Love ' or hate 'em, here they are: The Top 10 Most Influential Metal albums ever.
10. Marilyn Mason: Antichrist Superstar (he sucks, but this album did influnce everything that happened in U.S. metal in the last two decades. All that shitty Nu-Metal? Thank Marilyn Manson and Hip-Hop for it)
9. Pantera: "Cowboys From Hell" proof that Metal could survive in the 90s. Lots of other bands were doing it, but there hadn't been anything this ANGRY in years. Probably the band most responsible for metal's rebirth.
8. Queensryche: "Operation Mindcrime". nothing that Symphony X, Statovarius, Sonata Arctica, the GREAT Dream Theater and any other "prog" metal act would have amounted to shit if not for this album. Arguably the first prog metal band, and a helluva concept album.
7. Alice Cooper: "Billion Dollar Babies". He put the shock in rock. This is Cooper's classic (pre Nightmare days). This is the one that REALLY put Alice on the map and it changed what a rock concept could be. If he welcomed us to his Nightmare in '75, this is how the bad dream started.
6. Judas Priest: British Steel. It's a classic. It has attitude. It's loud. It's mean. And it has influenced most of the European metal (especially the Germans) that have come after it. The Scorpions, Helloween, even Blind Guardian, owe at least a tip of the hat to this one.
5. Iron Maiden: The Number Of The Beast. for a brief period in time, Iron Maiden was the heaviest band in the world. Hard to imagine now, but it's true. This is what made them great. Bruce Dickinson's first album with the band, and "Run To The Hills" is still one of the most downloaded songs in the world (it's true). It took the sound of metal in a new direction, gave prominence to the bass guitar (go Steve Harris!), and made metal as theatrical as any glam rock band that ever was.
4. Venom: Black Metal. OK. This album stinks. No question. But without it, there would be no thrash metal. They set the bar for GOOD bands like Metallica (back when they WERE good). Megadeath and Slayer to blow everybody out of the water.
3. Slayer: Reign In Blood. 28 minutes of fury. Nothing had ever been faster, angrier, or more intense until that moment.
2. Metallica: Master Of Puppets. My personal favorite metal album of all time. It remains a classic for a reason. Every track is brilliant. It's heavy, mean, and has a point. I wonder if the band listened to it and said "fuck. we're done". After the tragedy of Cliff Burton's death shortly after the album's release, maybe they SHOULD have hung 'em up, consdiering they've NEVER come close to anything this good again, and likely never will.
1. Black Sabbath: Paranoid. It started it all. Not Sabbath's first, or even best, album, but it set the trend for EVERYTHING that came after it. I don't think there's a SINGLE metal, hard rock, or punk act that doesn't pay homage to this album in some way. Not the best metal album of all time, but certainly the most influential.
Who's not on the list?
Megadeth: They ARE, without a doubt, one of the best metal bands out there, but I just don't see them as THAT influential. Sure, Dave Mustaine's ability to play has probably influenced every single good guitar player out there, but has any one album really been THAT INFLUENTIAL? Several are classics (notably Rust In Peace and Countdown to Extinction) but Iwouldn't call it influential.
Anthrax: They just plain suck. They're overrated, and always were. If anything, they influenced Nu Metal more than Marilyn Manson did, but I can't in good conscience include them on my list.
System Of A Down: Great band. Not influential. Why? Nobody else has the balls to sound ANYTHING like them at all.
Helloween: They call them the first "power metal" band. What's power metal? It's thrash that sounds cleaned up. Nope. Great band, but not influential.
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