90s metal: A guide to the best albums

This Brazilian band had always been prepared to try new ideas, and here they found their true voice with a record that took as much from the indigenous tribal rhythms of Brazil as it did from extreme metal. And the result was stunning. Songs like Roots, Bloody Roots, Breed Apart and Ratamahatta are among the best examples of how the band took metal into exotic new areas. 

It's a shame that Max Cavalera left the band before this pioneering work came to fruition. Roots is an album of such diversity, range and acuity that it is possibly the most challenging and satisfying metal release of the decade.

Cowboys From Hell, released in 1990, may have set the tone for Pantera's influence, but Vulgar Display Of Power was arguably the band's finest moment. It had everything – and set up vocalist Phil Anselmo and co. as the natural successors to Metallica. Every song breathed menace and pungent fumes, with Mouth For War, Walk and Fucking Hostile lodged firmly among the greatest anthems of the era. 

In many ways this album is the bridge between 80s thrash and nu-metal. Did the late Dimebag ever play more storming guitar than he did here? Has Anselmo ever roared with greater impact?

Just when it seemed that thrash was never going to regenerate, along came Robert Flynn and the rest of these Bay Area mentalists, not only reviving memories of past thrash glories but also throwing down the gauntlet to those who believed this sort of thing to be passé and pasty. 

The band set a blistering pace with Old, Davidian and I'm Your God Now – one that even they themselves found tough to maintain as the decade wore down their focus. But for that brief flicker in 1994 this was state-of-the-art metal, and it marked out Machine Head as one of the most crucial bands of the 90s. It still blisters the mind.

Anthrax had made their impact as innovators in the 80s, but were sounding horribly dated by the time vocalist Joey Belladonna was fired in 1991. Desperate for some renewed cred, they brought in Armored Saint's John Bush as his replacement. And, against all the odds, came up with one of the strongest albums of their career. Modern, cohesive, brutal yet melodic, and stuffed with strong songs – Only, Room For One More, Black Lodge, Hy Pro Glo – it was the start of a glorious new era. Anthrax were the only one of the Big Four who truly adapted to the demands of the new decade.

No messing here. These unique Canadian metalheads took a further turn towards warp-factor psychedelia on this, the album that finally convinced sceptics that Voivod were among the most forward-thinking bands on the planet. 

While their cover of The Nile Song underscored the Pink Floyd influence, the band relished their experimental metal on equally good songs like Fix My Heart and Moonbeam Rider. Far removed from the electro-thrash turbulence that marked their slightly comic-book formative years, The Outer Limits became one of the most influential metal-related records of the time. 

This is where modern goth metal really started, with the dour Yorkshire band tearing up the rule book, and in the process creating a style that matched extreme metal with a darkness that was more inspired by goth-related atmospherics than by horror movies. The band's genius lay in allowing their development to take flight. Nothing here is forced, it all sound like their next evolutionary stage. The Last Time and Forever Failure probably sound so familiar today because so many other bands have copied the blueprint over the last decade. But you never beat originals, and Paradise Lost were in a league of their own in 1995.

So many regard this album as one of the reasons why Euro underground metal enjoyed a glorious period in the 1990s. The combination of ultra-heavy riffs and grinding rhythms gave these Swedes a vicious, viscous intensity that drove tracks like Under A Serpent Sun, Suicide Nation, Nausea and the title track. 

Many now regard this cult record as one of the most crucial influences on the renaissance enjoyed by extreme metal over the past few years. The twin guitars amid sheer velocity has proved to be a benchmark for the likes of Lamb Of God and Shadows Fall. This album is European Reign In Blood.

This was the debut album from the Suffolk cod-Satanists, and it immediately put Cradle Of Filth among the vanguard of the growing black metal breed. It might sound ultra-primitive, and even a little clichéd, these days, but the band were already showing a musical boldness that was to lead to even greater heights. The Forest Whispers My Name and The Black Goddess Rises were early Cradle classics, as the band combined a snarling, dark rasp with some surprising melodic touches. 

The Filth went on to achieve higher acknowledgement, and display more musical conviction.

The first all-new Slayer album of the 90s – an occasion in itself – came four years after Seasons In The Abyss. And even if it didn't have the impact of Reign In Blood or South Of Heaven, that shouldn't detract from the fact that the band were still more than capable of stomping most of the young pretenders into dust. The high pace of Killing Fields and Sex, Murder, Art are matched by the more considered approach of Dittohead. 

This is Slayer chained to the past, yet stretching out towards a more varied, dare one say mature, future. The best album from the band during a particularly patchy decade.

Never ones to bother with expectations, Metallica followed the vast success of the 'Black' album with a record that sees them trying a few different tricks. The band's long-established trademarks of heavy, epic tunfulness are still there in places, but this time, on tracks like The House That Jack Built and Bleeding Me, Metallica allow themselves the luxury of a little self-indulgence. But they could still pistol-whip – proved by Ain't My Bitch, 2x4 and King Nothing. 

Had they gone soft? No. They just knew you can't stand still – unless you're anxious to be swallowed up by the quicksand of public opinions.