10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Metal

At the turn of the '80s, the metal world had started to evolve into two separate camps. There was already the section of bands like Maiden and Priest that were riding high off of the momentum of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, making everything a lot heavier than what had come before. This was also coming off the glam years of rock and roll though, and bands were more than happy to introduce the melodic side of rock too.

Born and bred out of a mix of British '70s pop and hard rock, Def Leppard found a bridge between those two worlds with Pyromania, cementing them in the center of the hair metal movement that was going on half a world away in Los Angeles. With the help of producer Mutt Lange, every single song on this album was meant to be a single cut, each having a perfect balance of the metallic production with subtle hints of balladry and pop smarts thrown into the mix.

Take a song like Photograph, for example. There's a lot of distortion on those guitars and Phil Collen's lead break is good enough to be on any other metal album, but there's a chance that the chorus to that song will last on pop radio much longer than anything by the likes of Poison or Ratt. The Sunset Strip scene may have already gotten underway, but Leppard were shedding their skins for something a lot more melodic.