What's the first modern metal album?

Paranoid seems like a pretty big omission there.

i can't imagine Black Sabbath not being considered metal.

I don't see why would one choose Paranoid over the debut. I included some later Sabbath albums because of significant changes, which I explain above.

I included the early entries from 69-71 for those who don't believe there's anything to significantly distinguish early proto-metal from modern metal. Those who vote for those, feel free to explain why.

Fwiw, I don't know what the answer is (and I included a Link Wray album in my metal book), but when I saw the thread title (with "modern" in it), I actually assumed the choices would be bands like Venom, Metallica, Slayer, and maybe even some later death/black/grind choices. (Think of, say, the Decibel Hall of Fame -- what the oldest album in that so far?)

So I guess another question would be: What was the first non-modern metal album? (If Zeppelin and Sabbath are "modern" metal, doesn't that imply there was less modern metal before them?)

monks banging against pots in the cloister

So I guess another question would be: What was the first non-modern metal album? (If Zeppelin and Sabbath are "modern" metal, doesn't that imply there was less modern metal before them?)

would guess that the zep and sabbath albums are included to provide options for those who deny that there's a profound difference between that kind of early/proto metal and the more "modern" sort.

judas priest. in general. them and others, but they are a conveniently famous example. first van halen album should be up there too.

Not the 1st Death album? Only suggesting because the term "modern metal" was used instead of "heavy metal."

As far as "modern" metal, I'd go with Sad Wings of Destiny. Or Kill 'em All. Both kicked off major paradigm shifts in the genre.

Isn't Blue Cheer kind of getting the short end of the stick here?

xp I still don't get how this poll makes sense unless you have both stuff earlier than Zeppelin (Hendrix or Iron Butterfly or Blue Cheer or Steppenwolf or the Yardbirds, say) and stuff later than Priest (Venom or Metallica or Death, say) as possible choices. All depends on how you define "modern" and "metal." (And yeah, I'm on record as one of those people who "denies there's a profound difference, etc." But there's cleary some difference. And it's not like the differences started with Zep, or ended with Judas Priest.)

i just think that later metal/modern metal followed the path of judas priest for the most part. obviously there were a zillion other bands that contributed to what is heard today. but priest are kinda the perfect example as far as what came after them. and they started really early. stuff they did in the mid-70's still sounds pretty modern to me!

really, though, i love most of the stuff on that list up there. it's wonderful stuff. and all those bands helped inspire people to make like-minded heavy stuff. forever. god bless them all.

plus, just so cool. and they could play vicious hard rock and awesome disco metal. they could do it all, really.

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q232/StrontiumDog666/1978-KillingMachine.jpg

I guess the answer to the rap version of this question would be The Chronic

dre was the next level.

then the wu did it again. and timbaland. and others. who now? i dunno. everything sounds really modern to me. i don't know who sounds extra-modern.

Truth by the Jeff Beck Group!!!

Montrose -- 1973

Certainly needs mention.

was loving this so much earlier today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ5jOxaaDjM

yeah, lots of things need to be mentioned, but that's why we have the hard rock thread. i can thank everyone there yearly. i still think priest is a good all purpose answer. its neat and tidy. they started out playing with those early bands and then just kept it going. for a long time! they refined the formula.

I have never ever heard or read of any sort of consensus from anyone who knows and likes metal, that Hendrix, Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf, Yardbirds, Vanilla Fudge or Jeff Beck are metal. Except for Chuck of course, heh. Heavy blues rock, yeah. But they're no more metal than Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Nugent, Lynyrd, Grand Funk Railroad, Foghat, Black Oak Arkansas... Montrose definitely broke some ground in hard rock, which Van Halen took to a new level. AC/DC (at least in the 70s) was not metal. There's no way Van Halen is metal, but I might have been convinced adding their debut to the poll given how Eddie's guitar playing had a big an influence in metal, if it weren't for the fact that it came out on the exact same day as Priest's definitive Stained Class! If it came out a week earlier, then I could see a case for it, but is there really any contest?

Whenever I have seen the term "modern metal" used, it has always been to differentiate from the early proto-metal bands, and usually referring to Judas Priest as the key pioneer. That had been my position for many years, until I reconsidered the 1975 offerings from Scorpions and Sabbath, and even possibly Rainbow. I'll give the reasoning for my choice when the poll is over. But it simply didn't occur to me that anyone would take seriously the notion that modern metal did not exist until it splintered into NWOBHM, thrash, speed, death, black, etc. Hundreds and hundreds of obviously modern metal albums had been released before Kill 'Em All!

