When the manly man prepares his manly day of doing manly things, it is important, nay ESSENTIAL, that he posses the proper soundtrack to accompany his many manly exploits accordingly. So when you’re out there driving your manly car, working your manly job, filing your manly taxes and updating your manly Facebook status for the 12th time on your manly day, enjoy these essential albums rated “M” for manly! Warning: If feelings of invincibility, the desire to kill dragons, uncontrollable flexing, synchronized shirt ripping, inappropriate, but totally rad air guitar solos or other manly symptoms persist for longer than 20 minutes, please head to your nearest physician and ask if that unmanly nerd is man enough to spot you.
1: Dio – “Holy Diver” (1983)
I’ll admit, while no manly list of albums can ever be complete without a passing mention of the late Ronnie James Dio, the question of which Dio album is always challenge.
2. Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)
Enter The Wu Tang opens up with the sounds of an old Asian man telling you the equivalent of “come at me bro” before launching into a flurry of karate chops, spin kicks, and the nine most deadly MCs ever assembled spitting fire for the next hour.
3. Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Pronounced Leh-nerd- Skin-nerd” (1973)
I defy you to walk into a single Waffle House in the South that doesn’t have nearly half these songs on their jukebox. Granted, the manly momentum gets cut off a little early at a mere two tracks in thanks to Skynyrd making the rookie mistake of throwing in their ballad (Tuesday’s Gone) entirely too early.
4. Led Zeppelin – “Led Zeppelin I” (1969)
Yes, IV has Stairway To Heaven and yes, the solo is pretty freaking sweet. But come on! This is man time! You need to get that testosterone pumping ASAP, and for that, you need look no further than the glittering golden gods debut.
5. Tom Waits – “Rain Dogs” (1985)
With a voice that can be best described as Cookie Monster meets Bob Dylan meets broken glass where vocal chords should be, that Waits growl cannot be mistaken for anything but manly.
6. Yngwie Malmsteen – “Marching Out” (1985)
I could just point to the above picture until you get the point. Instead I’ll just leave you with the fact that there is a song on this album un-ironically titled “I Am A Viking”, and let you work out the rest.
7. Judas Priest- “Screaming For Vengeance” (1982)
The title says it all. Rob Halford and company aren’t talking about retribution. They aren’t filibustering about retaliation. For reasons best known to them, they are screaming for vengeance.
8. AC/DC – “Highway To Hell” (1979)
While constant radio play since the 80s have all but assured that there’s not a single person alive who isn’t sick to death of the band, it’d be downright sacrilegious not to feature an album of theirs in a discussion about manliness.
9. Andrew W.K – “I Get Wet” (2001)
If AC/DC are more of collective drunken entity, Andrew is a force of drunken, child-like nature that speaks in only fist bumps and headbutting.
10. Manowar – “Kings Of Metal” (1988)
Confession time. This list of albums from the being was conceived merely to build up to this. For the uninitiated, Manowar are a band that’s so manly, they’ve blasted well beyond the point of self-parody only to circle back again to being manly men doing manly things.
