The Ten Most Metal Songs of All-Time
I was talking about metal with the owner of Apocalypse Party Press Ben DeVos the other day. For the blissfully ignorant, it’s an independent press promoting the concepts and philosophy of metal music through literature.
We were in agreement that metal isn’t just a genre of music. It’s a way of being. I get a lot of people asking me what can I possibly find enjoyable about people screaming and overwhelming decibels and every time, I answer the same thing: metal chooses you more than you choose metal. It speaks to something you already feel, like primordial vibrations coming from the Earth itself.
So what is metal exactly and how does it express itself so fiercely in music? It’s a question I sometimes suspect that I’m the only person in the universe to ever care about. So, I decided to impose it on you and rank the ten most metal songs of all-time to improve the understanding of a rather abstract concept to curious, but unsuspecting ears. Here are the criteria I used.
The song needs to provide an intuitive understanding of why it is metal. Any listener needs to feel the visceral empowerment one is supposed to feel when listening to metal.
It requires an extreme component. Whether it’s musical, philosophical, lyrical or emotional. Metal is not supposed to make you feel comfortable. At least not right away. It’s meant to shock you.
Metal is all about the anthemic riffs. The catchier and easier to hum, the better.
The emotional charge needs to be straightforward musically, but deferred lyrically. You need to feel it first and comprehend it later.
That’s what metal is to me: primal, extreme, rallying and counterintuitively emotional. So here are according to these criteria the ten most metal songs of all-time.
10) Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train
I hesitated between putting Crazy Train, Paranoid or Megadeth’s Holy Wars… The Punishment Due in tenth place because I believe the latter two are better songs, but the riff to Crazy Train elicits the strongest primal response. The emotional component of the song is a little on the nose, but it helps make Crazy Train more intuitively relatable. I'm going off the rails on a crazy train is just metaphorical enough to work.
Some of you would argue that it’s more of an arena rock song than all-out metal and there’s an argument to be made for that. But it’s so iconic in Ozzy’s already iconic catalog that it’s inevitable. Crazy Train rules and you can understand why it does under 10 seconds.
9) Korn - Blind
A more unconventional choice, I’ll admit. There’s a case to be made that the build-up to Blind is more metal than its delivery. But what a fucking build-up, right? What a tortured, primal and cinematic moment in metal. It conjures immediate images of pain and retribution. I’m not the biggest Korn guy in the universe (and I secretly enjoy Shoots & Ladders more than Blind), but there is no argument as to which one is the most metal of the two.
Although not the most extreme song on this list by a long shot, it was such a dramatic and alien shift in songwriting when it came out that it scores points on that aspect too. People didn’t know what the fuck to do with it when it came out and ended up inventing nü metal. My final choice was between either Blind or Rammstein’s Dü Hast and I ended up going with the more iconic one. Dü Hast is for normies, Blind lived on as metal lore.
8) Pantera - Walk
Arguably the most iconic Pantera song. Not their best by a long shot, but that riff. That fucking riff hits all metalhead and metalhead-to-be like a subliminal message. The chest-thumping, empowering lyrics (as are all lyrics on Vulgar Display of Power) make it even more of a rallying cry for your inner neanderthal.
Also, bonus points for being a social song for metalheads. Walk achieves its peak significance in a live setting (hence the live setting video) as a tribal chant for the initiates. It also works as a beacon for closeted metalheads when it airs on the radio.
7) Mayhem - Freezing Moon
Speaking of extreme. You can’t get more intense than Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem, but what a fucking song. It’s primal, extreme, anthemic…. emotional? Well, given that it was written by a person suffering from some legit mental health issues, it’s a little hard to decipher but being undead does FEEL emotional to Pelle. I do have an emotional attachment to Freezing Moon for it’s a song about getting a new lease on life by embracing your inner darkness.
I know Mayhem are controversial for many reasons, but you can’t deny that opening riff. That’s some unholy call to arms if I ever heard one. It took me several years to properly appreciate Freezing Moon, but hundreds of listens in, I believe it’s undeniable.
6) Metallica - One
Metallica is the only band with two entries on this list, but I don’t think anyone will argue my picks. One is all about Lars’ drum transition and the breakdown in the final part of the song. It is still today one of the most fucking metal things I’ve ever heard. It scores extremely high on the primal and anthemic criteria. Once again the storytelling is a little on the nose, but its reappropriation by the Netflix show The Punisher gave it a whole new reading.
It’s another song that’s all about patience and build-up, but it delivers a whole lot harder than Blind. It’s not the most extreme songs, but bonus points for having one of the most traumatic video to ever air at random hours for unsuspecting kids to watch.
5) Slayer - War Ensemble
Slayer are probably my favorite band of all-time, so it was difficult to choose their most metal song. It was either this one, Angel of Death or anything from God Hates Us All. But War Ensemble checks all the boxes: it’s anthemic, over-the-top angry, it feels the way a metal song is supposed to and it explores the number one emotions metalheads use music to sublimate: FUCKING ANGEEEER. But it does it responsibly through an elaborate war metaphor.
War Ensemble’s calling card is its primal appeal, though. It hits you right in the gut and works its way upwards into your chest and up your throat. It’s one of these songs that can start a much pit right away even if no one in the room knows what the fuck a mosh pit even is.
4) Megadeth - Tornado of Souls
There’s a lot of metal to choose from in Megadeth’s catalog, but Tornado of Souls is forever unassailable to me. It’s one of the riffiest songs of all-time. Being the mother of all breakup songs, it intuitively evokes more conventional feelings than metal usually does. But the fierceness and the immediacy with which it evokes these feelings is nothing short of masterful. It’s the best song to ever get resentful at your ex to.
Tornado of Souls is a little emo, but it’s also about overcoming adversity and promising to yourself to become a bigger and better person. So that’s fucking cool too. Metalheads are people too. We don’t necessarily need a black mass to overcome a breakup.
3) Meshuggah - Bleed
If you don’t like this song, you’re a fucking poseur. Sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you. Not only it features the most metal riffs written in the twenty-first century, Jens Kidman’s lyrics and vocal performance embody the very simple, but efficient feeling Bleed means to carry: pain! The lyrics are so literal and yet so visceral that anyone who’s physically or emotionally suffering can identify. It’s the second most intense song on this list, but it’s also one of the most relatable.
Bleed is intuitively understandable, extreme (it was also extremely different when it came out), RIFFY AS SHIT and emotional in its own way. It’s the total package.
2) Judas Priest - Painkiller
Painkiller is my personal most metal song ever. It elicits all the right feelings right from the first notes of that crazy drum solo. Seriously, who the fuck puts a drum solo AT THE BEGINNING OF A SONG AND MAKES IT WORK? That song is absurd. It is way too over the top to work, but it does. Painkiller is what someone who didn’t know metal in 1990 was afraid it would sound like, but in the best possible way.
Is this an emotional song? Not really, but the empowering vision of a steel warrior fucking shit up and saving humanity is so vivid that it’ll give you one.
1) Metallica - Master of Puppets
Let’s be real here: Stranger Things be damned, this has been the most metal song of all-time since 1986. Play it at a Walmart at 2PM on a Sunday and you’ll see every white man from 30 to 50 start bobbing their head and muttering the words to themselves. James Hetfield tapped into something genetic with them riffs. It’s such a good song that even millions of non-metalheadas could appreciate when it was put into a proper narrative context by Netflix.
Essentially a song about addiction, Master of Puppets can be made about inner or outer demons, depending who’s listening to it.
