51. Helmet – In The Meantime (Meantime, 1992)
The early 90s saw plenty of bands with little or no mainstream crossover appeal getting signed in the post-Nirvana major label gold rush. One such band was New York’s Helmet, who perfected their grooving, piston-like bludgeon on the opening song of their major label debut, Meantime, in 1992.
In The Meantime enjoyed respectable success, but the song’s legacy is huge: within a couple of years, variations of guitarist Page Hamilton’s unique, drop-D tuned, staccato riffs would begin cropping up on albums by Korn, Deftones, Coal Chamber and the rest of the nascent nu metal scene. While rap-rock crossover may take much of the credit for the inspiration of that movement, every nu metal guitarist spent the 90s desperately trying (and failing) to match the sound of In The Meantime. SH
52. Kyuss – Green Machine (Blues For The Red Sun, 1992)
With this one song Kyuss put tongue to cigarette paper and prepared to roll a fat one that would be passed around a thousand stoner metal bands – slightly ironic, considering it was one of their faster tracks and the green machine in question is more about greed than weed.
There was always a punk edge to Kyuss, but that fat bottom end and distortion you could practically chew served as the jumping-off point for a slew of imitators, as well as Palm Desert offshoots including Fu Manchu and Queens Of The Stone Age. More than three decades on, the direct hit of Green Machine still resonates through stoner, doom and any other scene that cranks monumental riffs and fuzz through an overdriven amp. PT
53. Dream Theater – Pull Me Under (Images And Words, 1992)
Dream Theater weren’t the first prog metal band, but they were the one that shaped the jagged, thrashing noise that 80s outliers such as Voivod and Watchtower had pioneered into something more approachable. Where 1989’s Metallica-meets-Rush debut album When Dream And Day Unite had been a false start, follow-up Images And Words – featuring new singer James LaBrie – had its eye on the big prize.
Pull Me Under was their breakout - an eight-minute prog metal powerhouse that balanced supreme-level musical chops with nailed-on commercial sensibility (and a lyric apparently inspired by Hamlet). It may have lacked the edge of the bands that came before it, and the ones that followed, but it remains a key staging post in the development of prog metal – one that marked out the genre’s boundary lines for those that came after. DE
54. Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name (Rage Against The Machine, 1992)
The point where mixing rap and rock went from an interesting curio of an idea into a full-blown revolution. Rage Against The Machine’s incendiary anti-establishment diatribe fused huge hard rock guitars with seething, venom-laced rap bars. Its central message – ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!’, howled with righteous fury by Zack de la Rocha – became a lightning rod for would-be insurgents everywhere, propelling Rage themselves to notoriety-fuelled success.
The band might have sat somewhere to the left of Che Guevara, but this was a strangely unifying clarion call – something proven nearly two decades later, when fan power helped it steal the 2009 UK Christmas No.1 spot from whichever X Factor muppet Simon Cowell was trying to foist on us that year. SH
55. Emperor – I Am The Black Wizards (Emperor, 1993)
With inscrutably powerful lyrics by bassist Mortiis, this definitive genre classic opened Emperor’s landmark self-titled debut EP in 1993, but was held back to the penultimate spot on their first full-length album, In The Nightside Eclipse, the following year. Its haunting cadence has made it arguably Norwegian black metal’s bestloved smash hit, somehow streamlining the tempestuous blizzard of sound to produce a sublime melody for the ages.
“We wanted it to sound like a soundtrack to the most epic, violent, dark movie ever,” Ihsahn said of Emperor’s early impetus. “With our music we wanted to paint endless dark forests with a constant full moon.” All of that visionary ambition turned up here, but allied to a structural nous and a set of harmonic hooks that rendered Emperor’s abstruse philosophies more approachable - and more singable. CC
56. Type O Negative – Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All) (Bloody Kisses, 1993)
Launching a career in seductive gothic metal while sending up the whole concept, Black No.1 felt like a joke Type O were just far too good at. The advance cut from an album that consequently went platinum, it was here Pete Steele found his optimum Type O voice, emerging like a goth butterfly from a hardcore chrysalis.
