What albums meet your minimum standard for "heavy metal?"

Lightest metal albums I can think of are Sad Wings of Destiny which feels a lot more like hard rock with behavioral traits of future metal albums, and Heroes of Mighty Magic by Twilight Force, which has very little power to it.  As for 80's hard rock albums, I also include Dr. Feelgood and anything heavier than that from that period, and that includes ONE album by Guns N' Roses: Appetite for Destruction, which has seven songs out of twelve that meet my standard.  I'll also throw in Deep Purple in Rock as it's their heaviest album from the 70's when metal was lighter, and Perfect Strangers.  I guess that about sums up my minimum standard for metal.  But what about yours?

Sad Wings Of Destiny was kind of shocking to go back to as someone who never really listened to too much Judas Priest; I'd agree that it's a decent benchmark. I think there's a lot of back and forth for a lot of Scorpions content as well, since those Guns N' Roses adjacent Hard Rock/Hair Metal bands seem to really toe the line from a modern perspective. 

I don't find myself listening to a lot of straight up Heavy Metal these days though and that's where I think a lot of these genres start to get into a real grey area as Metal has evolved. I'll always name drop Caio Lemos from Kataayra and multiple other projects though, as he's recently been taking Black/Avant-Garde Metal songwriting tendencies and paring them with musical characteristics that go against Metal's fundamental definition. The fully acoustic and Brazilian Folk inspired Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe and the even more egregious Inpariquipê have this strange sense that it feels like you're listening to something that could be considered Metal, but the content itself says otherwise. It's an entirely different case rather than finding the sweet spot where Hard Rock rocks hard enough to be considered Heavy Metal and sadly I'm not enough of a genre enthusiast to really get into the weeds, unless it comes up in a review.

I guess it comes down to what you understand rock & metal music to be, doesn't it? I was taught the different techniques for playing the two genres when I was in my early teenage years & those theoretical rules have stuck with me ever since so I see a well defined line between the two. As I've already explained in another recent thread, the point of contention shouldn't really be about how heavy or light-weight a release feels. You either have metal guitar & drum techniques being used or you don't as far as I'm concerned. Now, if we're going to be throwing the likes of Guns 'n' Roses, Def Leppard, Scorpions, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc. under the metal banner then I have to ask a pretty obvious question i.e. just what is hard rock music then because those are some clear examples of it as far as I'm concerned. To be open & transparent, my personal cut-off ratio for a release to qualify as metal is 40% i.e. if 40% or more of it's run time is legitimate metal then I'm happy enough to include it. Here's ten examples of some very big "metal" releases that I don't think should qualify as metal if we use that philosophy:

Kyuss - "Welcome To Sky Valley"

Boris - "Pink"

Rainbow - "Rising"

Black Flag - "My War"

Motorhead - "Overkill"

Primus - "Frizzle Fry"

Black Sabbath - "Technical Ecstasy"

Alcest - "Kodama"

Voivod - "Nothingface"

Elder - "Reflections of a Floating World"

I think a more contemporary take on this is how much metal can you take out of metal music before it ceases to be such?  I am thinking of some of the more -gazey sort of releases of recent years such as a coup!e of Alcest albums and the Lustre release I proposed for the Hall a while back.

Xephyr also makes an excellent point, I have also heard several obviously non-metal albums that sound like metal, such as The Visit's Through Darkness Into Light which is a cello-based album that manages to encaapsulate the essence of metal (at least to me it does), Dolven's 2015 album, Navigating the Labyrinth is classed as neofolk but sounds like Elizabethan doom metal and recently I've been listening to Darkher, an ethereal wave act whose material would definitely appeal to a number of metal fans I suspect. I wonder, is there any mechanism for getting releases like these added as non-metal releases that could appeal to metalheads?

I guess it comes down to what you understand rock & metal music to be, doesn't it? I was taught the different techniques for playing the two genres when I was in my early teenage years & those theoretical rules have stuck with me ever since so I see a well defined line between the two. As I've already explained in another recent thread, the point of contention shouldn't really be about how heavy or light-weight a release feels. You either have metal guitar & drum techniques being used or you don't as far as I'm concerned. Now, if we're going to be throwing the likes of Guns 'n' Roses, Def Leppard, Scorpions, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc. under the metal banner then I have to ask a pretty obvious question i.e. just what is hard rock music then because those are some clear examples of it as far as I'm concerned. To be open & transparent, my personal cut-off ratio for a release to qualify as metal is 40% i.e. if 40% or more of it's run time is legitimate metal then I'm happy enough to include it. Here's ten examples of some very big "metal" releases that I don't think should qualify as metal if we use that philosophy:

I think what you must bear in mind Daniel, is that for those of us with little to no technical musical ability or theoretical knowledge, this is not such a straightforward task. Without the ability to hear and understand as clearly as yourself then we are left to good old-fashioned "gut feeling". I don't for a second dispute anything you say and would absolutely take guidance from someone with undoubted theoretical knowledge, but for me it is a lot like listening to Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining quantum mechanics in TV - I get some of what he says but a lot if it goes way over my head. He too would probably shake his head and wonder why I couldn't see what is so blatantly obvious to him.

