10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Metal

Much of the founders of the metal genre were never really the ones to flaunt it all that much. Led Zeppelin had always shied away from the moniker from the very beginning, and even though Black Sabbath have been known as the true godfathers, they always claimed to be a hard rock band first before anything else. It would be sometime before metal got its real ambassadors, but Judas Priest were the first ones to really claim the title.

It takes a lot of guts to claim that sound for yourself, but British Steel was the first time that Priest arose to the peaks that they were capable of, taking all of the bombast of hard rock and taking away the blues element entirely. Outside of a few bluesy leads brought out here and there, this is what the sound of metal was going to be for years going forward, from singalong anthems like Living After Midnight to the heavier material to the deep cuts like Grinder and Metal Gods.

Even though this whole album was recorded in Ringo Starr's house, there's no real lineage back to the old days of classic rock. This was the start of the new guard of hard rock music, and this was the sacred text that made Priest the new missionaries of heavy metal.