No more the screaming caveman he’d been in street metal provocateurs Carnivore, this saw the frontman recast himself as a swooning love god with a killer line in dry snark, unleashing his tender vampiric croak over downright hilarious lyrics (‘She’s got a date at midnight with Nosferatu / Oh baby, Lily Munster ain’t got nothing on you’). The deadpan revelry in goth clichés, the haunted-house organ, the arch romanticism - Dani Filth and Ville Valo owe it all to Black No.1. CC
![Type O Negative - Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare -All) [HD Remaster] [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/vFwYJYl5GUQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
57. Cynic – Veil Of Maya (Veil Of Maya, 1993)
Veil Of Maya is where Cynic buzz-sawed through the tangled web of their roots. Early demos hailed them as promising Floridian death metal additions, but a year-plus of delays – at the hand of a shady UK promoter and Hurricane Andrew devastating their home state – had them return to the drawing board.
The result was metal infused with progressive rock, jazz fusion, new age, vocals that ran the gamut from synthesised robotics to 4AD wispiness, and poetic lyrics about philosophy and religion. And despite being instantly heralded as a classic in some circles, other circles weren’t as hospitable.“Everywhere we played that song, people were yelling ‘You Suck!’,” vocalist/ guitarist Paul Masvidal recalled. “Then again, we were touring with Cannibal Corpse.”
In the process of creating a blueprint for the future of prog metal, alienation was inevitable. KSP
58. Entombed – Eyemaster (Wolverine Blues, 1993)
We thought we knew what to expect from Entombed by the time of their third album, Wolverine Blues. Its predecessor, Clandestine, rendered the Swedish scene leaders’ frosty death metal more accessible than the gnarly splatter of 1990 debut Left Hand Path.
However, Eyemaster’s piercing feedback intro and the Hellraiser sample cued us into that crafty shitkicking intro, and it was evident that some priorities had shifted. These were righteous pummelling riffs and flailing beats, sure enough, the verses pure grind and guitar melodies sinister as ever, but Eyemaster flat-out rocked. With raw, stripped-back punk energy, nailed-down garage jam grooves and Fast Eddie-joins-Slayer soloing, suddenly we had a death metal rock’n’roll band. Thanks to Eyemaster’s walloping impact, soon we had loads. CC
59. Carcass – Heartwork (Heartwork, 1993)
Without Heartwork, the metal world would sound very different. You can draw a line from this song through melodic death metal bands like Amon Amarth and Arch Enemy (who were founded by Carcass guitarist Michael Amott), as well as metalcore acts such as Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall.
“With the music we try to catch the impossible: sophisticated brutality,” said guitarist Bill Steer at the time, and that formerly unachievable mix is just what they managed to bottle. Not that it was an instant success. “I didn’t meet anybody who liked it,” said Bill, noting that they were labelled sellouts. It was certainly a different vibe from 1989’s Crepitating Bowel Erosion, but time would prove their innovation to be a massively influential one. PT
60. Korn – Blind (Korn, 1994)
Nu metal had many fathers. The groundwork had already been laid with the musical cross-pollination of Faith No More, the rap-rock polemic of Rage Against The Machine, and the concrete-heavy grooves of Helmet and Prong, among others. But for all those artists, the movement as we know it was birthed with the release of Korn’s monstrous first single, Blind.
The pieces were all in place from the off. The sinister, skittering cymbals; that jagged, repeated slash of guitar and its counterpoint riff; frontman Jonathan Davis growling, ‘Are you ready?’ like an invitation to a riot – which in a way it was. The song launched Korn and a thousand follow-the-leader wannabes into the musical mainstream. PT
61. Mayhem – Freezing Moon (De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, 1994)
“Like how it looks when a thick heavy fog lies on the ground at funerals in Transylvania,” was how Euronymous described his vision for how he wanted Mayhem to sound to The Oath zine, in an interview published posthumously, after the guitarist’s murder by Burzum’s Varg Vikernes (infamously here on session bass).
