| #31 |
"Rock Bottom" UFO Phenomenon (1974) |
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| I don't remember UFO being a major player back in the late 70's when I first got into metal -- my guess is that they were more popular in their native England than here in the US. But they certainly were a great hard rock/metal band in those days (and even now, they're still going strong). Phenomenon was the band's fourth album, but the first featuring former Scorpions guitarist Michael Schenker, which surely gave the band a boost. "Rock Bottom" is one of the standout cuts from that album, with a main riff that I've always found unique and captivating. | ||
| #32 |
"Welcome To Hell" Venom Welcome To Hell (1981) |
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| Black Metal is probably most people's choice for best Venom album, but I like Welcome To Hell better, and the title track is the major reason why. It's raw, it's simplistic, it's evil ... it's Venom. | ||
| #33 |
"Arabloop" Kong Push Comes To Shove (1995) |
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| On this, their third album, Kong was really hitting their stride with their unique brand of ecletic prog instrumental metal. "Arabloop" isn't their heaviest song ever, but it's got a cool groove that I've found fascinating from the first time I heard it. | ||
| #34 |
"Monolith Of Infinity" Nigro Mantia Poetry Of Subculture (1984) |
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| As I write this, there is not yet a BNR page for this band. If (or rather, when) it comes online, it will break a cardinal rule for my site, that being the one that says I don't feature bands that don't have official releases. As it turned out, this obscure Danish band only recorded one demo, and only a three-song demo at that. But the last of those three songs is this monstrous, 12-minute epic, easily my favorite song acquired during my demo tape-trading days in the eighties. I thought they had quite an original style, but two bands that come to mind when describing them happen to also be Danish, those being Mercyful Fate and Artillery (the Artillery track at #41 bears some similarity to this song). The vocals here are understated, not terribly well sung, but also quite sparse, as this song is largely instrumental, consisting of riff after riff after crushing riff. Despite its length, the song never gets tiring since it's always changing, yet there's cohesion overall. I so wish this band had gone to at least put out an album, but it was not meant to be. | ||
| #35 |
"Oceana" The 3rd And The Mortal Tears Laid In Earth (1994) |
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| The 3rd And The Mortal may be one of the least metallic bands on this list, as their style (at least on this album) is more of a gentle atmospheric band with doom touches and wonderful soprano vocals. But there's a moodiness and darkness that many metal fans, myself definitely included, have been drawn to. "Oceana" is an absolute epic, at 18 minutes long befitting its name (think of waves washing onto a beach) and showcasing all that was great about this band. For the uninitiated, the rest of this album is of a similar vein, but their later material is noticeably different. | ||
| #36 |
"Black Messiah" Nemesis The Day Of Retribution (1982) |
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| Doom fans might remember that this band was an early incarnation of Candlemass. And in fact this song later appeared in a different form, re-recorded some six years later on the Ancient Dreams album with the title "Incarnation Of Evil". I like this version better, though -- it's classic early doom at its finest. | ||
| #37 |
"War Pigs" Black Sabbath Paranoid (1970) |
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| I've already chosen "Iron Man" from the classic Paranoid for this list, and the title track deserves to be here too, but I made my two-song-per-album limit, and so "War Pigs" gets the nod. | ||
| #38 |
"The Four Horsemen" Metallica Kill 'Em All (1983) |
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| Kill 'Em All is full of classic early thrashers, though this song (originally known as "The Mechanix" on their demo, and named as such by Dave Mustaine when he did his version with Megadeth), has a more mid-tempo main riff that I like better. | ||
| #39 |
"Don't Burn The Witch" Venom Black Metal (1982) |
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| Ah, Venom. Say what you will about those early albums featuring bad musicianship and production, they were blazing a path that both death and black metal would follow years later. Again I've picked a less obvious song to represent this album rather than, say, the title track, but I've always loved the main riff on this song. | ||
| #40 |
"Cities On Flame" Blue Oyster Cult Blue Oyster Cult (1972) |
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| Not the Cult's most popular song ("(Don't Fear) The Reaper" would take that honor), but on the strength of an unforgettable main riff, this might be one of their more metallic moments, though BOC was never about crushing heaviness. No one really sounded like this in 1972, then again few bands have ever really sounded like Blue Oyster Cult. | ||