Leave it to ILM to want to talk about every band except those included in the poll!

'Stained Class' for me

the earlier stuff was heavy blues. Heavy blues that I love like my firs-born and is the stuff that rules my world. But yeah, not sure if it's metal. If I had to pick an early album, then it is 'DEEP PURPLE IN ROCK'

That album slays. I think one of the missing choices in this "poll" is MC5 'Kick Out the Jams'.

If that is not a Heavy Metal record, than I do not know what is. I've long thought that in between the 1969 s/t 'Deep Purple' LP on Bill Cosby's Tetragrammaton label, and the first Deep Purple "MARK II" album 'In Rock' on Warners, Ritchie Blackmore had heard 'Kick Out the Jams' and heard the future of music.

It's the only way I've been able to explain the radical difference between 1969 s/t and 'In Rock'. The riffs and guitar attack sound completely inspired by the Detroit revolution of 1969. The blues are mostly out the window (except for the opening "Speed King", which, while referencing Little Richard, still is an amazingly wicked track -- especially of course on the European edition of the LP with the freakout opening.) But tracks like "Flight of the Rat"? Nobody had written speed-riffs like that, that was fucking insane. And stuff like "Hard Lovin'-Man"? feedback-drenched freakouts ... so much so that Merzbow actually recorded a composition based on chopping and screwing the feedback from "Hard Lovin Man" (one of my all-time fave Merzbow releases too, by far)

So yeah, 'In Rock' for early stuff. If people still feel that that is too blues damaged .. than 'Stained Class' for sure. that album is the rosetta stone for speed metal. "Exciter". holy fuck. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to hear "Exciter" when it first came out. oh and Les Binks ftw

Great post. I read in a couple places, possibly liner notes that said it was Blue Cheer that inspired In Rock. Though who knows, they may have heard MC5 too. Like the Stooges, I can't really call MC5 proto-metal nor proto-punk. Just fucking awesome heavy rock. I recently wrote about and listed my favorite heavy rock albums here.

First Sabbath album, definitely.

xp If there was "consensus," you wouldn't need a poll. But I'm fairly sure that most of the bands you name (certainly AC/DC and Van Halen and Nugent and Alice Cooper and Blue Cheer) would have been widely agreed upon to be "metal" in the '70s, at least in all the articles and books from that time period I've read. It's certainly not an idea I invented when I wrote my book, believe me. For those bands, at least, I was following the consensus.

But okay, maybe that's not "modern" (though again, "modern metal" implies a "pre-modern metal," by definition.) Truth is, I've never much understood how people hear Sabbath as a "blues-rock" band, compared to, well, almost all the "heavy blues rock" that had preceded them. Well, maybe their debut, a little, but by Paranoid (not up there), to me the blues (compared to other blues-rock) is mostly out the window. Deep Purple and Uriah Heep too, really. Hell, even early Queen (not up there.) Early Priest were fine, I guess (right, I admit it now), but I still don't hear what they added to the equation that wasn't there already. (Though yeah, I guess they changed it somehow. But so did lots and lots of other bands.) So I guess I'll vote for Sabbath's debut, for lack of a better choice.

Eh, that sounded crankier than I wanted it to. By "better choice," I guess I just mean Paranoid-- something about sounding like it tips the scales of loud rock's primary influence from the blues over to horror soundtracks seemingly rooted in some sort of European classical tradition. Or something. But really, Sabbath's debut is probably fine for this. They just refining the idea on their next couple LPs (never got the appeal of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath though), and then other bands did too, later. ("Pre-modern metal," in that scheme, would be the Butterfly/Cheer/Fudge/Zep etc heavy blooze doods.)

"Paranoid" is a lot less blues rock influenced than the debut album, but it's still in there: "War Pigs" is obv. inspired by "If Six Was Nine" for instance. "Master of Reality" seems like the big break with the past to me.

