The Top 20 best metal albums of 1987

Three of the Big Four delivered defining albums in 1986: Metallica with Master Of Puppets, Slayer with Reign In Blood and Megadeth with Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?. In 1987, Anthrax weighed in with what drummer Charlie Benante called their “signature album”.

Among The Living was their breakthrough, hitting the UK Top 20, and it stands tall as a thrash classic. The album thrums with a fierce energy, a combination of breakneck speed and heavy grind proving brutally effective in the title track, Caught In A Mosh and the Judge Dredd-inspired I Am The Law. And in Indians, Anthrax had their Run To The Hills.

Bathory were the band that took Venom’s original black metal blueprint and pushed to its logical conclusion, cementing the Scandinavian style of demonic vocals, furious icy riffs and simple, unrelenting percussion in the process. So why so late in the list? Well ’84’s self-titled debut and ’85’s The Return album are certainly more seminal works, but this third album is arguably the musical highpoint, and its hugely influential use of cold, intense and hypnotic repetition remains extremely effective.

Dedicated purveyors of doom metal since 1984, Leif Edling’s seminal crew were paying tribute to Black Sabbath long before the stoner and doom scenes erupted, and their first two albums – Epicus Doomicus Metallicus and this monumental follow-up – are among the most revered records in metal history. While be-robed new singer Messiah Marcolin brought new levels of epic to The Well Of Souls and Mourner’s Lament, the Swedes’ MVP was guitarist Edling: Tony Iommi aside, it’s hard to think of anyone that has written as many cast-iron winners. A true 80s doom landmark.

Former Celtic Frost mastermind Tom Fischer – aka Tom G Warrior – is one of metal’s great visionaries, and the Swiss band’s second full-length album was his magnum opus. No band has made an album like Into The Pandemonium before or since. Taking thrash metal as their jumping off point, Frost dived into uncharted territory for bands: mournful requiems, operatic laments, post-punk covers, primitive hip hop and even pop-friendly backing singers – no musical path was off limits. Not for nothing was it christened ‘avant garde metal’ – this was something entirely new.

The album that birthed a new generation of metalheads. Death’s debut Gore was to inadvertently provide the embryonic blueprint for what was to become the death metal genre. 

This gradual epiphany was predominantly due to the appearance of Chuck Schuldiner’s guttural approach to vocals, the only aspect that really set Death apart from their ferocious thrash metal contemporaries – a genre from which he took primary inspiration. 

The apex of the early formative demos and lineups, Scream Bloody Gore immersed their thrash roots in a fascination with horror and Chuck's grisly artistry.

Released as the CD format was seriously taking hold, this hi-tech, crystal clear, hour-long epic catapulted Def Leppard into the stratosphere. Mutt Lange’s superb production and the Lep’s anthemic choruses were a winning combination. The tongue-in-cheek Pour Some Sugar On Me was the first hit, but they followed it up with no less than six other chart singles including Animal, Women, Armageddon It and the blockbusting ballad Love Bites. Hysteria continued to by the bucketload long after it was released, and is one of an exclusive group of albums to be awarded Diamond status in the US.

Proto funk-metal and sneering sarcasm set to a tribal beat courtesy of five scraggy misfits from San Francisco was an unlikely recipe for success. But Faith No More’s journey from the 80s alt-rock shadows to rubber-stamped MTV stardom began in earnest with their second album, and its breakout track We Care A Lot.

Vocalist Chuck Mosley, the man behind the mic here, had a voice that could charitably be described as ‘characterful’, but that was the point. FNM were eternal square pegs resisting being forced into any hole whatsoever: droning post-punk, art-thrash and a general air of not-giving-a-fuckness permeated Faster Disco and Chinese Arithmetic. Even without their later success, Introduce Yourself still stands as a uniquely brilliant record.

It’s damn near impossible to adequately explain the impact of Guns N’ Roses’ studio debut. It was like nothing we’d heard before – the sound of a street smart LA gang with a tortured genius of a frontman and a brand new guitar hero with a penchant for top hats. From the ominous opening growl of Welcome To The Jungle to the relentless closer Rocket Queen, Appetite runs the gamut from heartfelt balladry (Sweet Child O’ Mine) to full-on anthems for a new rock world in Paradise City and Mr Brownstone. We just didn’t know what hit us.

The arrival of new vocalist Michael Kiske enabled Helloween to flex their musical muscles far beyond the thudding, speed metal limitations of their debut album Walls Of Jericho. The result was a dazzling follow-up that combined their momentum with the melodic might of Maiden and Priest and an extra helping of unhinged bombast.

Thanks to Kai Hansen and Michael Weikath’s duelling guitars and Kiske’s helium-guzzling vocals, songs like the insanely catchy Future World, the thunderous Twilight Of The Gods and the sprawling, 13-minute ‘Halloween’ sounded unlike anything else. The seeds for the power metal explosion were sewn here – seeds which would blossom a year later with Keeper’s equally brilliant sequel.

Having established his redefined sound and aesthetic on 1986’s Fatal Portrait, King Diamond floored the creative accelerator for its follow-up. A flawless classic by any sane reckoning, Abigail showcased the fiery chemistry between the King and guitarist Andy LaRocque across a genuinely creepy tale of haunted mansions, stillborn children and, seemingly, posthumous self-cannibalism.

The songs are all fantastic, of course: from immortal opener Arrival and the skull-rattling A Mansion In Darkness to the monumental, murderous finale of Black Horsemen, Abigail is a magnificently twisted horror show with immaculate riffs to burn.