The Ten Albums In My Metal DNA

what albums formed you most as a metalhead?

I came across a really great and thought-provoking prompt scrolling around in Twitter earlier today. It’s by J.D. Lauscher. And it runs like this:

Been giving this a lot of thought. What 10 albums are part of your metal DNA? Not necessarily your favourites, but the ones that made you the metalhead you are today.

I was tempted to reply right away, but then decided I wanted to think this over. What would that interesting analogy mean — your “metal DNA”? Lauscher provides one clear answer right there: “the [albums] that made you the metalhead you are today”.

Of course, for someone who started listening to heavy metal bands in the 1970s without realizing they were getting into that genre, and then began to consciously identify as a metalhead in his early teens in the 1980s, that’s not an easy matter to wrap your head around! I’m nearly forty years in to being a metalhead at this point. That’s a lot of albums and bands, quite a few changes of taste and appreciation, even some thoughtful reflection on what metal albums I most respond to, running through those decades.

That distinction Lauscher makes is also provocative. Not necessarily your favorites. Which doesn’t mean that they’re not your favorites. But it does hold out the possibility that there’s a difference between the albums you do consider to be your favorites and those that had the greatest lasting impact upon you.

My appreciation for what’s really solid and great in heavy metal has been augmented over the years in multiple respects. Learning to play bass at 19 and then playing a lot in my 20s helped me better understand what was going on musically in metal songs. Years of conversations in my 40s and 50s with working metal musicians interested in philosophy, that’s also deepened my understanding.

But looking back on it, I suspect that the majority of my “metal DNA” was forged in those formative teenage years. As I think about the albums that did get their hooks into me, to the extent that merely mentioning or thinking about one of their songs gets them autoplaying in my head, they’re all albums I acquired during that era — though some of them were recorded much earlier.

What are they for me? And why did each of them groove their mark into my mind, heart, and even body in some manner? Here’s my list:

Iron Maiden — Piece of Mind

This was the very first Iron Maiden album I got my hands on in late spring of 1984, prompted by the song that proved to be my threshold into heavy metal, “The Trooper”. For a number of years, it was my absolute favorite album by my absolute favorite band, so it had a massive impact upon me as a young and growing metalhead. I’ve played it so many times that each of the songs is indelibly burned into my brain. I still love it, but my favorite record by Iron Maiden over time shifted to Killers

Scorpions — Love At First Sting

I was already prepped for loving this heavy, biting, but melodic band, having heard some of their songs from the 1970s and 1980s on the hard rock stations. I’d already heard some of the new songs when a friend of mine played the whole album for me. I listened through it on a 90 minute cassette tape (with Blackout on the other side) many nights as I drifted off to sleep. As a teenager, of course, I wanted to be that guy depicted on the album cover.

Ratt — Out Of The Cellar

This was another album I got in 1984. As with “The Trooper”, I remember exactly where I was when I first heard “Round And Round. Something deep in me responded to it, and I got the album in summer of 1984. Every single song on that album is hard, gritty, groovy glam that hooks right into you each time I listen to it down to the present. It remains among my favorites and still beats out Ratt’s other albums for me. Probably doesn’t hurt that my very first make-out session had this playing in the background

Dio — Holy Diver

This is just an absolute monster of an album, compositions that feel raw and polished at the same time. Ronnie James Dio, the most powerful voice metal has ever known, as a newly minted bandleader and solo artist, weaving every element he’d developed in Rainbow and Black Sabbath within the context of the band he assembled. I bought this my first week of high school in 1984. Interestingly, although I love this one, The Last In Line replaced it as my favorite sometime down the line

Deep Purple — Perfect Strangers

In my view, this is one of the original heavy metal bands arguably at their very best. I’d heard some of their other Mark II stuff from the early 1970s, and by 1985 “Knocking At Your Back Door” and the title track were getting airplay. I bought it on cassette, and listened to it over and over during some bleak years. Like each of the albums so far, for me, every one of the songs is a solid one I’ve never skipped past.

Judas Priest — Sin After Sin

I’d already bought what was their latest and arguably heaviest release, Defenders of The Faith, by the time I saw this cassette in a bargain bin on spring break down in Florida in 1985. The contrast between the two albums was striking, but I loved and listened to them both, and as I got my hands on more and more of their albums, Sin After Sin grew upon me. I simply love a lot of their albums, but this is the one that became a metal home to me, a place I could live, with songs of beauty, poignancy, and nostalgia but also sheer metal aggression.

Metallica — Kill Em All

This wasn’t their first album I heard. That was Ride The Lightning, on a stereo down in a basement room of a friend of a friend. I remember the night I’d bought Kill Em All, me and my neighborhood buddies out there blasting it on my boombox, riding our skateboards in the fog. I learned the bass lines of every song on those first three albums. They’re all beyond excellent, but over the years, this earlier one edged out the others for me. Probably doesn’t hurt that the leather and denim crowd I ran with in high school called itself “Metal Militia” (and also Midnight Sales and Services — though that’s another story)

Motorhead — Another Perfect Day

This is one of many bands my friend Chris introduced me to, generously lending and dubbing tapes in high school. I already had gotten No Remorse and Orgasmatron from him, and became totally hooked on Motorhead. And then, in a used record store in Waukesha in the summer of 1986, I saw that amazing fire and ice cover for this album and bought it on the spot. It’s always been my favorite album of theirs, and that’s saying a lot. I could listen to this one day in, day out.

Van Halen — Fair Warning

I bought this one, along with Diver Down, at that same used record store, that same summer. Van Halen and Van Halen II were already in heavy rotation at my place and nextdoor at the Scaffidos, where me and my neighborhood buddies listened to metal, drank sodas, and skated incessantly those hot days. Diver Down is great (so is Women and Children first, for that matter), but Fair Warning is simply the best. It’s dark and dangerous, fierce and brilliant, and every song on it captured my attention then and now

Tank — Honor and Blood

I only knew one song by Tank, “Run Like Hell”, when I saw that record among the prizes for a contest at a YWCA dance I attended in Waukesha in 1986. I snatched it up, and listened to it over and over again. They’d matured from a great raw power-trio into a yet heavier quartet that somehow alternated war and violence themed songs with a classic metal cover of “Chain of Fools” and romantic songs like “Too Tired To Wait For Love” and “W.M.L.A.” without ever comprimising the heavy and hard edge. They’ve produced a number of excellent albums, but for me this remains the definitive one.

So there you have it. Those are what I can call my “ten albums in my metal DNA”. It’s a strange and subjective listing, I’m sure, but that’s bound to be the case for any of us metalheads who think this through.

What would yours be? And more importantly, why are those albums you identify in your particular metal DNA?

I’m Greg Sadler, the Heavy Metal Philosopher. I’m also the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and a producer of highly popular YouTube videos on classic and contemporary philosophy. I teach at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and offer classes to the wider public in my Study With Sadler online academy. I also produce the Sadler’s Lectures podcast and co-host the Wisdom for Life radio show