Job done throughout the whole LP, but Freezing Moon stands as the apotheosis of early Mayhem’s bonechilling atmospheric power, and an all-time high for black metal songcraft at its most pungent. The 1991 recording with Dead on vocals (originally intended for an unreleased compilation) was Freezing Moon’s most influential form, dubbed recordings circulating around Norway’s underground, and turning every adolescent death metal jam band into corpsepainted overlords of a merciless new black metal empire. CC
62. Machine Head – Davidian (Burn My Eyes, 1994)
Pantera are rightly hailed as the saviours of aggressively minded heaviness in the face of grunge and alt rock, but Machine Head swiftly picked up the baton from them. The opening track from the Oakland outfit’s classic debut album, Burn My Eyes, Davidian was an instant breakthrough.
The song plugged into classic 1980s thrash – mainman Robb Flynn had been a member of Bay Area ’bangers Vio-lence, after all – but updated it for the new decade, bringing a monster groove and an unforgettable cry (‘Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast!’, prompted by the fateful Waco siege a year earlier, a standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians religious group, in which more than 80 people died).
On the back of this opening salvo, Burn My Eyes became Roadrunner Records’ fastest-selling debut album to that point, proving metal’s rock-solid foundations could weather anything. MM
![Machine Head - Davidian [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Qf0yWQzz0gM/maxresdefault.jpg)
63. At The Gates – Slaughter Of The Soul (Slaughter Of The Soul, 1995)
Rewind your mind to the mid-90s: the popularity of metal, and particularly death metal, was at a standstill, having suffered at the hand of the one-two punch of grunge and then nu metal. Sure, there was great stuff out there, but most people didn’t care to know about what was bubbling in the underground.
Once Slaughter Of The Soul started making the rounds, it became the song – and album – that cracked open a new world and turbo-boosted melodic death metal. Within half a decade, hardcore kids had picked up on it too, fusing its influence into the emergent metalcore scene and providing a jumping-off point for everyone from Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and Unearth to The Black Dahlia Murder. ‘Go!’ KSP
64. Tool – Stinkfist (Aenima, 1996)
With their first two releases – 1992’s Opiate EP and 1993’s Undertow album – Tool established themselves as a fascinating if unusual alt rock band. However, it was on their second album, Ænima, that they began to dispense with genre labels entirely. Stinkfist was their big breakthrough - musically and lyrically dark, powered by an elastic groove and Maynard James Keenan’s alternately seductive and explosive vocals, it was simultaneously hypnotic, enigmatic and, if that title is anything to go by, pervy, dominant and subversive.
A deeply unsettling stop-motion video got the song onto MTV, and suddenly the whole world’s eyes were on them – this was progressive without being prog, arty without being up its own arse, shocking without being senseless. This was metal from the brain and the gut, an idea that everyone from Sikth to Tesseract would pick up and run with. SH
65. The Prodigy – Firestarter (The Fat Of The Land, 1997)
By this time, the lines between musical genres were questionably blurred, but the idea that a group from the UK rave scene could infiltrate the metal world still seemed pretty far fetched. The Prodigy had made steps towards heavier territory from their days as a pure dance act, but no one saw just how far they would take things with Firestarter.
A tightly wound ball of big beats, squalling guitars and Keith Flint’s sneering punk rock vocals, the song showed that dance music could be every bit as hard, as confrontational, and as subversive as metal. There were some dissenting voices, but they were drowned out by those embracing The Prodigy as one of our own. SH
66. Dimmu Borgir – In Death’s Embrace (Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, 1997)
1997 was a pivotal year for black metal. Enslaved, Emperor, Arcturus, Sigh and Solefald all put out albums that stretched its sonic possibilities, but no one was prepared for the audacity of Dimmu Borgir’s third album. Newly signed to Nuclear Blast, they decided to team up with producer Peter Tägtgren at his emergent Abyss studio. The result was a huge evolutionary leap, both for the band and black metal as a whole, and the new, spacious sense of grandeur it ushered in was embodied by In Death’s Embrace.
