In rock’s house there are many mansions. Soft and progressive, hard, and – as we celebrate in this new magazine – heavy.

You might want to split hairs with what we’ve done here. But in the run-up to their final performance this summer, we’ve allowed Black Sabbath, our cover stars, to be our guide to our 200 excellent heavy selections in this publication.

This doesn’t only mean Sabbath themselves, of course – or indeed the key records by the other foundational heavy rock groups like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. We find room for selections by those groups whose output runs faster (like Metallica) and less bluesy (like Iron Maiden), not to mention that which touches on the psychedelic (like say, The Groundhogs or the first Scorpions album).

It’s about the freshness of the music. And if there’s a sound which seems a perfect foundation for the 200 albums we’ve ranked and reviewed here, then it’s that of the first three Sabbath albums. Which is to say that of a band catching the full force of their music in the studio, maybe not spending a huge number of weeks in doing so and possibly recorded by Rodger Bain. Some of Bain’s output is in here (LPs by Budgie, for example), but there’s plenty that wasn’t which captures some of his heavy magic. Outside the mainstream, check out Toad and Iron Claw. Within it, try Rocka Rolla the debut album by Judas Priest, a pleasant discovery while editing the magazine.

There’s no grunge in here, though you could argue that the first Soundgarden album warrants a place. Maybe more controversially perhaps, there aren’t very many “heavy metal” albums in here. For one thing, it’s not a term that Tony Iommi agrees with, for another, the production values of the 1980s – the decade from which HM predominantly derives – didn’t always allow the music to punch the weight you might hope for down the decades. There’s no Stoner/Doom, which could also be a fairly lively conversation, since Sabbath are the spiritual leaders of all that.

The hope here is to use genre as a jumping off point for new listening (or re-listening) than to imprison you in a vinyl straitjacket, like the one on Quiet Riot’s 1983 chart topper Metal Health, but let’s not go there. This, after all, is a series which aims to bring great records to your attention, wherever they come from. For those about to read, we salute you.

It’s in the shops tomorrow but you can get your copy direct from us here.