What I'm trying to say, not very succinctly admittedly, is, although it must be frustrating, please don't judge us non-theorists too harshly, we are just trying to figure things out as best we can.

Fair point Sonny & I fully appreciate that not everyone's working from the same experience base. Perhaps I need to find a way to visually/audibly demonstrate what I'm saying rather than simply throwing out these bold exclamations.

Interestingly, Ben & I had a conversation on a very similar topic last week. We posed the question to each other: Can you have metal without metal guitars? There have been various examples of this tossed about over the last couple of years. The Kaatayra record Xephyr mentioned is certainly one of them. I'm interested to hear what everyone else thinks but both Ben & I are of the opinion that you can't have metal without metal guitars. It's like removing the ice from ice-skating. What does everyone else think?

I guess it comes down to what you understand rock & metal music to be, doesn't it? I was taught the different techniques for playing the two genres when I was in my early teenage years & those theoretical rules have stuck with me ever since so I see a well defined line between the two. As I've already explained in another recent thread, the point of contention shouldn't really be about how heavy or light-weight a release feels. You either have metal guitar & drum techniques being used or you don't as far as I'm concerned. Now, if we're going to be throwing the likes of Guns 'n' Roses, Def Leppard, Scorpions, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc. under the metal banner then I have to ask a pretty obvious question i.e. just what is hard rock music then because those are some clear examples of it as far as I'm concerned. To be open & transparent, my personal cut-off ratio for a release to qualify as metal is 40% i.e. if 40% or more of it's run time is legitimate metal then I'm happy enough to include it. Here's ten examples of some very big "metal" releases that I don't think should qualify as metal if we use that philosophy:

Kyuss - "Welcome To Sky Valley"

Boris - "Pink"

Rainbow - "Rising"

Black Flag - "My War"

Motorhead - "Overkill"

Primus - "Frizzle Fry"

Black Sabbath - "Technical Ecstasy"

Alcest - "Kodama"

Voivod - "Nothingface"

Elder - "Reflections of a Floating World"

Good list, Daniel. Although I have to say, to my ears, Voivod's Nothingface is like 45% metal, and a slight notch heavier than their mainstream-sounding follow-up Angel Rat.

I tried to find a video of someone demonstrating the difference between hard rock & heavy metal & this was the best I could come up with at short notice. This guy can't play much but what he's saying is essentially right. There are more differences in the techniques & the hard rock riffs he demonstrates are excessively bluesy in order to prove his point but it's a good starting point.

I guess it comes down to what you understand rock & metal music to be, doesn't it? I was taught the different techniques for playing the two genres when I was in my early teenage years & those theoretical rules have stuck with me ever since so I see a well defined line between the two. As I've already explained in another recent thread, the point of contention shouldn't really be about how heavy or light-weight a release feels. You either have metal guitar & drum techniques being used or you don't as far as I'm concerned. Now, if we're going to be throwing the likes of Guns 'n' Roses, Def Leppard, Scorpions, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc. under the metal banner then I have to ask a pretty obvious question i.e. just what is hard rock music then because those are some clear examples of it as far as I'm concerned. To be open & transparent, my personal cut-off ratio for a release to qualify as metal is 40% i.e. if 40% or more of it's run time is legitimate metal then I'm happy enough to include it. Here's ten examples of some very big "metal" releases that I don't think should qualify as metal if we use that philosophy:

Kyuss - "Welcome To Sky Valley"

Boris - "Pink"

Rainbow - "Rising"

Black Flag - "My War"

Motorhead - "Overkill"

Primus - "Frizzle Fry"

Black Sabbath - "Technical Ecstasy"

Alcest - "Kodama"

Voivod - "Nothingface"

Elder - "Reflections of a Floating World"

My cut off is 50%.  Having said that, Zep is my favorite band and I would only put them as proto-metal, never the other.  Early Def counts, but AC/DC is hard rock through and through.  That's all they really do.  So far there are only two Deep Purple's I consider metal: In Rock and Perfect Strangers.

For the "clear example," every AC/DC album is generic hard rock, and I've heard them all for completionism's sake.  Occasional blues is present but that's pretty much it as far as diversity goes.  They do the same thing every album, and they never got any heavier than that.

Led Zeppelin could just be classified under hard rock, but they've done so many types of hard rock songs that a few early metal songs were thrown in the mix, but never enough one one album to count.  I mean, they had reggae and pop present on Houses of the Holy.

