10 Perfect Metal Albums With No Bad Songs

When Judas Priest were first cutting their teeth in the rock scene, metal didn't really have a face yet. Although acts like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were certainly making some heavy music for the time, it took Priest to actually turn it into a style of music, with Rob Halford adopting the denim and leather uniform of the genre and writing long exercises of metal decadence. Just as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was about to sweep over the land though, British Steel turned the entire genre into a household name.

Recorded in Ringo Starr's house, there's a certain level of class that comes with British Steel, with the band writing some of the most straightforward metal music you would ever hear. Though there are a few lighter cuts in the track listing like United that float more towards hard rock than metal, the real gems on the project are where the band embrace the heaviness, whether that's the pop flavored energy of Breaking the Law or when they make the percussion sound like robots marching across the land on Metal Gods.

With the thrash scene gaining traction around the same time, this would become the gold standard of what metal could be for the next few years, as Rob became the archetype frontman with his trademark shriek above the soaring lead work of Glenn Tipton and KK Downing. Heavy metal may have seemed like a dirty genre most of the time, but when it cleaned up like this, there were still quality songwriters underneath everything.