A Decade Of Dio

The Top 100 '80s Rock Albums span a series of genres as startling and varied as the era's neon-flecked fashions.No one was immune to the early-decade emergence of new wave, from up-and-coming acts to legacy groups – many of whom began incorporating the then-new sound into their bedrock approach.Meanwhile, classic rock and subsequently metal began a transformation into mass acceptance when the edges were smoothed out to form arena rock and hair metal, respectively. The arrival of roots, thrash, and world music influences kept things interesting, along the way. All of it made selecting the period's best releases both intriguing and deeply challenging.Check out the list below, as Ultimate Classic Rock takes a chronological look at the Top 100 '80s Rock Albums.

The story of a small town that rose to become the most powerful empire of the ancient world has been an inspiration to generations of people. Even after the collapse of the Roman Empire, many nations and their leaders have styled themselves 'heirs of Rome', emulating its society, technology and warfare. This book details the wars that shaped the Roman Empire, from the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar and the subsequent civil war between Caesar and Pompey which tore apart the ageing Republic, through the expansion of the early Empire to its 'decline and fall'. Contains material previously published in Essential Histories 21: ‘Rome at War’, Essential Histories 43: ‘Caesar's Gallic Wars’ and Essential Histories 42: ‘Caesar's Civil War’.

Destruction were the most traditionalist of the big three German thrash bands: where Sodom and Kreator headed in a punkier direction, frequently aiming for pure aggression at the expense of melody, Destruction always retained a classic metal feel. They wanted audiences to mosh, but they also wanted to write songs with memorable choruses and heroic guitar solos…

This is my favorite Sutherland collection. It has so much from so many periods. The bits from The French Opera Gala are beyond belief. It is some of the best coloratura she ever did and was recorded at a great part of her career. Both the Wagner and the Mozart discs were recorded when she was close to 60, which doesn't mean that much with Sutherland. Still it would have been great to have heard the Wagner recorded a decade earlier when she recorded the Turandot. She would have been better at Wagner than anyone around today. Not Nilsson or Flagstad's equal, but better by far than Voigt, who isn't bad. On the Mozart bits, a couple sound old, but the rest are as good a performance of Mozart as you are ever going to hear. Many people only like the young Sutherland, but I like the color and richness her voice developed with age.

Collected together for the first time, ‘Manipulations Of The Mind – The Complete Collection’, assembles the entire solo works of founding Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler across four CDs.  Featuring the albums ‘Plastic Planet’ (1995), ‘Black Science’ (1997), and ‘Ohmwork’ (2005), with a bonus 4th disc of rare and largely unreleased material, ‘Manipulations Of The Mind’ shines the spotlight on a creative force who, as chief master of the heavy metal originators heavyweight bottom-end and the lyrics that gave voice to the monolithic riffs, didn’t rest on his laurels and created three solo albums of forward-thinking new music throughout those years. The 4th bonus disc is a treasure trove of unreleased demos, studio outtakes, single edits and three live tracks captured at the Majestic Theatre, Detroit, MI, February 1996, alongside the song ‘Beach Skeleton’, only previously heard on the Japanese edition of ‘Black Science’.