Which of these 4 bands is the one true KING of British Heavy Metal for you? Me

Judas Priest :DDDDDD
Motorhead :D
Black Sabbath :)
Iron Maiden : I

You've heard one Iron Maiden Song, you've heard them all. You've heard that one Judas Priest song (you know the one I speak of!), you've heard the best. And the other two bands are overblown.

Yes, I like to oversimplify :P

Excuse me, but is this a joke?

SABBATH
SABBATH
SABBATH!!!!!!!!!!!

All of them are really good bands, but my ranking is;

Iron Maiden :DDDD
Black Sabbath :DDD
Motorhead :DD
Judas Priest :D

You mean the first six songs of the Painkiller album :D Litirally the reverse of my ranking :P

Well, after Ozzy left I really don't consider Sabbath, but in those few years with that original line up they created and conquered the entire genre.

I love the other bands in the title but they don't exist without Sabbath and even an egomaniac like Lemmy will say as much.

Lemmy did help make Thrash Metal :D

Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Exodus, Testament, Overkill, Death Angel, and so much more would be nothing without Motorhead.

That is an absolute waste of good material. Without Ozzy the band wrote so much better material. Heaven & Hell, TYR, Cross Purposes, Headless cross. Beats a lot of that bloated mid '70s stuff.

Dio era was better for you. You share the same thoughts as my Brother ;) Iron Maiden always play their most famous songs than anyother band.

Mostly from Number of the Beast and Poweslave albums. Oh and the song the Trooper.

Black Sabbath is THE metal band. Specially their first era, the gloomy and doomy songs with Ozzy, is the best of the best. Of course, DIO era is good and all, and DIO kicks Ozzy's ass, but you cannot match the raw metal of the first 4 albums. But well, I am a Doom kind of guy.

Judas Priest is my second on this list, but there are far better NWOBHM bands in my opinion (Witchfinder General is my favourite, but then, I voted Ozzy's Sabbath :P ).

I prefer Iron Maiden to Motorhead, but only because I have not listened a lot of it. About Iron Maiden, I really like < 20 songs. I really love those, but their other stuff, for me, is MeH, at best. And Black Sabbath "made" Lemmy. If you like "Metal theory", check a documentary called A Headbanger's Journey. I remember himself referencing Black Sabbath's innovation and influence, yet I might be wrong.

Ozzy was the voice.

Motorhead gets the nod for me. Black Sabbath is great and one of the official founders of metal, but there were a ton of psychedelic rock bands in America and Germany in the 60s doing what Black Sabbath did (and occasionally better), just most never got known nationally. Judas Priest is fantastic, not much else to say there. While I do like Iron Maiden I've never loved them.

Now for some useless info that is tied to the aforementioned bands, maybe you'll find a new band you like.

There was a band in the late 80s called WWIII, they were formed by a singer named Mandy Lion backed by musicians including Vinny Appice (Black Sabbath) and Jimmy Bain (Dio) in the initial lineup. Later on Mikky Dee was with them before he was with Motorhead, and Tracy G of Dio was as well.

This is a song called Love You To Death off their first record (self titled) Love You To Death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouEjyxN_mww

Their label rep killed whatever chance they had of really making it thanks to a idiotic PR move, so you'd think that would be the end of Mandy Lion, right? Nope. He managed to form a (short lived) band called Wicked Alliance with Jake E. Lee of Ozzy Osbourne. This is The Rust off of one of their demos: : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCnS_c4x6eU

As far as Jake E. Lee, he formed a band called Badlands after leaving Ozzy, a band that included former Black Sabbath singer Ray Gillen and future KISS drummer Eric Singer. This is High Wire from their debut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnpLOOLCmjE
and this is Devil's Stomp, also from their first album I believe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHYKa0xD0G8

Silly kid. Judas is a thief, not a priest.

I'm gonna be extra-biased because the first record I ever purchased was "Fear Of The Dark" on tape (CD market was only beginning to appear in stores) and I then collected the Iron Maiden postcards and put them on the walls of my bedroom for a few years so I was deep into them :o)

Musically speaking, I prefer Iron Maiden over the other three because they had different phases in their discography. To this day, I'm quite fond of the pre-Dickinson albums, the synthetizer phase (somewhere in time, 7th son of 7th son) and early 90's. BTW, I'm glad you opened this thread as I just saw on the wikipedia page they have a new album coming up in September, yipee! ^o^

And also : Eddie various artworks rule ! :o)