76. System Of A Down – Chop Suey! (Toxicity, 2000)
‘Wake up / Grab a brush and put a little make-up…’ More than 20 years after its release, Chop Suey!’s head-scratching opening mosh call is as deranged and cryptic as ever. By 2001, nu metal had become safe, formulaic, repetitive. By contrast, System Of A Down were surreal and viscerally, radically political.
Their most indelible song proved nu metal could be twisted into new shapes… and that downright weirdness could cut through the noise. Chop Suey!, the lead single from their second album, Toxicity, was an instant MTV hit, turning System into a megawatt, arena-headlining band – and one that wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power (Serj Tankian’s essay, Understanding Oil, criticising US political interests in the Middle East, caused an inordinate amount of trouble for System post 9/11).
Chop Suey!’s enduring power remains – it’s clocked up 1.3 billion views on YouTube and 1.2 billion streams on Spotify – proof that weirdness can sometimes win. DL
77. Opeth – The Drapery Falls (Blackwater Park, 2001)
The Drapery Falls was the sound of death metal’s boundaries breaking. Though the genre had grown increasingly experimental throughout the 90s – thanks to the likes of Atheist, Death and even Opeth themselves – this song hoisted it completely out of blastbeating hellscapes and into densely textured excellence.
The fourth song on the Swedes’ breakthrough LP Blackwater Park is as much an acoustic meander as an all-gunsblazing attack, its 11 minutes weaving through brutality and bittersweetness, metal and folk. As a result, The Drapery Falls and Blackwater Park courted acclaim not just from diehard metalheads, but prog connoisseurs and old-school rock aficionados alike – no one had heard anything quite as meticulously honed yet accessible as what Opeth conjured up here. MM
78. Converge – Concubine (Jane Doe, 2001)
At the turn of the millennium, Converge were a well-respected but ultimately underground hardcore band from the fertile Boston scene. There was no warning they were about to raise the bar for the genre, but when Jane Doe arrived the following year, they did exactly that.
Bringing together new sounds, ideas and visuals to the world of metallic hardcore, this was a lacerating noise driven by heartache and emotional carnage. Opener Concubine captured more pain, rage and chaos in its one minute and 19 second running time than most bands did in their entire career, helping turn Converge into standard-bearers for a new type of hardcore – one that wore its pain, hurt and frustration as clearly as the ink on its arms. SH
79. Mastodon – March Of The Fire Ants (Remission, 2002)
Watching an unknown Mastodon open for High On Fire at Camden Underworld in summer 2003 was one of those rare moments of transcendent wonder. Everyone was flayed to the wall by the sheer force erupting off the stage, but this big gun was the most devastating volley of all.
Although a slower, more tuneful groove than the rest of their debut album, Remission, every quirk of March Of The Fire Ants’ body-buckling prog-sludge hypnosis raised the heat in the room, an experience increasingly replicated in fervid sweatboxes all over the world. Result: sludge bands got proggier, prog bands got sludgier, a wave of inspired new artists emerged circa 2002-5 (Baroness, Kylesa and Black Tusk from Mastodon’s home state of Georgia, plus Oregon’s Red Fang and Florida’s Torche), and the drop-A tuning started turning up more in metal songs. CC
80. Killswitch Engage – My Last Serenade (Alive Or Just Breathing, 2002)
In 2002, metal needed a new set of heroes. While nu metal’s success was inarguable, it had stifled the creativity of the scene as a whole, funnelling it down a narrow channel towards a predictable-sounding end point. My Last Serenade would change all that.
