Warthur I actually think the title track on this one is a bit of a weak opener - it's not a bad song, but much of the rest of the material on this album blows it away. Lyrically, Anvil bounce around here between classic metal subject matter like monster movies (Mothra), Satan (666), and metal itself (title track, of course), with the odd curveball like Tag Team, a really stomping tribute to pro wrestling. (Come to think of it, it's slightly surprising to me that more metal bands haven't composed tributes to the squared circle, especially given traditional heavy metal's recurring themes of vaguely homoerotic hyper-macho heroism.)

Musically, it's a dynamite blend of influences like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and other superstars of traditional heavy metal, taken to a new level of confident, aggressive headbanging. Early 1980s metal only rarely gets better than this.

voila_la_scorie This riff must be in the top something of best metal riffs ever. Certainly the top ten of the eighties. "Metal on Metal" was the first true introduction the world had to Canadian purveyors of heavy, heavy metal, Anvil. Well, there's that whole documentary about Anvil, and the one thing many can agree upon is that Anvil are the link between traditional metal like Judas Priest and thrash metal. And the title track of this album is sung with a spit and drool snarl, like a burly biker doing metal karaoke, vocals with guts. It has to be one of the great metal anthems.

The fun doesn't stop after the first track, though. Anvil take every lesson learned from Judas Priest's most intense head banging tracks between 1978 and 1980 and pump it all full throttle into "Mothra", a speedy and thunderous charger of a tune that will have you tapping your feet like a jackhammer. And heck, just to be sure, Anvil have a song on here called "Jackhammer".

The oddball of the album is "Stop Me" which is not so unusual for its acoustic intro as it is for its more standard-for-the-day hard rock/heavy metal approach. This could be Scorpions meets Raven. The chorus is almost catchy!

No fear. By "March of the Crabs" we are somewhere between Judas Priest and "Killers" Iron Maiden with the intensity factor kicked up a notch or two. If Anvil didn't write the book on metal up until 1982?! This is '82? Damn, well if they didn't write the book they they were ready by any means to rewrite it!

Do I need to do a track by track run down? How about I just summarize by saying the rest of the album is heavy, intense, fast, an onslaught of metal music. This should by all means stand out as a defining album in metal history. When things slow down it's only to be slow and heavy like steel factory machinery. Otherwise, it's never mind the bullocks and take no prisoners. If someone had said that thrash metal could never be done, someone else surely would have said, "How about Anvil?"

AtomicCrimsonRush I owned this on vinyl in the 80s and played it to death in those days. It has since met it's fate in the heavy metal funeral pyre along with a lot of other 80s metal. But at the time this was a killer with some awesome riffs and amazing melodies. Metal on Metal is an ear splitter with an infectious anthemic shout out loud chorus.

Mothra is a lot of fun about the legendary Tokyo monster.

March of the Crabs is an incredible guitar heavy metal instrumental. Tease Me, Please Me harkens back to their sex n sleaze debut. And 666 was the mandatory take on Revelation that every metal band was targetting.

The band were sadly underrated but this was the drawcard - great solid punching metal between the ears.

Time Signature Jackhammer metal...

Genre: traditional heavy metal

"Metal on Metal" is, or at least, should be a heavy metal classic on par with "Balls to the Wall", "Back in Black", "British Steel" and perhaps even "The Number of the Beast". It's much better than their debut, and "Metal on Metal" certainly lives up to its name.

Musically, "Metal on Metal" stamps out the Anvil style and it was also somewhat ahead of its time. There are several hard rocking metal tracks on this album that ought to be legendary by now, such as "metal on Metal", "Mothra", "Scenery" and, of course "666" as well as the instrumental metal epitome "March of the Crabs".

Lips' voice is really sick (the good way) on this album which suits the music very well, which is generally both harder and heavier than on "Hard and Heavy" - almost thrashy in places. and, thankfully, the silly cock rock lyrics of the debut album have also given way for nihilistic lyrics celebrating heavy metal music - although there are some sex 'n' sleaze lyrics left.

This belongs in any metal collection.