As a tender and sensitive lad in those days of yore, I well remember the early hard rock albums. Noone whom I knew and no music magazine talked about Heavy Metal. That is an 80s reconstruction when the term became popularised. The term for the genre was Heavy Rock and you knew it when you heard it.
Black Sabbath.
Iron Butterfly.
Vanilla Fudge.
The other creative bands at the time made Hard Rock and that was more successful and accessible for the masses. Led Zeppelin, The Who, the Stones, Uriah Heep were pretty heavy, Deep Purple pushed through with incredible music, and Jethro Tull lent us Locomotive Breath. But generally Heavy Rock was a distinct sound of its own and not popular with radio stations or my girlfriends.
Guys as far as i know this is the first Heavy Psychedelic Doom Metal song,in two days we have fullmoon put it loud as you see the moon sinking behind the mountain or into the sea.
To be fair, the original award was for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Performance, before the two categories were split the next year. And while Jethro Tull could in no way, shape, or form be categorized as heavy metal, some of their earlier works (“Aqualung”, especially) could arguably be labeled hard rock. That said, the album that won (“Crest of a Knave”) is about as far away from hard rock as I am from winning Naomi Watts’ hand in marriage.
Good points about there not being bright-line borders between music styles. For a comparison, look at Elvis Presley. Songs like “Jailhouse Rock” and “Hound Dog” are unquestionably rock music, but they are acoustic - how can you have rock music without electric guitars? That makes you step back for a minute and realize that “What is rock?” is really a more complex question than you thought. Elvis Presley’s music also has a country/western sound to it, but it’s more energetic and beat-based than what you would hear if you turned on the country station today.
Another vote for Black Sabbath. IMO (and as pointed out upthread), it was a sound that appeared more and more in rock until it became a style of its own: another of the blues’ many grandchildren. As an example of the gradual appearance of this sound, I’ll point out Sgt. Pepper’s and that one bit of chunky distorted guitar in the title song (“We hope you will enjoy the show”…chunka-chunk-chunk…) Of course, I haven’t listened to all early rock recordings, but the way I remember it is that there weren’t entire albums of that heavy sound (differs from the “squawking” distorted sound of the solo bits in the Sgt. Peppers title song and in its reprise) until Black Sabbath.
It seems like a valid point, but don’t you mean - ETHOS - ethics is a set of standards regarding morals. If you are making up your own standards like SPYMANIAC did, you can find Heavy Metal elements in many songs. The perfect example is Beatles fans trying to claim they had the first heavy metal song. This is nonsense, Helter Skelter was just a little loud and screaming.
What is the definition of Heavy Metal? Wikipedia is, of course, a dubious source for some, but I believe the peer review process of that site to very critical and using it is a resource highly credible. that definition then is -
With roots in blues rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness.
Kinks - I feel miss the emphatic beats and massive sound.
The song I nominate is Sunshine of Your Love. If the sound is not massive enough for you, then Blue Cheer is the answer. No song after Blue Cheer should be considered, they clearly got it.
As for Power Chords being “rock-n-roll,” that is completely wrong, power chords are for heavy rock and its offspring.
Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath is one type of metal, but a lot of metal is fast with galloping riffs. The first one I’ve heard of that kind is Hard Lovin’ Man by Deep Purple, also from 1970.
Two statements that almost no one will agree with:
The old minor key murder ballads are ancestors of heavy metal, with lines like “gentlemen and ladies I bid you farewell; for killing pretty polly my soul will go to hell.”
Listen to the beginning of the Mothers of Invention’s “Who Are The Brain Police”. Sounds something like the opening of “Iron Man”. Sounds creepy all the way through. Of course Zappa was always ahead of his time.
