Forbes – a magazine and website largely focused on all things finance and marketing – has dipped a toe into the metal world with their most recent list. Forbes published their 38 Greatest Heavy Metal Bands article and it's ruffling quite a few feathers.
Right up top, Forbes noted that while it's "impossible to include all metal sub-genres in this type of list, the sub-genres that are most prominent and influential across metal today were considered with priority." They later added that all 38 bands were chosen due to having "the most significant impact in the metal genre, and a number of these bands are among the genre’s most famous and revered bands."
And it's… fine. It certainly covers all the bases of important metal bands as far as pioneers of the genre, but 38 choices seems like a weird line to draw. And then there are some of the choices – Metallica being slightly more important than Black Sabbath? Check. Dream Theater instead of Fates Warning? Got it.
It's certainly not a bad list as far as "major publication that generally doesn't deal in metal goes metal," but yeah. Check out the bands-only rankings below, and check out the full list here via Forbes.
- Carcass
- At The Gates
- Exodus
- Behemoth
- Napalm Death
- Kyuss
- Dream Theater
- Nightwish
- King Diamond
- Danzig
- Converge
- Cannibal Corpse
- Anthrax
- Meshuggah
- Machine Head
- Lamb Of God
- Mastodon
- Sepultura
- Type O Negative
- Motörhead
- Death
- Dio
- Megadeth
- Gojira
- Korn
- Rammstein
- Deftones
- System Of A Down
- Avenged Sevenfold
- Tool
- Slayer
- Slipknot
- Ozzy Osbourne
- Judas Priest
- Pantera
- Iron Maiden
- Black Sabbath
- Metallica
