hardcore out of the underground, even if hardcore wasn’t keen to follow. KSP
18. Mötley Crüe - Shout At The Devil (Shout At The Devil, 1983)
Any ankle-biter headbanger who came up during the triangulation of the Satanic Panic, Mötley Crüe’s second album, and the carving out of their pre-teen identity probably remembers screaming matches and the defence of “But mom/dad/ schoolteacher, they’re saying, ‘Shout at the Devil!’”
While said album teemed with bangers like Looks That Kill, Too Young To Fall In Love and Red Hot, it was the title track that showed there was depth to these hooligan ruffians. They could wrap anthemic metal around rocking riffs, stop-on-a-dime staccato and doomy tempos. The song wasn’t the serenade to Satan most thought it was; it was a demonstrative rallying cry for all of metaldom, from sun-kissed beach babes and feather-haired dudes in Camaros to nefarious thrashers and black metal futurists, and planted the seed for the glam metal explosion that would dominate the rest of the decade, for good and for ill. KSP
19. Mercyful Fate - Evil (Melissa, 1983)
Originally broadcast to the masses via the BBC’s pivotal Friday Rock Show before appearing on Mercyful Fate’s beloved debut album, Evil allied King Diamond’s blasphemous braggadocio to an elegant compositional approach, devising a blueprint for Ghost’s entire career, as well as countless underground acolytes (Attic, Portrait, Wolf, In Solitude).
The moody time changes, melodic embellishments and turnover of infectious riffs advanced black metal beyond Venom’s feral racket, inspiring Metallica and Slayer on their journey to musical fruition. By keeping one foot in the 70s rock of Uriah Heep and UFO, Evil presented a far more accessible proposition than other pioneering transgressors like Bathory or Possessed. Their prog leanings made a palpable impact on extreme metal’s creative ambition, while the flamboyantly ghoulish lyrics gave 90s Norwegian BM a model of bad behaviour to aspire to. CC
20. Metallica - Hit The Lights (Kill Em All, 1983)
Metallica have bigger songs. They have better songs. But no Metallica song has had the same impact as the one that opened their game-changing debut. Four minutes and 17 seconds of suburban fury, Hit The Lights fired the starting pistol on the
the career of the most successful metal band in history and, by extension, invented modern metal as we know it.
But just as Metallica themselves had planted the seeds for thrash with Hit The Lights, so they were the first to outgrow it. Within 10 years, they’d gone from scrappy underdogs to the biggest metal band on the planet, and one of the most successful bands in any genre. And once again, where Metallica led, so many other bands followed. DE
21. Saint Vitus - Burial At Sea (Saint Vitus, 1984)
Bringing the LA doom instigators’ debut LP to a crushing close, Burial At Sea boasted the slowest, darkest, creepiest riffs yet devised by man or beast. The blasting punk-metal mid-section rampaged like a proto-Autopsy, yet this heaving behemoth was present on pre-Vitus band Tyrant’s first demo as early as 1978. Pushing back the frontiers of doom metal even while effectively scouting them out, Burial At Sea roughened, toughened and distressed the original Sabbath blueprint with stoner caveman energy and sinister atmospheres, reflected in the Weird Tales narrative about a pirate ghost ship.
Dave Chandler’s guitar crawled with spectral unease, siring the 90s/00s Electric Wizard school of occult psych doom, while the singular shuddering pipes of Scott Reagers bewitched the microphone with theatrical fervour and possessed abandon. CC
22. Hellhammer - Triumph Of Death (Apocalyptic Raids, 1984)
Venom opened the door to metal’s dark new future, inspiring a wave of bands
to take what they did and push it even further. Hellhammer quickly assumed the mantle of the heaviest (and most reviled) band in the world. Triumph Of Death was the most unpalatable noise unleashed by any band to that point. The Swiss trio – fronted by future Celtic Frost visionary Tom G Warrior – recorded the track three times in total, each version getting slower, longer and more nightmarish.
By the time it made its official, non-demo debut on 1984’s Apocalyptic Raids EP, it had mutated into nine minutes of droning, tortuous agony, turning metal from music for slamming beers to into a hallucinatory expression of a tormented soul. There had never been a metal band this audibly DIY before – it soon became clear that if Hellhammer could do it, so could anyone. PH
23. W.A.S.P. - Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) (Animal..., 1984)
You’ve gotta love any tune that’s so over-the-top that the guy who wrote it denied its existence for 15 years. As a song, Animal is heavy metal brutalism at its
finest, based on rudimentary quarter-note chugs and simplistic power chord movement – albeit with a razor-sharp hook for a chorus. You would have to be living under a bridge of denial to think the song, and bloody saw-blade codpiece cover, was never going to stir controversy.
It may have been dropped as the opener to the band’s debut album, but sensation sells – its presence on US censorship group’s the PMRC’s ‘Filthy Fifteen’ list of records that no kid should ever be subjected to only turbocharged its infamy. By the mid-00s, born-again Christian Blackie refused to ever play the song again. But it seems he knows where his bread is buttered, as it ended up being dusted off for the band’s 40th anniversary tour. KSP
24. Celtic Frost - Circle Of The Tyrants (Emperor's Return/To Mega Therion, 1985)
The video for this early Celtic Frost signature tune was filmed in 1985 at the World War III festival in Montreal, North America’s first extreme music festival. The earthmoving chaos put on display by the crowd’s reaction to this track’s sinister and measured plod (and operatic vocal variations), combined with bassist Martin Ain decked out in aristocratic, frilly stage gear, showed a band in transition.
Circle Of The Tyrants is Celtic Frost’s crowning jewel, not just because it’s home to the band’s most recognisable riff and best song of their catalogue, but because it was a bridge between Tom G Warrior’s raw and unkempt Hellhammer-y past and all the avant-garde experiments to come, for Frost and all the countless bands they inspired. KSP
Possessed - Death Metal (Seven Churches, 1985)
Originally the opening title track on the 1984 demo by the Bay Area’s most divisively extreme band, Death Metal ended up as the final killer blow on the teenage foursome’s incendiary debut, Seven Churches, the following year. Although audibly in thrall to recent innovations by Venom and Slayer, the bulldozing relentlessness of the sheet-metal riffing and Jeff Becerra’s sick, tormented rasp ratcheted the intensity way beyond workaday thrash tropes.
This was a far darker, grislier mode of expression, judiciously signified by its far-sighted title. Essentially, Possessed were revisiting Black Sabbath’s foundational concept: the musical equivalent of a scary movie. But instead of Sabbath’s English Gothic folk-horror devilry, we’ve got an army of bloodthirsty Satanic zombies annihilating California to ‘rule by Death Metal’ and ‘bringing you nothing but strife’. CC
26. Candlemass - Solitude (Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, 1985)
The cod-Latin title of Candlemass’s debut album said it all: Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Where American doom as purveyed by contemporaries Saint Vitus and The Obsessed reeked of biker bars and nasty speed, the Swedes offered a more grandiose Northern European update of the original Black Sabbath template. As founder/bassist Leif Edling told Metal Hammer, “We wanted to make doom metal of epic proportions.”
Solitude very much lived up to that billing, its mix of slo-mo musical grandeur and lyrical, I’d-be-happier-dead desolation (actually inspired by nothing darker than a world-class hangover) sparking a strain of metal that was as ambitious as it was agonised. Woe never sounded so uplifting. DE
27. Megadeth - Peace Sells (Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? 1986)
Not content with helping invent thrash when he was still a member of Metallica, Dave Mustaine then went on to reinvent it with Megadeth. The monumental almost-title track of their second album rose above the perpetual chaos of the band’s drug-addled existence at the time, slowing the genre’s 100mph fury down to a hypnotic groove, then lacing it with a furious, combative lyric that took aim squarely at an establishment that looked down on people like Dave Mustaine. ‘Whaddya mean I don’t pay my bills? Why do you think I’m broke?’ spat MegaDave.
