Tales From The Jugular - The 50 Greatest Heavy Metal/Hard Rock CDs of All Time

We've been dodging that bullet here for quite a while now, but after enough badgering in our forums, we finally caved in. The difficulty of such an endeavor was always the same--how do you compare and rank metal of different genres? Sure, you can look at skill, quality, production, influence and any number of factors, but opinion is always going to be a sticking point. Also, can you trust that any judge has a keen critical ear and is fairly free of bias?

After enough debate, we decided to keep it personal and let our staff create their own Top 50 list of favorite CDs no matter what they were.  Points were assigned for each CD: #1=50, #2=49 and so on down to #50=1 point. All the CDs were then put into a Master List to determine the final total per CD. With 12 staffers taking part (and not separating by ties!), here it is :

Maximum Metal's 50 Greatest
Heavy Metal/Hard Rock CDs of All Time

View the Top CDs from 25-2