History of Heavy Metal Thread

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Certif1ed

The plan here is to explore each stage of the development of heavy metal, on a year-by-year basis.

To get things started, we need to identify what it is that makes the Heavy Metal sound/style, and that is different things to different people.

It makes sense to me to have Heavy Metal defined as the music produced by the NWoBHM bands of the late 1970s. Although the acronym stands for "New Wave of British Heavy Metal", there was no clear "Old Wave" - that is, most bands, with very, very few exceptions, that played "metal" before the NWoBHM are also widely described as "Hard Rock", "Heavy Rock" or even "Progressive Rock", and the music is decidedly different.

With that definition, we have some boundaries by which we can identify traits in earlier music as being a precursor to metal, and formulate the history more successfully than the often ludicrous attempts you read elsewhere!

How often have I read that the term "Heavy Metal" is derived from some old book title (as if to try to lend it some sort of literary creedence!) and that it "originated in bands of the 1960s, such as The Kinks", or in the lyrics of some song or other.

Sorry, but this won't do - I mean to explore the 1960s and before in order to find out where the roots are, look at hard rock bands other than the usual suspects (Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, Purple, Zep and Sabbath) and really get intimate with the musical development.

In order to keep things as interesting and readable as possible, I'll put this analysis into the next post.

The NWOBHM certainly brought Heavy Metal to the masses and turned it into a true genre and for that reason I think Judas Priest were probably the most important group prior to that movement and one of the first. Not only did they develop a true heavy metal music sound but also the leather and chains/studs look that would become essential to that movement, the group also displayed at times a quiet sound as oppossed to their jaw breaking heaviness, thus showing the variation of the HM sound. I think Stained Class to be one of their best. I think the movement really starts here with them, but of course there were other groups such as the Scorpions who were doing similiar stuff just as well and running parallel to them.

Going back further though, then look no further than Black Sabbath, if Judas Priest was the father then Black Sabbath the grand-father. Black Sabbath introduced the riffs that most groups still play variations of, the impending doom of HM and they were precursors of speed metal and also doom metal that many thrash groups would incorporate into their sound after slowing down. They also introduced the satanic imagery and of course like Judas Priest they were from an impoverished area of Birmingham.

Not necessarily going back further but there were a whole host of other groups that as you said above who displayed a heaviness in their sound such as Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge etc but I just think these groups just played loud and future HM bands would have just taken influence from these groups.

Groups like Led and Purple were distinctly hard rock but it is here the problems start especially with Purple. I always regard Purple as hard rock but when frontman Blackmore formed Rainbow, is this hard rock or HM because early Rainbow dislplayed the swords and sorcery and fantasy imagery that is associated with HM, also Dio has always been regarded as a classic HM Vocalist but then again his background is distinctly blues (just listen to his stuff with ELF) Then groups like Blue Oyster Cult displayed what has been described as a proto metal sound in the 70`s.

Running parallell to the NWOBHM were their American counterparts, first Kiss and then Van Halen, groups that had the imagery (glam as opposed to the British model) and the riffs fom Van Halen BUT they were distinctly tame compared to their British counterparts and had a commercial sound to their music before 80`s commerialism arrived.