Ten albums that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that 1980 was the greatest year ever for hard rock and heavy metal

In October 1979, US rock magazine Creem published a cover feature asking the provocative question ‘Is Heavy Metal Dead?’, and concluded that the writing was on the wall for the genre.

Their judgment could not have been more wrong.

In the 12 months that followed, bolstered in part by the emergence of an exciting New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the genre was re-born, with the release of a clutch of albums that would come to be viewed as all-time classics.

Come October 1980, in a remarkably shameless editorial u-turn, Creem revised its opinion of 12 months earlier, and put a leather-clad Rob Halford on the cover, alongside the declaration ‘Heavy Metal: Back From The Dead’.

Occasionally, people will try to tell you that there's never been a better time to be a metalhead than right now. These people were not alive in 1980.

Here, in alphabetical order, are 10 records that prove, beyond argument, that 1980 was the greatest year ever for hard rock and heavy metal.

AC/DC – Back In Black

AC/DC connoisseurs rightly identify Powerage as the band’s finest hour, but Back In Black – the second biggest-selling album of all time, behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller – is their blockbuster production, and the greatest ‘comeback’ album of all time.

Born out of tragedy, following the loss of the inimitable Bon Scott, here ‘DC consolidated all the commercial lessons learned with producer ‘Matt’ Lange on 1979’s Highway To Hell, and delivered 10 lean, mean hard rock masterclasses, with new ‘boy’ Brian Johnson bellowing over the top like a man with his scrotum on fire. Magnificent.

Black Sabbath – Heaven And Hell

The first six albums Black Sabbath recorded with Ozzy Osbourne created both the blueprint for heavy metal, and the standard by which all subsequent albums in the genre are measured. But there’s a strong case to be made for Heaven And Hell being the most consistent body of work Sabbath ever recorded.

With Ronnie James Dio installed as Ozzy’s replacement, Sabbath were unrecognisable from the worn-out and weary unit who recorded the lacklustre Never Say Die, with Tony Iommi in particular a man re-born. “It really did feel like we were starting all over again,” the guitarist later admitted to Metal Hammer. “And we all knew when the album was finished that it was something special.”

Diamond Head – Lightning To The Nations

The most under-rated band in this list, Diamond Head should, on the strength of their debut album, have been global superstars. A combination of bad luck, and ill-judged business decisions, ensured that it would take the patronage of Metallica (who freely admit that their early game plan was to sound like a mixture of Diamond Head and Motörhead) to truly secure the Stourbridge quartet a place in history. Lars Ulrich’s hero-worship of the group has led to his band recording covers of no fewer than four tracks from Lightning To The Nations (Helpless, Am I Evil?, The Prince and It’s Electric).

Iron Maiden – Iron Maiden

Steve Harris has long bemoaned Will Malone’s production on Iron Maiden’s debut album, but if the January 1980 recording sessions at Kingsway Studios didn’t fully capture the thrilling live energy of the East End band as the bassist intended, the strength of the songwriting here is undeniable, and still remarkable all these years later.

While Phantom Of The Opera, Running Free, Prowler and the title track are now rightly regarded as heavy metal standards, under-rated tracks such as the moody, atmospheric Strange World and Remember Tomorrow were brilliant early indicators that Maiden possessed a skill set far more developed than their enthusiastic NWOBHM peers. That Maiden could afford to leave off the fantastic Sanctuary from the album’s original UK pressing speaks volumes about their confidence in what remains one of the greatest metal debuts of all time.

Judas Priest – British Steel

With 1979’s live album Unleashed In The East a ‘greatest hits’ set in all but name, Judas Priest had effectively drawn a line under the first decade of their career, leaving them with a blank canvas as they began work in January 1980 upon what would be their sixth studio album. “You could feel that there was something really exciting about to happen to the band,” Rob Halford later recalled to this writer, “it was very tangible.”

