Well, that’s the age old question isn’t it?
For my money it started with Black Sabbath. Most metalheds would agree with me but there’d be a few that would have other opinions on the matter as well. The minute you put on their first actual album “Black Sabbath (relaeased Feb 1970) you hear a guitar tone like nothing anyone had ever heard before this. The vocals are scarier than anything that came before it and the lyrics and guitar riffage had a sinister demonic undertone to it.
Instead of blabbering on about it here (as old men tend to do) I’ve linked my thoughts on the first Black Sabbath album HERE. Check it out!
The music itself was like heavy blues, tuned down and distorted. I guess for me as someone that wasn’t born then its easy to sit there and preach, but I feel like I can look back on it reasonably objectively and say that this is the moment in time when rock (or even hard rock) became Heavy.
WHAT OTHER BANDS PIONEERED HEAVY METAL?
But one year before Black Sabbath released their genre defining self titled album there was another band Coven that put out an album. The album, oddly enough was called “Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls”. The band featured a sexy as hell pagan chick Jinx on vocals (who has defied any concept of aging and still performs with a re-vamped line-up of Coven to this day). Oddly enough the original guitar player on the album was called “Oz Osbourne”. There was even a song called “Black Sabbath” on the record. The lyrics on the album were overtly satanic and occult in nature and if you were lucky enough to own this on record, the second half of the album actually contained a live recording of a black mass. The only thing that didn’t make this album “metal” in the purest sense of the word was the guitars. It just wasn’t anywhere near as heavy in a coherent sense as the first Black Sabbath Album. Definitely an Honourable Mention as a fore-runner to the look, feel and spiritual path of Heavy Metal. Listen to the Album on You Tube
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
There’s the more obvious fore-runners who had some heavier guitar and drum tones like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple (Both of whom formed in 1968 – Again one year before Sabbath but around the same time as Coven), Hendrix and Steppenwolf but most of you would already be aware of them anyway so there’s not much point in going into that in too much detail here.
To me the elements of Heavy metal were the Heavy guitar / bass sound, Heavy drum sound, and as well as the the imagery in the stage clothes, vocals and lyrics. I don’t think Deep Purple or Led Zep had enough of those elements to class themselves as Heavy Metal. I think Black Sabbath did. Thats my opinion anyway. Some would disagree and they’re more than entitled to 🙂 . I’ve spent many hours discussing this over beers with friends, and always happy to spend a few more discussing it with my metal friends, after all this is what life and metal is about.
WHERE DID THE TERM HEAVY METAL COME FROM?
There’s two equally credible explainations for this and to me they both make sense. The first was a journalists reaction to a Jimi Hendrix gig saying it sounded like “Heavy Metal Falling from the sky” and the second was in reference to a line in a Steppenwolf song “Born to be Wild” where the singer pulls out the line “Heavy Metal thunder”. I’m happy with either of these explainations really.
BEFORE THERE WAS METAL
A few of todays metal legends were running around before the dawn of Heavy Metal honing their skills in other areas of music, such as Ronnie James Dio(who played in a vocal group called Ronnie Dio and the Prophets) as far back as the 1950s, Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister who played in the Rocking Vickars and Hawkwind, later going on to form Motorhead and even a very young Eric Adams of Manowar who’s childhood band was playing regular professional gigs a year before the Beatles took the stage for the first time!
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