Treble’s Top 100 Metal Albums

70. Megadeth – Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying?
(1986; Capitol)

There are very few things that can diminish just how badass Peace Sells is. That iconic bassline intro, the guitar weedily-weedlies, and then Dave Mustaine snarls, “What do you mean I don’t believe in God? I talk to him every day” like a bull before the charge. I’ve heard this song probably a hundred times in the forms of live videos, studio recordings, and even some local high school metalheads giving it a go. It works every single time, and if that’s not a testament to good songwriting, I don’t know what is. During the great thrash arms race of the ’80s, the real winners were the audience. The genre saw a ridiculous amount of legendary releases in this time period and Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? is most certainly one of them. The riffs are fast and furious and soaked in piss. Like most of Megadeth’s career, there’s a chip on their shoulder that simply elevates their music to the next level. There’s anthems, blues callbacks, breakdowns, and plenty of solos that all sound like pure celebration of the guitar itself. There’s a reason why thrash has struggled to find life in the ensuing decades, and that’s because albums like Peace Sells did such a damn good job in the first place. – Dakota Foss

69. Kyuss – Welcome to Sky Valley
(1994; Elektra)

We could spend an endless amount of time debating about what is or what is not metal, but some of it has to do with a type of no-shits-given-I’ll-pound-these-instruments-into-the-ground attitude. Kyuss conjured up countless dust storms during their career, and it could be argued that Welcome to Sky Valley hammers on the throttle harder than any other album on this list. Sky Valley became a cornerstone for adventurous music listeners, and its influence may be as massive as Funhouse. Josh Homme ended up in Queens of the Stone Age, but this is where he came from, and he once said that Kyuss wanted Sky Valley to be “like hell to play on a CD player.” This recording is invigoratingly loud (and originally released with 12 songs split into four tracks). Homme’s guitar could combat a fighter jet; Brant Bjork, his last offering with the band, slams with immense speed, cymbals crashing like car accidents; and bassist Scott Reeder sends out his share of shockwaves. Previous album Blues for the Red Sun was equally as groundbreaking, but Sky Valley expanded on Kyuss’ range within the marriage of metal and psychedelia. – Jordan J. Michael

68. In Flames – The Jester Race
(1996; Nuclear Blast)

Though opinion is divided on the relevance of In Flames’ later work in alt-metal, it is undeniable that their 1996 album The Jester Race represents a major landmark in the history of metal music. Featuring a new vocalist and drummer, In Flames opens the album with a kind of mission statement: melodic acoustic guitars on “Moonshield.” By transitioning from these accessible portions to Maiden-esque power metal to death metal, In Flames offer an early microcosm for the ambition of the album: to reconcile the more extreme strains of metal with the genre’s roots. In that sense, this probably marks In Flames’ most ambitious moment — even more so than Lunar Strain and Whoracle, which bookend it — but the outstanding execution is what cements it as their finest hour. – Connor Brown

67. Kylesa – Spiral Shadow
(2010; Season of Mist)

Why do we love metal so? Is it the muscular flow of energy every stirring riff, hammering beat and powerhouse vocal provide? Or is it the genre’s defiant temperament and willingness to grow and evolve regardless of the opinion of its fanbase or the critical masses? It’s probably a little of both and, as shown repeatedly on Kylesa’s Spiral Shadow, everything works out for the better when there are equal measures of both involved. Not only does the Savannah, Ga. band offer powerfully addicting metal, they do so while throwing the genre’s traditional band structure to the wind. With two lead vocalists/guitarists (one of them female) and a pair of dynamic percussionists sharing drumming duties, they do justice to the genre’s past while expanding upon the conversation with their pleasantly robust melodic attack. Between its thunderous mood, psychedelic tendencies and unbridled sense of adventure, Spiral Shadow not only lives up to the word ‘metal’ — it establishes a new meaning altogether. – A.T. Bossenger

66. Pig Destroyer – Phantom Limb
(2007; Relapse)

In a genre that is fundamentally confrontational and abrasive, Pig Destroyer make music that challenges even hardened fans with its abrasiveness. Make no mistake, however: the sound and the fury do signify something. Perhaps the clearest articulation of that fact is 2007’s Phantom Limb, which exceeds even Reign In Blood in the furiousness of its pace and the darkness of its subject matter. Vocalist/lyricist J.R. Hayes contributes and delivers a series of short-yet-harrowing poems (around which the songs are constructed), moving substantially beyond the base glorification of gore and instead broaching memory (“Thought Crime Spree”), emotional damages (“The Girl in the Slayer Jacket,” “Fourth Degree Burns”) and ugly truths (“Alexandria”). When, in “Loathsome,” he declares that, “this is my escape art / exhibition / and I’m never coming back,” anybody who has listened to the entirety of this album would be obliged to agree with him on all three points. Then again, if you listen to what Pig Destroyer offers, you may never come back either. – Connor Brown