Led Zep II seems about right to me - never actually liked it much though

^ crazy talk

Metal Machine Music?

i'm going with zep ii of the above listed, tbo. i mean, everything sabbath, purple, priest, et al would later refine into tr00-bl00 metal is right there--i.e., warped-out fuzz riffs, unholy bass tones from the dankest depths, berserker bonham beats, high-pitched vocal shrieks, tolkien mythologizing run amok, demented bluez, etc. if you've the earz to listen, and the "mind" to contemplate and overcome whatever petty preconceptions you maybe bring to "our" favorite playground grotto, that is. hell. everything else is just so much fashion accessorizing, afaic.

AC/DC and Van Halen and Nugent and Alice Cooper and Blue Cheer) would have been widely agreed upon to be "metal" in the '70s...

True. Even in 1979, there were barely any albums out yet that were influenced by Priest, Scorpions and even Van Halen that one had much of a clue what modern metal was going to be like. So far the basic building blocks were the heavy bits from Zep, Purple and Sabbath as they key archetypes. Only later in hindsight, does one learn that nearly all the bands in the 80s short of the doom bands owed something to Priest, and some to Scorpions, Rainbow, Motorhead, Van Halen as much and more than the Led-Purple-Sabbath ground zero. As we're no longer in the 70s, we hear albums from 1970-78 differently, with some sounding more pre-historic (e.g. pre-metal) than others.

It's outside the remit of this poll, but Reign In Blood is the earliest metal album I've heard with virtually no blues influence at all. I guess they were just refining what they'd been doing for a few years, but in terms of machine-tooled precision they made Judas Priest sound like Son House. Anything earlier that you could say the same about?

That's a real good point

venom?

xp Fwiw:

Top 10 Metal Albums Of The '60s (from a mid '80s Creem "Close-Up" special issue)
the yardbirds - s/t
the who - sings my generation
the troggs - s/t
vanilla fudge - s/t
jimi hendrix experience - are you experienced
cream - disraeli gears
mc5 - kick out the jams
the stooges - s/t
black pearl - s/t
led zeppelin II

Top 10 Metal Albums of the '70s (same issue)
the godz - nothing is sacred
kiss - destroyer
pere ubu - 30 seconds over tokyo b/w heart of darkness + final solution b/w cloud 149 (45s)
grand funk - grand funk love
alice cooper - killer
blue oyster cult - s/t
blue oyster cult - the blue oyster cult bootleg EP
black sabbath - master of reality
iggy and the stooges - raw power
black sabbath - paranoid

Top 10 Metal Albums Of The (well, early) '80s (same issue)
motorhead - ace of spades
the lords of the new church - s/t
zz top - eliminator
ac/dc - back in black
accept - balls to the wall
hanoi rocks - back to mystery city
venom - black metal
plasmatics - new hope for the wretched
twister sister - you can't stop rock'n'roll
motley crue - too fast for love

And nope, I didn't write any of it. (Did probably rip some of it off later, though.) (Also, note: No Priest or Maiden.)

I'm going with the first Sabbath album, for reasons similar to what xhuxk said. It seems like the first album that used its heaviness to creep listeners out rather than to rock them or suggest sex. The "modern" cookie monster vocals feel to me like an attempt to replicate the underworld feel of Iommi riffs vocally.

xp "grand funk live", not "love" obv

Grand Funk Live is pretty heavy in the modern sense.

Ive always used the Sabbath debut as the touchstone here.

I'm not surprised by that CREEM list. I stopped reading it regularly in '83 because it seemed to be going downhill. I always liked their irreverence, but it was becoming dangerously similar to CIRCUS. No Metallica, Maiden, Scorpions, Priest, Mercyful Fate, Raven, Loudness, Dio, even Def Lep = useless!

Kinda doubt Circus would have listed Troggs/Black Pearl/Pere Ubu/Godz/bootleg BOC EPs in any metal Top 10s, ever, to be honest. (And Creem Metal was always way funnier and more irreverent than Circus in general, are you kidding? Then again, you stopped reading it -- Which explains how you wouldn't know.)

I assume a bunch of totally out of touch old farts who didn't like anything post 79 wrote for it?
xp

Well, some did. But sometimes they were right.

