10 Perfect Metal Albums With No Bad Songs

When the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was first finding its feet, there was a clear line in the sand between the metalheads and the punks. Compared to what they were seeing from the likes of the Sex Pistols and the Damned, metal was more focused on the music, creating a certain type of intensity and attention to detail that made you want to headbang whenever you heard it. There was a way to combine both punk and metal together though, and Metallica made their thrash masterpiece trying to blend every genre under one roof.

Part of the reason why thrash got its name was how intense it is next to other metal genres, taking the speediness of punk to make guitars sound like machine guns whenever they come across your speakers. Having two albums already under their belt, Metallica's third outing was when they could start to spread out into different epics in the world of metal, making 8 minute exercises like the title track feel like a roller coaster ride with how many hooks it's able to cram into that time.

The secret weapon behind this record had to be Cliff Burton, who's bass playing and attention to harmony gave them a leg up on the rest of their contemporaries, including making an entire thrash metal symphony on the back half of the record like Orion. Metal might get a lot of ridicule from mainstream fans for being a little too meatheaded, but there's a good chance that some of the biggest pop acts in the world couldn't write a song like Welcome Home Sanitarium if they tried.