Appearing on Killswitch Engage’s second album, 2002’s Alive Or Just Breathing, it suggested that something new was brewing just outside metal’s nu metal-saturated mainstream. My Last Serenade became a flagship anthem not just for KSE, and but for the emerging wave of US bands collected together under the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal umbrella. Two decades later, metalcore still thrives in various guises, having usurped other forms as the base component of much popular metal. PH
![Killswitch Engage - My Last Serenade [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/OoQrwKJtv_c/maxresdefault.jpg)
81. Evanescence – Bring Me To Life (Fallen, 2003)
Evanescence’s debut single, Bring Me To Life, turned vocalist Amy Lee into a megastar. Arriving in 2003, when mainstream music was dominated by hyper-masculine men and overly sexualised pop stars, with her billowing long skirts, corset tops, arm socks and steely self-confidence, Amy redefined what a female artist could be, becoming a role model for millions of misfits and dreamers everywhere.
Despite its crunchy guitars and a rapped verse, courtesy of 12 Stones’ Paul McCoy – which Amy has since said she was forced to add by their label – Bring Me To Life’s cobwebby, goth fragility also brought something fresh to nu metal’s dick-swinging party, extending the mainstream’s flirtation with the genre for a little longer – as of 2019, it’s sold more than 3 million copies and has passed more than a billion streams on YouTube and Spotify. DL
82. Arch Enemy – We Will Rise (Anthems Of Rebellion, 2003)
We Will Rise was a huge song, not only for Arch Enemy but for the new generation of 21st-century melodic death metal they spearheaded. Guitarist Michael Amott had already laid down the melodeath blueprints with Carcass, while Arch Enemy themselves had already made three albums with singer Johan Liiva, but neither they nor anyone else had made an anthem quite like this.
As well as propelling the genre as a whole to greater heights and popularity, it provided a bigger platform for Angela Gossow – a hugely influential figure and one of the first prominent female vocalists to not only try but absolutely nail an extreme metal style. “Her emergence as a metal vocalist was, without hyperbole, revolutionary,” Svalbard’s Serena Cherry told us recently, and we’re not arguing. PT
83. Avenged Sevenfold – Unholy Confessions (Waking The Fallen, 2003)
As metalcore usurped nu metal as heavy music’s dominant force, Avenged wasted no time in laying bare their grand ambitions. Jamming in twin guitar leads, harmonised vocals and Dimebag-sized grooves, Unholy Confessions gave the Orange County gang their breakthrough moment and injected metalcore with some much-needed heavy metal thunder.
Impressive, given that the band didn’t even write the song together. “We all wrote in separate rooms,” revealed M. Shadows years later. “It’s kind of like our Hit The Lights. There’s no science behind it, it’s just what we do!”
The band are a little dismissive – “I wouldn’t say it’s a well-written song,” confessed the frontman - but make no mistake about it: Unholy Confessions put Avenged Sevenfold on the map, and the future of metal in their hands. MA
84. Nightwish – Nemo (Once, 2004)
Nightwish didn’t invent symphonic metal, but alongside peers Within Temptation and Epica, they popularised it and packaged it to the masses. By 2004, the Finns had already established themselves as a major player in Europe, but with the sumptuous Nemo, they broke through on an unprecedented level.
No longer a niche concern in the geeky corners of the metal world, symphonic metal, in all its lavish, overwrought glory revelled under a global spotlight. Nemo’s fantastical magic, sparkling piano refrain and stirring melody has endured – it’s still the band’s best-known song – but its lasting image comes via its gothic music video, and then-singer Tarja Turunen singing in the snow in a blood-red coat. Nemo showed metal at its most fragile and beautiful. DL
85. Trivium – Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr (Ascendancy, 2005)
It seems like metal has been searching for the ‘New Metallica’ ever since Metallica released Kill ’Em All. When Trivium released their second album, Ascendancy, in 2005, these young Florida metalheads had a valid claim to the title. This was the sound of a superstar metal band being born, exemplified by the album’s lead single, Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr.
Melding vintage thrash riffs, huge arena rock hooks and metallic hardcore across five perfect minutes, its mix of classic and contemporary won over old school cynics and turned a whole new generation of kids into diehard metal fans. Their performance of the song at Download in 2005 also created one of the most iconic metal moments of the 21st century. SH
![Trivium - Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/d0dD59FYxJ4/maxresdefault.jpg)
86. Alcest – Le Secret (Le Secret, 2005)
When black metal masters such as Darkthrone, Emperor and Mayhem were pushing heavy music to new extremes, the idea of the genre gelling with shoegaze would have seemed laughable. Yet in 2005, Stéphane ‘Neige’ Paut used Alcest to pull the atmospheric side of metal’s most satanic style to the forefront, having been influenced equally by Cradle Of Filth and Slowdive.