Metallica, Maiden, Scorpions, Priest, Mercyful Fate, Raven, Loudness, Dio, even Def Lep

Also, wouldn't some or most of these bands have been all over CIRCUS, actually? (Pretty sure they all got coverage in Creem Metal at times, too; just not always fawning coverage, boo hoo.)

pre-83, but still...

http://judaspriest.free.fr/magazines/USA/198108uscreem.jpg

http://earfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/halfordcreem.jpg

Fwiw, those top 10s I listed were by Richard Riegel (60s), Gregg Turner (of Angry Samoans/fighting a lot with Metal Mike Saunders fame) (70s), and Sylvie Simmons (who was also in KERRANG a lot iirc) ('80s.)

Heh, I just meant I stopped reading it regularly. I still have a couple issues lying around from 84-85 (see below). Seems like David Lee Roth was on multiple covers a year. I'm not saying there weren't still major differences between CREEM and CIRCUS. So those lists were just from those individuals and not polled from the whole staff, which makes a lot more sense.

http://www.creemmagazine.com/_site/ArchiveImages/1984_03.jpg
http://www.creemmagazine.com/_site/ArchiveImages/1985_02.jpg

While Lemmy vehemently insists that his music is simply "rock 'n' roll" as opposed to metal, the debut Motörhead album clearly was a big influence on modern metal with it's power, speed and grit. So much that punkers often exclusively respected the band among their hard rock and metal peers.

while i don't doubt or question motorhead's metalness, i don't think being liked/respected by punks in the late '70s and early '80s is a good argument for them. if anything, that would go in the "con" column, wouldn't it? my impression is punk-rockers liked 'em back then because they didn't sound like metal at all to their ears. they sounded like the "rock n roll" that lemmy claimed to be. punks weren't exactly clamoring to buy priest or maiden albums back then.

Pere Ubu? Metal?? Is crazytalk.

xp Did you ever see Creem Metal, though (which probably ran, oh, maybe '86-'88, thereabouts)? It was pretty great, in lots of ways, and we got a lot of leeway about what we could call metal. (Pretty sure no other national magazines were doing much coverage of White Zombie singles and Skin Yard and Leather Nun and Redd Kross and the Mentors at the time. Not to mention Dick Destiny and the Highway Kings.) And the Triumvirate of Metal Wisdom (Kordosh/Dimartino/Holdship) reviewing Cinderella and Queensryche -- "a rage to order women's clothes!") was a trip and a half. So yeah, those guys and Rick Johnson (who had a video column for a while) were old farts who had basically no use for '80s metal whatsoever; hey thought it all sucked, except Motorhead maybe. And that's part of what made them good.

xxpp Nah, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" is totally "Electric Funeral."

loud guitar-heavy music? check
pummelling drums? check
lyrics about depraved shit like loving like a reptile and shooting people in the back? check
leather? check
denim? check
fan-base heavily populated with bikers? check
serious drug/alcohol issues? check
long hair? check
menacing skull based trademark? check
umlauts? check

Sorry Lemmy, you're metal

lynyrd skynyrd and david allan coe qualify too, of course, give or take an umlaut.

I totally missed Creem Metal. Not surprising, as I temporarily lost interest in new metal albums between 85-88 with just a few exceptions (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer). I have to say the regular CREEM issues look pretty interesting from 1987 -- I wish I had subscribed again then. Looks like Chuck had a choice cover story on the Beastie Boys too.

xp - Punks liked Motorhead for being hard and fast, something that would become pretty important for a lot of modern metal. They probably appreciated Lemmy's wit, which was less apparent in, say, Rainbow. I sometimes wonder if it was overstated the number of punks who truly hated all metal. Or maybe not, any geezers here who went to metal shows in the UK in 76-78?

I totally missed Creem Metal. Not surprising, as I temporarily lost interest in new metal albums between 85-8881-90

^^^that would be sad fate too.

xp Also, Motorhead subject matter seemed really down to earth and blue collar, none of that grandoise dungeons and dragons crap; they'd rather eat the rich. (Which would inspire some '80s metal, too.)

Did British punks like AC/DC, assuming they even heard them? (They apparently were initially, unsuccessfully marketed as punk rockers in the States, even to the point of being booked at CBGBs. But U.S. punks, inasmuch as they existed, weren't noticing.)

couldn't imagine Patti Smith and David Byrne getting too worked up over AC/DC.

