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The album that changed everything for Metallica – catapulting them from patron saints of unrelentingly heavy thrash metal to reluctant (at first, anyway) mainstream superstars! The production is glossier sounding than ever before, and whether that compromised the rawer brutality of their heaviest moments is debatable to this day – but that's countered by the slow-building, epic songcraft (the shortest one is over 5 minutes long), odd, and all around ambitiously structured material. Includes "Blackened", "Eye Of The Beholder", the game-changing "One", "Harvester Of Sorrow", "To Live Is To Die", "Dyers Eve" and more. CD

The triumphant debut of Metallica – whose reputation began to build even earlier, via a legendary demo tape that made the underground rounds in the metal community, along with their roof-blasting early live sets – and this astonishing first album showed that the hype was no joke! It's hard to imagine the move towards unrelenting heaviness in metal music ever could have happened without this and a handful of other early 80s masterpieces, and it still kills after all these years. Includes "Hit The Lights", "Motorbreath", "Jump In The Fire", "Anesthesia – Pulling Teeth" and "Whiplash", "The Four Horseman", "Phantom Lord", "No Remorse" and "Metal Militia". CD

An unimpeachable metal masterpiece! Master Of Puppets is one of the rare cases when the critical and popular consensuses match right up and are both right on the money – there's just no arguing against this being considered one of the greatest, most influential, and surprisingly timeless metal albums of all time – and it built that reputation organically, fan by fan, without radio or music videos to hype it. All the more impressive for the few disarmingly quiet moments and borderline pretty instrumental passages before the heaviness comes walloping back in, this one is for the ages. All classic songs on this one: "Battery", "Master Of Puppets", "The Thing That Should Not Be", "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)", "Disposable Heroes", "Leper Messiah", "Orion" and "Damage, Inc.". CD

One of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time – a pioneering blast of mid 80s thrash from Metallica at an early peak! Say what you will about Metallica's later career triumphs and failures, there's no overstating how huge their impact was on metal and hard rock early on, and their best few records are incredible to this day. This may well be they're very best album – the culmination of a couple years of slow-building word-of-mouth reputation-building for genre work that can't be praised highly enough. One metal classic after another: "Fight Fire With Fire", "Ride The Lightning", "For Whom The Bell Tolls", "Fade To Black", "Trapped Under Ice", "Escape", "Creeping Death" and "The Call Of Ktulu". CD

Metallica takes a break from cementing the legacy of thrash metal, after their Master Of Puppets tour, with this fun covers EP paying homage to few of their own heroes – from UK metal heroes Diamond Head and Holocaust, to hard rock forbears Budgie, to postpunk iconoclasts Killing Joke, to horror punk icons The Misfits! Includes "Helpless", "The Small Hours", "The Wait", "Crash Course In Brain Surgery" and "Last Caress/Green Hell". CD

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The second of Dio's twin masterpieces – a second album knockout that followed Holy Diver by a single year! The biggest difference this time out is the addition of full time keyboard player Claude Schnell to the band, making Dio a quintet – but what the keyboards do NOT do is air out the heaviness. This remains a headbanging classic, with songs as heavy as any in the Dio canon. Like they did on Holy Diver, the band balances a melodic sensibility with heavy rock in a way that would prove hugely influential – we can't imagine the quietly melodic to massively heavy transitions on Metallica's Master Of Puppets LP could've been what they are without the opening minute of the title track here, but this whole thing is a win – with "We Rock", "Mystery", Breathless", "I Speed At Night", "One Night In The City", "Evil Eyes", "Eat Your Heart Out" and "Egypt (The Chains Are On)". CD

Includes tracks by Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, UFO, Black Sabbath, Rose Tattoo, Judas Priest, Angel Witch, Iron Maiden, Venom, Queensryche, Metallica, Motorhead, Blue Oyster Cult, and more! CD

Features Metallica, Yo-Yo Ma, Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, Eumir Deodato, Roger Waters, Renee Fleming, Celine Dion, and others. CD