Le Secret, the title track of the French band’s first EP, spent 13 minutes offsetting metallic aggression with lush-sounding relief. Though the recording was incredibly raw, it built a contrast that Alcest perfected on 2010 masterpiece Écailles De Lune. Deafheaven later brought blackgaze to broader American audiences with 2013 standout Sunbather, but diehards know the sound was truly born deep in the south of France. MM
87. Bullet For My Valentine – Four Words (To Choke Upon) (The Poison, 2005)
With Killswitch, Avenged, Trivium et al continuing the US dominance of 21st century metal, it felt like the UK was long overdue a clap back at our Stateside cousins. That clap back came courtesy of a former nu metal group from Bridgend, South Wales who once laboured under the unfortunate name Jeff Killed John.
With 4 Words, Bullet For My Valentine officially announced themselves as the biggest British metal band in a generation. One of the first songs the band wrote under their new name, the track captured Matt Tuck’s growing frustrations at failing to make headway in the music industry - “It was having that moment to say to people that doubted us and hated us, ‘Look at me now!’” the frontman told Rock Sound. A ripping, polished heavy metal anthem, it ensured the UK was finally back at the races. MA
88. Dragonforce – Through The Fire And Flames (Inhuman Rampage, 2005)
European power metal had already produced plenty of Earth-shattering anthems by 2005, but what Dragonforce did here was to distil all the genre’s magic and madness, winch it to its dizziest pinnacle, then put it in more ears than anyone ever imagined (a quarter-billion downloads and counting).
Three years earlier they were supporting Virgin Steele at a half-full Camden Underworld, but when this platinum-selling single was rolled out across the Guitar Hero franchise, Dragonforce exploded the horizons of countless unsuspecting youths worldwide. A million metal seeds were planted, coming to fruition a decade later with an ascendant crop of hyperskilled virtuosos, literally schooled in the intricacies of this song. CC
89. Meshuggah – Bleed (Obzen, 2008)
It’s difficult to narrow down which of Meshuggah’s songs was most responsible for causing noticeably seismic shifts in the world of metal. Meshuggah had turned thrash upside down with Contradictions Collapse, had created their own polyrhythmic universe on Destroy Erase Improve, and started the whole djent thing along the way.
By the time Bleed appeared, the band were already existing in their own stratosphere with at least 20 songs that had already altered the course of extreme music. Bleed’s subtle, slithering melody chromatically slinking in the background snake-charmed punters and gave the song a wavy sensibility that thousands of copycat bands have yet to figure out. Bleed gave soul to the machine. KSP
90. The Devil’s Blood – River Of Gold (Come Reap, 2008)
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Winston Churchill famously once said. Drawing influence from the stranger corners of occult rock – Coven, Black Widow and Jacula – and attaching it to the likes of Mercyful Fate and various stops along Iron Maiden’s discography, Dutch magicians The Devil’s Blood took those words to heart.
The result was River Of Gold. The second track on their debut EP, its galloping riff, propulsive bass and soaring vocals opened the floodgates for a torrent of esoterically inclined retro rock, making it cool for the likes of Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats, Lucifer, Blood Ceremony and Tribulation to dust off their vintage clothes and copies of the Necronomicon as old metal was shifted towards fantastical new(-ish) realms. KSP
![The Devil's Blood - River Of Gold [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/5-N7rq4ih4I/maxresdefault.jpg)
91. Tesseract – Concealing Fate (Concealing Fate, 2010)
As opening statements go, few come more audacious than Tesseract’s Concealing Fate. First released as an EP in 2010, and later appearing as the fulcrum of the band’s debut 2011 album, One, the track was the progressive metallers’ first official release and landed as a perfectly realised statement of intent – all six parts and 27 minutes of it.
