Track Of The Day - The Guardians Edition

Majestic hard rock/heavy metal with lyrics battling against the corruption of race:

This one’s an all-timer for me. Utterly mind-blowing.

Battle-ready power metal to lose some of this album's cheese for a little more seriousness:

I probably wouldn't have gotten into the more symphonic side of power metal without accidentally discovering this album's glorious title track in a video that was wrongly credited to DragonForce as the band. This is NOT that video:

The ultimate anthem for this band that started off as a spin-off to DragonForce:

An 11-minute epic highlight for metal opera project Avantasia:

An epic upbeat piece of symphonic gothic metal, featuring the operatic soprano singing of ex-Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen, which simultaneously made me interested in both Within Temptation and Nightwish:

The ultimate epic of the Tarja era of Nightwish, greatly blending together all the album has already offered:

A graceful catchy heavy metal tune without ever going too far into the mainstream:

The more metallic direction is already taking shape in many songs in Narita, especially in this explosive piece of early speed metal that is the title instrumental:

Memorable riffing is another outstanding piece of early 80s speedy heavy metal:

One of the rare examples of early 70's heavy metal not to come from Black Sabbath. This one is taken from Brooklyn four-piece Sir Lord Baltimore's 1971 self-titled sophomore album.

If you wanna hear the earliest roots of speed metal then this track is where you'll find them. Drummer Ian Paice is using two kick drums to play an early example of double kick while guitarist Ritchie Blackmore is playing the prototype for the tremolo-picked speed metal riff.

Check this early heavy/stoner metal effort from in 1972 out. It's pretty fantastic just quietly.

I'm claiming this track from a one-off 1972 progressive/hard rock record as an early example of heavy metal. What do you think?

An amusing little song consisting of nothing but Duke Nukem references. (just the one I timestamped at 5:00, not the rest)

An epic historical metal anthem that would make you wanna become a horse-riding Spartan warrior and charge into a battle:

Early heavy metal taken from an obscure Aussie single that first saw the light of day as far back as 1971. Melbourne band Ash only got the chance to release two singles, the first having nothing to do with metal. Both sides of "MIdnight Witch/Warrant" comfortably qualify though in my opinion.

An early example of genuine heavy metal from an obscure Belgian heavy psych outfit. This single came out in 1972.

Fantastic 80s-influenced heavy/power metal:

A beautiful memorable ballad featuring Trivium frontman Matt Heafy:

Cinematic symphonics, serene vocals, best lyrical writing of the album:

An epic symphony with a synth-y first third, a metallic second third, and a symphonic final third:

Anthemic power metal, featuring Joakim Brodén of Sabaton: