The Batlord

Machine Head's first album might have been kind of samey, but song-for-song it's one of the most badass albums ever recorded, and "Davidian" is the most badass song on it. Just crushing, with a riff to die for, and vocals to punch Barrack Obama in the face to. And the last minute or so of that one riff repeated over and over and over again is just brutal to the max. ****ing insane.





On their Blind album COC took Metallica's Black Album sound and made it not suck. I guess you'd call it post-thrash, but I just call it badass. "Vote with a Bullet" was one of, if not the only track with Pepper Keenan on vocals (I'm too new to COC to know), and as such it is the best of the bunch -- since Pepper Keenan is a true Metal God on the mic -- and crushes in much the same way as Machine Head. If you can't mosh to this track then your are a pussy.






HoF's Death Is This Communion was their first album I ever heard, and this being the opening track, "Fury Whip" was also my introduction to the band. It's definitely not the only song on this album that will be featured in this series, but it's the one that still resonates with me the most (only just). It's a crushing combo of stoner, doom, and post-thrash that beats your head into the dust in the most painful possible way. **** you and **** yeah!






Slaughter of the Soul is one of my fav metal albums of all time, but it's kind of a downer, so many songs that are truly badass are just a tad too nihilistic to really make the cut (which isn't a knock against them at all). "Suicide Nation" isn't quite my fav from the album, but it is the one track that I would say is elevated to pure badass status. That riff and the gun slide being wracked at the beginning are pure awesomeness embodied. More evidence that melodic death metal can be badass too.






TBH this song is almost too tongue-in-cheek and silly to qualify for true badass status, but its badass pedigree overcomes any possible asterisk. As always, this song has a monumental riff, and the lyrics about Christian armies crushing "heretics" (a thinly-veiled metaphor for doom metal legions obliterating all non-doom poseurs) are hilariously badass. A weird band, but truly badass when they can be bothered to dispense with depressing droning.






I wouldn't necessarily call this band underrated, as they have the one thing they do and not much else, but when it comes to truly brutal death metal that is also totally catchy, they stand toe-to-toe with Cannibal Corpse (while also being just as gloriously one-dimensional). I've only really checked out the one album -- Rise to Dominate -- but this song is the most brutal and badass of the lot, with the possible exception of "Helel Ben-Shachar", "Caressed By the Holy Man", and... other songs (might include at least one of them in later entries, cause they ****ing rule!).

Aeon are not a band to convert a non-death metal fan, but if you dig your DM brutal and fun and Satanic, then listening to one album of theirs is a must. And this song in particular will blow your socks off into the realms of Hades and beyond.






Goatsnake has many badass songs, ranging from stoner to stoner doom to pure doom, but this song in particular is the epitome of badass. It's absolutely heavy as **** stoner metal -- with a more-than-proper amount of mind-altering distortion -- while also being catchier than a slow, fly ball in baseball... but infinitely less boring. One of the hallmarks of a great song is that when it's short you feel satisfied with it's awesomeness, while being equally dissatisfied with its length. The great thing about stoner is that the songs are often simple and repetitive enough that repeated plays are just an exercise in getting exactly what you want without having to wait for the "good parts", since the whole thing is what you want all the time (just listened to this song four times in a row while doing this entry, and I'm just as happy as the first time it played).

Props for the Molly Hatchet-ish, Southern rock vocals which are just as badass as they are melodic.






Danzig are one of those bands that are going to feature more than once, so here's another track. Their first album (from which I took "Twist of Cain") was as much of a rock album as a metal one, but by their third album (which this song is from) they were very much a metal band, but unique in their influences and final sound. They were uncategorizable in much the same way that High on Fire are, with blues rock, doom, trad metal, and goth rock combining to somehow form a sound that encapsulated everything that was metal, while also sounding like no other metal band on Earth.

This song is one of the best from Danzig III: How the Gods Kill, and it is also arguably the most straight up badass (though other songs from that record will also feature later on). As always, John Christ delivers metallic blues riffs that are evil to the core, brutal yet catchy, and as badass as Hitler's German pinschers.






Much of early nineties thrash was just a tad too complex for its own good (due in no small part to the influence of Metallica's ...And Justice for All) and Devastation's final album fell prey to this to an extent, but the title track is just too heavy to deny. The whole song ****ing rules, but the bridge (or whatever), chorus, and riffs immediately after are just immense, and prove that badass can transcend wannabe-complexity-for-the-sake-of-complexity.






I don't have to explain what this song sounds like. You've either already heard it, or you are a poseur who likely has no interest in one of my journals and is therefore not even reading this (good!).

This song proved that falsetto vocals could be immensely badass ("Freewheel Burning" did to an extent, but "Painkiller" showed that song to be merely a taste of what was to come); the guitar work isn't quite thrash, while also putting 99% of thrash guitar to shame; and whoever the new drummer is is just a monster, bringing the band to previously unattainable levels of sheer badassery.

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