Meticulously crafted and mathematically complex, muscular and beefy, yet majestically melodic, Concealing Fate gave a new generation of tech metal fans their own heavyweight to rally behind, alongside luminaries Meshuggah, Textures and Sikth.
It’s a sound that has confirmed Tesseract as one of the most influential bands of the last decade. The ambition, creativity and genrebleeding tech they pioneered with Concealing Fate can be heard in the very bones of metal right across the spectrum, rippling through the juddering riffs of everyone from Architects to Northlane, Spiritbox to Sleep Token. DL
92. Watain – Malfeitor (Lawless Darkness, 2010)
No one really expected black metal to win back the notoriety it cultivated during the early and mid-90s, yet Watain reignited the sense of danger that surrounded it. Under the visionary leadership of Erik Danielsson, they asserted the genre as both ceremonial exhibition and all-encompassing outlaw lifestyle, giving the underground renewed conviction in the power of Satan, blood and rock’n’roll.
Crucially, with Malfeitor they also made it utterly catchy, turning in a latter-day black metal classic that gallops like it’s a 1980s Maiden standard. They won a Swedish Grammi for parent album Lawless Darkness, laying the groundwork for black metal to enter its fourth decade against all the odds. PH
93. Bring Me The Horizon – Shadow Moses (Sempiternal, 2013)
More than a decade after its release, Bring Me The Horizon’s fourth album still casts a long shadow. Spawning a ridiculous number of copyists, it split metalcore into two distinct eras: pre-Sempiternal and post-Sempiternal.
Its influence can be heard everywhere, from the juddering grooves of Architects to Bad Omens’ melodic fire. Shadow Moses, the album’s lead single, was a revelation, incorporating a gargantuan riff with a flood of emotion and electronics in a way that had never been done before, all the while staying true to the grit and aggression of the genre - a sound so omnipresent, it’s now part of the very fabric of modern metal. Today it remains the gold standard for metalcore, and sounds just as fresh as the day it first landed. DL
94. Wardruna – Helvegen (Runaljod – Yggdrasil, 2013)
With Helvegen, Wardruna paved the way for a whole array of musical acts occupying that strange realm where metal and dark, primal folk overlap. Contemporaries Heilung, hybrid black metal project Myrkur, and relative newcomers like Kati Rán and Suldusk have all followed in their footsteps to some extent.
A lot of metal bands have played with folk themes and motifs, but Helvegen took things to a far deeper, more elemental and emotionally resonant space, with a ritualistic feel and the meters of Old Norse poetry. It’s also worth celebrating the fact that the progressive Wardruna, are reclaiming the runic symbols and Nordic mythology that had been co-opted by the darkest corners of the metal and neo-folk scenes, as well as neo-Nazis worldwide. PT
95. Babymetal – Gimme Chocolate!! (Babymetal, 2014)
If elitists were tearing their hair out at the likes of Ghost, Bring Me The Horizon and Limp Bizkit being considered ‘metal’, then they might as well have just reached for the clippers for this one. The sight of three young Japanese girls rocking choreographed moves and singing sugary-sweet, J-pop-infused choruses about chocolate over heavy metal riffs was as shocking as it was delightful.
Babymetal hadn’t just broken the mould for metal, either; they’d given the West a fuller glimpse into the uniquely Japanese phenomenon of idol culture, and given the cutesy world of Kawaii a bigger global platform than ever. Overseen by band mastermind and producer extraordinaire, Key ‘Kobametal’ Kobayashi, Babymetal were unlike anything our world had seen before: equal parts hyper-polished girl band and full-on heavy metal experience, with their mysterious Kami Band backing musicians as formidable as any ‘proper’ metal band you could name.