Hair metal itself is where it gets more confusing, as metallic production techniques were molded with AOR techniques.  But if you ask me, the majority doesn't even come close to metal, but there are a few who do, like Crue and Dokken.

Thanks Daniel. I kinda get it instinctively, but, much to my eternal embarassment, I am so absolutely fucking clueless that I don't even know what a scale is really and certainly not the difference between a blues scale and a minor scale. Also, and I know this may sound blasphemous to you, but if it's so hard for a layman to differentiate between them, does it really matter that much? I mean I can tell the difference between AC/DC and Slayer, but take a band like Motorhead (who Lemmy always denied were metal), some of their material sounds exceptionally borderline to me and could fall either side of the fence.

This is one of the best examples of a band who bridges the gap.  I'll also throw in Budgie.

I get where you're coming from Sonny. If you look at it closely, relatively little of Motorhead's material is actually legitimate metal. They were far too blues-oriented to ever fully commit to a metal sound (at least during the first decade of their recording career which is what they're most well known for). There are two main reason they're associated with metal in my opinion:

1. Lemmy's vocals simply sound too gruff to be attached to anything else. In fact, if you put a different singer over the top of the instrumentation then I doubt that anyone would even think about labelling Motorhead as heavy metal (see Girlschool).

2. The fact that Motorhead were heavily responsible for bringing the use of double-kick (& speed in general) to heavy music & this element had an uncanny knack of matching up with the biggest songs from each successive album.

In Budgie's case, I'd suggest that their association with metal is mostly because of their historical association with Metallica. Their self-titled debut was really heavy for a rock record of the time & was certainly influenced by Black Sabbath but I've always felt that it was still far too bluesy to qualify as metal. After that they tended to indulge in Rush-inspired progressive rock & sometimes even folk music more often than they did metal. Sure, there are a few tracks here & there that qualify but not for a full album, at least not in their early-to-mid 1970's prime which is what people are usually referring to when talking about Budgie.

In regard to Motley Crue, I've always thought "Shout At The Devil" is close enough to metal. "Too Fast For Love" is much punkier & I find metal to be more of an influence that a primary genre with that one. I can't say I've heard "Dr. Feelgood" since the early 1990's so I'm not in a position to say. Our father used to cane that record so I'm sure I'd know every song by heart & I actually saw them play live on the associated tour but I tended to steer well clear of Crue's more commercially driven material once I fully committed to extreme metal.

You used to cane that record Daniel. Along with Poison, Guns 'n' Roses and Def Leppard. No need to be ashamed about it. 

Just gonna say it: Def DEFINITELY stopped being metal after the second, and stopped being glam metal after the third.  I don't know why RYM has Hysteria tagged as glam metal right now.  I've heard that album a million times and it does have a couple glam metal songs, but not enough for the whole damn thing.  It feels too poppy even for glam metal.

I actually don't think Def Leppard were ever a metal band although I admittedly don't think I've ever heard "The Def Leppard E.P." from 1979 so there's potential to have my mind changed there I guess.

As long as we're on this subject, anybody remember how King Crimson decided to be a metal band before they stopped working in the studio?  Because those two albums were pretty kickass.

I'm very familiar with literally every King Crimson studio album except for those two so unfortunately not. Their 1973-81 period is definitely where my sweet spot lies.

I know this may sound blasphemous to you, but if it's so hard for a layman to differentiate between them, does it really matter that much? 

Perhaps not but our market doesn't comprise entirely of laymen & I think you'd agree that it'd be pretty annoying if The Guardians or the Fallen charts were topped by releases that sat on the wrong side of the metal borderline as it kinda brings the integrity of the site & the Metal Academy brand into question. There has to be a line somewhere & the entire clan community has the ability to vote on which side of that line a given release falls on.

Of course, you are right, but the Hall gives everyone within the respective clan the ability to vote, so my one clueless vote has as much weight as your own, which is based on actual knowledge and an ability to differentiate between genres that I could never hope to match. I mean look at last month's Lord Vigo feature release. It seems I upset Morpheus massively by suggesting I didn't think this was doom metal, a view I stand by. Now that may empirically be an incorrect statement, but it's what I think, so should I have the right to vote in the Hall with such wrong-headed views? Personally I think not and, to be honest, there are many Hall votes I genuinely haven't got a clue about, it is one reason I am reticent to participate in it. I understand it is important to the site's integrity, but it also has it's weaknesses. It is also a good reason why I think you and Ben are right to stick to your guns on the number of votes required as it mitigates fools like myself fucking it up.

I just posted a bout how two Metallica albums should also have the heavy metal tag and nobody bugs me about it.  I might've committed the worst sin possible here, so don't worry about looking like a fool 

However, the fact that it has 9 votes and is still active says I'm not alone.