The Best Metal Album of Each Year Since 1970

What is the best metal album of each year since 1970? Come find out!

We’ve sifted through the best of the best from over half a century of metal, enjoying fierce debates along the way while making agonizing choices as we’re forced to choose just one representative from each year.

The way history sees it, heavy metal officially began on Feb. 13, 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath’s classic self-titled debut record. The omnipresent darkness and heaviness felt so far removed from the popular hard rock of the time, ushering in a new era of music. However, Sabbath’s riff-driven style would later catch on within the doom and stoner metal underground, while Judas Priest’s twin guitar attack and Rob Halford’s powerful high singing established the blueprint for the traditional style of metal popularized throughout much of the ’80s.

READ MORE: The ‘Big 4’ Bands of 27 Rock + Metal Subgenres

From there, thrash marked the next major evolution in metal, which later gave way to various forms of extreme metal who had been inspired by the speed and intensity of that movement.

Pantera flew the flag for commercial metal in the ’90s and brought truly heavy, aggressive sounds to the mainstream. Meanwhile, the underground continued to flourish and, with the New American Wave of Heavy Metal dominating the 2000s, genre hybridization became the standard, from metalcore to deathcore and, currently even a new era of nu-metal.

The 2010s and 2020s has been quite rich with old school revivals, technical brilliance and continued innovation, even if we’re not seeing new subgenres crop up quite as frequently as previous decades.

Below, see what we named The Best Metal Album of Each Year Since 1970, ending with the Metal Album of the Year for 2024!

PLAYLIST: Early Thrash Metal (The ’80s + ’90s)

Over 175 songs! Listen here.