10 Greatest Metal Albums Of The '00s

10. Death Magnetic - Metallica

For a band that was known as the gods of metal, the thought of a new Metallica album in the late '00s was actually triggering alarm bells for a lot of people. Since the last album St. Anger gave us all a mutual headache from the god awful production, it looked like the thrash band that we loved had disappeared and were content to release whatever audio turd they wanted to. When they got Rick Rubin behind the scenes though, Metallica actually discovered what made them so badass in the first place.

Coming after years of tinkering with their sound, this is the kind of music that most fans had been waiting for since the late '80s, with songs that felt more like events the more you listened to them. Even though you could still hear bits and pieces from the '90s hard rock side of the band, songs like All Nightmare Long and Cyanide seemed to have picked up exactly where tracks like One and Blackened left off 20 years before.

There are even callbacks to the early days in the flow of the album as well, from My Apocalypse perfectly blending their hardcore punk influences to The Day That Never Comes being one of the greatest ballads they have ever released. Metallica may have lost their way for a little while, but this was the moment where our favorite thrash band found their roots again.