2003 in heavy metal music
This is a timeline documenting the events of heavy metal in the year 2003.
Newly formed bands
Re-formed bands
Albums
- Alice Cooper - Eyes Of Alice Cooper
- Arch Enemy - Anthems of Rebellion
- Avenged Sevenfold - Waking the Fallen
- Black Label Society - The Blessed Hellride
- The Black Dahlia Murder - Unhallowed
- Cannibal Corpse - 15 Year Killing Spree
- Children of Bodom - Hate Crew Deathroll
- Chimaira - The Impossibilty of Reason
- Cradle of Filth - Damnation and a Day
- The Darkness - Permission to Land
- Deep Purple - Bananas
- Devildriver- DevilDriver (album)
- Dimmu Borgir - Death Cult Armageddon
- Divinity Destroyed - Divinity Destroyed
- Divinity Destroyed - Eden in Ashes
- DragonForce - Valley of the Damned
- Dream Theater - Train of Thought
- Finntroll - Visor om Slutet
- Helloween - Rabbit Don't Come Easy
- Iron Maiden - Dance of Death
- Judas Priest - Livin' after Midnight
- KISS - Symphony: Alive IV
- Kreator - Live Kreation
- Macabre - Murder Metal
- Metallica - St. Anger
- Moonspell - The Antidote
- Motörhead - Live At Brixton Academy The Complete Concert (live)
- Opeth - Damnation
- Pitchshifter - Bootlegged, Distorted, Remixed and Uploaded
- Skid Row - Thickskin
- Solefald - In Harmonia Universali
- Sonata Arctica - Winterheart's Guild
- Static-X - Shadow Zone
- Strapping Young Lad - Strapping Young Lad
- Stratovarius - Elements, pt.1, Elements, pt.2
- Stryper - Seven
- Theocracy - Theocracy
- Tourniquet - Where Moth and Rust Destroy
- Trivium - Ember to Inferno
- Týr - Eric the Red
- uneXpect - We, Invaders
Disbandments
Events
- Metallica hires new bassist Robert Trujillo (from Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne).
- MTV2 resurrected the old Heavy Metal, Rock television program Headbangers' Ball.
- Iced Earth vocalist Matt Barlow leaves Iced Earth after the events of September 11th.
- Christian metal band Stryper reforms with all original members.
- Visions of Atlantis lead vocalist Christian Stani quits, and is later replaced by Mario Plank. Keyboardist Chris Kamper quits and is replaced by Miro Holly