10 Greatest Musical Duos Of ALL TIME

There's no one really debating the start of metal at this point. For most metalheads in the know, Black Sabbath was the first thought when it comes to the concept of heavy, with the scary riffs erupting from Tony Iommi's fretboard. If you want to know when metal became a household name, it all stemmed from two snot-nosed kids from the Bay Area.

Although Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield would tell you they were just copying from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the amount of firepower they created with Metallica signaled the dawn of thrash metal as we knew it, with albums like Master of Puppets becoming cornerstones in the development of the style. Aside from the underground albums, The Black Album managed to pull off the impossible by bringing their unique brand of kickass to the masses. But what makes this pair so essential to begin with?

Although the drummer-guitarist dynamic isn't necessarily all that common, James and Lars have created an almost symbiotic relationship together with the band. Whereas James writes all of the riffs, Lars works as the full arranger of the piece, making sure no section overstays their welcome and keeps pulling the audience forward with every lick. Compared to the standard riff vocabulary of their contemporaries, Metallica's style feels more closer to architecture than actual song crafting.