At a time when hard rock’s attempt at protest music extended no further than a brickie in make-up yelling ‘We’re not gonna take it!’, this was stark social commentary. MTV certainly thought so – they used a snippet of the song to soundtrack their news bulletins, legitimising Megadeth, and by extension thrash, as the sound of metal’s thrilling future. DE
28. Slayer - Angel Of Death (Reign In Blood, 1986)
Ensuring no taboo went unviolated, Slayer forced us to learn about the vilest excesses of real-world horror, describing the evil human experiments conducted by Nazi scientist Josef Mengele. Before Angel Of Death, metal’s monsters were ancient myths or backstreet prowlers, but guitarist Jeff Hanneman’s unflinching lyrics spawned Cannibal Corpse’s exhaustingly baroque catalogue of death and torture, and Carcass’s medical gore, plus a regrettable raft of edgelords getting it wrong.
Additionally, with that bridge riff - sampled to a wider audience by Public Enemy’s She Watch Channel Zero - Jeff invented the groove breakdown. It’s Jeff’s song, but drummer Dave Lombardo’s contribution also urged metal to new levels of manic intensity with his lightning-speed double bass break, inspiring a trend for relentless metronomic kick blasts well into the 90s. CC
29. Napalm Death - Scum (Scum, 1987)
With their debt album Scum, Napalm Death pushed the frontiers of noise back further than anyone could have ever imagined. The line-up that recorded this two-and-a-half minute grindcore landmark – singer/bassist Nicholas Bullen, guitarist Justin Broadrick and drummer Mick Harris – took in a disparate set of influences (Swans, Killing Joke, Siege, Metallica) and spat them out as something that was filthier, faster and bleaker than anything that had come before.
The mainstream world was baffled and/or repulsed by its seemingly impenetrable din, but over time its revolutionary racket became fused into metal’s DNA, in the process helping establish Earache Records as one of the most influential underground labels in history. Today, any band who profess to be remotely extreme owe a massive debt to Scum. DE
30. Voivoid - Killing Technology (Killing Technology, 1987)
Voivod’s journey from rudimentary punk-thrashers to intergalactic prog metal travellers took just three years. The opening track to the band’s third album, Killing Technology was another piece in a musical and conceptual puzzle that was slowly beginning to take shape.
Piggy’s upper register chord-slashing and morose progression dragged thrash metal kicking and screaming into the 23rd century. Away’s restless drumming style made safety-pin-through-cheek punks out of King Crimson and Hawkwind. Snake delivered what was arguably his finest vocal performance, accenting his cautionary cybernetic tale with all the fervour of a maniac acting out a one-man play. With vocoders. Suddenly, metal stopped gazing at its white hi-tops and started looking starwards. KSP
31. Anthrax - I'm The Man (I Am The Law B-Side, 1987)
When Anthrax joined forces with Public Enemy on 1991’s Bring The Noise, it was seen as a serious collision between worlds. But while the track brought hip hop and metal together, it wasn’t the first song to do it. It wasn’t even the first Anthrax song to do it, for that matter. That honour goes to 1987’s I’m The Man, a jokey single B-side that walked just the right side of spoofing the genre (Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian was an authentic admirer of hip hop).
But as drummer Charlie Benante told Songfacts in 2013, the track wasn’t so much a piss-take as a planned collaboration with the Beastie Boys that fell through. “It’s a scheduling thing,” he explained. “We just never got it together because they were fuckin’ boom! Blowing up. So we ended up doing it.” Bring The Noise may grab the headlines, but this is where rap metal started. RH
32. Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine (Appetite For Destruction, 1987)
Welcom e To The Jungle was nastier and Paradise City more anthemic, but Sweet Child O’ Mine was the song that turned these feral Sunset Strip street rats into the biggest rock’n’roll phenomenon of the 80s and beyond. Where the rest of Appetite For Destruction stalked LA’s grimy underbelly, this glorious not-quite ballad presented Guns N’ Roses as bad boys with broken hearts.
Axl Rose’s yearning vocal was given a leg up by that immortal Slash riff – one part wail of despair, one part cry of euphoria – before it pulled a 180˚ turn halfway through: ‘Where do we go now?’ howled Axl, no longer the wide-eyed Romeo, as the music shifted urgently under him. Where previous singles had played to the hard rock gallery, this busted things wide open, giving Guns their first (and only) US No.1 and propelling Appetite to 30 million-plus sales. Rock’s new era of dominance had begun. DE
33. Living Colour - Cult Of Personality (Vivid, 1988)
Cult Of Personality is the stanchion for ridiculously catchy riffing, deep-pocket groove, thought-provoking lyrics (and a prescient sign of how humanity learns fuck-all from the past), the power of immediacy (it was written in one rehearsal), commercial success and racial acceptance in the ordinarily lily-white world of heavy metal.
It’s also the home of one of the craziest solos this side of NY’s downtown jazz scene. In fact, that’s where guitarist Vernon Reid honed his chops, and to hear him violate the song’s brilliant ear candy with chromatic discord, unanticipated bends, Echoplex shred and cock rock whammy bar dives is still a mind-bending trip. KSP
34. Helloween - Eagle Fly Free (Keeper Of The Seven Keys Pt. II, 1988)
It’s astonishing how ahead of its time Eagle Fly Free still sounds. Hamburg hotshots Helloween had already cornered the market in jubilantly supercharged Teutonic Maidenisms, but for the curtain-raiser on their breakthrough release they cast an industry-standard power metal template in iron.
Symphonic backing tracks, relentlessly exuberant double bass drumming, emotional top notes, stirring sugary hooks, the obsession with eagles… the whole rulebook was chiselled from these five glorious minutes. An enigmatic, philosophical anthem flirting with social angst, singer Michael Kiske has noted this as a favourite to sing live, where the audience is often in tears at the song’s surging motivational force. CC
35. Bathory - A Fine Day To Die (Blood, Fire, Death, 1988)
Fresh from helping to define the first wave of black metal, Bathory mastermind Quorthon once again tore up the rules and almost single-handedly established Viking metal as a genre. He would plunge even further on subsequent albums, but it all started on A Fine To Day To Die, the eight-minute-plus centrepiece of Blood Fire Death.
It featured a more epic and atmospheric approach, while retaining a blackened sense of aggression that would influence bands like Enslaved, Watain and everyone who has ever fantasised about pillaging an English monastery. Quorthon was also delving into his Scandinavian roots – the start of a journey that would eventually continue through metal-adjacent Nordic folk bands like Wardruna and Heilung. PT
36. Ministry - Stigmata (The Land Of Rape & Honey, 1988)
No one who heard the bouncy funkpop of Ministry’s debut album, With Sympathy, in 1983 could have foreseen Al Jourgensen’s subsequent transformation into the Dark Lord Of Industrial Metal. But Stigmata – the opening track on their button-pushing third album – was where the Ministry we know and love today were born, and with it a distorted new strain of noise where metal met electronic music.
Its tight riffs and claustrophobic, mechanised sound provided a seed of inspiration for everyone from Trent Reznor (who fashioned his own, sleeker version with Nine Inch Nails) to Fear Factory frontman Burton C. Bell (who was inspired to embark on his music career after hearing the song). But no one did it quite so filthily as this. RH
37. Sepultura - Inner Self (Beneath The Remains, 1989)
'Walking these dirty streets with hate in my mind / Feeling the scorn of the world, I won’t follow rules.’ We’ve all been there, Max. Sepultura’s first video clip, which featured heavily on MTV’s Headbangers Ball, Inner Self saw this sainted line-up emerge as standard bearers for the South American scene, representing Brazilian passion and ingenuity like the heavy metal Pelé.
Inner Self’s themes of urban alienation and nonconformist selfempowerment struck a resounding chord with a generation of young, disaffected working class headbangers, who quickly came to see these blossoming Brazilian thrashers as their relatable champions. The discreetly ambitious and sophisticated structure took in a variety of tempos and atmospheric quirks, although it was received most gratefully as a compulsive procession of pugnaciously direct ‘keelar reefs’. CC
38. Morbid Angel - Chapel Of Ghouls (Altars Of Madness, 1989)
Bursting open with that stabbing lead riff and metal’s catchiest torrent of blasphemies, Chapel Of Ghouls was an early landmark song for death metal. Committed to tape on multiple demos in 1986, the precocious proficiency of its irresistible hooks and structural nous provided early evidence of true musical ingenuity in this scattershot subgenre.
