20 Greatest Metal Albums Of All Time

9. Anthrax - Among The Living (1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlLn0UicWrM Sure the eighties brought us horridly bouncy pop music, shoulder pads and keytars, but it also brought an onslaught of a new kind of music that had been brewing among the angry youth - thrash metal. Anthrax was in the front of the queue back then, one of the formidable Big Four, shredding their way through four albums before the end of the decade and inspiring a generation to learn the guitar, grow their hair and scrawl pentagrams on their school desks. Four albums of savage thrash intensity, but it was the third, Among The Living, which spawned the band's most memorable moments. Diehard Anthrax fans will go on about the deeper meaning of their mosh pit classics, but we shouldn't overthink things like this - a lot of the themes here are throwaway thriller stuff or loosely bound social commentary, but we can overlook even the most clichéd nonsense when the music itself is a non-stop thrash attack like Among The Living. Joey Belladonna's vocal style may also split judgements, distinctly less aggressive that we got from Slayer and Metallica at the time, but the chest-thumping choruses and testosterone-fuelled chord progressions had us merrily cracking our skulls together regardless.