Your metal tastes are virtually parallel to mine. I don’t disagree with anything you wrote.
That said, one of the bands you appear to have forgotten about is Anthrax. They were reliably good with a few great tracks (like most of “Among The Living”).
Testament and Sacred Reich did some good stuff.
M.O.D. was good, if a bit silly.
I played King Diamond as a joke for my friend, but he liked it! So I gave them another listen, and found that musically, they were really good once you got past the ludicrous vocal tricks.
Eh? Pantera had four good albums. Tool had two. Guns and Roses had four even if you don’t count The Spaghetti Incident? (I wouldn’t) and Lies (I would) as albums.
It’ll take me a while to list all of Queen’s heavy stuff, but if you haven’t heard Ogre Battle you owe it to yourself to give it a listen.
I only like about one song per Anthrax album. That doesn’t really matter today when everything is an MP3 but it annoyed the hell out of me back in the day.
I very nearly included Mercyful Fate in my list, and I like them a lot better than King Diamond’s solo stuff.
While I at least like every band on there, and certainly love a few, one of my pet peeves about theses kinds of lists is that they tend to be very heavy on the older bands and lacking a lot in the more modern sounds. But at the same time, you can’t get too modern or you run the risk of them not really being “essential” at some point in the future. So here, only a couple of bands on this list have released anything that is on par with their best work in the the last decade or so.
I also think that while you may not be a fan of unclean vocals, they really are important in a lot of modern metal, and while the list covers a lot of stuff, particularly the originators of heavy metal, thrash, power metal, and a bit of prog, there’s nothing that covers anything in the black metal or death metal sub-genres, and the whole list is from the UK or US. Metal is also extremely popular through the rest of europe and other parts of the world, so getting those sounds in would make the list more well rounded.
So, here’s a few thoughts:
Opeth - Would help fill out in the heavier side as well as being Swedish and still very active. You’d probably want to look at a more straight forward Death Metal band too, but I would have a hard time picking the most representative.
Nightwish or maybe Therion - More European bands and both cover a lot of ground in modern power metal sounds.
Iced Earth - American, but pretty much the natural progression of bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
Finally, you’d probably want some kind of Black Metal representative, but that’s also difficult to pick a single essential band for.
Not really complete sure who you’d drop to get some of them on there, but it depends on whether you’re going for most influential or for a good coverage of the genres.
Ok, I personally don’t like Pantera so much, apart from Vulgar. I guess it’s too stressful for me.
Hmm, yeah I forgot about Chinese Democracy and Lies.
10.000 days is a good album too.
I actually have all Queen albums except Queen II, The Miracle and Hot Stuff, and I still stand by that they have fewer heavy / hard rock tracks in total than Tool.
Black Sabbath: If I had to pick one band as my favorite, it would be Black Sabbath. Especially their early stuff. The credit can’t go to one person in the band; they were a true unit.
Ozzy w/ Randy Rhoads: First of all, the music produced by these guys was very much different than Black Sabbath - it’s not heavy, doom-n-gloom metal. It’s very melodic and high energy. And unlike Black Sabbath, most of the credit can go to just one person. Hint: it’s not Ozzy.
**Dio: **He was only in Black Sabbath for a short time. Oh, and I really didn’t care for his vocals. Sounds very over-rehearsed.
I don’t know if it’s Randy, either. The quality of Ozzy’s records didn’t exactly nosedive with Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde. Dio was in Sabbath long enough to release two (excellent) studio albums and two live ones.
If you liked Queensryche & Dream Theater, then** Fates Warning** should be checked out. Anything with Ray Alder on vocals is worth a listen. Maybe not ‘essential’ as per your list, but they are an excellent overlooked gem of a metal band.
Metallica’s problem is the singer? Really? Can you explain this?
I’m not hating on you (well kinda cuz I love Met) but of all the problems people mention when talking about the band the quality of Hetfield’s singing is normally not what’s mentioned
I know, but Hetfield is the first to say he’s not a very good singer. That didn’t matter for the first four records, because the focus was on the guitars. It’s held them back since they slowed down a bit, though. Picture Iron Maiden if Paul Dianno was still the singer.