Your top 5 metal songs

1. Rime of the Ancient Mariner
It has epicness, strong in your face intro, beautiful melodies and solis, great arangments, vocals are so dramatic and outstanding, Maiden and metal masterpiece!

2. Holy Wars
Ultimate intro!!!! Best metal riff! Bass, guitar and drums are so melodic and coherent, great blend of agression, melody, progressive arangments and great songwriting.

3. Metropolis pt.1
Ultimate DT song, progressive metal masterpiece with great blend of mainstream and heavy aproach.

This is only 3 which are always there!
 
Holy Wars - the Punishment Due. Megadeth
Wasted Years. Maiden
The Sinner. Priest
Overture/The Temples Of Syrinx. Rush
Symptom of the Universe. Black Sabbath
 
I won't pick more than one song from each band. Maiden would probably have three of the top five. At least.

1. Hallowed Be Thy Name - Iron Maiden

The best song ever written. It's mindblowing. How the hell can a person write stuff like this?

2. Roads to Madness - Queensrÿche

Back when Queensrÿche were bursting with creativity, and when Geoff Tate had a voice only Bruce Dickinson rivalled, they wrote this masterpiece.

3. Stargazer - Rainbow

Dio and Blackmore both on top of their game gave us this gem. The solo is one of the best ever.

4. Master of Puppets - Metallica

This is Metallica's best song, with amazing riffs and two brilliant guitar solos. The calm part in the middle of the song is beautiful.

5. UFO - Love to Love

Such a beautiful song. I love the guitar playing on this one. The solo is great, the rhytm he plays during the intro is great, everything about this song is great.
 
I have to pick 2 songs for this 5 hugely influential bands I really love (in no particular order):

Judas Priest: Painkiller/ Hell Bent For Leather
Devin Townsend: Namaste/ Almost Again
Rosetta: TMA 3/ Red In Tooth And Claw
Paradise Lost: Encantment/ One Second
Iron Maiden: Aces High/ Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

(Have to drop Sabbath, Cynic and Cult Of Luna but honorable mention nonetheless)

... but if I had to show someone totally new to metal what the whole thing was about it would be a compilation with these 20 songs:

1. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath: "See man? this is how it all began..." (Heavy, Doom, Blues)
2. Judas Priest - Dissident Aggressor: "... then these guys came along with an aditional guitar and a zeppelinesque vocal style and defined it." (Heavy/ Power Metal)
3. Rush - Cygnus X-1 Book II Hemispheres: "Remember what prog bands were playing back in the turn of the 60's to the 70's? Apply a bit of sabbath to it" (Prog Metal)
4. Motorhead - Overkill: "Dirtier, faster and more aggressive than anything ever made" (Heavy Metal, Punk Metal)
5. Iron Maiden - Phantom Of The Opera: "Speaking of dual guitars... this is the biggest band in the genre. Quite unique sound signature" (NWOBHM, Maiden Sound)
6- Metallica - Fight Fire With Fire (or Megadeth - My Last Words): "Based on the NWOBHM with a much faster tempo and aggressive guitars" (Speed/Thrash Metal)
7- Celtic Frost - Procreation Of The Wicked: "This guys came from out of nowhere with the darkest and most evil sound one could imagine. Heavy and eerie as hell" (Dark, proto Black Metal)
8- Bathory - Total Destruction: "Northern Mythology or Satanism themed, croaked vocals, and also heavy, dark and fast as hell" (Black Metal)
9. Slayer - Angel Of Death: "Take speed/thrash and redefine the notion of the words heavy and fast" (Thrash Metal, proto Death Metal)
10. Suicidal Tendencies - Subliminal (or S.O.D. - Milk): "By this time some guys started mixing Thrash with Hard Core - Punk" (Crossover/ Thrash Core)
11. Death - Leprosy "Then things started getting a bit heavier, faster with growling vocals..." (Death Metal)
12. Terrorizer - After World Obliteration (or Napalm Death - Instinct Of Survival): "... ok, here it gets way heavier with blast beats all over and a punk groove" (Grind Core)
13. Godflesh - Like Rats: "Samplers, Drum Machines and metal with a factory like ambiance" (Industrial Metal)
14. Pantera - Cowboys From Hell: "a bit similar to thrash but at a slower tempo, full of harmonics, slides and pulls" (Groove Metal)
15- Cathedral - Frozen Rapture: "Slow tempo as slow can get, with crunchy guitars and growling vocals. No happy tunes here." (Doom Death)
16. Paradise Lost - Christendom "Get a couple of metal infused riffs, Female Vocals, keyboards, a Goth rock influenced lead guitar and of you go!" (Gothic Metal)
17. Clawfinger - The Truth: "Hey! Who would say Metal and Rap would ever mingle?" (Rap Metal)
18- Korn - ADIDAS :"Downtune your guitars, alternate the vocals between screaming and moanings and if it's the late 1990's you would get rich easily :p" (Nu Metal... yuck!)
19- Neurosis - To Crawl Under One's Skin: "Weird, dissonant and depressive long compositions featuring sludgy guitars and walls of sound" (Post Metal/ Sludge)
20- Meshuggah - Future Breed Machine: "Complex structures, thrashy guitar riffs in bursts with intricate tempos and a slight prog feeling underneath" (Djent/Extreme Prog Metal/ ... whatever you wanna call it)
 
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At the moment, in no particular order:

Bruce Dickinson - No Way Out... to be Continued
Dark Tranquillity - Punish My Heaven
Iron Maiden - No Prayer for the Dying
Death - Flesh and the Power It Holds
Annihilator - Brain Dance

If you don't know them, Death is one of the most influental (surprise, surprise) death metal bands. They started out as pretty straight-forward death but over time evolved into something more melodic and progressive (much to the chagrin of all those death metal purists). Definitely a band worth checking out.

I don't really know what Annihilator are like - Freaky sent me this song (along with another one that's not quite as good) and it's absolutely brilliant, but I haven't explored their music any further yet.

Great Picks here:
Punish My Heaven an amazing song and The Gallery is an amazing album (altough it would be a tough choice between that one, The Dividing Line and The Emptiness From Which I Fed or even Final Resistance or The Sun Fired Blanks from other discs). Death is also a institution and although I really love Flesh and The Power It Holds my choice would be between Overactive Imagination, Lack Of Comprehension and Symbolic.
 
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Ooh, this is tough...

Iron Maiden - Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Bruce Dickinson - Chemical Wedding
Alestorm - 1741 (The Battle of Cartagena)
Death - Crystal Mountain
Ahab - Old Thunder
Sabaton - Ghost Division
Judas Priest - Hell Patrol

It's over five but I can't slim it down any...
 
1. Afterlife- Avenged Sevenfold
2. Lying from you- Linkin park
3. Washington is next- Megadeth
4. All nightmare long- Metallica
5. Hallowed be thy name- Iron Maiden
Something like this.
 
I disagree. Nu metal was trying to ride on the popularity of metal but did too many other things to actually be a part of the real deal, IMO.
 
And just to clarify - my original post was written in jest. I don't consider them to be metal (A7X straddling the line, LP merely a band that utilizes metallic riffs to create alt rock) but hey, there's a lot of room for discussion here certainly.
 
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