Written and recorded in just 12 weeks, British Steel typified the hunger, confidence and rising ambition in the resurgent UK metal scene, its mix of terrace choruses and razor-sharp riffs turning the band into Top Of The Pops regulars at home and a platinum-selling arena act in the US. Halford calls the album “magical”: he’s not wrong.

Motörhead – Ace Of Spades

With the release of the brilliant Overkill and Bomber in 1979, Motörhead were on a hot streak and full of confidence when they began work on their fourth album in the summer of 1980. Lemmy’s band may have pre-dated the emergence of the NWOBHM, but their raw, ferocious punk-tinged rock n’ roll was perfectly attuned to this new climate. With fabulous understatement, in his autobiography White Line Fever, Lemmy noted “The songs on Ace Of Spades are considered classics by Motörhead fans, and I must say, they are an excellent bunch.” Lemmy may now have left us, but the likes of (We Are) The Road Crew, Jailbait and that deathless title track will ensure that that incomparable throaty roar will echo in our heads and hearts forever.

Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard Of Ozz

In the summer of 1979, Ozzy Osbourne was staring into the abyss. Kicked out of Black Sabbath, the singer was holed up in a West Hollywood apartment attempting to numb his pain with cocaine and hard liquor, convinced that this was The End. And then a young guitarist named Randy Rhoads entered his life, and everything changed.

Returning to England, the cleaned-up vocalist co-wrote Goodbye To Romance, Suicide Solution, Crazy Train and Mr Crowley with his new musical foil in a matter of weeks, and when Sabbath’s label Warners passed on the album demos, Ozzy’s manager (and future wife) Sharon Arden convinced her father Don to release Blizzard Of Ozz on his Jet label. The album would go on to sell six million copies and establish Ozzy as an international superstar.

“My ego loved it,” Ozzy recalled. “It was like ‘Fuck you, I told you I was right!’”

Saxon – Wheels Of Steel

Saxon’s patchy 1979 debut album only hinted at the promise held by the Yorkshire quintet, with even frontman Biff Byford conceding “to be honest, it wasn’t very good.” Under pressure from their record company to deliver the goods, in 1980 the band stepped up to the plate, racing to the forefront of the NWOBHM scene with the release of not one, but two, landmark metal releases.

Pound for pound, Wheels Of Steel just eclipses Strong Arm Of The Law, with the brawny Motorcycle Man, 747 (Strangers In The Night) and the chugging title track evergreen classics in the band’s set-lists to this day. Speaking about the album to Metal Hammer 20 years ago Byford noted “It’s obviously a classic. But, more than that, it saved our career.”

Van Halen – Women And Children First

Bored with having hits with souped-up cover versions of other artists’ songs, Eddie Van Halen approached his band’s third album with the intention of creating a heavier sound for the Pasadena quartet. This new attitude was evidenced in the album’s killer one-two opening of And The Cradle Will Rock… and Everybody Wants Some! and while the guitarist was far too melodically gifted to ever steer his band into pure heavy metal territory, the likes of Loss Of Control and Romeo Delight displayed a hardening of the VH sound.

Ahead of the album’s release, motormouth vocalist David Lee Roth predicted that the new decade would belong to Van Halen, warning “we’re the youngest and the newest and we’re coming on real strong.” 'Serious' music critics may have hated his flashy band and everything they represented, but Women And Children First served notice that heavy music wasn’t going away anytime soon in the USA.

Whitesnake - Ready an' Willing

Prior to the release of Whitesnake's third album, the group was strengthened by the recruitment of two of David Coverdale's former bandmates from Deep Purple: virtuoso keyboardist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice. It was no coincidence then that Ready an' Willing, produced by Martin Birch, emerged head and shoulders above the band's first two records. Songs such as Fool For Your Loving, Sweet Talker, Ain't Gonna Cry No More and the title track were instant classics, delivered with soul and swagger by the never-more-cocksure Coverdale.