Metallica: Master of Puppets

Disagree if you must, but Metallica was probably the most important metal band of the 80s and 90s. They cracked the Top 30 on the charts with Puppets in 1986, with absolutely no radio airplay or MTV. But who cares about charts, these guys were bringing serious shit on every album they made between 1982-1992. They were reinventing metal with each new album -- making it truly epic for the first time -- and all this in an era when bands like Cinderella and Poison were most listeners idea of metal. They weren't the first band to play thrash, or to stretch a song past the 8-minute -- but they pieced it altogether on this album. There are so many compositional tricks the band empoys on Puppets -- Hetfeild's rhythm playing, the beats Lars picks to hit his cymbals, etc -- but they all sound commonplace because this album influenced everyone that ever played metal after it.

Link:
Metallica: Master of Puppets