10 Greatest Debut Albums In Metal
2. Van Halen - Van Halen
As metal started to find its feet, this was not a genre really concerned with having a good time. While the likes of something like Judas Priest certainly had a lot of energy to it, it's goal was more to get a rise out of you rather than make you dance. On the other side of the Atlantic though, Van Halen took the confines of metal and turned the whole thing into a great big party.
It almost feels weird putting Van Halen in the category of metal though. From start to finish, the charisma coming off of David Lee Roth is hardly on par with someone like Bruce Dickinson, and yet the instrumentation behind him is absolute chaos. Across every song on this record, Eddie Van Halen basically writes the textbook on how the electric guitar was going to be played from then on, with tapping solos and insanely fast lead licks that were as infectious as they were heavy.
For every pop-tinged smash like Jamie's Cryin, you have songs like Atomic Punk and On Fire which any sensible metalhead will find difficult not to headbang along with. Leaving a whole list of copycats in their wake, the arrival of Van Halen marked both the beginning of hair metal and the new regime of the heavier side of rock and roll.