Sweeping, cinematic and switching between different movements, its vast scope saw the album sell an initial, unheard-of 300,000 copies, enrage Dimmu’s peers, become the template for symphonic black metal and drag the entire scene from the insularity of the underground. JS
67. Rammstein – Du Hast (Sehnsucht, 1997)
In the 70s and 80s, German metal bands such as Scorpions and Accept had to play at being American or British to get noticed internationally. Rammstein were having none of it. The Berliners had spearheaded the Neue Deutsche Härte (‘New German Hardness’) movement with 1995’s German-language debut album, Herzeleid.
But it was follow-up Sehnsucht and monumental single Du Hast (a play on words – ‘You Have’ being a homophone of ‘You Hate’) that bent the rest of the world to their will. Its dancefloor-friendly, techno-industrial barrage had precedence - Slovenian provocateurs Laibach were doing this a decade earlier, and its riff had the distinct whiff of Ministry – but nobody delivered it with such ruthless, joyous efficiency as Rammstein.
Linguistic differences meant nothing – Du Hast attracted the attention of everyone from Korn (who invited them onto their Family Values tour) to the producers of The Matrix (the song featured on its soundtrack). Modern German metal had entered the conversation. DE
68. Deftones – My Own Summer (Shove It) (Around The Fur, 1997)
Following their 1995 debut album, Adrenaline, Deftones found themselves lumped in with the nascent nu metal scene. Realising the confines of the genre, the Sacramento crew made a deliberate attempt to extricate themselves from the likes of Korn on its follow-up, 1997’s Around The Fur.
Opening song and lead single My Own Summer (Shove It) did the job perfectly, showcasing an entirely new breadth of sounds and ideas, with Chino Moreno channelling his love of 80s soul-pop queen Sade on the slinky, sexy whispered verses, atop Chi Cheng’s weed-wreathed, dubby basslines. With it, Deftones had drawn up a road-map out of nu metal, one that would be subsequently followed by everyone from Far and Glassjaw to Deafheaven and Loathe. SH
![Deftones - My Own Summer (Official Music Video) [HD Remaster] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/XOzs1FehYOA/maxresdefault.jpg)
69. Refused – New Noise (The Shape Of Punk To Come, 1998)
Before they released their third album, Umeå’s Refused were a solid, if unremarkable, underground Swedish hardcore band whose members were growing frustrated by their lack of progress. The Shape Of Punk To Come was their final throw of the dice. Amid the dazzling, kaleidoscopic music, there was one moment of obvious commercial gold: New Noise, a slice of jittery, angular brilliance powered by a spidery, scratchy riff.
But despite the acclaim that greeted it in hip hardcore circles, The Shape Of Punk To Come largely continued the trend of being ignored. Soon after, Refused split with barely a whimper. But gradually, and belatedly, the unexpected started to happen: New Noise found an audience. The Shape Of Punk To Come and its most prominent song were held up as touchstones by the wave of post-hardcore and emo bands that had emerged in Refused’s absence. SH
70. Slipknot – Wait And Bleed (Slipknot, 1999)
Wait And Bleed was responsible for introducing an entire generation to a more extreme form of music, dragging metal kicking and screaming into the new millennium as it went. Nu metal had already brought heavier grooves into the mainstream, but Slipknot were always a band apart, and their self-titled debut was a chaotic ball of vitriol and hate.
Wait And Bleed was their not-so-secret weapon; a song that maintained that malignant core, but sneaked it past the lines of defence under the cover of a roughshod melody and utterly infectious hook. To some extent it can be seen as a gateway song, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and it paved the way for even heavier fare to reach a wider audience. PT
![Slipknot - Wait And Bleed [OFFICIAL VIDEO] [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/B1zCN0YhW1s/maxresdefault.jpg)
71. The Dillinger Escape Plan – 43% Burnt (Calculating Infinity, 1999)
As the 21st century approached, nu metal’s boom-and-burst dynamics were heavy music’s dominant sound. The antidote to this simplistic approach arrived in the shape of The Dillinger Escape Plan, who mashed up the technicality of death metal, the raw force of hardcore, and the speed and chaos of thrash, and took them to then-unheard extreme forms on their debut album, Calculating Infinity.