Led Zeppelin IV or Paranoid define Metal more or less, esp the album covers and all the Satanic mysterioso. the preceding albums are still too blues or 60s

or maybe it started right here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRt3PIDER94&feature=related

xp Another thing about Motorhead in the U.K. is they initially recorded for Stiff and then for Chiswick, which was basically a pub and punk rock label (Count Bishops, 101ers, Johnny Moped, Damned), right? Which always made me wonder whether they had a "punk" audience before they got a "metal" one.

couldn't imagine Patti Smith and David Byrne getting too worked up over AC/DC.

― Quo riff just isn't a suitable vehicle for interplanetary exploration (Ioannis), Monday, August 9, 2010 2:54 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'd pay to see the look on their eggheaded, elitist faces as AC/DC wiped the floor of some downtown punk joint

it's a funny old list, the acts that were on Chiswick (tho' yeah, predominantly pub punk bands):

Amazorblades
The Count Bishops
The Damned
Dr. Feelgood - (Fast Women and Slow Horses album) (1982)
Drug Addix
The Gorillas
Jakko Jakszyk
Jeff Hill
Johnny Moped
Johnny & the Self Abusers
The Jook
Kid Rogers and the Henchmen
Killerhertz...
Little Bob Story
Matchbox
Motörhead
The Nipple Erectors
The 101ers
The Radiators From Space
Radio Stars
Riff Raff
The Rings
Sniff 'n' the Tears
Rocky Sharpe & The Razors
Skrewdriver
T. V. Smith
The Stukas
The Table
Whirlwind

There is no question in my mind -- Black Sabbath s/t is the first metal album.

But if you want to split hairs on "modern metal", is there anything that presages the 80s more strongly than "Symptoms of the Universe?"

"Led Zeppelin IV or Paranoid define Metal more or less, esp the album covers and all the Satanic mysterioso."

Cover Black Sabbath s/t WAY WAY WAY more Metal than Paranoid.

Black Sabbath. But the thread title confused me too - these are all very much 'trad' metal' by any standard.

My friend Glenn emailed me a great response. He doesn't post on ILM and hopefully won't mind if I post this:

"Sad Wings Of Destiny".

As you discuss, this totally depends on the definitions of "modern" and "metal". Black Sabbath, when they started, were often lumped in with prog, and I still think "heavy prog" is perhaps a better label for them than "heavy metal" or "doom". I've also always liked the term "acid rock" for a lot of the proto-metal stuff. In discussing critical proto-metal, I'd add The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Blue Cheer, and Mountain to the Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and Budgie that you mention. Mountain, especially, does not get its due, in my opinion. I'm tempted to make the case that the song "Don't Look Around" on their "Nantucket Sleighride" album (January 1971) may be the first "modern metal" song, even though the album as a whole does not qualify as the first "modern metal" album.

To me, the phrase "modern metal" suggests a few things:
- lots of lead guitar, with solos, speed, and something like a screaming quality
- a fair amount of high-pitched and dramatic vocals
- a certain style of bass that I don't know music theory well enough to explain
- a further, even if subtle, step away from the blues, prog, and acid underpinnings of metal
- a conscious identification with--or at least not a rejection of--"heavy metal" as that term was understood prior to around 1978

Another way I might put it is to define "modern metal" as "NWOBHM" and adopt the "I know it when I hear it" approach.

We get really close from 1973 to 1975. Here are some highlights just from 1974:
Black Sabbath "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
Budgie "In For The Kill"
Hawkwind "Hall Of The Mountain Grill"
Judas Priest "Rocka Rolla"
Queen "Sheer Heart Attack"
Rush "Rush"
Scorpions "Fly To The Rainbow"
Thin Lizzy "Night Life"
UFO "Phenomenon"

Each of those is a great album, with some NWOBHM parts, but if you heard any one of them for the first time, would you think it was a long lost NWOBHM album?

In 1976, we get "Sad Wings Of Destiny", and it is something we just haven't heard an entire album of before, for which labels like "blues rock", "acid rock", "heavy prog", or "hard rock" are clearly not adequate.

I've been saying for many years that I don't think Scorpions get enough credit as a pioneer of what I consider "modern metal". But I just listened to "Fly to The Rainbow", "In Trance", and "Virgin Killer" and, while perhaps the closest runner-up, they just don't redefine things the way Judas Priest did with "Sad Wings Of Destiny".

Most of those are good choices.

These, however, merit a little more discussion.

