Rhino readies a huge dose of heavy metal thunder

What’s that? You say you regularly sing Satan’s praises while thrashing yourself silly to the sounds of Killswitch Engage and Cradle of Filth but you have no deeper understanding of the history of metal?

Never fear, Rhino Records is here to put you straight—with “The Heavy Metal Box,” a four-disc overview of the much-maligned (and equally exalted, by others) genre that began as the `60s gave way to the `70s. The set, due Oct. 2, spans that “golden age,” from pioneers like Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper and Uriah Heep—and who could forget Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” honey?—to the English demons of the late `70s and `80s (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Saxon, even Motorhead) and on into the dichotomy that the late `80s brought, comprising both hair-metal (Poison, Ratt, Cinderella) and the decade’s rawer return to pure metal (Metallica, Pantera, Sepultura).

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