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Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:36 pm
by muskeg
erkling got all the big ones i was going to say, so i'll second that post
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:43 pm
by Black Axe
nightsblood wrote:JP is also reportedly the first band to which the term 'heavy metal' was applied, this being around the Stained Class era. The term was retroactively applied to Black Sabbath's early work, which was originally referred to as 'acid rock'.
Sir Lord Baltimore and Alice Cooper beat Priest to that title.
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:12 pm
by King Zombie
Heavy Metal Progenitors:
1970 - Black Sabbath
Pioneers:
(Hugely influential in a great number of groups and developed a faster less Blues oriented music) Judas Priest, Rainbow, Deep Purple, and others
Late '70s Getting faster:
Judas & Motorhead and many other bands
1980: THE GROUNDBREAKING YEAR!!!
British Steel
Ace Of Spades
*Venom (Formed in '79) The fathers of extreme metal: Thrash, Death and Black.
1981 Welcome To Hell - Raw, faster and thrasier
1982 Black metal - Obscure, malevolent sounds
Hellhammer, Mercyful Fate and many other proto thrash/speed pioneered the sound.
1983 Mantas - Death by Metal
The foundations stablished by previous groups helped to develop the then embrionary proto Death Metal, a highly violent offshoot form of Thrash with found in this demo by Mantas: very fast guitars and drumming, screechy vocals and rawness. A plethora of groups worldwide can be mentioned here as well. Speed and aggresivesness taken to another level.
I think The top 3 gods would be Black Sabbath, Venom and Mantas, the other groups are absolutly important too, but the former three are the most visionary.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:13 am
by nightsblood
Black Axe wrote:nightsblood wrote:JP is also reportedly the first band to which the term 'heavy metal' was applied, this being around the Stained Class era. The term was retroactively applied to Black Sabbath's early work, which was originally referred to as 'acid rock'.
Sir Lord Baltimore and Alice Cooper beat Priest to that title.
Here's wikipedia's 2 cents
"The first documented uses of the phrase to describe a type of rock music are from reviews by critic Mike Saunders. In the November 12, 1970, issue of Rolling Stone, he commented on an album put out the previous year by the British band Humble Pie....".
"HM" was used in reference to Sir Lord Baltimore in a '71 review.
If the phrase showed up in Rolling Stone in late 1970, it may have been floating around in the vernacular for a little while beforehand and this is just the earliest recorded example of its usage (assuming the ref. is correct). The timing makes sense if, as is popularly thought, the phrase came from the Steppenwolf lyrics ('born to be wild' was recorded in '68).
Humble Pie, the first heavy metal band? Hmmm...
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 2:26 am
by Nightlock
I wonder what the first band to reference themselves/their music as "heavy metal" in one of their own songs was.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:18 am
by omen of hate
I think that the first band to use the term "heavy metal" is STEPPENWOLF in their song "Born to be Wild".
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:13 am
by The Knell
the erlking wrote:Yeah Motörhead
Anyone listened the "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers" Cover? What blasphemy + how bad done
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:28 am
by Noisenik
here are phrases.org.uk 5 cents:
The expression first appears in print in William Burroughs' 1962 novel The Soft Machine. His character Uranian Willy is described as "the Heavy Metal Kid". Burroughs later re-used the term in his 1964 novel Nova Express:
"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."
good ol' badass Burroughs and I often thought certain insects are Metal!
also from phrases.org.uk :
it isn't clear who first appropriated the term to refer to loud rock music, although several lay claim to it. The widely quoted description of Jimi Hendrix's music as 'like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky', while being a fairly accurate assessment, isn't the earliest.
Some claim that the US rock music critic Lester Bangs, while working for Creem magazine, used the expression in 1968 to describe a performance of the band MC5 (Motor City Five) from Detroit. Creem magazine themselves attribute the term to Mike Saunders, in an article about the 'Kingdom Come' album, by Sir Lord Baltimore, in the May 1971 edition of the magazine:
"This album is a far cry from the currently prevalent Grand Funk sludge, because Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book. Precisely, they sound like a mix between the uptempo noiseblasts of Led Zeppelin (instrumentally) and singing that’s like an unending Johnny Winter shriek: they have it all down cold, including medium or uptempo blasts a la LZ, a perfect carbon of early cataclysmic MC5."
This has the benefit of being a traceable citation, as copies of the edition are still extant. So, until other hard evidence is found, that has to be the current strongest claim. It would be surprising if the term had never been used in the musical context before 1971 though - after all Steppenwolf used it in the lyric of their 1968 song Born to be Wild:
"I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under"
The musical style remains popular, although less so than in its heyday - the 1980s, and has spawned sub-genres. These include 'death metal', 'thrash metal', 'grindcore' and even 'folk metal' (aka 'heavy wood').
no wonder Blue Oyster Cult covered Steppenwolf.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:54 am
by vasilis2112
There are many bands that come to my mind such as:
Beatles, Rolling stones, Cream, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin
, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Rush and tha mighty Uriah Heep!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:24 am
by ION BRITTON
Dust!
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 1:33 pm
by mordred
At the end of the day, when all is said and done, when judgement day has come, nothing will matter except Black Sabbath. Next to the riff monster of doom from Birmingham all the inventions and accomplishments of mankind will seem trivial and insignificant.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 2:07 pm
by nightsblood
The Jimi Hendrix description as 'heavy metal' supposedly came up long after the fact, and there's no record of that phrase being used to describe Hendrix's music back in the day.
Humble Pie and Sir Lord Baltimore seem to have the earliest written citations.
Nightlock asks a good question; I don't know when bands would have started considering/describing themselves as 'heavy metal'.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:03 pm
by Piotr Sargnagel
My own two cents - I would actually mention The Velvet Underground who had really minimalist and heavy material on their first album (but obviously not ALL their material), also black clothes, shades, dark lyrical themes, ugly guys into drugs and drink and a female drummer who just "played" kettle drums! They were a big influence on Bowie and if you listen to the record *The man who sold the world* there are some serious Lizzy guitar lines in there too!
But Black Sabbath of course are the first and only.
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:19 pm
by Helm
nightsblood wrote:
Nightlock asks a good question; I don't know when bands would have started considering/describing themselves as 'heavy metal'.
NWOBHM revolution. Self-informed HM music starts in around 1980 I'd say. Iron Maiden thought they were a progressive rock band. But if you look elsewhere...
Judas Priest were however very vocal about their status as 'Heavy Metal' but they also diluted same claims by claiming to be a rock band, though it is my understanding that for most people the two do not negate each other.
Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 11:52 am
by vasilis2112