Heavy Metal
The heaviest branch of the tree: Black Sabbath's birth of metal, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and thrash's Metallica-led charge.
Part of Rock
46 moments in this segment.
- - Black Sabbath - Iron Man. The doom-laden 1970 riff that helped define the whole genre.
- - Black Sabbath - War Pigs. Sabbath's anti-war epic is one of metal's foundational statements.
- - Black Sabbath - Paranoid. Black Sabbath's 1970 riffs are widely regarded as the birth of heavy metal.
- - Deep Purple - Highway Star. Deep Purple's speed and virtuosity helped lay the groundwork for metal.
- - Diamond Head - Am I Evil?. Diamond Head's NWOBHM classic became a Metallica staple.
- - Judas Priest - Breaking the Law. Judas Priest gave metal its leather-and-studs look and twin-guitar attack.
- - Black Sabbath (with Dio) - Heaven and Hell. Ronnie James Dio reinvented Sabbath and gave metal one of its great voices.
- - Motörhead - Ace of Spades. Motörhead's 1980 anthem bridged metal and punk at full speed.
- - Venom - Black Metal. Venom's raw 1981 album named and pointed the way to black metal.
- - Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills. Iron Maiden led the New Wave of British Heavy Metal into the '80s.
- - Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast. Iron Maiden's 1982 album made them metal's flagship band.
- - Metallica - Master of Puppets. Metallica's 1986 thrash landmark is one of metal's most revered albums.
- - Slayer - Angel of Death. Slayer's 1986 Reign in Blood defined thrash's extreme edge.
- - Anthrax - Indians. Anthrax brought New York energy and crossover thrash to the Big Four.
- - Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle. Guns N' Roses' 1987 debut brought danger back to hard rock.
- - Metallica - One. Metallica's 1988 anti-war epic and its first video broadened thrash's reach.
- - Judas Priest - Painkiller. Judas Priest's 1990 speed-metal onslaught raised the genre's bar.
- - Megadeth - Holy Wars. Dave Mustaine's Megadeth pushed thrash's technical edge on Rust in Peace.
- - Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss. Slayer's dark precision made them thrash's most extreme of the Big Four.
- - Death and the birth of death metal. Chuck Schuldiner's Death pioneered the death-metal genre in Florida.
- - Metallica - Enter Sandman. The 1991 single that took thrash's leaders to global stadiums.
- - Pantera - Walk. Pantera's 1992 groove metal reset the genre for the '90s.
- - Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark. Iron Maiden's title track became a live anthem for a generation.
- - Sepultura - Refuse/Resist. Brazil's Sepultura carried metal's fury to the whole world.
- - Kyuss and the birth of stoner rock. Josh Homme's Kyuss forged the heavy, fuzzy desert sound of stoner rock.
- - Rammstein - Du Hast. Germany's Rammstein made industrial metal a global spectacle.
- - Sleep - Dopesmoker. Sleep's monolithic doom took stoner metal to its slow, heavy extreme.
- - Tool - Schism. Tool brought art-prog complexity to modern metal.
- - Slipknot - Wait and Bleed. Slipknot brought masked, brutal nu-metal to the mainstream.
- - System of a Down - Chop Suey!. System of a Down fused metal, politics and Armenian melody in 2001.
- - Opeth - The Drapery Falls. Sweden's Opeth fused death metal and prog into something wholly new.
- - Lamb of God - Laid to Rest. Lamb of God led the American 'new wave' of heavy metal in the 2000s.
- - Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country. Avenged Sevenfold carried metal to a huge new-millennium audience.
- - Mastodon - Oblivion. Mastodon carried progressive metal into the 2000s.
- - Ghost - Cirice. Sweden's theatrical Ghost won a Grammy and made metal a pop spectacle again.
- - Gojira - Silvera. France's Gojira made technical, ecological metal a global force.
- - Sleep Token - The Summoning. The lead single from Take Me Back To Eden, released in January 2023. It is the song that carried Sleep Token out of a masked online cult following and into arenas.
- - Metallica - 72 Seasons. The title track of Metallica's eleventh album, released in 2023. The record launched the M72 World Tour, built around two different sets on consecutive nights in each city.
- - Metallica - If Darkness Had a Son (live in Paris). Metallica playing a new song from 72 Seasons at the Stade de France on 19 May 2023, on the opening run of the M72 World Tour. The band were more than forty years into their career and still filling stadiums twice over.
- - Bring Me The Horizon - AmEN!. A 2023 single featuring Lil Uzi Vert and Glassjaw's Daryl Palumbo, from the POST HUMAN: NeX GEn cycle. It is the clearest statement of the band's collision of metalcore with hip-hop and pop production.
- - Knocked Loose - Suffocate. The collaboration with Poppy from You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To, released in April 2024. It became the song that carried metallic hardcore to a far wider audience.
- - Linkin Park - The Emptiness Machine. The single that announced Linkin Park's return on 5 September 2024, introducing Emily Armstrong as co-vocalist and the album From Zero. It was the band's first new music since the death of Chester Bennington in 2017.
- - Ghost - Satanized. The lead single from Skeleta, released in March 2025 under the new frontman persona Papa V Perpetua. Ghost went on to headline arenas across the Skeletour run that followed.
- - Knocked Loose headline Outbreak Fest. Knocked Loose's full headline set at Outbreak Fest in Manchester on 15 June 2025, filmed by the festival. It is a record of how large modern hardcore had become as a live draw.
- - Ghost - Lachryma on The Tonight Show. Ghost performing a song from Skeleta on The Tonight Show in July 2025. The Swedish band had spent a decade turning theatrical occult metal into a mainstream concern.
- - Knocked Loose - Hive Mind. A 2026 single pairing the Kentucky hardcore band with rapper Denzel Curry. It continues the run of crossover collaborations that pulled Knocked Loose out of the hardcore underground.
