re: Post your METAL essentials album in ten tracks

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Black Sabbath is the only answer here. The most "essential" metal band ever and it isn't even close. It's obvious most of you have no idea what metal is.

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As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, metal has become a highly fluid and diverse genre of music.

The only real definition of heavy metal is that it is a heavier variation of blues-derived rock 'n' roll. If you want, you could include the alternate tuning requirement, but there are some well known metal bands that occasionally play in standard tuning.

Tempo has proven to be insignificant (i.e. contrast doom to grindcore) and lyrical can encompass everything (e.g. religion, politics, literature, philosophy, history, love, human existence, etc.).

Some of these bands might not fit the category of "heavy metal", a subgenre reserved for the forefathers Black Sabbath and a handful of other bands with few extreme elements in their music, but that doesn't necessarily make them non-metal.