9 Metal Videos Your Toddler Will Love

Little kids are surprisingly edgy when it comes to entertainment. While satisfied with learning life lessons from Daniel Tiger some of the time, toddlers also like trucks, dinosaurs, and other big, loud things that cause mass destruction. Flashing lights, crazy characters, spooky villains, big catchy choruses -- all of these appeal to kids right at the age where they don't want to be babies anymore. And if any genre of music is entirely committed to those themes, its heavy metal, a style rooted in the idea that fantasy and reality aren’t that different.

While metal prides itself on being edgy as hell, it also has a childish sense of fun about it, born out of showing the world's stuffy grown-ups that it refuses to take anything too seriously. As such, there are a handful of heavy metal videos that are both child-friendly and that your kid will absolutely love. Obviously, we’re not saying you should put on the new 3TEETH video for your three-year-old, but if you find yourself ready to punch a wall if you have to watch the first 20 minutes of Kung Fu Panda 2 yet again, these provide some solid alternatives.

Here are nine heavy metal videos that your toddler is sure to love...

What toddler doesn’t love trains? Not only is Ozzy’s biggest hit the kind of ultra-catchy track that little kids love to listen to on repeat, but the video features a ton of weird stimulus that makes sense to a toddler’s hungry mind. A Flying V soaring down a train track and the constant flashing images of Randy Rhoads are the kind of gripping nonsense imagery that kids immediately latch onto. Just get ready to sing this one in the car a lot.

Jump finds Van Halen at the perfect point in their career to appeal to kids. Diamond Dave is vamping to the camera, but he’s not singing about hunting strange. The band’s outfits are tattered or bizarrely patterned, but no one’s hairy chest is out. The song is about something kids are learning to do, and the chorus involves DLR doing mid-air splits. Eye-catching, fun, and a great primer on what exactly a “rock star” is supposed to be.

Honestly, Twisted Sister probably made this video knowing that little kids would watch it. You’ve got a mean teacher who takes school too seriously getting put through all sorts of cartoon punishment by a group of weird apocalyptic clowns -- basically, every child’s dream. Your bundle of joy might be a little put off by Niedermeyer screaming at the very beginning, but once you get to people banging their heads on lockers, it's all Tom & Jerry.

Though a little trippier than some of the previous entries on this list, the Epic video walks that thin line between edgy and goofy. Sure, there are exploding lightbulbs, eyes in hands shooting lightning, and the infamous fish out of water at the end. Then again, there’s also Mike Patton bouncing around like a clown in a boxing ring, doing exaggerated facial expressions and getting soaked in the rain. We’re not saying your toddler will understand this one, only that they’ll like it.

Nu-metal has only a handful of child-appropriate videos; most offerings from that time period involve at least one scantily-clad fly girl. But Nobody’s Real is mostly about a little kid in a light-up space-helmet that gives him superpowers. Between that, you have the Hot Topic astronauts of PM5K teleporting around and dancing like they don’t know how to dance. Weird, but fun and safe for the little ones -- a rarity in the era of Nookie.

What music video is perfect for your toddler? Answer: the most perfect music video of all time. While Dio’s original Holy Diver video is a little cheesy and humorless for your modern child, Killswitch Engage’s tongue-in-cheek version is a perfect mix of epic and low-budget. Complete with a princess played by a dude, a knight who can barely move, and the perpetual turkey leg, this is an awesome way to introduce your little kid to the ultimate heavy metal song without it feeling totally lame.

Get ready to open your child’s third eye with this one. Mastodon’s Asleep In The Deep video, directed by Lovecraftian doom metal artist Skinner, is the tale of an adorable kitty going on an epic quest -- the kind of stuff all great kids’ media is about. But it also features psychedelic puppets cat mummies, stoner frogs, and a giant evil feline god falling into a neon vortex. It's sort of like one of those Jim Henson one-off specials for the '80s: your kids will love it, and you'll have a hard time explaining it.

Say what you want about Ghost’s soft approach to satanism -- it shows kids how much of being "evil" is just facepaint and theater. Case in point, the Square Hammer video does feature an evil skull-faced pope emerging from a movie screen, but the way he manifests as a cloud of bats over an animated city is way more Halloween than Hallowed Be Thy Name. It's also a good reminder that for all the Internet arguing, metal's biggest new band is just one big costume party.

Superheroes in space. Strange energy machines. An actual giant hammer, like in the band name and song title. The latest video by epic power metallers Gloryhammer is the perfect entertainment for kids raised in the golden age of superhero movies. Thankfully, it’s also a power metal video, so any sort of scary violence or sexually suggestive material is a guaranteed pass.