Kerrang! Says These Are The 13 Best Metal Shirts of All Time

Metal shirts and merch are my jam. I know that makes me slightly superficial, but I can’t help it–if a band has cool art, especially cool shirt art, it makes me like them more. A band sounds better to me if their art is rad as fuck.

So this morning, when Kerrang! posted that they’d determined the thirteen best metal shirts of all time, I was interested to see how well they’d done their research. And overall, I have to admit, I was pretty impressed! They got plenty of the majors, including one or two shirts I never would’ve thought of but that definitely qualify for me.

You can read the full post here, but here’s the list:

1. Slayer’s steel eagle shirt.
2. Cradle of Filth’s ‘Jesus Is A Cunt’ shirt.
3. Death’s plain logo shirt.
4. Pantera’s Vulgar Display shirt.
5. Metallica’s Master of Puppets shirt.
6. Cannibal Corpse’s Eaten Back shirt.
7. Darkthrone’s TNBM shirt.
8. Iron Maiden’s Trooper shirt.
9. Slipknot’s self-titled shirt.
10. Brujeria’s “Matando Gueros” shirt.
11. Anthrax’s Among the Living shirt.
12. Motörhead’s logo shirt.
13. Obituary’s Cause of Death shirt.

Again, not terrible, right? Each one of these shirts is pretty iconic, and we’ve seen all of these at a million metal shows. There’s nothing here that makes me say, “REALLY?”

That said, there are some BIG omissions here that I think need to be discussed. Here are five shirts that the dudes at Kerrang! seem to have blanked on.

Celtic Frost’s Morbid Tales shirt

Duuude, is there any logo more iconic, arcane, and TRVE than the cover of Celtic Frost’s debut full-length? Seeing someone in this shirt officially tells me they have at least some idea of what the fuck is up. How many looming psychos have you seen at a metal show rocking this bad boy? Definitely deserves a high spot on this list.

Judas Priest’s British Steel shirt

Now, how the Hell are you going to add Maiden and Motörhead and not give props to this gem? Honestly, the British Steel cover might be the most iconic heavy metal album sleeve of all time. Kerrang! is even a UK-based magazine–this one feels like a given!

Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite shirt

Obviously, this shirt will spark the classic controversy of, Is G’N’R a metal band or not? But that’s what makes this shirt so important, if you ask me. The Appetite shirt is the ultimate T-shirt that non-metal fans wear to show that they’re into metal and metal-adjacent stuff. Sorry, guys, but this one’s a necessary inclusion.

White Zombie’s ‘Ugly Music for Ugly People’ shirt

Okay, maybe this isn’t the most iconic shirt in the world, but I don’t give a shit–this thing RULES. It’s as straight-up metal as White Zombie shirts get, and the slogan on the back is claaaassic. I had this shirt as a kid, and it will forever be The One That Got Away for me.

This Municipal Waste shirt

Easily the greatest shirt design ever made. Come on, guys.