10 Most Important Metal Bands Of All Time
3. Metallica
Metallica are one of the few metal bands that seem to defy the genre. From the first time they came through on Kill Em All, James Hetfield and co. have done everything they can to expand upon the thrash sound they helped create. Not every release by these guys has been perfect, but it's impossible to downplay how much influence they had on the metal community.
From the get go, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich came together for the pure love of making music, which has continued throughout the course of their career. Though Ulrich tends to get a bit of a raw deal for being the business side of the band, the amount of punch he had in his prime made every drummer want to pick up a double bass drum. On the other side of things, Hetfield's rhythm guitar is almost superhuman given the intense speeds he has to play at to keep the metal assault going forward.
Even when the band scaled it back a touch on albums like their self-titled and Load and Reload, every one of the tunes still had that trademark heaviness that most bands can only dream of achieving. Metallica may not have been the first heavy metal band, but they were instrumental in bringing metal music to the rock mainstream.