Nearly four decades afters its release, High ’N’ Dry remains a true rock classic and the springboard for all that followed

Mastodon's Crack The Skye: a sprawling prog metal masterpiece dealing with astral travel, wormhole theory, Rasputin and suicide

There are the nearly men. There are the underrated bands. There are the should-have-beens. And then there's King's X, and their second album Gretchen Goes To Nebraska

Aphrodite's Child's cult masterpiece 666: an apocalyptic prog tour-de-force or a pretentious load of twaddle? Just don't ask Irene Papas what she thinks

Heralding the departure of Adrian Smith and the arrival of Janick Gers, Iron Maiden's No Prayer For The Dying also saw the arrival of very mixed reviews

Inspired by a panic attack, The Groundhog's four-part suite Split soundtracked a psychotic reaction

In the wake of Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, Animals saw Pink Floyd show their disgust with humanity

The self-titled debut album by the original Queen Of Noise, Suzi Quatro, strives to prove she was more than a singles act

Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus was the album that put Spirit at the forefront of conceptual psych-rock

Honeyed harmonies, subversively witty lyrics and superb musicianship? It can only be Jellyfish's Bellybutton

Touched by tragedy, T. Rex's Dandy in the Underworld was seen as a return to form by many

Cheap Trick's debut album had a rougher edge than in later years, but the songwriting and sense of humour were already in place

With Magnum on the verge of falling apart, everything came together with On A Storyteller's Night, an album that offered the perfect coalescing of music, themes and imagery

An album that split Rush's following clean down the middle, Signals saw the Canadian trio beginning to experiment with keyboards

In which Black Sabbath decamp to LA to work on an album, and somehow make Vol. 4