Opening the Floridians’ aborted 1986 debut album Abominations Of Desolation, its eventual placing on Altars Of Madness as track one side two always felt like a printing error, such was the compulsive immediacy of its attack. Pete Sandoval’s performance here raised the bar for superhuman athleticism in metal drumming, just as Trey Azagthoth’s did for extreme guitar wizardry. The haunting choral synth melody, and priest-crushing lyrics, anticipated some crucial black metal tropes, too. CC
39. Faith No More - Epic (The Real Thing, 1989)
Faith No More bounced onto the scene with 1987’s single We Care A Lot (itself a re-recorded and buffed-up version of a song from two years earlier). But it was Epic that turned these San Francisco mavericks into alt metal trailblazers. New vocalist Mike Patton offered percussive, rap-style vocals against anthemic choruses that helped the band nail a radio sensibility their original, Chuck Mosley-led incarnation lacked. “Things were changing,” drummer Mike Bordin told Metal Hammer in 2019. “We were insinuating ourselves into the mainstream, taking up the charge from bands like Metallica.”
This new guard also featured the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, but Epic beat them all to the punch, bagging heavy MTV rotation when it was released as a single in early 1989, inadvertently acting as a precursor to the rise of nu metal half a decade later. SH
40. Nine Inch Nails - Head Like A Hole (Pretty Hate Machine, 1989)
For much of the 80s, industrial music was a wilfully confrontational collision of abrasive electronics, mutant dance music, white noise and the occasional squalling guitar. It took Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails to imbue the genre with a hook-laden pop sheen and push it into the mainstream.
Head Like A Hole was an instant industrial anthem and a precursor to the nihilistic 90s that were on the way. It turned the awkward, introverted Trent into a reluctant crossover superstar, an icon for the dark and depressed, while also inspiring the industrial metal boom of the early 90s. But, even beyond that scene, the fact it’s been covered by everyone from AFI to Miley Cyrus is proof of the breadth of influence and the seemingly neverending longevity of the song. SH
41. Godflesh - Like Rats (Streetcleaner, 1989)
There was a long way to go before Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick and G.C. Green perfected the sound they themselves created, but their debut album, Streetcleaner, found the pair zeroing in on their unique presentation and style, and getting a handle on what was possible and where they wanted to go. And, by the sounds of opening track Like Rats, that was through a portal to a molten, industrialised Hades that apparently opened up on a destitute and abandoned Midlands factory floor.
Despite it being one of the more pessimistically funereal and downcast entries of the Godflesh oeuvre (the hip hop-influenced beats are absent), and brimming with pained vocals, mechanised flourishes and abusive guitar discord, it set the stage for the introduction of a specifically British strain of industrial music to metal’s lexicon.
42. Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing (Ritual De Lo Habitual, 1990)
The voice that introduces the song that invented the 1990s wasn’t a human one. It belonged to Annie, a dog picked up from a rescue centre by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell. It was Annie’s rhythmic barking that ushered in their 1990 single, Been Caught Stealing, the song that sparked the alt rock revolution.
Been Caught Stealing and its parent album, Ritual De Lo Habitual, brought the left-field into the mainstream, positioning these LA boho drug-monkeys as pied pipers for a wave of bands that followed. Been Caught Stealing put a sideways spin on the funk-rock sound that the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s themselves had helped pioneer. DE
43. Alice In Chains - Man In The Box (Facelift, 1990)
If the likes of Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden had punk rock flowing through their veins, then Alice In Chains represented the metal wing of the Seattle scene. Man In The Box was as thick as molasses, taking a riff that would have done Black Sabbath proud and slathering it in fuzz and talkbox guitars, the latter reportedly inspired by producer Dave Jerden hearing Bon Jovi’s talkbox-intro’d 1986 megahit Livin’ On A Prayer on the radio when heading into the studio. That was as close as Man In The Box came to anything remotely uplifting.
Propelled by the success of Man In The Box, the band's debut was certified Gold (for half a million sales) on September 11, 1991 – the first grunge album to reach that status. Two weeks later, Nirvana released Nevermind. While Cobain and co. would undoubtedly have done well anyway, the path was certainly cleared by Man In The Box. RH
44. Pantera - Cowboys From Hell (Cowboys From Hell, 1990)
The early 1990s was a tricky time for metal, but Cowboys From Hell introduced the one band that would keep the scene roaring through this turbulent period dominated by grunge and alt rock.
“A lot of thrash bands are sort of limited in what they can do, and we always felt our musicianship allowed us to do more… the groove thing was something we didn’t want to lose,” Vinnie Paul said of the band’s transformation from glam metal to something altogether gnarlier. Pantera would have a huge influence on metal in general, but the pummelling grooves first introduced in this song would be particularly evident in the slab-heavy riffage of such later pugilists as Lamb Of God, Devildriver, and Five Finger Death Punch. PT
45. Paradise Lost - Gothic (Gothic, 1991)
Throughout the 80s, metal and goth were two distinct and separate tribes, each one suspiciously eyeing the other. It wasn’t until Paradise Lost released Gothic in 1991 that it became clear what a perfect fit they were for each other. Paradise Lost’s first album had been grimy yet conventional death-doom, but with follow-up Gothic they embarked on a mission to crosspollinate – or maybe cross-pollute – these two worlds. Its opening title track placed gothic rock and church organ-inspired lead melodies in doom metal, and contrasted Nick Holmes’ death growl with an angelic female vocal. Its impact was almost instant.
Spearheading the trio of bands that became known as the Peaceville Three alongside Anathema and My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost became key architects in shaping the direction of European metal as a whole in the 1990s. But their very specific fusion of goth and metal could be heard in everything from Nightwish’s gothic grandiosity to Him’s sultry doom-pop. It’s strange today to think of a metal landscape that never embraced The Sisters Of Mercy or Depeche Mode, while the sound Paradise Lost pioneered with Gothic remains a source of inspiration for bands from Unto Others to Zetra. PH
46. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nevermind, 1991)
With four power chords and a hurricane of drums, Nirvana changed everything. The Seattle band’s 1991 breakthrough single-handedly defined the direction of popular music, capturing the teenage angst of a generation and putting grunge on the map. The entire hair metal scene, which had owned mainstream rock for a decade, was rendered irrelevant pretty much overnight, and when Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, landed mere weeks later, it kicked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard chart.
“Nirvana didn’t go to the mainstream,” bassist Krist Novoselic would later declare. “The mainstream came to Nirvana.” Alternative music has collided with the zeitgeist many times since, but nothing has turned the world on its axis like Smells Like Teen Spirit did. DL
47. Skyclad - The Widdershins Jig (The Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth, 1991)
Few knew what to make of Skyclad initially. Formed by Martin Walkyier, formerly singer with UK pagan-thrashers Sabbat, their blend of metal with fiddle was a novel USP, but The Widdershins Jig was a boldly eccentric leap in the early 90s, when dystopian modernity was hot. As the perky piccolo unfurled its rustic trill over a rolling 6/8 rhythm, and the atmosphere took on a medieval village green vibe, it was clear Skyclad were frolicking in a world of their own.
Ten-15 years later, a European folk metal scene would come alive in force, a carnival of hobbits, trolls and troubadours jigging around a dedicated circuit of pagan festivals. Every one of them owe this jaunty ditty a colossal debt, for blazing the trail in a hostile landscape. CC
48. Body Count - Cop Killer (Body Count, 1992)
Metal and hip hop had made great strides towards each other when Body Count arrived on the scene in the early 90s, but the idea of legitimate gangsta rap pioneer Ice-T launching a full-blown metal band was still unexpected. Released in March 1992, Body Count’s self-titled debut album was a chugging, brutal slab of aggro that drew from metal, hardcore and thrash.
What separated it from other similar albums was Ice-T – this master hip hop storyteller spat out vivid, often OTT lyrics filled with brutal tales of gang warfare, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse and death. Yet there was one song that stood out above them all: Cop Killer. The chorus – ‘Cop killer, fuck police brutality’ – left no doubt as to the source of its rage.
