The Book of Heavy Metal

The Book of Heavy Metal is the third album, using thick riffs, racing beats and proud choruses to put heavy metal's fun across directly. Released in May 2004, this time they wrote at leisure for the first time and spent two months recording. The songs prioritize immediacy over complexity, making places where the listener can sing along right away. It's also their most widely known record — fair to call it their signature work. The respect for the classics is thick, but the playing has a modern hardness and drive. The opening title track “(March of the Metallians)” became the band's flagship song as a metal anthem, and through “Into the Moonlight,” “The Sledge,” “No Way,” “Crusaders' Anthem,” “Chosen Twice” to “Chapter 6(66),” the intensity never breaks across fourteen songs. It's also the last album with Gus G and Snowy Shaw; Gus left at the end of that year to focus on Firewind, and he would later become Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist too. A clear, high-intensity record that sounds like the love of metal itself turned into music.