Necromancer

Heavy Metal (also referred to as Metal) is a genre of Rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock.
Which decade has produced the best Metal, the 70s or the 80s?

Raust

80's, the 70's didn't have that much "metal" black sabbath is hardly metal and judas priest didn't really come out with any real metal material til the 80's. Iron Maiden was more of Punk meets a little bit of metal with Paul and really didn't hit there fullest potential till the 80's. 80's were great they had the big 4 in thrash. Some death metal started making the scene. That was a very innovative year, but it also had the dreaded genre of glam.

Necromancer

But of course the 70s had alot of metal, I think that you are mainly talking about subgenre's of Heavy Metal (Metal)? (I do see where your coming from) not to confuse Heavy metal with its sub-genre's.
The Scorpions are a 70s metal band that also went on into the 80s, bands like Motley Crue (glam metal) are more 80s, Ozzy is another artist that falls into the 70s & 80s metal scene, there's alot of metal (bands) influence to choose from the 70s era, Led Zepplin would be one to mention.
Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are both innovative Heavy Metal bands of the 70s.

Unknown Soldier

Black Sabbath hardly metal The most revered metal band of all time! And Judas Priest not having any real metal till the 1980`s!

Just because 80`s metal bands played louder and most importantly more agressively, doesn`t make the 70's band any less metal.

The only argument that could be put by a metal purist against the 70`s metal bands, is the influence of blues rock into their sound, which is hardly surprising, as when most of these bands evolved blues rock would`ve have been the dominant rock sound of the late 60`s and early 70`s.

The metal sub genres emerged sometime in the 80`s, and by their definition some of the 70`s metal acts probably wouldn`t qualify as metal. But Sabbath and Priest are without doubt metal both musically, image wise and lyrically. If there are blues rock influences there, well its just academic.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

80s. 70s metal bands were still trying to figure out what differentiates hard rock from metal(something that people could debate for lifetimes, if there even really is one), and in the 80s with thrash it was very much more defined. The sound then was refined and perfected.

Mojo

I think you can look back on certain 70's bands now and identify what they were doing as heavy metal but the way I have always thought of it is that there wasn't such a thing as heavy metal until the very late 70's or the turn of the decade. 80's for me wins hands down by sheer numbers alone.

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Unknown Soldier

In terms of decades, sure it has to be the 80`s with the thrash movement for me. As whether the NWOBHM or the thash movement were more influential on future metal acts....well this is another debate, especially given the fact, that the NWOBHM heavily influenced on thrash in general.

Mojo

Most NWOBHM bands released debut's in 1980 or later anyway.

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Jonny Redshirt

The term "Heavy metal" was actually coined in reference to Led Zeppelin's debut, if memory serves, so if we go by that basis, then there are plenty of metal bands in the 70's. Where it gets sticky is differentiating between heavy metal and hard rock.

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Janszoon

I don't think that's true.

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