Biggest September Rock + Metal Releases By Year Since 1980

What are the biggest September rock and metal releases of every year and why does it matter?

Well September is traditionally the biggest new music release month of the year. Historically, some of the biggest selling albums of all-time have been launched during September and labels typically flood the market with top notch offerings just in time for the holiday shopping season.

Why September? There’s so many reasons why the ninth month aligns perfectly for music. It’s that time of year when kids are just getting back to school and sharing their new favorites with classmates. As stated, the prime shopping season is just around the corner and by launching in September, people will most likely have enough time to get familiar with a record to ask for it on their Christmas list. There’s also that other thing where September is a month where often the top award shows wind down their eligibility for a year, so there’s a last minute push for consideration.

Some of each year’s biggest albums always seem to arrive in September, and it really kicked into full gear in the ’90s when it seemed like every week brought something that would be massive. Monster albums from Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots and Creed absolutely crushed it as September offerings.

As file sharing became more of a thing in the 2000s, you see the sales numbers start to tail off, but that still didn’t keep from September from delivering much hyped albums from System of a Down, Green Day and Panic! at the Disco.

September in the 2010s also yielded some of the decades bigger albums, with Linkin Park, Arctic Monkeys and Imagine Dragons all delivering platinum records in a decade where that sales mark was definitely hard to hit. And so far in the 2020s, we’ve seen big sellers from Machine Gun Kelly, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne and more.

So rather than raking leaves, September is a great month to rake up some new music. See what each year from 1980 to present brought in the gallery below.