Biggest September Rock + Metal Releases By Year Since 1980

Ah September! It's a great time of year if you're a music fan! In fact, it's the month in which the music industry goes a little crazy in releasing new music. Year in and year out September is the month that provides the most new music releases as record labels try to get some of their biggest releases out in time to be considered for award season AND still be freshly remembered for the year-end holiday shopping blitz.

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.

READ MORE: Rock + Metal Artists With the Most Top 10 Charting Albums

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.