I’m pretty much open to all kinds of metal here, so you decide what you want to include. Please include links to the song if they are available online. Youtube is huge for this. I recommend including only one per artist, too. Keeps things diverse.
See? I’ll count anything. This is a soft song for Nightwish, but it’s still metal to me. I have fond memories of dancing around with my little daughter and wife to this when it was new.
The last time they showed any genius was around this time. They were still good after this, but it faded into mediocrity and just playing the classics.
What would you include?
Note: I’m going to cheat to include a 2017 song. However, it is from the current, drastically different line-up of Sepultura. It’s just one dude left, I think, at this point. However:
Well, I love, live and breathe the Melvins, and I honestly can’t think of a more metal band. Sweet Willy Rollbar, Honey Bucket, and Night Goat are sweet, tasty short classics that they still play live. For longer, more epic songs, I’ll refer you to The Decay of Lying for a taste of what they’ve put out in the last two decades (or last year, evennnn).
But if you have the gumption to listen to heavy metal and 18 minutes to spare and pay attention, there’s no real substitute for the perfection of Hung Bunny/Roman Bird Dog. Yes, by the nomenclature, that’s technically two songs. But as I said in another thread, the whole album’s one track, with no song titles. I’ve never heard them play those compositions separately, and there’s a nice fade out at that point, so I call it a song. I still listen to a lot of other slower or more de-tuned metal, but that is the standard I hold that stuff to. I may have heard a few tunes that approach it, but I still haven’t heard anything that honestly sounds heavier in my opinion.
Oh, and also Premenstrual Princess Blues and March of the S.O.D./Sergeant D. (oooh those S.O.D. links seem to be short lived). Sooo metal, still so good, still so ignorant and silly in the way that music should dare to be.
As I have stated probably too many times on the dope, when I need an injection of pure metal ;), I have found I go to Just One Fix by Ministry. I need that relentlessness, I guess. And I love the ghosty-sounding pre-echo vocals.
Slayer - Raining Blood
I played in an Iron Maiden cover band for a few years so I suppose I’d nominate Rime of the Ancient Mariner since it’s really is their magnus opus. Such a great showpiece of their songwriting and musical style.
Master of Puppets is, what, a blueprint? for so much that came after it.
Love Megadeth’s whole Rust in Peace album. Tornado of Souls*, baby.
*could there BE a cooler song name to a 16yo? Pantera has the two best metal album names - Far Beyond Driven and the hilariously perfect A Vulgar Display of Power - but Tornado of Souls is an equally cool song title.
I was such a UFO guy - their live Strangers in the Night album was played incessantly as I faked my way through Michael Schenker licks. They almost feel more hard rock than metal, but since they are considered NWOBHM alongside Maiden, I’ll namecheck them here.
If Industrial/NoWave counts (as indicated by the Rammstein and Ministry refs above), then: Morpheus Laughing by Skinny Puppy Longue Route by Young Gods Raping a Slave by Swans Z.N.S. by Einsturzende Neubauten
I personally prefer that type of thing over metal of the fretwankery ilk. Although I do like a good headbang to Paranoid or One on the dancefloor.
Pantera has TONS of great metal songs. I’ve loved a huge amount of metal over the years but I always find myself going back to Pantera. That “groove metal” thing they did always hits me in all the right places.
Alice in Chains - It Ain’t Like That
They got categorized “grunge” just because of where they were from, but they were metal, they were always metal, they were never anything besides metal.
Megadeth - Five Magics
Other tracks on this GREAT album get a lot of attention, but IMO this is the masterpiece. The final minute is total metal mayhem.
And last, and most importantly and happily, I am very, very happy to share, after a nearly 20 year absence, the return and new incarnation of one of my all-time favorite bands: Iron Monkey - 9-13
