Old School Metal

Heavy metal was born out of the sound and fury of the late '60s. Forged by blues jams, tempered with a touch of biker-gang glamour, it emerged full-blown at the dawn of the '70s. Reveling in excess, flirting with blasphemy, metal bands speak to the savage in the souls of millions. If you have a head, prepare to bang it now.

Pop music styles wax and wane, but metal has survived thanks to its hard-core faithful. Longhaired, leather-clad rockers thrive like dinosaurs in a lost world, churning out primitive riffs and shrieking mightily. Take a journey further into the bowels of Metalland with these potent distillations of controlled chaos.

When the likes of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple first stalked the land, few would've dreamed that metal-mongers would follow for decades to come. From speed-metal to the harder side of glam rock, the genre has proliferated since the '70s. You may have over-looked these rarer gems that present metal at its skull-searing best.

Since its late-'60s birth, some have mistakenly called heavy metal "the blues . . . cranked up". It's more like the blues cranked up, stripped down, and blown away with god-of-thunder guitar, skull-rattling rhythms, and howling-at-the-moon vocal prowess. It's no secret that, despite the trappings of hellfire, metal fans and musicians alike are some of the nicest folks you might wish to encounter. Still, they look like wild-eyed, shaggy hooligans. Taste their mayhem with these molten eruptions of metal madness.