Lizzy's Night Life wasn't very good, in terms of its place in my collection. Fighting is far better. But I always considered it more a rock and roll album.

UFO's Phenomenon has Schenker for the first time. But half of it, at least, just putters along in low gear. "Crystal Light," "Space Child" -- some awful psyche holdover from earlier, the dreadful "Built for Comfort." They'd up the voltage the next one out by quite a lot. This one only has "Doctor Doctor" and
"Rock Bottom" to get by on.

UFO is actually a pretty good call here. Force It came out in '75, sounds like it could be '85. Same with Montrose, both were pretty ahead of their time. Montrose does not sound like a 1973 heavy rock record.

Ted Nugent definitely needs a sneak in here since it was 1975. For example, it just kills Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow which is rather quaint by comparison, having the twee version of "Greensleeves" on it. "Stormtroopin'," "Motor City Madhouse," "Just What the Doctor Ordered" -- they're very Seventies metal, every bit as much as mid-Seventies Judas Priest.

In 1976, we get "Sad Wings Of Destiny", and it is something we just haven't heard an entire album of before, for which labels like "blues rock", "acid rock", "heavy prog", or "hard rock" are clearly not adequate.

real good point, re: the inadequacy of other language. it must be metal cuz it clearly isn't anything else.

Sad Wings has it's moments of metal innovation, but it harkens back a LOT to acid rock and gam and southern rock, like Skynyrd. I think moreso than Sabbath did, much of the time.

gam, because, you know...the thighs!

Another way I might put it is to define "modern metal" as "NWOBHM"...
Force It came out in '75, sounds like it could be '85...
Montrose does not sound like a 1973 heavy rock record.

Okay, I'm finally getting this. "Modern metal" basically means "fast '80s metal (but not hair and not necessarily thrash and what came after)", then. So the Yesterday & Today (self-titled, 1976) and Riot (Rock City, 1977) LPs I've been playing so much this would maybe fit, too, though they probably came out too late to be in the running. This thread did just inspire me to pull out my copy of Force It, though (Phenomenon, too, though I'll wait a little longer on that one, probably.)

"...playing so much this year," that is.

So anyway, maybe a clearer way to ask the question would be "What was the earliest heavy metal album that sounds like it should've come out in the '80s rather than '70s," right? (I don't know the answer.)

Roxy Music? (j/k)

This thread did just inspire me to pull out my copy of Force It, though (Phenomenon, too, though I'll wait a little longer on that one, probably.)

^Phenomenon has still has some traces of their earlier phsychedelic incarnation, like Gorge said.I think it's pretty good.

Riot - Rock City rules. I should have put that in there. I need to hear that first Yesterday & Today. I like pretty much every album UFO & Thin Lizzy ever released.

Did British punks like AC/DC, assuming they even heard them?

They'd certainly have heard them, "Let There Be Rock" was a Top 20 album in 1977. I don't think they'd have taken much notice of them and probably wouldn't have been caught dead listening to them if they did, pretty sure Heavy Metal was considered a rival to punk rock.

It was, but my mate and his big bro listened to both, I think the whole punks selling off the 70s heavy rock albums thing came later (my mate regrets doing it in the 80s)

silly old farts

Hard to imagine that oi! boys (or their Sham 69/Bishops/etc. fan predecessors) wouldn't love, say, "T.N.T." if they actually heard it. But music fans are weird.

Wikipedia:

High Voltage gained the band a following among the then-substantial British punk audience.

AC/DC came to be identified with the punk rock movement by the British press. Their reputation, however, managed to survive the punk upheavals of the late 1970s.

Quietus:

Having moved to London in 1977, AC/DC were somewhat bemused to find themselves lumped in with punk rock. Finding little in common with the barrage of the Pistols, The Clash et al, the Antipodeans reacted against the prevailing winds by delivering an album of blistering rock’n’roll in its purest sense.

They may have reacted against punk, but also Let There Be Rock benefits from the same liberating force that other punk bands did.

rose tattoo were popular with skinheads/punks too.

Judas Priest's Sad Wings Of Destiny is definitely a strong candidate.

first thing that sprang to mind when I saw this thread

sometimes I listen to sad wings and think to myself 1976! 1976! (was actually recorded in 75 tho)

AC/DC came to be identified with the punk rock movement by the British press.

No they didn't

High Voltage gained the band a following among the then-substantial British punk audience.

