3 Heavy Metal Songs From the Early 1980s That Pointed Toward the Decade’s Darker Future

Heavy metal enjoyed a serious boom in the 1980s, and the genre evolved significantly by the decade’s end. Many early 1980s tracks would predict the dark direction heavy metal would take, too. Let’s look at just a few examples of trend-setting metal songs, shall we?

“Heaven And Hell” by Black Sabbath from ‘Heaven And Hell’ (1980)

This Black Sabbath track has that ominous, epic energy to it that would become common in darker metal songs that would drop in the later 1980s. It’s no surprise, honestly. Virtually everything Black Sabbath did would come to inspire metal bands that walked in their footsteps.

“Heaven And Hell” by Black Sabbath was written by Ronnie James Dio and would become a go-to for performances by Black Sabbath, as well as Dio and the supergroup Heaven & Hell.

“The Sentinel” by Judas Priest from ‘Defenders Of The Faith’ (1984)

This Judas Priest deep cut dropped closer to the mid-1980s, but its futuristic and almost violent vibe was a bit ahead of its time in metal. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, such themes would become much more common in metal. Judas Priest got dystopian before a lot of metal bands jumped on board.

“The Sentinel” by Judas Priest was never released as a single, but Defenders Of The Faith as a whole would reach No. 18 on the Billboard 200.

“The Number Of The Beast” by Iron Maiden from ‘The Number Of The Beast’ (1982)

From its inception in the 1970s, heavy metal often touched on the supernatural. That wasn’t anything new by the time Iron Maiden dropped “The Number Of The Beast” in 1982. However, by the end of the 1980s, the heavy metal bands’ interest in the occult and horror would grow in new and interesting ways, spearheaded by this iconic song (and album as a whole, honestly).

This title track from The Number Of The Beast would cause quite a bit of outrage during the Satanic Panic era in the US. In the band’s native England, however, the song made it all the way to No. 18 on the UK Singles chart.

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