Here’s All The Metal on Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Best Albums of All Time’ List

Published on:

It’s been some time since Rolling Stone was considered an authority on heavy metal music (and some would argue that they maybe never were). The But the veteran rock magazine has recently updated their list of ‘The 500 Best Albums of All Time,’ and surprisingly, they’ve made a point of including several metal albums on it.

Overall, most metal fans will find the list a mixed bag, with mainstream rock magazine-appropriate amounts of Sade and Herbie Hancock listed thereon. There’s also a tendency to only include metal albums that were big successes or tried-and-true cultural landmarks, which means that several obvious classics — Slayer’s Reign in Bloody, Iron Maiden’s Powerslave, and White Zombie’s La Sexorcisto — are glaringly absent. That said, the fact that some of these releases are included at all means there must be at least one metal fan on Rolling Stone‘s staff.

Below are the metal albums included on the list. And before anyone begins complaining, we’ve included both albums that are obviously metal and albums that heavily informed and are loved by metal-loving audiences, so please do not blow your top because you don’t consider Rush and Van Halen ‘metal.’

453. NIN, Pretty Hate Machine

408. Motörhead, Ace of Spades

355. Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath

305. Kiss, Alive!

292. Van Halen, Van Halen

235. Metallica, The Black Album

234. Black Sabbath, Master of Reality

221. Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine

139. Black Sabbath, Paranoid

122. Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral

101. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin

97. Metallica, Master of Puppets

84. AC/DC, Back In Black

62. Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction

You can read the entire list at Rolling Stone‘s website.

***

Words by Chris Krovatin