10 Hardest Drumming Songs In Hard Rock

Every genre of heavy music seemed like it was inching closer and closer to speed metal in the early '80s. Looking back on the treasure trove of bands coming out of the woodwork, it isn't exactly hard to see how something like Iron Maiden turned into the likes of Metallica and Megadeth just a few years down the line. If you wanted to pinpoint an exact moment of change in the drums, the primal stomp of Overkill certainly is a start.

Up until this point, Motorhead were already known as a balls to the wall rock and roll band, what with Lemmy's odes to the road and the reckless lifestyle that comes with being a traveling musician. Once they went in to track their next record though, Phil Taylor's insane practicing of his double bass pedals sparked a new idea, leading to the rest of the guys building the song around that manic drum beat.

Not only is this track an endurance test unto itself, but it also became the lynchpin for the machine gun kick drum patterns that came just a few years later, with Lars Ulrich citing it as the reason why he decided to pick the drums in the first place. While something like that may have been a bit of a mixed blessing in retrospect, this is the kind of feral energy that you can't escape once you hear it for the first time.