10 Perfect Albums That Started Heavy Metal

For as much as Alice Cooper was macabre both on and off the stage, you could tell that it was an act half the time. There may have been urban legends of him feasting on the flesh of the innocent, but there's only so much you can do when you can be invited onto talk shows and then change the minute that you put some eye shadow on your face. Alice was a decent start, but KISS took the idea of shocking to a much bigger level.

Then again, the first handful of KISS albums tend to be more in line with hard rock than heavy metal, having the same tropes that you would find in a meat and potatoes rock band like Grand Funk Railroad, only with wild painted faces. Hotter Than Hell is where they started to discover their dark side though, recording in Los Angeles rather than New York and having some of the most sludgy production of their career at the time. Even though some fans claim that the production hurt the record, it actually just enhances the implied sliminess of some songs, with the ballad Goin Blind suiting the Demon persona of Gene Simmons a lot better with the blown out speakers.

Ace Frehley really is the MVP on this record though, coming into his own as a songwriter with riffs that would go on to be staples of the metal community, from the bad boy swagger of Parasite to the dark dirge behind the album closer Strange Ways. We were still firmly on rock and roll territory, but the tides were slowly starting to turn towards something heavier.