The Best Metal Album of Each Year of the 2000s

Here’s the best metal album of each year of the 2000s.

After a difficult ’90s period where an overwhelming amount of big ’80s names either broke up or stuck together long enough to make the worst records. Aside from Pantera‘s dominant streak, even burning up the Billboard 200 chart all the way to No. 1 with Far Beyond Driven, metal larely returned to being an underground commodity with the rise of extreme metal. Metallica deviated from their metallic roots and nu-metal followed in hair metal’s footsteps of being the outcast in the eyes and ears of “true” headbangers.

But things rebounded quite nicely in the first decade of the new millennium. A lot of those ’80s bands shook off the bad years and returned to form or found a new sticking point that restored the value of their band’s name. Bruce Dickinson returned to Iron Maiden, Rob Halford rejoined Judas Priest, thrash bands got good again and black and death metal kept the momentum rolling.

As for the new breed, the 2000s witnessed the rise of metalcore, deathcore and whatever label you want to slap on Mastodon. Ozzfest was still massive, helping to launch the careers of many of today’s biggest bands from the 2000s. And, while CDs sales would totally collapse by the end of the decade, it’s still looked at as a golden era for metal — the last one before streaming turned the industry completely upside down.

So, let’s take a look at metal’s best album of each year, from 2000 through 2009, below!