It showed that metal still had the ability to become public enemy number one and be seen as a genuine threat to those in power. Even more importantly than that, it proved that there was a place for Black voices and experiences within our scene. Were it not for Cop Killer’s influence, it’s hard to imagine we would have the revolutionary work from the likes of Fever 333, Zulu, Backxwash and many more. SH
49. Sleep - Dragonaut (Sleep's Holy Mountain, 1992)
In the 1980s, plenty of underground bands built their sound on a mix of Iommi-worshipping riffs and heavy drug consumption, but it wasn’t until the early 90s that it fully crystalised into a legitimate scene. In 1992, Californian trio Sleep released their second album, Sleep’s Holy Mountain, and opening song Dragonaut was crucial in perfecting and distilling stoner rock.
Guitarist Matt Pike’s blissed-out opening riff is joined by a hypnotic groove, and bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros’s woozy call to leave the human race behind by riding dragons toward the crimson eye. At the height of alternative rock’s domination, it felt genuinely unique to embrace the classic traditions of early heavy metal and psychedelic rock in this way. Dragonaut would forever become the Rosetta Stone for a strain of mystical stoner doom for legions of weed-worshippers to follow.
50. Neurosis - To Crawl Under One's Skin (Souls At Zero, 1992)
The opening track of Neurosis’s third album was an incendiary rite of transformation – both for the Oakland, California quintet themselves and anyone caught in its blast radius. Their sound was a progressive yet strain-atthe-leash take on hardcore punk, but here, an ominously tolling bell, a slew of sampled endtimes proclamations, chainsaw riffs and tribal drums became the tension-ramping prelude for a cataclysmic and revelatory new vision of enraged-Earth protest.
With Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly’s vocals sounding like they had erupted from a subterranean fissure, and all hell breaking loose around them, it was the seething birth throes for the entire post-metal movement, brewing DNA that Cult Of Luna, Amenra and countless other bands are still drawing from three decades on. JS
51. Helmet – In The Meantime (Meantime, 1992)
The early 90s saw plenty of bands with little or no mainstream crossover appeal getting signed in the post-Nirvana major label gold rush. One such band was New York’s Helmet, who perfected their grooving, piston-like bludgeon on the opening song of their major label debut, Meantime, in 1992.
In The Meantime enjoyed respectable success, but the song’s legacy is huge: within a couple of years, variations of guitarist Page Hamilton’s unique, drop-D tuned, staccato riffs would begin cropping up on albums by Korn, Deftones, Coal Chamber and the rest of the nascent nu metal scene. While rap-rock crossover may take much of the credit for the inspiration of that movement, every nu metal guitarist spent the 90s desperately trying (and failing) to match the sound of In The Meantime. SH
52. Kyuss – Green Machine (Blues For The Red Sun, 1992)
With this one song Kyuss put tongue to cigarette paper and prepared to roll a fat one that would be passed around a thousand stoner metal bands – slightly ironic, considering it was one of their faster tracks and the green machine in question is more about greed than weed.
There was always a punk edge to Kyuss, but that fat bottom end and distortion you could practically chew served as the jumping-off point for a slew of imitators, as well as Palm Desert offshoots including Fu Manchu and Queens Of The Stone Age. More than three decades on, the direct hit of Green Machine still resonates through stoner, doom and any other scene that cranks monumental riffs and fuzz through an overdriven amp. PT
53. Dream Theater – Pull Me Under (Images And Words, 1992)
Dream Theater weren’t the first prog metal band, but they were the one that shaped the jagged, thrashing noise that 80s outliers such as Voivod and Watchtower had pioneered into something more approachable. Where 1989’s Metallica-meets-Rush debut album When Dream And Day Unite had been a false start, follow-up Images And Words – featuring new singer James LaBrie – had its eye on the big prize.
Pull Me Under was their breakout - an eight-minute prog metal powerhouse that balanced supreme-level musical chops with nailed-on commercial sensibility (and a lyric apparently inspired by Hamlet). It may have lacked the edge of the bands that came before it, and the ones that followed, but it remains a key staging post in the development of prog metal – one that marked out the genre’s boundary lines for those that came after. DE
54. Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name (Rage Against The Machine, 1992)
The point where mixing rap and rock went from an interesting curio of an idea into a full-blown revolution. Rage Against The Machine’s incendiary anti-establishment diatribe fused huge hard rock guitars with seething, venom-laced rap bars. Its central message – ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!’, howled with righteous fury by Zack de la Rocha – became a lightning rod for would-be insurgents everywhere, propelling Rage themselves to notoriety-fuelled success.
The band might have sat somewhere to the left of Che Guevara, but this was a strangely unifying clarion call – something proven nearly two decades later, when fan power helped it steal the 2009 UK Christmas No.1 spot from whichever X Factor muppet Simon Cowell was trying to foist on us that year. SH
55. Emperor – I Am The Black Wizards (Emperor, 1993)
With inscrutably powerful lyrics by bassist Mortiis, this definitive genre classic opened Emperor’s landmark self-titled debut EP in 1993, but was held back to the penultimate spot on their first full-length album, In The Nightside Eclipse, the following year. Its haunting cadence has made it arguably Norwegian black metal’s bestloved smash hit, somehow streamlining the tempestuous blizzard of sound to produce a sublime melody for the ages.
“We wanted it to sound like a soundtrack to the most epic, violent, dark movie ever,” Ihsahn said of Emperor’s early impetus. “With our music we wanted to paint endless dark forests with a constant full moon.” All of that visionary ambition turned up here, but allied to a structural nous and a set of harmonic hooks that rendered Emperor’s abstruse philosophies more approachable - and more singable. CC
56. Type O Negative – Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All) (Bloody Kisses, 1993)
Launching a career in seductive gothic metal while sending up the whole concept, Black No.1 felt like a joke Type O were just far too good at. The advance cut from an album that consequently went platinum, it was here Pete Steele found his optimum Type O voice, emerging like a goth butterfly from a hardcore chrysalis.
No more the screaming caveman he’d been in street metal provocateurs Carnivore, this saw the frontman recast himself as a swooning love god with a killer line in dry snark, unleashing his tender vampiric croak over downright hilarious lyrics (‘She’s got a date at midnight with Nosferatu / Oh baby, Lily Munster ain’t got nothing on you’). The deadpan revelry in goth clichés, the haunted-house organ, the arch romanticism - Dani Filth and Ville Valo owe it all to Black No.1. CC
57. Cynic – Veil Of Maya (Veil Of Maya, 1993)
Veil Of Maya is where Cynic buzz-sawed through the tangled web of their roots. Early demos hailed them as promising Floridian death metal additions, but a year-plus of delays – at the hand of a shady UK promoter and Hurricane Andrew devastating their home state – had them return to the drawing board.
The result was metal infused with progressive rock, jazz fusion, new age, vocals that ran the gamut from synthesised robotics to 4AD wispiness, and poetic lyrics about philosophy and religion. And despite being instantly heralded as a classic in some circles, other circles weren’t as hospitable.“Everywhere we played that song, people were yelling ‘You Suck!’,” vocalist/ guitarist Paul Masvidal recalled. “Then again, we were touring with Cannibal Corpse.”
In the process of creating a blueprint for the future of prog metal, alienation was inevitable. KSP
58. Entombed – Eyemaster (Wolverine Blues, 1993)
We thought we knew what to expect from Entombed by the time of their third album, Wolverine Blues. Its predecessor, Clandestine, rendered the Swedish scene leaders’ frosty death metal more accessible than the gnarly splatter of 1990 debut Left Hand Path.
However, Eyemaster’s piercing feedback intro and the Hellraiser sample cued us into that crafty shitkicking intro, and it was evident that some priorities had shifted. These were righteous pummelling riffs and flailing beats, sure enough, the verses pure grind and guitar melodies sinister as ever, but Eyemaster flat-out rocked. With raw, stripped-back punk energy, nailed-down garage jam grooves and Fast Eddie-joins-Slayer soloing, suddenly we had a death metal rock’n’roll band. Thanks to Eyemaster’s walloping impact, soon we had loads. CC
59. Carcass – Heartwork (Heartwork, 1993)
Without Heartwork, the metal world would sound very different. You can draw a line from this song through melodic death metal bands like Amon Amarth and Arch Enemy (who were founded by Carcass guitarist Michael Amott), as well as metalcore acts such as Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall.
