10 Darkest Rock Music Albums Of The 80s

For all thrash fans, it's easy to call Metallica's catalog before the '90s a perfect run of classic metal. Even when they lost their bassist Cliff Burton, their sound continued to thrive and get heavier and heavier before hooking up with Bob Rock and toning things down for the Black Album. On that one record without Cliff though, they certainly had a lot of dark emotions to sift through.

While not necessarily a tribute to Cliff or anything, And Justice for All is a much angrier album that the rest of their output. Referring to this period as the "CNN Years," Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield looked at the evils of the world in most of these songs, whether that be calling out the justice system on the title track or sneaking a borderline environmental message on the song Blackened.

Even MTV, which was not down with thrash metal, managed to make One the most classic metal video of all time, which has one of the most disturbing visuals in video history. Think about that though...Metallica wrote a song about a man with all of his motor skills gone and left to embrace death, and actually got it to chart on MTV. You know you have some strange priorities when that's the kind of song you're pushing as your lead single.