# What is the most influential metal album in history?

> Influence in metal means inspiring not just fans but entire genres — albums that shifted the course of heavy music forever. Vote for the metal album that has had the greatest and most lasting impact on the world of music.

*By YPB Team · Published April 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-most-influential-metal-album-in-history*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Black Sabbath**
   The 1970 self-titled debut that invented heavy metal and influenced virtually every heavy band that followed.
2. **Paranoid**
   Black Sabbath's 1970 follow-up that cemented the metal blueprint with iconic tracks emulated by generations of bands.
3. **Master of Puppets**
   Metallica's 1986 record that defined thrash metal's artistic peak and inspired countless extreme metal subgenres.
4. **Reign in Blood**
   Slayer's 1986 album that directly influenced death metal, black metal, grindcore, and hardcore punk in equal measure.
5. **Black Metal**
   Venom's 1982 album that not only coined the genre's name but provided the satanic and raw aesthetic that black metal built upon.
6. **The Number of the Beast**
   Iron Maiden's 1982 album that took heavy metal global and showed that the genre could achieve mainstream success without compromise.
7. **British Steel**
   Judas Priest's 1980 album that crystallized heavy metal's image, attitude, and sonic template for all subsequent bands.
8. **Machine Head**
   Deep Purple's 1972 album containing 'Smoke on the Water', one of the most recognizable riffs and a gateway drug to metal.
9. **Under the Sign of the Black Mark**
   Bathory's 1987 album that created the sonic and thematic vocabulary of black metal, influencing waves of Norwegian bands.
10. **Slaughter of the Soul**
   At the Gates' 1995 album that spawned thousands of imitators and practically created the Scandinavian melodic death metal wave.
11. **Human**
   Death's 1991 album that elevated technical and progressive elements in death metal and inspired the genre's most ambitious acts.
12. **Lateralus**
   Tool's 2001 album that pushed progressive metal into philosophical and mathematical territory, influencing a generation of modern metal bands.
13. **Ace of Spades**
   Motörhead's 1980 album that bridged heavy metal and punk, directly inspiring thrash metal and the entire extreme metal underground.
14. **To Mega Therion**
   Celtic Frost's 1985 avant-garde metal album that influenced doom, black, death, and gothic metal across decades.
15. **Leviathan**
   Mastodon's 2004 album that revived progressive and sludge metal and launched a new era of artistically ambitious heavy music.

Tags: music, rock, historical, bands, classics, metal