Top 10 Best New Wave of British Heavy Metal Songs
You're standing at the dawn of the 1980s. Punk is on the ropes, prog is puffing on its final gasps, and disco is being bulldozed by denim and leather. Out of this glorious chaos, something loud, raw, and distinctly British crawled from the pubs and garages. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal, or NWOBHM, had arrived.NWOBHM wasn't just a genre. It was a movement. One forged in a Britain still reeling from strikes, blackouts, and Thatcherism. The youth needed something heavier, faster, angrier.
Bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Diamond Head, and Saxon didn't just turn their amps up. They rewired the whole scene. Some, like Def Leppard, cleaned up and conquered arenas. Others, like Venom, scared everyone out of theirs. Guitars got sharper. Drums got faster. Lyrics got darker. And the fans? They multiplied. Fast.
This list is all about the songs that came to define that era. The riffs that broke necks, the choruses that punched through the fog of the UK's industrial decline, the solos that made teenagers everywhere want to skip homework and start bands. You get to decide which tracks really brought the thunder.
The intro of this song reminds me so much of Child In Time by Deep Purple (3:20). I am not surprised. The NWOBHM incorporated massively and irreversibly Ritchie Blackmore's metal DNA into the metal sound. Even Black Sabbath changed radically their style and sound in 1980, accordingly. Black Sabbath also hired the most talented metal musicians discovered by Ritchie Blackmore - Dio (Rainbow) and Ian Gillan (Deep Purple) on vocals, and Cozy Powell (Rainbow) on drums.
This song encapsulates all the emotions of metal. The lyrics even paved the way for death metal.
This is one of the greatest metal riffs.
I love Run to the Hills and Breaking the Law by Judas Priest, but I read that they were criticized for being radio friendly (a radio-friendly sound is not good for metal songs). This explains why Run to the Hills and Breaking the Law are the only songs non-metal fans know, and this annoys metal fans because these bands have better songs. Just saying. Maybe The Trooper and Phantom of the Opera should be higher than Run to the Hills.
1978 - Halford at his best (his prime). One of the most mindblowing metal songs I've ever heard - music, lyrics, performance. Sad and epic. A song about suicide and the right to choose whether to live or die. Halford wrote the lyrics and dedicated the song to "Anita Bryant and all those schmucks" (she was on a major anti-gay campaign in 1977). "This is my life, this is my life. I'll decide not you. Keep the world with all its sin. It's not fit for living in."
This is not only a great epic song - it says loudly: heavy metal is classically inspired. It also means that Iron Maiden (and the NWOBHM in general) followed Ritchie Blackmore's idea of metal. Then the whole metal genre did the same.
The Newcomers
This is a NWOBHM song. Although it has a thrash metal/extreme sound, that was the thing about the NWOBHM. Bands experimented with different styles. Bands like Venom, Motörhead, and Angel Witch were just a few who experimented with Thrash/Speed.
