Seriously, there is no better song to get stoned to than “Planet Caravan.” Truth. In fact, except for the title track and “Iron Man,” the entire album practically begs you to light one up and drift away. Take a listen to almost any track on Paranoid and you’ll hear a band playing loose and carefree. And make no mistake, Black Sabbath at their prime was every bit as groovy as any jam band on the scene today. While Iommi and company surely approached their subject matter with tongue slightly in cheek - the band’s whole approach was something of a marketing ploy after all - there’s no doubting their commitment to making the grooviest, bottom-heavy tunes around. That said, it’s impossible to ignore the majesty of the eight-minute-long instrumental “Orion,” the arena-rock fury of the title track, the killer riffage of “Disposable Heroes,” and Hetfield’s growling melodies.īlack Sabbath invented metal with its 1970 self-titled debut, but it wasn’t until their sophomore disc that Tony Iommi, Geezer Bulter, Bill Ward, and Ozzy Osborne perfected it.
In that regard, Master of Puppets is also metal’s greatest failure since the vast majority of metal albums that came after it would be almost totally lacking in melody, groove, and experimentation and instead be obsessed with a single-minded, goose-stepping sturm und drang. James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kurt Hammett, and the late Cliff Burton forever changed the face of metaldom with their third LP, combining the spirit of hardcore punk, classical music, and metal’s favorite themes - drug use, demons, and death - into a militaristic thrashfest that divided metal into two camps: the brutal headbangers favored by mosh pitters and everything else that had come before. For this little roundup of the best metal albums of all time, we decided to look at metal’s entire history, selecting those artists that defined particular sub-genres or paved the way for future acts.įrom the opening blitzkrieg that is “Battery” to the even more punishing “Damage Inc.,” Metallica’s Master of Puppets is 60+ minutes of nonstop warfare. In fact, many of the acts that one would have labelled metal back in the late 1970s and early 1980s are no longer considered metal at all. Although metal these days is largely the province of death metal riffers and Cookie Monster vocals, this wasn’t always the case. Metal is a many-headed beast, each one capable of melting your face with a blast of turn-it-up-to-11 thunder.