The album’s second song became DEP’s calling card: 43% Burnt. Part grindcore, part free jazz, part two-stepping beatdown, so unhinged and feral it was music that appeared to come from another universe. Not everyone could get their heads around it, but those who adored it were inspired to instigate the tech-metal and mathcore movements that came to prominence during the next decade. SH
72. Limp Bizkit – Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle) (Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water, 2000)
In a genre rammed with larger-than-life anthems, Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’ is nu metal’s blockbuster. Released in 2000, it was the song that turned a scene that was already spilling into mainstream consciousness into a full-blown tsunami. Obnoxious, lairy and entirely unsubtle, Rollin’ embedded Bizkit in 2000’s pop culture.
The track became the entrance theme for WWE wrestler The Undertaker, frontman Fred Durst went from underground menace to a cultural anti-icon dating Britney Spears and getting name-checked by Eminem, while the accompanying music video was an outrageous, big-budget splash filmed at the top of New York’s World Trade Center, complete with a dance routine we’ll all take to our graves. Twenty-four years later, there isn’t a rock dancefloor immune to its charms. DL
73. Electric Wizard – Funeralopolis (Dopethrone, 2000)
Throughout the 90s stoner metal had emerged as its own colourful scene, but it was only a matter of time until someone brought it back to the darker tenets laid out by founding fathers Black Sabbath.
Funeralopolis is a morbid inversion of Sabbath’s Into the Void, not setting off from a ruined planet but embracing its death as Jus Oborn howls: ‘Nuclear warheads ready to strike, the world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight.’ This nihilistic concoction of drugs and the occult manifested in a distortion of tone so extreme it positioned this as actively civilisation-hostile music. It made Electric Wizard the most ripped-off band in doom for the next two decades, even if they delivered it with more spite than their bastard offspring. PH
74. Within Temptation – Ice Queen (Mother Earth, 2000)
In the 90s, symphonic metal was more a glittering garnish than a scene in itself, something bands from Therion to Celtic Frost would sprinkle on their music to make it sparkle. And while the genre would start coming together into something more tangible towards the end of the decade, it wasn’t until a few years later that a song would emerge to put symphonic metal on the map.
That song was Within Temptation’s Ice Queen. A complete volte-face from the gothic doom of the Dutch metallers’ 1997 debut, Enter, it appeared on the follow-up, Mother Earth, in a flurry of lavish arrangements and fairytale histrionics. Buoyed by vocalist Sharon den Adel’s crystalline voice, it pushed metal towards a new frontier, quickly whipping up a buzz in mainland Europe. Ice Queen can take credit for being symphonic metal’s first major hit, pushing women to the forefront and influencing a brand new generation of bands. DL
75. Linkin Park – One Step Closer (Hybrid Theory, 2000)
When Linkin Park released their debut single, One Step Closer, in 2000, they pioneered a new frontier in heavy music. While much of nu metal was wired by machismo and aggression, Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington sang about anxiety, depression and abuse, and their mash-up of razor-sharp metal, electronics, rap and pop sensibilities was more revolutionary than the band were given props for at the time.
Every sound-blurring artist today, regardless of genre, owes One Step Closer a debt. In 2020, Mike Shinoda told Hammer how the track and its parent album, Hybrid Theory, broke down tribal attitudes towards music: “If you asked somebody what they were listening to they’d say, ‘Rock. I listen to hip hop. I listen to jazz.’ It wasn’t until five years later they would say, ‘Everything.’” DL
![One Step Closer [Official HD Music Video] - Linkin Park - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/4qlCC1GOwFw/maxresdefault.jpg)
