Trollheart

I don't think he disagrees on the dates, just the placement of Judas Priest within the NWO and whether or not they can be called such a band.

Like I say.
It's a matter of history that the bands involved in, and who drove the NWOBHM all started coming to prominence, gigging, releasing EPs then albums around this time, 1979/1980, and as more and more bands got into it and a general shift in the undercurrent of metal/hard rock was detected, a shift away from blues based bands like Purple, Sabs and Zep and even Priest to a degree, with bands coming up who were younger, faster and harder, kind of a precursor to punk, the term got coined and is firmly rooted in this time. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

The roots of the movement certainly go back further (Maiden were formed in 1975, Motorhead the same, Leppard in 77 and Praying Mantis in 1974). But none of them really came to any sort of prominence or were noticed until the very end of the 70s.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

I know all that, in fact I pretty much said the same thing.

What I'm saying is you can't just separate it as being one thing and say this was this and that was that. You have to take what was happening in the music scene at large. As I said Priest reinvented themselves in late 78/ early 79 and became the first metal act since punk to make any sort of a breakthrough, but they needer a newer fresher sound to do it. And with that they led the way for the NWOBHM.

It doesn't actually matter if they were a part of it or not, but they were caught up with it and were a causing factor in what happened to it which is why I keep saying it's not a black & white thing.

This is at the same time when European rock bands like Accept, Krokus & Trust were breaking out, you had American bands like Van Halen playing their first gigs in the UK as well as bands like Kiss & Alice Cooper playing their first UK gigs since the mid 70s. You also had 70s bands like Scorpions, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Hawkwind, Black Sabbath with new line ups in a lot of cases playing much more harder edged music then they had before. Plus you had punk bands who were bored of playing punk and in some cases went on to play in metal bands and/or started the whole glam metal thing in the early 80s.

You can't just take one thing and look at it as a solitary entity, you have to look at what was going on around it too.

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Trollheart

No I know you know it, obviously. That was just to confirm it to Briks, who seemed to think you were saying the movement, what is seen as the NWOBHM, began in the early seventies, which of course it didn't.

You and I lived through that period, so obviously you're well clued-in on it. Briks is younger so missed it. I was just clarifying for his sake.

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Isbjørn

Yeah, I'm 15, so I have an excuse.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

I was about 5 years old at the time

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Trollheart

God-damn you all! I was seventeen in 1980 ....

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Unknown Soldier

Just think of the NWOBHM as a movement of like-minded yet different heavy metal and hard rock bands that recorded their first albums in the 1979 to around 1983-1984 period. Certainly not a genre and just a geographical movement. If you explore the bands you'll see just how different many of them are.

Like Motorhead, Judas Priest get included because they were a major driving forcé behind it, but they along with Motorhead put out their first albums before the movement was even heard of, but all their albums from this period are like essential NWOBHM listens.

For the record bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and UFO were probably the biggest influences on it, even more so than Black Sabbath in my opinión. I tend to think of Black Sabbath as being the prime movers behind the extreme metal genres of the early to mid 1980s.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Holerbot6000

"With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music."

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Chula Vista

IMO this is the song that really helped pigeon hole what NWOBHM became for the remainder of the 70s and into the early 80s. Iron Maiden hopped on board this gallop big time though they upped the meter a few BPMs.

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Big Ears

It is not quite, but almost, a month since I posted (posed?) my question, so it would seem reasonable to assume that there is not a definition of heavy metal for the forum or sub-forum.

My definition of heavy metal (drawn from my admittedly failing memory) is a term introduced in the mid-seventies to refer to music developed in the late-sixties/ early-seventies, characterised by The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream and Black Sabbath in the UK and Blue Cheer, Grand Funk Railroad, Iron Butterfly and BOC in the US. It was based on simple riffs played in unison at high volume (simple meaning immediate or obvious). This was predominantly lead by guitar and bass in four or five-piece bands, but, as with the English language, there were clear exceptions.

Heavy was used because bands like Iron Butterfly had a thick heavy sound, although Led Zeppelin had a thin sound, but belted it out! Black Sabbath claimed to have a heavy sound, because it was born out of the heavy industry of the midlands in which they were brought up and worked.

By the time the term was coined, it tended to be derogatory (because of its inadequacy and cheesy application) for plain hard or heavy rock. Ozzy Osbourne said he never liked the term, 'heavy metal'. My sources are, as I say, my memory of the time, and contemporary publications, while quotes from Tony Iommi and Burke Shelley spring to mind.

Since the LA big hair bands of the eighties, like G'n'R, heavy metal now appears to have been adopted affectionately by commercial, almost pop, groups with punk rock elements, such as Dickinson-era Iron Maiden, Metallica and the like.

Re. the NWOBHM: The NWOBHM was a marketing term and strategy for hard or heavy rock bands which emerged in the wake of punk rock and was characterised by short fast tracks, sometimes incompetently played. After all, punk rock was often heavy rock with bad vocals. NWOBHM was my first experience of bad heavy rock, although the internet has subsequently shown me it did exist earlier. Something which made it notable was that EMI, to which many of the bands were signed and who released the influential Metal for Muthas albums, added inferior production to clean sounding material in order to make it 'NWOBHM'.

Another aspect of NWOBHM was that established bands like Nutz (idiotically renamed Rage) and Budgie absurdly became NWOBHM for marketing purposes.

My memory of seeing many of these bands live in the early days was that Iron Maiden, Samson, Chevy, (Jameson) Raid, Praying Mantis and others were NWOBHM. I remember seeing a publicity photo for Iron Maiden outside the Marquee in Wardour St, with them dressed in the cliched garb of denim, leather and studded wrist bands - from which I have still not recovered. I am vague about Saxon, Magnum and Def Leppard, although Saxon were very loud! Some like Trespass and White Spirit were pretty good.

Motorhead and Judus Priest were emphatically not NWOBHM, but unlike Nutz and Budgie they were not marketed as such. Motorhead became more refined and commercial, while Priest became less refined and commercial.

By way of a conclusion, I would find it helpful if there was a definition for the site. It would certainly help with regard to the place of heavy and hard rock on the forum, including the original bands, such as Budgie, Stray, Groundhogs and many others. I am not trying to ruffle any feathers here, but my experience is that history can sometimes be rewritten.

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