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Judas Priest
Judas Priest, formed in Birmingham, England in 1969, helped define heavy metal's visual identity by introducing leather-and-studs stage attire drawn partly from motorcycle and BDSM subculture fashion, a look that became one of the genre's most enduring and widely imitated visual templates. The band's twin-lead-guitar approach, featuring two guitarists trading and harmonizing melodic lead lines simultaneously, became a widely adopted structural template for subsequent metal bands, giving Judas Priest's sound a layered, harmonized guitar texture distinct from the single-lead-guitar approach common in earlier hard rock. Frontman Rob Halford publicly came out as gay in 1998, becoming one of the first prominent metal frontmen to do so, a significant moment given heavy metal's historically hypermasculine public image, and Halford's continued prominence within the genre after coming out helped gradually shift broader conversations about sexuality within metal culture. Judas Priest's 1980 album British Steel, featuring hits like "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight," helped bring heavy metal to a broader mainstream rock audience, and the band's sustained influence on metal's visual style and twin-guitar musical structure has made them one of the genre's most foundational acts.
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Slayer
Slayer, formed in Huntington Park, California in 1981, became one of the "Big Four" thrash metal bands alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax, and their 1986 album Reign in Blood, produced by Rick Rubin, is widely regarded as one of the most aggressive and influential thrash metal albums ever recorded. The band's explicit, often graphically violent lyrical content, including songs directly referencing serial killers and Nazi war crimes, drew sustained controversy and censorship attempts throughout their career, with Slayer's label reportedly requiring the removal of a specific song from Reign in Blood's initial pressing due to its Holocaust-related subject matter. Slayer's extremely fast tempos and technically demanding guitar work, particularly on tracks like "Angel of Death," pushed thrash metal's speed and aggression to a genuinely extreme level that directly influenced the subsequent development of death metal and other more extreme metal subgenres. The band's decision to formally retire in 2019, following a lengthy farewell tour, ended one of thrash metal's most significant and consistently uncompromising careers, and Slayer's influence on extreme metal's subsequent development remains among the most direct and widely acknowledged of any band from the genre's founding thrash era.
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