65. Negură Bunget – Om
(2006; Code666)

How do you make black metal sound even more ominous and strange than the whirlwind hiss of church-burning, axe-wielding vikings already is? Conjure up the spirits of Transylvania. Romania’s Negură Bunget are an altogether terrifying group based on the sounds of their metallic symphonies, which by all rights should be beaming out of the crypts of medieval cathedrals. And yet, their masterpiece Om represented a dramatic new reinterpretation of black metal, replacing the well-worn tropes of Satan and icewinds with lyrics referencing Transylvanian history, sung in the band’s native tongue. As a musical statement, however, Om is much more compelling — atmospheric without going post-rock, symphonic without veering into new wave cheese, and eclectic while remaining true to black metal’s unholy force. This is some of the most stunningly arranged black metal in its nearly three decades of existence, from the immaculate riffs of “Fiesarul de Lumini” to the ghostly horn that opens “Inarborat.” – Jeff Terich

64. Baroness – Red Album
(2007; Relapse)

Baroness’ debut album, released back in 2007 after a series of burly and progressive sludge-metal EPs, received a warm welcome from the modern metal community, and rightfully so. Red Album is gorgeously crafted and fluid from beginning to end. Thanks to the combination of beautiful and unpredictable guitar riffs (“Isak”), isolating instrumentation (“Wailing Wintry Wind”), and fierce vocals (“O’Appalachia”), Baroness created an album of equal parts power and artistic innovation. When “Cockroach En Fleur” emerges with its finger-picking acoustic guitar, allowing a chance for respite from the epic sounds they conjure, “Wanderlust” picks up right where they left off with more progressive, sludge, doom, and more importantly, their own unique style of metal — equating to a cohesive and eclectic album as a whole. – Dan Pritchett

63. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind
(2012; Epitaph)

The Massachusetts metalcore outfit’s conscious choice to avoid all outside influences—guest performers as well as production tricks—makes their eighth album a frenetic, imposingly aggressive volume. Jacob Bannon’s vocals, ranging from tender growl to indecipherable siren, aren’t the only primal screams here; in truth, every single recorded sound is hurled at you at full volume and at full speed. From the dizzying opening seconds of “Aimless Arrow,” All We Love We Leave Behind suggests the sound of a pinned-down soldier machine-gunning all enemies lined up against him, the testosterone of every 1980s paramilitary-rescue movie gushing out of your speakers. Coming quickly on the heels of the first three songs, the bluesy bits of “Sadness Comes Home” and drum-driven march in “Empty on the Inside” don’t just represent stylistic shifts, they’re the first brief opportunities to catch your breath. It’s a studio album engineered to sound like a nonstop live show, and it probably takes about as much adrenaline for you to enjoy all 39 minutes as it did for Converge to play it. – Adam Blyweiss

62. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Calculating Infinity
(1999; Relapse)

Calculating Infinity is one of those rare albums where everything is more or less perfect. The Dillinger Escape Plan sucker punch you in the gut right away and don’t stop with the cheap shots throughout the album’s running-length, and then some. Songs stop and start in chaos theory fashion, and the boys certainly have a flair for the dramatic. In 1999, math-metal was still in its infancy, but Calculating Infinity came out of the womb fully formed. The songs are smeared with smirks and swagger; there’s almost no way that you’d be able to tell that this was band’s debut or that the genre was still inventing itself. That sense of confidence and newness makes Calculating Infinity sound every bit as refreshing and vital now as it did 15 years ago. – Dakota Foss

61. Harvey Milk – A Small Turn of Human Kindness
(2010; Hydra Head)

Harvey Milk don’t have a keen desire to conform to any one idea of what ‘metal’ is or might be. Among their influences, they list both Led Zeppelin and Leonard Cohen, and they’ve performed a set of nothing but Hank Williams covers. The Athens, Ga. act has even gone as far as covering R.E.M.’s Reckoning in its entirety, with Michael Stipe himself in attendance. But when a fan wrote a letter to the band declaring 2008’s Life… The Best Game in Town as a pop-leaning let-down, Harvey Milk took that as a personal challenge and turned up the sludgy doom as much as possible. A Small Turn of Human Kindness is a loud giant, cruising at a glacial pace, but that doesn’t mean the artistic or experimental side of Harvey Milk is abandoned here. Between the album’s distant, longing melodies and the pointedly self-focused lyrics (every song title begins with ‘I’) Harvey Milk defies many common tropes of the genre while still crafting a record that is unmistakably metal at its center. – A.T. Bossenger