In the 1980s, a band couldn’t truly say that they had “made it” until they had a massive, over-the-top, epic, tear-jerking power ballad. It was a trend that dates back to KISS having the biggest hit of their career with the accidental chart-topper “Beth” in 1977. Be it Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” or Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Till It’s Gone), the decade was one giant game of balladry one-upmanship. By the time hair metal burned itself out at the dawn of the 90s, there were bands that seemed to deal in nothing but ballads (Firehouse, Warrant, Trixter, et al…).

There is, however, one song that stands out to me as the apex of this movement. Veteran German metal band Scorpions were equally adept at bone-crushing rock and roll and ballads that could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. This week’s Massive Metal Monday song is one of the latter moments. Here, with the most bitchin’ ballad of the day, is Scorpions with “Still Loving You” from their massively successful 1984 album Love At First Sting.

In honor of the 45th anniversary of the release of Black Sabbath‘s self-titled
debut album this past Friday, today’s edition of Massive Metal Monday is dedicated to the album’s eponymous opening track. Watch the band perform the song live in Paris from 1970 here below.

Every 5 to 10 years there is a band whose arrival signals a sea change in the heavy metal landscape, be it Black Sabbath’s invention of the form, Iron Maiden’s punk/speed metal hybrid, Metallica’s time signature shifting thrash, or Pantera’s grungy southern sludge groove. Killswitch Engage is one of those bands. While their lowbrow nu metal contemporaries were unsuccessfully attempting to bastardize rap and doing it all for the nookie, Killswitch melded the aesthetics of hardcore to melodic, radio-friendly metal hooks to popularize a genre that would come to be known as metalcore.

There would be a million bands that would attempt to emulate Killswitch’s unique brand of beauty and ferocity. Most of them would only succeed in sounding like pale imitations. To this day the band stand as one of the most vital in the genre and their live shows continue to amaze.

From the band’s second album, Alive Or Just Breathing, the Massive Metal Monday track for this week is “Fixation On The Darkness.” Interestingly, the album features the vocals of original singer Jesse Leach who would leave the band before the video for the song was shot. This video features his replacement, Howard Jones, and was shot live to introduce the world to the new singer and his skills.

Angel Witch is one of the most underrated bands to emerge during the new wave of British heavy metal movement in the late ’70s and early ’80s. The list of bands who cite them as an influence are as long as your arm, but Angel Witch never broke through to mass acclaim that some of their peers such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest did.

Formed in London in 1977, the band has endured so many breakups, reunions, lineup changes (at least 28 different musicians have been in the band at some time or another… some multiple times), and mismanagement debacles that they could make a documentary to act as the sequel to This Is Spinal Tap. This has all led to a rather sparse output; Angel Witch have issued only four full-length studio albums in 35 years.

Here below is the title track of the band’s eponymous 1980 debut album, the highly revered Angel Witch.

Savatage emerged from the Tampa, Florida scene in the early 1980s and helped usher in a new brand of progressive power metal. Led by virtuoso guitarist Criss Oliva and his brother, the powerhouse operatic vocalist Jon Oliva, Savatage would climb all the way to the top of the metal world with one classic album after another. The pinnacle of their success came with their 1987 album Hall of the Mountain King, which featured two hit singles that received heavy airplay on MTV: “Hall of the Mountain King” and “24 Hours Ago.”

Watch the video for the album’s title track here below.