10 Most Influential Hard Rock Albums
Hard Rock Doesn't Exist In a Vacuum. Here's Where They All Got It From.
Most rock stars come into the business for the art of playing music. While it might be fun to revel in the fame and attention that comes with being a successful musician, there's nothing more rewarding than actually leaving an impact on people through the power of your music. Fame goes a long way, but influence will take you even farther.
Over the years, many artists have come out with records that worked both in the moment and continued to reverberate throughout the rock pantheon. Even though these respective bands have had their fair share of hits and misses over the years, the real power behind these albums is what they meant to the next generation going forward. Compared to just making a solid collection of tunes, many up and coming artists were able to build off of these songs and make their own careers off the strength of these albums, whether it be starting a whole new genre of music or thinking about the concept of rock and roll in a completely different way.
There's no real way to predict things like this, so when they do appear in the wild, they shine that much brighter. When put against the regular run of the mill rock tunes, this is the lightning in a bottle that only comes once every generation.
10. Love it To Death - Alice Cooper
Hard rock music was known as a shocking genre by nature as the '70s started to come to fruition. After years of changing the world with folky guitars and psychedelic rock, the era of loud and distorted rock and roll was always going to ruffle a few feathers in the mainstream community. Even with the Doors and Jimi Hendrix coming before him, no other band made audiences go "what the hell was that?" quite like Alice Cooper.
Arriving on top of the charts, Love it To Death showed that this more caustic side of rock and roll could have a spot in the mainstream For his time, many were led to believe that Cooper himself was almost a demon of sorts, whose tales of mentally damaged people were going to send the youth straight to hell. While the rapture never fully set in, people started to realize just how catchy these tunes were, never sacrificing a good melody for the theatrics.
Going forward, this album became one of the foundational cornerstones of shock rock, with everyone from the outlandish punks like the Sex Pistols to the members of KISS to Marilyn Manson taking some piece of the puzzle and transforming it into their own unique fashion. At this point, the era of the rock star hero had gotten a bit stale. It was time for the villains to have their say.