A good music album is like a book, and the individual songs are the chapters that guide and dictate the action. As the chapters of a book introduce you to the story, establish the characters and the plot, brings everything together for the conclusion and then sweeps the debris away, the first couple of songs on an album introduce you to the feel of what the band, or artist, is offering; the middle section settles down a bit, consolidates the tone, and the ending either leaves you with the contented "ahhhhhhhh" that comes from sipping your favorite beverage, or else smacks you over the head with how awesome the music was.

For this reason, the opening tracks on an album have a tough job on their hands. As any journalism teacher will tell you (mine did), the easiest thing for the reader to do is to stop reading. Similarly with music, if your first (or second) tracks don't grab the listener and say, "You're in for a hell of a ride, buddy!", the listener's just going to hit the 'stop' button, or find something else to listen to.

So I asked myself, what albums in the heavy metal spectrum have the best first & second tracks? A list of opening tracks is too easy to compile, and it's been done plenty of times already. The second track is where the money is - can it maintain, sustain and push on from where the opening track left off? Or does it drop the ball and lose the momentum that the powerful opener has worked so hard on setting? This is heavy metal we're talking about, so it's not going to be easy.

For this list, I eschew albums that open with an "intro" track, i.e. sound effects, a looped recording, or a brief piece of music that serves as a setup to the second track on the album (which would be the first bona fide song). Here, we're talking about real songs, the real deal, no filler. How well does an album grab - and more importantly and difficulty, maintain - your attention with its first two songs? These are the ones that do it best.

(contd. - Anthrax, Among The Living)