“With the music we try to catch the impossible: sophisticated brutality,” said guitarist Bill Steer at the time, and that formerly unachievable mix is just what they managed to bottle. Not that it was an instant success. “I didn’t meet anybody who liked it,” said Bill, noting that they were labelled sellouts. It was certainly a different vibe from 1989’s Crepitating Bowel Erosion, but time would prove their innovation to be a massively influential one. PT
60. Korn – Blind (Korn, 1994)
Nu metal had many fathers. The groundwork had already been laid with the musical cross-pollination of Faith No More, the rap-rock polemic of Rage Against The Machine, and the concrete-heavy grooves of Helmet and Prong, among others. But for all those artists, the movement as we know it was birthed with the release of Korn’s monstrous first single, Blind.
The pieces were all in place from the off. The sinister, skittering cymbals; that jagged, repeated slash of guitar and its counterpoint riff; frontman Jonathan Davis growling, ‘Are you ready?’ like an invitation to a riot – which in a way it was. The song launched Korn and a thousand follow-the-leader wannabes into the musical mainstream. PT
61. Mayhem – Freezing Moon (De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, 1994)
“Like how it looks when a thick heavy fog lies on the ground at funerals in Transylvania,” was how Euronymous described his vision for how he wanted Mayhem to sound to The Oath zine, in an interview published posthumously, after the guitarist’s murder by Burzum’s Varg Vikernes (infamously here on session bass).
Job done throughout the whole LP, but Freezing Moon stands as the apotheosis of early Mayhem’s bonechilling atmospheric power, and an all-time high for black metal songcraft at its most pungent. The 1991 recording with Dead on vocals (originally intended for an unreleased compilation) was Freezing Moon’s most influential form, dubbed recordings circulating around Norway’s underground, and turning every adolescent death metal jam band into corpsepainted overlords of a merciless new black metal empire. CC
62. Machine Head – Davidian (Burn My Eyes, 1994)
Pantera are rightly hailed as the saviours of aggressively minded heaviness in the face of grunge and alt rock, but Machine Head swiftly picked up the baton from them. The opening track from the Oakland outfit’s classic debut album, Burn My Eyes, Davidian was an instant breakthrough.
The song plugged into classic 1980s thrash – mainman Robb Flynn had been a member of Bay Area ’bangers Vio-lence, after all – but updated it for the new decade, bringing a monster groove and an unforgettable cry (‘Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast!’, prompted by the fateful Waco siege a year earlier, a standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians religious group, in which more than 80 people died).
On the back of this opening salvo, Burn My Eyes became Roadrunner Records’ fastest-selling debut album to that point, proving metal’s rock-solid foundations could weather anything. MM
63. At The Gates – Slaughter Of The Soul (Slaughter Of The Soul, 1995)
Rewind your mind to the mid-90s: the popularity of metal, and particularly death metal, was at a standstill, having suffered at the hand of the one-two punch of grunge and then nu metal. Sure, there was great stuff out there, but most people didn’t care to know about what was bubbling in the underground.
Once Slaughter Of The Soul started making the rounds, it became the song – and album – that cracked open a new world and turbo-boosted melodic death metal. Within half a decade, hardcore kids had picked up on it too, fusing its influence into the emergent metalcore scene and providing a jumping-off point for everyone from Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and Unearth to The Black Dahlia Murder. ‘Go!’ KSP
64. Tool – Stinkfist (Aenima, 1996)
With their first two releases – 1992’s Opiate EP and 1993’s Undertow album – Tool established themselves as a fascinating if unusual alt rock band. However, it was on their second album, Ænima, that they began to dispense with genre labels entirely. Stinkfist was their big breakthrough - musically and lyrically dark, powered by an elastic groove and Maynard James Keenan’s alternately seductive and explosive vocals, it was simultaneously hypnotic, enigmatic and, if that title is anything to go by, pervy, dominant and subversive.
A deeply unsettling stop-motion video got the song onto MTV, and suddenly the whole world’s eyes were on them – this was progressive without being prog, arty without being up its own arse, shocking without being senseless. This was metal from the brain and the gut, an idea that everyone from Sikth to Tesseract would pick up and run with. SH
65. The Prodigy – Firestarter (The Fat Of The Land, 1997)
By this time, the lines between musical genres were questionably blurred, but the idea that a group from the UK rave scene could infiltrate the metal world still seemed pretty far fetched. The Prodigy had made steps towards heavier territory from their days as a pure dance act, but no one saw just how far they would take things with Firestarter.
A tightly wound ball of big beats, squalling guitars and Keith Flint’s sneering punk rock vocals, the song showed that dance music could be every bit as hard, as confrontational, and as subversive as metal. There were some dissenting voices, but they were drowned out by those embracing The Prodigy as one of our own. SH
66. Dimmu Borgir – In Death’s Embrace (Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, 1997)
1997 was a pivotal year for black metal. Enslaved, Emperor, Arcturus, Sigh and Solefald all put out albums that stretched its sonic possibilities, but no one was prepared for the audacity of Dimmu Borgir’s third album. Newly signed to Nuclear Blast, they decided to team up with producer Peter Tägtgren at his emergent Abyss studio. The result was a huge evolutionary leap, both for the band and black metal as a whole, and the new, spacious sense of grandeur it ushered in was embodied by In Death’s Embrace.
Sweeping, cinematic and switching between different movements, its vast scope saw the album sell an initial, unheard-of 300,000 copies, enrage Dimmu’s peers, become the template for symphonic black metal and drag the entire scene from the insularity of the underground. JS
67. Rammstein – Du Hast (Sehnsucht, 1997)
In the 70s and 80s, German metal bands such as Scorpions and Accept had to play at being American or British to get noticed internationally. Rammstein were having none of it. The Berliners had spearheaded the Neue Deutsche Härte (‘New German Hardness’) movement with 1995’s German-language debut album, Herzeleid.
But it was follow-up Sehnsucht and monumental single Du Hast (a play on words – ‘You Have’ being a homophone of ‘You Hate’) that bent the rest of the world to their will. Its dancefloor-friendly, techno-industrial barrage had precedence - Slovenian provocateurs Laibach were doing this a decade earlier, and its riff had the distinct whiff of Ministry – but nobody delivered it with such ruthless, joyous efficiency as Rammstein.
Linguistic differences meant nothing – Du Hast attracted the attention of everyone from Korn (who invited them onto their Family Values tour) to the producers of The Matrix (the song featured on its soundtrack). Modern German metal had entered the conversation. DE
68. Deftones – My Own Summer (Shove It) (Around The Fur, 1997)
Following their 1995 debut album, Adrenaline, Deftones found themselves lumped in with the nascent nu metal scene. Realising the confines of the genre, the Sacramento crew made a deliberate attempt to extricate themselves from the likes of Korn on its follow-up, 1997’s Around The Fur.
Opening song and lead single My Own Summer (Shove It) did the job perfectly, showcasing an entirely new breadth of sounds and ideas, with Chino Moreno channelling his love of 80s soul-pop queen Sade on the slinky, sexy whispered verses, atop Chi Cheng’s weed-wreathed, dubby basslines. With it, Deftones had drawn up a road-map out of nu metal, one that would be subsequently followed by everyone from Far and Glassjaw to Deafheaven and Loathe. SH
69. Refused – New Noise (The Shape Of Punk To Come, 1998)
Before they released their third album, Umeå’s Refused were a solid, if unremarkable, underground Swedish hardcore band whose members were growing frustrated by their lack of progress. The Shape Of Punk To Come was their final throw of the dice. Amid the dazzling, kaleidoscopic music, there was one moment of obvious commercial gold: New Noise, a slice of jittery, angular brilliance powered by a spidery, scratchy riff.
