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We asked Metal Edge readers a simple question with a cruel catch: which band strung together the best three albums in a row? Most legendary catalogs run four, five, even six deep at their peak, so drawing the line at three meant leaving a classic or two behind and naming the exact stretch where a band was untouchable. These five runs pulled ahead.
5. Def Leppard
Def Leppard supplies the list's one pop-metal entry, all hooks and harmonies. High 'n' Dry, Pyromania, and Hysteria, all produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange, chart the band's climb from New Wave of British Heavy Metal hopefuls to one of the biggest rock acts on the planet. 1981's High 'n' Dry sharpened the sound and produced the power ballad "Bringin' On the Heartbreak," an early staple of the young MTV. Pyromania broke them wide open in 1983 with "Photograph" and "Rock of Ages," selling more than ten million copies in the US and helping kick off the decade's pop-metal boom. Hysteria took over three years to finish, survived drummer Rick Allen's near-career-ending car accident, and topped charts around the world on the strength of seven hit singles including "Pour Some Sugar on Me." Both Pyromania and Hysteria went diamond, a distinction only a handful of rock bands have earned on two separate albums.
4. Black Sabbath
The founding trilogy: Black Sabbath, Paranoid, and Master of Reality. The self-titled debut opened in 1970 with rain, tolling bells, and Tony Iommi's doom-laden title track. Paranoid followed the same year, hauling in "War Pigs," "Iron Man," and a title track written in a matter of minutes that became the band's only US top-twenty single of the decade. Master of Reality landed in 1971 with Iommi tuned down for a heavier, sludgier attack that laid the groundwork for doom, stoner rock, and sludge metal all at once.
3. Pantera
Cowboys from Hell, Vulgar Display of Power, and Far Beyond Driven document a band reinventing itself and dragging heavy metal along with it. Pantera had four glam-leaning records behind them on their own Metal Magic label before 1990's Cowboys from Hell, their major-label debut with producer Terry Date, torched the hair-metal look and helped invent groove metal in the process. Vulgar Display of Power arrived in 1992 heavier and leaner, home to "Walk" and "Mouth for War" and still the band's best seller. Far Beyond Driven debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in 1994, an almost unthinkable feat for an album that punishing.
2. Iron Maiden
The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, and Powerslave, from 1982, 1983, and 1984, make up a three-year sprint that carried Maiden from British upstarts to global headliners. The Number of the Beast was the band's first UK chart-topper and Bruce Dickinson's debut behind the mic, all air-raid vocals and galloping bass. Piece of Mind brought in drummer Nicko McBrain alongside "The Trooper" and "Flight of Icarus." Powerslave capped it with Egyptian iconography, "Aces High," "2 Minutes to Midnight," and the thirteen-minute "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," then fed straight into the marathon World Slavery Tour and the Live After Death album that documented it.
1. Metallica
Metallica takes the top spot with Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, and ...And Justice for All. Released in 1984, 1986, and 1988 with Flemming Rasmussen behind the board for all three, the sequence tracks a band getting more ambitious and more precise with every record. Ride the Lightning pushed the thrash of Kill 'Em All into longer, more composed territory, from the nuclear dread of "Fight Fire with Fire" to the near-nine-minute instrumental "The Call of Ktulu." Master of Puppets refined that blueprint into what many still consider the genre's high-water mark, its arrangements tighter and more layered than anything the band had put to tape before. Justice pushed further into knotty, long-form structures, wrapped in that famously dry, bass-starved mix, closing out a decade in which Metallica rewrote what a metal band could sound like.
