The Greatest Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums of All Time

Dads know full well that on the school run and given a choice between the Today programme or some Def Leppard, Sheffield’s finest will always be the lesser of two evils. And so it was that the lads decided their daughters - Sian, Alice and Holly - should choose the albums they would review for Episode 26.

Part of the enduring appeal of hard rock and heavy metal was always that it was downright unfashionable. As we gazed through a curtain of unwashed hair in our embroidered patchouli-soaked denim and studded wristbands, we were the outsiders, worshipping at an altar of spandex and noise, members of an exclusive and reassuringly unappealing club.

Well, it had to happen. At some point the Gods (or, in this case, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes) were going to decree that the lads had gorged on the swollen nipples of the Seventies and Eighties for long enough and the time had come to teach them that there was a dark and forbidding world beyond the mascara, moogs and mellotrons that had cocooned them on their circumnavigation of rock’s monuments thus far.

Generally speaking, the Enter Sadmen podcast is usually all about the people making the noise, rather than the people who are left to survey the empty cans of super strength Tennents and overflowing ashtrays covering every surface, listening to the hum of a Marshall amp in the newly-minted silence of the studio while they work out how the fuck they’re going to stitch together a month’s worth of assorted riffs, screams and clangs into something remotely coherent.

Let’s be honest. Early Seventies rock was really fucking weird. Like, weapons-grade weird. Sometimes that weirdness was good, and sometimes that weirdness was, well … really fucking weird. To the point where you just had to have smoked a lot of pot to be reading the same book, never mind be on the same page.

Now, we all know that by and large, when you’re a kid, siblings are a total pain in the arse. And it doesn’t matter which sibling you are, either - older, younger or middle, it’s all the same. in this episode of the pod, the boys manage to find three rare creatures indeed: three sets of siblings who got on so well as kids that they decided to form a band together and spend even more time in each other’s company. How mad is that?

In the shadow of East Midlands International Airport, Blackie Lawless sharpened the blades of his chainsaw codpiece.

Ronnie James Dio stood on tippy-toe to meet the venue’s minimum height restrictions. James Hetfield practised his trademark woof! in front of the hotel mirror while, in the room next door, Jon Bon Jovi practised not tripping on the Stars and Stripes flag-turned-cape around his shoulders.

It was August 22, 1987 and the Monsters were back. All was right with the world.

Back in the old days, when the only way for your mummies and daddies to own the music they really loved was to go out and buy records by their favourite bands from a record shop, the album cover was an essential part of the marketing mix that sold a band and its music - at a time when mainstream radio played very little rock music, many people bought records based solely on the cover alone.

Episode 17 of the pod saw the boys get to grips with three albums with covers that were nothing if not striking. But was what occupied the 0.28 miles of groove on the 2mm-thick disc inside those covers any good?

All those years on, the albums we buy still have stories to tell, so the Sadmen went through their record collections and picked out three that, in their words, changed their lives. And yes, we thought one of them would be Stakk Attakk as well, but their addled minds somehow overlooked the obvious.

Hard rock is nothing without theatre, and theatre is nothing without makeup. Which means that like love and marriage, hard rock and makeup go together like a horse and carriage. It’s the first glam metal episode of many for the Sadmen

As part of the Enter Sadmen special with Diamond Head founder Brian Tatler, the boys asked the legendary guitarist to nominate the three albums they would review in their next show. Which track did Mark ironically describe as a plodding dirge? When is a prelude not as prelude? And which album was a glorious ‘fuck you’ to the record label?

The Sadmen weren’t so much sad as they entered the studio (er, their three respective bedrooms) for Episode 11, more perplexed by what had happened in Episode 10, about as bizarre an affirmation as is possible of quite what a broad church we metalheads worship in.

You ever have that moment where you come up with an idea, act on it - and then realise it all sounded very different in your head to the way it did in reality? Yeah, so did the boys. All of which is by way of a welcome to the strange odyssey that is the tenth episode of the podcast.

After a week in which we celebrated the work of Ronnie James Dio in his spells with British outfits Rainbow and Black Sabbath and the best of his work with the eponymously-titled (and largely American) Dio, the boys decided the ninth instalment of the podcast should have its roots in continental Europe.

In the space of 7 years between 1976 and 1983, Ronnie James Dio recorded three classic albums with three different bands. First came Rainbow’s Rising; then, 4 years later, Heaven and Hell , the first of two he would record with Black Sabbath; and finally, in 1983, Holy Diver, from the band that bore his name. Which of the three would give the Little Wizard his highest spot in the Hall of Fame?

After the ear-bleeding week of thrash that was Episode 6, the Enter Sadmen tour bus rolled down the (Ventura) highway to AOR land, where Journey and REO Speedwagon played Apollo Creed to Strangeways’ Rocky Balboa.

So far the sad men of the Enter Sadmen podcast had neatly side-stepped the charging elephant in the room - 15 albums down and no sign of a thrash band. That all changed for the sixth instalment - though the boys placed an embargo on the Big Four and instead dived into deeper, darker and far, far choppier waters.

Simmer down lads. Episode five of the coolest podcast around is a paean to the fairer sex as we assess the merits of a trio of vinyl throwbacks from Girlschool, Vixen and Phantom Blue.

An inferior outfit might be tempted to hail the majesty of these rock goddesses by souring the airwaves with an invective of sexism and smut, but that’s not our way, Jose. Our wives insisted not a single double entendre so we aren’t going to give them one.

Three albums from three decades as the boys look at the calling cards from three bands who were destined to make a big impact in the direction of the genre. And they couldn’t be more different as Lynyrd Skynyrd meets Ratt meets Rage Against The Machine.

The Enter Sadmen podcast rolls into its third week and Steve, Mark and Richard have set off in search of the holy riff. They’ve narrowed the locations to three: industrial Birmingham in 1970, swinging London in 1971 and the sleepy - but really fucking loud - county town of Hertfordshire. (That would be Hertford, to save you heading to Google Maps). Let the arguments commence.

In Episode 2 we discuss the merits of the albums that are, individually, our favourites of all time. We know - counterintuitive, right. But there are no spoilers. The ones that sit at the top of the heap in the end will be the ones we all agree on.

The loudest podcast in the world kicks off with three albums that pack a punch as we open the hood and poke around the guts of Van Halen, Highway to Hell and British Steel.