But despite the acclaim that greeted it in hip hardcore circles, The Shape Of Punk To Come largely continued the trend of being ignored. Soon after, Refused split with barely a whimper. But gradually, and belatedly, the unexpected started to happen: New Noise found an audience. The Shape Of Punk To Come and its most prominent song were held up as touchstones by the wave of post-hardcore and emo bands that had emerged in Refused’s absence. SH
70. Slipknot – Wait And Bleed (Slipknot, 1999)
Wait And Bleed was responsible for introducing an entire generation to a more extreme form of music, dragging metal kicking and screaming into the new millennium as it went. Nu metal had already brought heavier grooves into the mainstream, but Slipknot were always a band apart, and their self-titled debut was a chaotic ball of vitriol and hate.
Wait And Bleed was their not-so-secret weapon; a song that maintained that malignant core, but sneaked it past the lines of defence under the cover of a roughshod melody and utterly infectious hook. To some extent it can be seen as a gateway song, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and it paved the way for even heavier fare to reach a wider audience. PT
71. The Dillinger Escape Plan – 43% Burnt (Calculating Infinity, 1999)
As the 21st century approached, nu metal’s boom-and-burst dynamics were heavy music’s dominant sound. The antidote to this simplistic approach arrived in the shape of The Dillinger Escape Plan, who mashed up the technicality of death metal, the raw force of hardcore, and the speed and chaos of thrash, and took them to then-unheard extreme forms on their debut album, Calculating Infinity.
The album’s second song became DEP’s calling card: 43% Burnt. Part grindcore, part free jazz, part two-stepping beatdown, so unhinged and feral it was music that appeared to come from another universe. Not everyone could get their heads around it, but those who adored it were inspired to instigate the tech-metal and mathcore movements that came to prominence during the next decade. SH
72. Limp Bizkit – Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle) (Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water, 2000)
In a genre rammed with larger-than-life anthems, Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’ is nu metal’s blockbuster. Released in 2000, it was the song that turned a scene that was already spilling into mainstream consciousness into a full-blown tsunami. Obnoxious, lairy and entirely unsubtle, Rollin’ embedded Bizkit in 2000’s pop culture.
The track became the entrance theme for WWE wrestler The Undertaker, frontman Fred Durst went from underground menace to a cultural anti-icon dating Britney Spears and getting name-checked by Eminem, while the accompanying music video was an outrageous, big-budget splash filmed at the top of New York’s World Trade Center, complete with a dance routine we’ll all take to our graves. Twenty-four years later, there isn’t a rock dancefloor immune to its charms. DL
73. Electric Wizard – Funeralopolis (Dopethrone, 2000)
Throughout the 90s stoner metal had emerged as its own colourful scene, but it was only a matter of time until someone brought it back to the darker tenets laid out by founding fathers Black Sabbath.
Funeralopolis is a morbid inversion of Sabbath’s Into the Void, not setting off from a ruined planet but embracing its death as Jus Oborn howls: ‘Nuclear warheads ready to strike, the world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight.’ This nihilistic concoction of drugs and the occult manifested in a distortion of tone so extreme it positioned this as actively civilisation-hostile music. It made Electric Wizard the most ripped-off band in doom for the next two decades, even if they delivered it with more spite than their bastard offspring. PH
74. Within Temptation – Ice Queen (Mother Earth, 2000)
In the 90s, symphonic metal was more a glittering garnish than a scene in itself, something bands from Therion to Celtic Frost would sprinkle on their music to make it sparkle. And while the genre would start coming together into something more tangible towards the end of the decade, it wasn’t until a few years later that a song would emerge to put symphonic metal on the map.
That song was Within Temptation’s Ice Queen. A complete volte-face from the gothic doom of the Dutch metallers’ 1997 debut, Enter, it appeared on the follow-up, Mother Earth, in a flurry of lavish arrangements and fairytale histrionics. Buoyed by vocalist Sharon den Adel’s crystalline voice, it pushed metal towards a new frontier, quickly whipping up a buzz in mainland Europe. Ice Queen can take credit for being symphonic metal’s first major hit, pushing women to the forefront and influencing a brand new generation of bands. DL
75. Linkin Park – One Step Closer (Hybrid Theory, 2000)
When Linkin Park released their debut single, One Step Closer, in 2000, they pioneered a new frontier in heavy music. While much of nu metal was wired by machismo and aggression, Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington sang about anxiety, depression and abuse, and their mash-up of razor-sharp metal, electronics, rap and pop sensibilities was more revolutionary than the band were given props for at the time.
Every sound-blurring artist today, regardless of genre, owes One Step Closer a debt. In 2020, Mike Shinoda told Hammer how the track and its parent album, Hybrid Theory, broke down tribal attitudes towards music: “If you asked somebody what they were listening to they’d say, ‘Rock. I listen to hip hop. I listen to jazz.’ It wasn’t until five years later they would say, ‘Everything.’” DL
76. System Of A Down – Chop Suey! (Toxicity, 2000)
‘Wake up / Grab a brush and put a little make-up…’ More than 20 years after its release, Chop Suey!’s head-scratching opening mosh call is as deranged and cryptic as ever. By 2001, nu metal had become safe, formulaic, repetitive. By contrast, System Of A Down were surreal and viscerally, radically political.
Their most indelible song proved nu metal could be twisted into new shapes… and that downright weirdness could cut through the noise. Chop Suey!, the lead single from their second album, Toxicity, was an instant MTV hit, turning System into a megawatt, arena-headlining band – and one that wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power (Serj Tankian’s essay, Understanding Oil, criticising US political interests in the Middle East, caused an inordinate amount of trouble for System post 9/11).
Chop Suey!’s enduring power remains – it’s clocked up 1.3 billion views on YouTube and 1.2 billion streams on Spotify – proof that weirdness can sometimes win. DL
77. Opeth – The Drapery Falls (Blackwater Park, 2001)
The Drapery Falls was the sound of death metal’s boundaries breaking. Though the genre had grown increasingly experimental throughout the 90s – thanks to the likes of Atheist, Death and even Opeth themselves – this song hoisted it completely out of blastbeating hellscapes and into densely textured excellence.
The fourth song on the Swedes’ breakthrough LP Blackwater Park is as much an acoustic meander as an all-gunsblazing attack, its 11 minutes weaving through brutality and bittersweetness, metal and folk. As a result, The Drapery Falls and Blackwater Park courted acclaim not just from diehard metalheads, but prog connoisseurs and old-school rock aficionados alike – no one had heard anything quite as meticulously honed yet accessible as what Opeth conjured up here. MM
78. Converge – Concubine (Jane Doe, 2001)
At the turn of the millennium, Converge were a well-respected but ultimately underground hardcore band from the fertile Boston scene. There was no warning they were about to raise the bar for the genre, but when Jane Doe arrived the following year, they did exactly that.
Bringing together new sounds, ideas and visuals to the world of metallic hardcore, this was a lacerating noise driven by heartache and emotional carnage. Opener Concubine captured more pain, rage and chaos in its one minute and 19 second running time than most bands did in their entire career, helping turn Converge into standard-bearers for a new type of hardcore – one that wore its pain, hurt and frustration as clearly as the ink on its arms. SH
79. Mastodon – March Of The Fire Ants (Remission, 2002)
Watching an unknown Mastodon open for High On Fire at Camden Underworld in summer 2003 was one of those rare moments of transcendent wonder. Everyone was flayed to the wall by the sheer force erupting off the stage, but this big gun was the most devastating volley of all.
Although a slower, more tuneful groove than the rest of their debut album, Remission, every quirk of March Of The Fire Ants’ body-buckling prog-sludge hypnosis raised the heat in the room, an experience increasingly replicated in fervid sweatboxes all over the world. Result: sludge bands got proggier, prog bands got sludgier, a wave of inspired new artists emerged circa 2002-5 (Baroness, Kylesa and Black Tusk from Mastodon’s home state of Georgia, plus Oregon’s Red Fang and Florida’s Torche), and the drop-A tuning started turning up more in metal songs. CC
80. Killswitch Engage – My Last Serenade (Alive Or Just Breathing, 2002)
In 2002, metal needed a new set of heroes. While nu metal’s success was inarguable, it had stifled the creativity of the scene as a whole, funnelling it down a narrow channel towards a predictable-sounding end point. My Last Serenade would change all that.
Appearing on Killswitch Engage’s second album, 2002’s Alive Or Just Breathing, it suggested that something new was brewing just outside metal’s nu metal-saturated mainstream. My Last Serenade became a flagship anthem not just for KSE, and but for the emerging wave of US bands collected together under the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal umbrella. Two decades later, metalcore still thrives in various guises, having usurped other forms as the base component of much popular metal. PH
81. Evanescence – Bring Me To Life (Fallen, 2003)
Evanescence’s debut single, Bring Me To Life, turned vocalist Amy Lee into a megastar. Arriving in 2003, when mainstream music was dominated by hyper-masculine men and overly sexualised pop stars, with her billowing long skirts, corset tops, arm socks and steely self-confidence, Amy redefined what a female artist could be, becoming a role model for millions of misfits and dreamers everywhere.
Despite its crunchy guitars and a rapped verse, courtesy of 12 Stones’ Paul McCoy – which Amy has since said she was forced to add by their label – Bring Me To Life’s cobwebby, goth fragility also brought something fresh to nu metal’s dick-swinging party, extending the mainstream’s flirtation with the genre for a little longer – as of 2019, it’s sold more than 3 million copies and has passed more than a billion streams on YouTube and Spotify. DL
82. Arch Enemy – We Will Rise (Anthems Of Rebellion, 2003)
We Will Rise was a huge song, not only for Arch Enemy but for the new generation of 21st-century melodic death metal they spearheaded. Guitarist Michael Amott had already laid down the melodeath blueprints with Carcass, while Arch Enemy themselves had already made three albums with singer Johan Liiva, but neither they nor anyone else had made an anthem quite like this.
As well as propelling the genre as a whole to greater heights and popularity, it provided a bigger platform for Angela Gossow – a hugely influential figure and one of the first prominent female vocalists to not only try but absolutely nail an extreme metal style. “Her emergence as a metal vocalist was, without hyperbole, revolutionary,” Svalbard’s Serena Cherry told us recently, and we’re not arguing. PT
83. Avenged Sevenfold – Unholy Confessions (Waking The Fallen, 2003)
As metalcore usurped nu metal as heavy music’s dominant force, Avenged wasted no time in laying bare their grand ambitions. Jamming in twin guitar leads, harmonised vocals and Dimebag-sized grooves, Unholy Confessions gave the Orange County gang their breakthrough moment and injected metalcore with some much-needed heavy metal thunder.
Impressive, given that the band didn’t even write the song together. “We all wrote in separate rooms,” revealed M. Shadows years later. “It’s kind of like our Hit The Lights. There’s no science behind it, it’s just what we do!”
The band are a little dismissive – “I wouldn’t say it’s a well-written song,” confessed the frontman - but make no mistake about it: Unholy Confessions put Avenged Sevenfold on the map, and the future of metal in their hands. MA
84. Nightwish – Nemo (Once, 2004)
Nightwish didn’t invent symphonic metal, but alongside peers Within Temptation and Epica, they popularised it and packaged it to the masses. By 2004, the Finns had already established themselves as a major player in Europe, but with the sumptuous Nemo, they broke through on an unprecedented level.
No longer a niche concern in the geeky corners of the metal world, symphonic metal, in all its lavish, overwrought glory revelled under a global spotlight. Nemo’s fantastical magic, sparkling piano refrain and stirring melody has endured – it’s still the band’s best-known song – but its lasting image comes via its gothic music video, and then-singer Tarja Turunen singing in the snow in a blood-red coat. Nemo showed metal at its most fragile and beautiful. DL
85. Trivium – Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr (Ascendancy, 2005)
It seems like metal has been searching for the ‘New Metallica’ ever since Metallica released Kill ’Em All. When Trivium released their second album, Ascendancy, in 2005, these young Florida metalheads had a valid claim to the title. This was the sound of a superstar metal band being born, exemplified by the album’s lead single, Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr.
Melding vintage thrash riffs, huge arena rock hooks and metallic hardcore across five perfect minutes, its mix of classic and contemporary won over old school cynics and turned a whole new generation of kids into diehard metal fans. Their performance of the song at Download in 2005 also created one of the most iconic metal moments of the 21st century. SH
86. Alcest – Le Secret (Le Secret, 2005)
When black metal masters such as Darkthrone, Emperor and Mayhem were pushing heavy music to new extremes, the idea of the genre gelling with shoegaze would have seemed laughable. Yet in 2005, Stéphane ‘Neige’ Paut used Alcest to pull the atmospheric side of metal’s most satanic style to the forefront, having been influenced equally by Cradle Of Filth and Slowdive.
Le Secret, the title track of the French band’s first EP, spent 13 minutes offsetting metallic aggression with lush-sounding relief. Though the recording was incredibly raw, it built a contrast that Alcest perfected on 2010 masterpiece Écailles De Lune. Deafheaven later brought blackgaze to broader American audiences with 2013 standout Sunbather, but diehards know the sound was truly born deep in the south of France. MM
87. Bullet For My Valentine – Four Words (To Choke Upon) (The Poison, 2005)
With Killswitch, Avenged, Trivium et al continuing the US dominance of 21st century metal, it felt like the UK was long overdue a clap back at our Stateside cousins. That clap back came courtesy of a former nu metal group from Bridgend, South Wales who once laboured under the unfortunate name Jeff Killed John.
With 4 Words, Bullet For My Valentine officially announced themselves as the biggest British metal band in a generation. One of the first songs the band wrote under their new name, the track captured Matt Tuck’s growing frustrations at failing to make headway in the music industry - “It was having that moment to say to people that doubted us and hated us, ‘Look at me now!’” the frontman told Rock Sound. A ripping, polished heavy metal anthem, it ensured the UK was finally back at the races. MA
88. Dragonforce – Through The Fire And Flames (Inhuman Rampage, 2005)
European power metal had already produced plenty of Earth-shattering anthems by 2005, but what Dragonforce did here was to distil all the genre’s magic and madness, winch it to its dizziest pinnacle, then put it in more ears than anyone ever imagined (a quarter-billion downloads and counting).
Three years earlier they were supporting Virgin Steele at a half-full Camden Underworld, but when this platinum-selling single was rolled out across the Guitar Hero franchise, Dragonforce exploded the horizons of countless unsuspecting youths worldwide. A million metal seeds were planted, coming to fruition a decade later with an ascendant crop of hyperskilled virtuosos, literally schooled in the intricacies of this song. CC
89. Meshuggah – Bleed (Obzen, 2008)
It’s difficult to narrow down which of Meshuggah’s songs was most responsible for causing noticeably seismic shifts in the world of metal. Meshuggah had turned thrash upside down with Contradictions Collapse, had created their own polyrhythmic universe on Destroy Erase Improve, and started the whole djent thing along the way.
By the time Bleed appeared, the band were already existing in their own stratosphere with at least 20 songs that had already altered the course of extreme music. Bleed’s subtle, slithering melody chromatically slinking in the background snake-charmed punters and gave the song a wavy sensibility that thousands of copycat bands have yet to figure out. Bleed gave soul to the machine. KSP
90. The Devil’s Blood – River Of Gold (Come Reap, 2008)
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Winston Churchill famously once said. Drawing influence from the stranger corners of occult rock – Coven, Black Widow and Jacula – and attaching it to the likes of Mercyful Fate and various stops along Iron Maiden’s discography, Dutch magicians The Devil’s Blood took those words to heart.
The result was River Of Gold. The second track on their debut EP, its galloping riff, propulsive bass and soaring vocals opened the floodgates for a torrent of esoterically inclined retro rock, making it cool for the likes of Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats, Lucifer, Blood Ceremony and Tribulation to dust off their vintage clothes and copies of the Necronomicon as old metal was shifted towards fantastical new(-ish) realms. KSP
91. Tesseract – Concealing Fate (Concealing Fate, 2010)
As opening statements go, few come more audacious than Tesseract’s Concealing Fate. First released as an EP in 2010, and later appearing as the fulcrum of the band’s debut 2011 album, One, the track was the progressive metallers’ first official release and landed as a perfectly realised statement of intent – all six parts and 27 minutes of it.
