If I were forced to pick - not a favorite, per se, but more of a seminal Queensryche song - I’d have to pick something like Promised Land (off of the CD of the same name). Or almost anything off of Operation: Mindcrime.
Metallica! “Hero of the Day.”
Iron Maiden’s the greatest of all time, but enough about them.
Lately, I’ve been on a folk metal kick, with the “Finn Four” at the top of the list:
Moonsorrow
Finntroll
Korpiklaani
Ensiferum
As for best song of all time, that’s just too difficult to pick just one, so I won’t even try.
Iron Maiden - ‘Paschendale’
Wow. This thread really shows the age of SDMB population.
I believe that Sabbath and Maiden are your favorite metal bands but what does that really mean? Did you stop listening to metal in 85? Do you really believe there haven’t been better metal bands in the last 30-40 years???
Who’s your favorite rapper? Grand Master Flash? Run DMC?
This is a time warp thread. Bizarre.
It’s kind of like having someone who never watches Nascar racing start a thread “Who’s your favorite Nascar driver?” and having a bunch of people who don’t really watch much Nascar reply with Dale E or Jeff Gordon. Bizarre.
My favorite metal song is Cum on Feel the Noize! by Quiet Riot. Close second to “We’re not Gonna Take it!” by Twisted Sister.
This was my theme song for both the 2008 and 2010 Ride For The Animals:
(www.c2cr2c.com)
Here we gooooooo! 
Okay, maybe not “hard rock” as y’all know it, but that’s what we knew it as when my band I played it. Y’all might call it “Southern Rock” (Skynyrd, maybe?)
Don’t matter to me, though!
My favorite drummin’ song!
All those accents!!!
All those fills!!!
Can’t wait till I can set my skins up again and play what’s rest of my brain out!!!
Thanks
Q
Not necessarily. I listen to a lot of current music, but if you asked me to name my Top 10 favorite rock albums, for example, the bulk of them would be from the early to mid history of rock (60s to 80s). I don’t think there’s anything odd about that at all.
As for the OP, I’m not much of a metal listener, but of the stuff I listen to and consider metal (some of the acts mentioned in this thread I consider more “hard rock” than “metal,” although the terms are a bit fluid), my tastes are distinctly mired in early-to-mid-80s thrash metal.
“Who would win in a fight, Lemmy or God?”
“Lemmy.”
“BZZT”
“God!”
“Trick question, dickhead. Lemmy is God!”
Anyway, since the really popular bands and songs have been covered, I’ll throw in a couple lesser knowns:
My Own Savior by Iced Earth
Pissed Off and Mad About It, Texas Hippie Coalition
My Own Savior’s easily my favorite metal song. Even Motorhead’s best can’t get my blood pumping the way it does.
:dubious:
First you accuse the other posters of being musically stuck before 1985, and then you name “Cum on Feel the Noize” (released by Quiet Riot in 1983, released originally by Slade in 1973) and “We’re not Gonna Take it” (released 1984) as your favorites. Bizarre, indeed.
I’m not a metal fan as such, more a fan of rock in general which includes good heavy metal, but I’ll give you my favorites anyway:
Black Sabbath - War Pigs
Led Zeppelin - The Ocean
Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
AC/DC - It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock’n Roll)
Sabbath. Of course. Lord of this World, After Forever, and Hole in the Sky are special favorites.
Of course I do have some newer favorites. Here’s something recent. It’s a celebration of the 1980s, though. White Wizzard, Over The Top.
I also quite like The Sword. Here’s Freya. The volume’s a little low, so crank it.
Well, if we go by the songs most played on my iPod, my favorite metal (however loosely defined) songs appear to be:
- “Panama” by Van Halen
- “Kill the King” by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow
- “Fireball” by Deep Purple
- “I’m on the Lamb, But I Ain’t No Sheep” by Blue Oyster Cult
- “Electric Eye” by Judas Priest
Iced Earth is probably one of the best bands out there, particularly when Barlow is singing. In terms of being “pure Metal” They are tops.
The nordic countries though are the undisputed kings of current metal production. Love all the Finnish guys but Ill see them and raise you Amon Amarth. If that doest get your blood pumping then you are dead.
I still love Iron Maiden the most, although I pretty much let them go after Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I spent a lot of time in high school drawing all their album covers! My favorite song is Revelations, from Piece of Mind.
We talking heavy metal or hard rock? Heavy metal would be something by Metallica. Hard rock would be the entire Rush discography 
“Five Magics” - Megadeth. The crashing thrash intro, the slow buildup, the shifting time signature, the odd-rhythm riffs, and a brutal, frantic coda to bring it all to an end-- it’s pure metal perfection.
I don’t think that anybody is able to provide a universally accepted definition for both genres. “Metal = anything that sounds like Metallica” and “hard rock = anything that sounds like Rush” really doesn’t cut it. What’s, for instance, AC/DC according to this taxonomy? They neither sound like Metallica nor Rush, but still they are always referred to as belonging to one of both. There’s a fuzzy divide/intersection between the two everybody defines a little different. (Btw., I think this applies to every genre of popular music).
I really like the sound of Metallica’s …And Justice For All album. They really did a good job of recording that, production-wise. Its still thrashy and heavy, but its so tight, especially the drum sound. Very dry sounding. Of course not soon afterwards they went all top 40 on themselves with their production and I hated everything after the “black” album (which I liked pretty well as it is).
Favorite song: Blackened.
Hard to define what’s heavy metal, as already mentioned.
Sabbath
Ozzie
Deep Purple.
AC/DC with Bon Scott.
Alice.
Original Van Halen.
Too many songs in there to mention.
Chuck Klosterman comes close. If memory serves, he says that hard rock is best listened to on speed and heavy metal is best listened to on weed.* I think (but it could be years of my own mind working over it) he said that “hard rock” should hit you like a stone thrown at you and “heavy metal” should crush you like a '53 Dodge pickup slowly being lowered onto you.
- I don’t remember which book this is discussed in. I’m pretty sure it’s either Fargo Rock City or Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.