Minimalistic, but Enter Sandman is a great intro.
You immediately know what the song is and portions of that phrase appear in some form all throughout the song. If Beethoven were still alive, I think he’d be impressed by that whole tune in general. It’s crash course on motif development.
Technically it also appears in the outro, so I’ll double dip and use it for the outro too.
My favorite Metallica song 
Oh man you reminded me of this
Outro to Nuclear Assaults Trail of Tears - totally unexpected gem of a jam style thing - awesome stuff:
To be faaaaaaiiiiiiiirrrrrrr…
Metallica has a bunch of examples of great intros. I’m a sucker for their earlier days, when the kinda-unrelated-to-the-rest-of-the-song intro was more commonplace…
Very cool topic!
When I think of a great outro I think of King’s X - I’ll Never Be The Same.
For me, it’s battery hands down. It just kicks up visuals like there is going to be some sort of gun fight, like a Sergio Leone style Mexican standoff. Or it conjures up images of the Spanish armada heading to invade Britain unaware they are about to be in for a surprise.
The whole song is awesome. I never heard much from kings X, so I went back and listened to the whole thing. My only gripe is that I’m not sure how I feel about the “bare” overly chorused guitar solo part. It really could have used some backing guitar tracks on it then it would have been perfect. You need that “nasty” in the background backing you up.
So somebody Is going to post this, they have to its low hanging fruit, so I might as well be first. The ending to still of the night. the solo section too, but that melodic walking progression at the very last few bars ending on the bII just hits it:
+1 for this. Low hanging fruit or not, awesome song all around.
I love the intro to Rising Force… so dramatic. haha
Man…forget all the weedly-weedly stuff…
The intro to Rush’s Limelight is exceptional. Some say it resembles the sounds of a car starting.
Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher is about as close to the sound of a built V8 idling until Eddie basically does a burnout…
…and the album cover to 1984 is just killer.
Excellent choice. How has nobody mentioned that yet???
That gives me an idea for another elephant in the room. Van Halen’s “You Really Got Me”. And no, I don’t mean the power chords before the band comes in…I mean…ERUPTION!!! Because that’s used an intro to You Really Got Me. From Wikipedia:
(Highlight, my own)
Seven by Symphony X:
Outro.
Outro - folksy guitar tune with a spectacular outro mix of synth and real world sounds.
I’m not sure if there are any other Boards of Canada fans here (perhaps not), but I love them. These two outros put me in a strange mood, like much of their music.
Sails of charon by scorpions is one of the best guitar intros of all time imo. Serious harmonic minor shredding and it’s so fun to play, if you can get it up to full speed! I’ve been stuck on 90% speed on the lil solo licks/fills for a while
I’m surprised no one has said Mr Crowley.