Meticulously crafted and mathematically complex, muscular and beefy, yet majestically melodic, Concealing Fate gave a new generation of tech metal fans their own heavyweight to rally behind, alongside luminaries Meshuggah, Textures and Sikth.
It’s a sound that has confirmed Tesseract as one of the most influential bands of the last decade. The ambition, creativity and genrebleeding tech they pioneered with Concealing Fate can be heard in the very bones of metal right across the spectrum, rippling through the juddering riffs of everyone from Architects to Northlane, Spiritbox to Sleep Token. DL
92. Watain – Malfeitor (Lawless Darkness, 2010)
No one really expected black metal to win back the notoriety it cultivated during the early and mid-90s, yet Watain reignited the sense of danger that surrounded it. Under the visionary leadership of Erik Danielsson, they asserted the genre as both ceremonial exhibition and all-encompassing outlaw lifestyle, giving the underground renewed conviction in the power of Satan, blood and rock’n’roll.
Crucially, with Malfeitor they also made it utterly catchy, turning in a latter-day black metal classic that gallops like it’s a 1980s Maiden standard. They won a Swedish Grammi for parent album Lawless Darkness, laying the groundwork for black metal to enter its fourth decade against all the odds. PH
93. Bring Me The Horizon – Shadow Moses (Sempiternal, 2013)
More than a decade after its release, Bring Me The Horizon’s fourth album still casts a long shadow. Spawning a ridiculous number of copyists, it split metalcore into two distinct eras: pre-Sempiternal and post-Sempiternal.
Its influence can be heard everywhere, from the juddering grooves of Architects to Bad Omens’ melodic fire. Shadow Moses, the album’s lead single, was a revelation, incorporating a gargantuan riff with a flood of emotion and electronics in a way that had never been done before, all the while staying true to the grit and aggression of the genre - a sound so omnipresent, it’s now part of the very fabric of modern metal. Today it remains the gold standard for metalcore, and sounds just as fresh as the day it first landed. DL
94. Wardruna – Helvegen (Runaljod – Yggdrasil, 2013)
With Helvegen, Wardruna paved the way for a whole array of musical acts occupying that strange realm where metal and dark, primal folk overlap. Contemporaries Heilung, hybrid black metal project Myrkur, and relative newcomers like Kati Rán and Suldusk have all followed in their footsteps to some extent.
A lot of metal bands have played with folk themes and motifs, but Helvegen took things to a far deeper, more elemental and emotionally resonant space, with a ritualistic feel and the meters of Old Norse poetry. It’s also worth celebrating the fact that the progressive Wardruna, are reclaiming the runic symbols and Nordic mythology that had been co-opted by the darkest corners of the metal and neo-folk scenes, as well as neo-Nazis worldwide. PT
95. Babymetal – Gimme Chocolate!! (Babymetal, 2014)
If elitists were tearing their hair out at the likes of Ghost, Bring Me The Horizon and Limp Bizkit being considered ‘metal’, then they might as well have just reached for the clippers for this one. The sight of three young Japanese girls rocking choreographed moves and singing sugary-sweet, J-pop-infused choruses about chocolate over heavy metal riffs was as shocking as it was delightful.
Babymetal hadn’t just broken the mould for metal, either; they’d given the West a fuller glimpse into the uniquely Japanese phenomenon of idol culture, and given the cutesy world of Kawaii a bigger global platform than ever. Overseen by band mastermind and producer extraordinaire, Key ‘Kobametal’ Kobayashi, Babymetal were unlike anything our world had seen before: equal parts hyper-polished girl band and full-on heavy metal experience, with their mysterious Kami Band backing musicians as formidable as any ‘proper’ metal band you could name.
Cynics moaned, but with the likes of Rob Halford, Metallica and Corey Taylor throwing in their support, the trio quickly transcended their ‘gimmick’ tag to become a legitimate force in the modern metal landscape. MA
96. Power Trip – Executioner’s Tax (Swing Of The Axe) (Nightmare Logic, 2017)
Power Trip were latecomers to the 2000s thrash metal revival, not debuting until 2013. But unlike such jokey recent forebears as Municipal Waste and Evile, they were deadly serious – and never more so than on Executioner’s Tax, a song that made thrash sound relevant all over again.
Here, the Texans eschewed the double-bass drumming and guitar acrobatics often associated with their genre, instead favouring a stomping groove and one hell of a hook: ‘Swing of the axe!’ Power Trip became a legitimate force as a result, though their rise was halted by the death of frontman Riley Gale in 2020. The outpouring of grief that followed, as well as tributes from everyone from Ice-T and Randy Blythe to Code Orange and Knocked Loose, showed what an impact they had made in such a short time. MM
97. Architects – Doomsday (Holy Hell, 2018)
After the death of guitarist Tom Searle in 2016, Architects poured every drop of their hurt, anger and confusion into their eighth album, Holy Hell. Gut-punching lead single Doomsday was the song to take them into their future, and it perfectly captured the sound of a band reeling from their pain, and the unforgiving, cruel nature of grief.
By embracing melodic maturity and a newfound production polish alongside the juddering grooves that had characterised their music, Doomsday became a template for other bands to follow – notably Wage War, whose song Low wore its influence. In a bittersweet twist, it would end up being the track that would transform Architects into arena headliners, playing Wembley Arena in 2019, proving there was life after tragedy. DL
98. Ghost – Mary On A Cross (Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic, 2019)
Ghost were already one of the biggest things in modern metal by the time this cut from their 2019 Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic EP went supernova on social media, but Mary On A Cross’s unlikely viral success finally brought them to the mainstream audience that band mastermind Tobias Forge had been courting for years.
A warm, woozy waltz of a track, its anthemic, earwormy chorus bewitched a whole new demographic of fans, enabling Ghost to be the first clear example of a band from our world to have finally (if somewhat accidentally) broken into TikTok’s unique, career-making music ecosystem. Not that anyone is entirely sure what the song is actually about. “There are multiple layers in the lyrics that it might be important for people to understand,” offered Tobias cryptically. Awesome, so that solves that, then. MA
99. Spiritbox – Holy Roller (Eternal Blue, 2022)
Spiritbox were already firmly established as Ones To Watch by the time Holy Roller, the first single from Eternal Blue, exploded like a hand grenade in the summer of 2020. Once those first, colossal riffs rang out, however, it was clear that the Canadian troupe hadn’t just levelled up considerably – they had successfully repositioned themselves as one of the most exciting and vital bands of their generation.
Backed by a memorable video inspired by Ari Aster’s disturbing Midsommar movie, Holy Roller was the perfect crystallisation of the last decade-plus of evolution in metal, packing djent, metalcore, nu metal and more into a massively crushing (but seriously catchy!) three minutes. “This song was never intended to be a single,” explained vocalist Courtney LaPlante later. “Our mission statement was, ‘Let’s make the most ridiculous song that we can.’” MA
100. Sleep Token – The Summoning (Take Me Back To Eden, 2023)
At the start of 2023, mysterious masked band Sleep Token were one of the metal underground’s buzziest names. The Summoning turned them into an Earth-conquering, expectation-shattering phenomenon.
Veering between depraved tech metal, soulful vocals and shimmering electronics, an enormous, hymnal chorus gave way to an Earth-shifting breakdown and screams. Intricate and groove-heavy, The Summoning was more like three songs seamlessly crafted into one genre-fluid modern masterpiece. And it still had its trump card to play: a bendy, thirst-trap, funk outro that went viral on TikTok, turning the internet into a lusty puddle. Suddenly, Sleep Token were the most talked-about band on the planet.
Today, Sleep Token are being mentioned in the same breath as potential future Download headliners Ghost, Gojira and Architects. The only difference? Sleep Token have managed to ascend to the same level as those bands in a fraction of the time. DL