Cynics moaned, but with the likes of Rob Halford, Metallica and Corey Taylor throwing in their support, the trio quickly transcended their ‘gimmick’ tag to become a legitimate force in the modern metal landscape. MA
96. Power Trip – Executioner’s Tax (Swing Of The Axe) (Nightmare Logic, 2017)
Power Trip were latecomers to the 2000s thrash metal revival, not debuting until 2013. But unlike such jokey recent forebears as Municipal Waste and Evile, they were deadly serious – and never more so than on Executioner’s Tax, a song that made thrash sound relevant all over again.
Here, the Texans eschewed the double-bass drumming and guitar acrobatics often associated with their genre, instead favouring a stomping groove and one hell of a hook: ‘Swing of the axe!’ Power Trip became a legitimate force as a result, though their rise was halted by the death of frontman Riley Gale in 2020. The outpouring of grief that followed, as well as tributes from everyone from Ice-T and Randy Blythe to Code Orange and Knocked Loose, showed what an impact they had made in such a short time. MM
97. Architects – Doomsday (Holy Hell, 2018)
After the death of guitarist Tom Searle in 2016, Architects poured every drop of their hurt, anger and confusion into their eighth album, Holy Hell. Gut-punching lead single Doomsday was the song to take them into their future, and it perfectly captured the sound of a band reeling from their pain, and the unforgiving, cruel nature of grief.
By embracing melodic maturity and a newfound production polish alongside the juddering grooves that had characterised their music, Doomsday became a template for other bands to follow – notably Wage War, whose song Low wore its influence. In a bittersweet twist, it would end up being the track that would transform Architects into arena headliners, playing Wembley Arena in 2019, proving there was life after tragedy. DL
98. Ghost – Mary On A Cross (Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic, 2019)
Ghost were already one of the biggest things in modern metal by the time this cut from their 2019 Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic EP went supernova on social media, but Mary On A Cross’s unlikely viral success finally brought them to the mainstream audience that band mastermind Tobias Forge had been courting for years.
A warm, woozy waltz of a track, its anthemic, earwormy chorus bewitched a whole new demographic of fans, enabling Ghost to be the first clear example of a band from our world to have finally (if somewhat accidentally) broken into TikTok’s unique, career-making music ecosystem. Not that anyone is entirely sure what the song is actually about. “There are multiple layers in the lyrics that it might be important for people to understand,” offered Tobias cryptically. Awesome, so that solves that, then. MA
99. Spiritbox – Holy Roller (Eternal Blue, 2022)
Spiritbox were already firmly established as Ones To Watch by the time Holy Roller, the first single from Eternal Blue, exploded like a hand grenade in the summer of 2020. Once those first, colossal riffs rang out, however, it was clear that the Canadian troupe hadn’t just levelled up considerably – they had successfully repositioned themselves as one of the most exciting and vital bands of their generation.
Backed by a memorable video inspired by Ari Aster’s disturbing Midsommar movie, Holy Roller was the perfect crystallisation of the last decade-plus of evolution in metal, packing djent, metalcore, nu metal and more into a massively crushing (but seriously catchy!) three minutes. “This song was never intended to be a single,” explained vocalist Courtney LaPlante later. “Our mission statement was, ‘Let’s make the most ridiculous song that we can.’” MA
100. Sleep Token – The Summoning (Take Me Back To Eden, 2023)
At the start of 2023, mysterious masked band Sleep Token were one of the metal underground’s buzziest names. The Summoning turned them into an Earth-conquering, expectation-shattering phenomenon.
Veering between depraved tech metal, soulful vocals and shimmering electronics, an enormous, hymnal chorus gave way to an Earth-shifting breakdown and screams. Intricate and groove-heavy, The Summoning was more like three songs seamlessly crafted into one genre-fluid modern masterpiece. And it still had its trump card to play: a bendy, thirst-trap, funk outro that went viral on TikTok, turning the internet into a lusty puddle. Suddenly, Sleep Token were the most talked-about band on the planet.
Today, Sleep Token are being mentioned in the same breath as potential future Download headliners Ghost, Gojira and Architects. The only difference? Sleep Token have managed to ascend to the same level as those bands in a fraction of the time. DL
