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53 albums · 1968–2021

Heavy metal, from Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden to thrash, death and black metal, doom and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

The four members of Black Sabbath with long hair and leather jackets, standing on a city street in front of a lit advertising sign
Iron Maiden seen from high up in an arena, the singer at the front of a lit stage, guitarists and the bassist behind him and the crowd to the leftSlayer on stage in green light, two guitarists and the bassist in front of the drums, a large pair of eyes projected behind them and raised hands in the crowd
Black Sabbath in 1970, the year of their first two albums. Photo: Vertigo Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. · Iron Maiden in Hamburg, June 2011. Photo: Mike Lawrence, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Slayer on their tour for Christ Illusion, October 2006. Photo: Gabriele, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Heavy metal grew out of the loud blues rock of the late sixties. In Birmingham, Black Sabbath made it slow and dark on their first album in 1970, and Deep Purple and Judas Priest made it harder and faster. Around 1980 the new wave of British heavy metal, Iron Maiden and Saxon among them, took it faster still.

In the eighties thrash metal came from California and Germany, with Metallica, Slayer and Kreator. Out of it grew death metal in Florida and Sweden and the black metal of Norway, with Mayhem and Emperor. Candlemass and Sleep kept the slow tempo of doom, Queensrÿche and Dream Theater wrote long progressive pieces, and in the nineties Korn and Slipknot brought in the rhythms of hip hop as nu metal. Later come Opeth, Mastodon and Gojira.

The list has 53 records from 1968 to 2021. It leaves out the hard rock around metal, from Led Zeppelin to AC/DC, glam metal, and the metal of Latin America, Asia and Africa beyond Sepultura, and it takes only one or two records of each band. About 42 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Metal 83%Rock 11%Other 6%
  • Metal 83%
  • Rock 11%
  • Other 6%

The genres named most: heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, hard rock, progressive metal, doom metal.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 11 countries: United States 20, United Kingdom 14, Germany 5, Sweden 5, Norway 3 and 6 more. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.