Top 10 Best Years in Metal Music History
The best years are when several great bands released some of their best albums and songs.
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1986
Peace Sells, Reign in Blood, Master of Puppets, Somewhere in Time, Orgasmatron, Pleasure to Kill, and The Ultimate Sin are some of the most important albums to me.
They are all top 3 albums of the respective artists and they all came out this year. Great year for metal.
Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer wrote the three greatest thrash albums that year (well, three greatest in the Big Four beside Rust in Peace).
Not only that, but Iron Maiden wrote a pretty good album as well.
Raining Blood, Angel of Death - Slayer. Master of Puppets, Welcome Home, Orion, Battery - Metallica. Peace Sells - Megadeth. Pleasure to Kill - Kreator. Merciless Death, Black Prophecies - Dark Angel, and more.
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1990
A lot of huge albums came out in this year, such as Cowboys from Hell (Pantera), Painkiller (Judas Priest), Rust in Peace (Megadeth), and Seasons in the Abyss (Slayer).
Seasons in the Abyss. Enough said.
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1988
Operation: Mindcrime, ...And Justice for All, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, South of Heaven, Leprosy, Slowly We Rot, State of Euphoria, So Far, So Good... So What!, The New Order.
Need I say more?
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1984
Maiden and Dio do it. Metallica and Manowar releases support!
Metallica and Iron Maiden made their best albums here.
1984! Metallica, Bathory, Running Wild, Slayer, Venom, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest (though DOTF is not their best work), and lots more...
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2004
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1992
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2002
Pretty good year with albums Arcturus's The Sham Mirrors and Agalloch's The Mantle.
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2001
I consider this year the revival of Thrash Metal since Thrash bands started to make good albums again.
Some even made albums among their best. This includes Slayer, Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, Testament, Death Angel reformed, and Megadeth also released an album. While it wasn't among their best, it was a huge improvement over Risk.
Slipknot's Iowa album was really good along with System of a Down's second album Toxicity and Slayer's God Hates Us All.
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1983
Slayer and Metallica made their debut albums this year, and Iron Maiden made one of their most famous albums.
On top of that, there was Bark at the Moon (Ozzy Osbourne), Holy Diver (Dio), and Melissa (Mercyful Fate).
The year of good debut albums (and more stuff).
This is the year it really all began.
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1998
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?
2020
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?
2005
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2016
2016 is a horrible year, without a doubt.
However, there's been a plethora of classic Thrash Metal bands hitting the Metal scene this year. Heck, Metallica's making a comeback after 8 years.
Megadeth, Anthrax, Testament, Metal Church, and Overkill are producing and have released new material to good chart success and critical reception. Maybe this could be the year where Thrash Metal finally makes its comeback.
Despite the events that year, good albums came along and thrash metal started to come back more.
Metallica and Megadeth both made good albums, and there were also albums from Metal Church, Anthrax, Testament, and Diamond Head.
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2003
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1982
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1989
1989 was very good for Technical Thrash Metal:
1. Annihilator - Alice in Hell (Alison Hell, Human Insecticide, Schizos Are Never Alone Parts I & II)
2. Coroner - No More Color (Die by My Hand, Tunnel of Pain, D.O.A.)
3. Dead Brain Cells aka D.B.C. - Universe (The Genesis Explosion, Estuary, Exit the Giants)
4. Watchtower - Control and Resistance (this album is a mix of progressive metal, thrash metal, and jazz fusion).
Savatage - Gutter Ballet is a huge diamond and the cornerstone of symphonic metal.
Toxik - Think This is the best tech thrash album.
Blind Guardian - Follow the Blind. Their first really good LP.
Kreator - Extreme Aggression. One of the best German Thrash albums.
Rage - Secrets in a Weird World. One of the great speed power CDs.
Gamma Ray formed.
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1995
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1991
Lack of Comprehension. Enough said.
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1970
Black Sabbath and Deep Purple released the first albums with some proto-metal songs on them.
Hard Lovin' Man by Deep Purple was the first speed metal song ever.
Black Sabbath released the first metal album ever. (Vincebus Eruptum is proto-metal.)
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1980
This website is flooded with Millennials. 1980 was THE BEST year for metal.
Without these bands, the majority of heavy metal music wouldn't even exist.
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1994
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1993
1993 was good for Melodic Death Metal. Three bands released pioneering albums with Melodic Death Metal songs: Carcass (Heartwork), Dark Tranquillity, and In Flames.
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1996
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1987
Call from the Grave - Bathory
Over the Wall - Testament
Halloween - Helloween
Caught in a Mosh - Anthrax
Hall of the Mountain King - Savatage
Zombie Ritual - Death
Nosferatu - Coroner
Shot to Hell - LÄÄZ Rockit
Deadlock - Dead Brain Cells
Killing Technology - Voivod
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2015
This should be higher. It was a great year for pretty much every subgenre.
Death Metal:
Napalm Death - Apex Predator - Easy Meat
Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction
Jungle Rot - Order Shall Prevail
Nile - What Should Not Be Unearthed
Black Metal:
Leviathan - Scar Sighted
Venom - From the Very Depths
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Marduk - Frontschwein
Enslaved - In Times
Thrash:
Slayer - Repentless
Viking - No Child Left Behind
Traditional Metal:
Ghost - Meliora
Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls
Enforcer - From Beyond
Satan - Atom by Atom
The Sword - High Country
Enforcer - From Beyond
Stoner/Sludge:
Baroness - Purple
The Sword - High Country
High on Fire - Luminiferous
Prog:
Tesseract - Polaris
Enslaved - In Times
Between the Buried and Me - Coma Ecliptic
Symphony X - Underworld
And much more.
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2006
My vote goes to 2006. Why? Well, just have a look at some of the albums we got that year:
The Ruins of Beverast - Rain Upon the Impure
Daylight Dies - Dismantling Devotion
Saturnus - Veronika Decides to Die
Insomnium - Above the Weeping World
Amon Amarth - With Oden on Our Side
Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain
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2019
