The Best Metal Albums of the '80s

Bruce Dickinson's first record with the band, cut at Battery Studios in London with Martin Birch producing. Hallowed Be Thy Name is the argument-ender: a condemned man's slow tolling intro handing over to a gallop, then to two guitars harmonising like they are finishing each other's sentences. Clive Burr's last studio album behind the kit before he left.

Ronnie James Dio walked in after Ozzy Osbourne walked out, and Martin Birch produced the result — the same band name attached to a different band. Children of the Sea opens on clean guitar and a half-whispered vocal before Tony Iommi drops the full weight in. Bill Ward still drums here; he quit partway through the tour. Spotify renders the title Heaven And Hell.

Tittenhurst Park, the Ascot house Ringo Starr bought from John Lennon, is where they recorded it, with Tom Allom producing and household objects standing in for half the percussion. Breaking the Law is three notes and a police siren, over in about two and a half minutes, and it turned Judas Priest into a band daytime radio would play.

Compass Point Studios in Nassau gave these songs air around them, which matters on a record this long-winded in the best sense. Rime of the Ancient Mariner runs past thirteen minutes, quotes Coleridge straight, and parks in a becalmed middle passage of creaking rigging and clean bass before the gallop comes back. Adrian Smith and Dave Murray trade leads all night.

Vic Maile produced, and he got Lemmy's Rickenbacker sounding less like a bass guitar than a chainsaw with a grudge. Ace of Spades opens on that descending slide and never lets the tempo sag; Fast Eddie Clarke's solo is finished before you have braced for it. Border case — Lemmy denied being a metal band his whole life, and nobody listened.

Free of Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio produced his own solo debut and hired Vivian Campbell to play the guitar on it, with Vinny Appice on drums and Jimmy Bain on bass. Rainbow in the Dark rides a keyboard hook Dio is said to have wanted scrubbed off the tape — a pop song that wandered into the wrong studio and stayed.

Randy Rhoads is the reason it amounts to more than a post-Sabbath curiosity. Don Airey's organ opens Mr. Crowley and Rhoads answers with phrasing borrowed from classical study rather than blues licks, over Bob Daisley's bass and Lee Kerslake's drums. Spotify's listing tacks the B-side You Lookin' At Me Lookin' At You onto the end of the original nine.

King Diamond's falsetto is the dividing line — you are in or out inside ten seconds. Hank Shermann and Michael Denner write guitar parts that behave like classical counterpoint pushed through Marshalls, and A Dangerous Meeting stacks three distinct riffs before the first verse turns up. Denmark's contribution to metal starts here, and the black metal bands took notes.

Peter Collins produced this concept record about a brainwashed junkie assassin, and Pamela Moore was brought in to sing Sister Mary opposite Geoff Tate. Eyes of a Stranger closes the thing by reprising motifs planted earlier, which is exactly the sort of move that gets a metal band called pretentious and is also why the record holds together.

America finally bought in, on the back of MTV rotation and a chorus a stadium could shout. The Hellion is barely a minute of instrumental fanfare before Electric Eye arrives with Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing locked in unison, surveillance-state lyrics delivered at a tempo that makes the point better than the words do. Dave Holland keeps it plain behind them.

H.R. Giger let the band use one of his paintings for the sleeve, which tells you what Tom G. Warrior was aiming at. Circle of the Tyrants is the template a thousand bands copied: riffs that lurch instead of gallop, timpani and horns where a normal metal record puts a guitar solo, and that grunt punctuating every phrase.

Leif Edling wrote it and brought in Johan Längquist as a hired session singer, not expecting to spend thirty years being asked about him. Solitude opens at a funeral crawl with a vocal that manages opera without tipping into pantomime. Spotify carries only a thirteen-track expansion of what was a six-song album, so the tail end is bonus material.

Neat Records put it out and accidentally named a genre with the title. Countess Bathory is barely in tune and the drums sound like a stairwell recorded in a hurry, which is the whole point: three men from Newcastle making a racket nobody could reproduce cleanly. Spotify's edition appends the 2002 Sanctuary bonus material to the original eleven tracks.

Quorthon made these records essentially alone, playing the guitars and singing through enough reverb to fill a cathedral he did not have. Enter the Eternal Fire slows to a dirge with an organ underneath it, and you can hear the Norwegian second wave being sketched five years early. Border case: the point where extreme metal stopped equating heaviness with speed.

Kai Hansen wrote I Want Out and then left Helloween to start Gamma Ray, which makes the title read like a resignation letter set to a major key. Michael Kiske sings the whole record in a register most metal vocalists visit once a night. Noise Records had the European power metal template on its hands and never stopped reissuing it.

Morrisound Recording in Tampa is where death metal found its production sound, and Earache put out the album that proved it. Chapel of Ghouls drops out of Pete Sandoval's blasting into a mid-paced stomp and back again, with Trey Azagthoth soloing in a way that ignores the key signature completely. Spotify's listing adds three tracks to the original ten.

Chuck Schuldiner played guitar and bass and got Chris Reifert, later of Autopsy, behind the drums — a two-man band with a Combat Records deal and a video-nasty vocabulary. Zombie Ritual sets the pattern the genre borrowed wholesale: a slow creeping intro, then a lurch into something faster and meaner. Border case, and arguably the first American death metal album.

Carrere Records had a genuine hit here — a UK top-five album that got Saxon onto Top of the Pops twice in a year. 747 (Strangers in the Night) takes the 1965 New York blackout for its subject and rides a Biff Byford vocal shouted across an imaginary car park. Spotify offers no un-remastered edition, so the 2009 Remaster is what links here.