No it didn't

So anyway, maybe a clearer way to ask the question would be "What was the earliest heavy metal album that sounds like it should've come out in the '80s rather than '70s," right? (I don't know the answer.)

I expected there would be some disagreement in what is meant by "modern metal." Think of how modernism is used in the context of art, architecture, literature, and music in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism_%28disambiguation%29

In literature, there are certain factors that distinguished a postmodern movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-modern_literature. I believe metal had certain sub-genres splinter into its own postmodern era at least since the 90s. What constitutes postmodern metal is a can of worms for a separate discussion, of course. For the purposes of this poll, I consider power metal, NWOBHM, true, thrash, speed, black, death, grindcore and some others all as modern metal. Some of you view Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Budgie, early Scorpions, as just plain metal, pure and simple, rather than proto-metal. Understandable. Compared to European art music, this could constitute the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. The early period of Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, Led Zep, Mountain, Steppenwolf, Vanilla Fudge, Jeff Beck, etc. could be compared to the early periods of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque. Modern metal would be like 20th century European art music.

Discuss!

Not sure it can break down exactly the same, since some of these periods/movements lasted longer than the entire history of Metal, and "Modernist" & "Post-Modernist" were umbrella terms for cultural shifts across nearly all of the arts in the early 20th century & post-WWII eras, rather than a specific genre period--like, say, Realism in literature. Metal (especially the prog-leaning stuff) was already kind of Modernist when it started, though it could also be said that the combo of high art classicism with horror movie kitsch was Post-Modernist. There are similarities between current metal and Atonal composers. The audience-alienating harshness.

I think of "modern metal" appearing when hard rock and early metal lost its swing, so went with Stained Class; "Exciter" rollocks and gallops but has no lateral movement. Though Simon Phillips could gallop with the best of them (see "Dissident Aggressor") he still gets the hips and shoulders moving. Les Binks gets the head nodding but nothing below the neck. The Scorpions didn't reach that stage till later, though Dierks production obviously had a huge influence on the sound and the instrumental balance of "modern metal."

I kind of like the idea of Modern & Non-Modern: like Vincebus Eruptum and Kick Out the Jams are the last of the non-modern metal albums, the first two Zep albums are the transition, and the first Sabbath album is the emergence of heavy metal, fully formed (hence the unity of vision implied by naming the album after the band, and the opening track after both)(though it prolley didn't happen in that order)

Zep II might actually be the first modern metal album; thinking of Heartbreaker & Whole Lotta Love especially, but also the emergence--in Thank You and Ramble On--of the medieval-pastoral side of metal which has proved just as integral to its identity as power chords & Satan. I can't really stand that album: tedious wankery is the glue that holds it together, and besides, there seems still to be too many blues/jazz pastiches to really count (hello What Is & What Will Never Be)(<-best song on Zep II btw)...

in short: Zep II = first song-long drum solo = it wins (but I voted Sabbath...)

Black Sabbath, when they started, were often lumped in with prog, and I still think "heavy prog" is perhaps a better label for them

I actually find this really interesting, partly because I definitely was too young to be paying attention when Black Sabbath started, and I'd never really heard anybody make this point before. Fastnbulbous, you should ask your friend Glenn to pinpoint where (British rock magazines maybe?) Sabbath were so lumped, or who was doing the lumping. It makes sense, in a way, since they definitely (as I said before) seemed to be moving away from blues structures toward more Yurropean, maybe classical ones (I think I've heard people compare them to Grieg and Dvořák before, but I'm classically illiterate and I have no idea whether that's baloney.) Also, is Glenn saying the genre name "heavy prog" was actually used at the time, or is that his own formulation? Curious who else would qualify for that genre, from that time, either way....Uriah Heep, I guess? Some King Crimson? Who else?

iron butterfly.

any band basically that played hard rock with extended organ solos.

So Deep Purple too, obviously.

gets the head nodding but nothing below the neck.

Agree with a lot of this, and I've grown to like plenty of late '70s and '80s metal that fastnbulbous might called "modern", but I'll always be dumfounded that this change was considered an improvement. Why is "not swinging" considered better -- or harder, or heavier, or more modern -- than swinging?

I mean, I guess it could be "heavier" in the sense of being more leaden, but why is that good? (And a lot of the stuff we're talking about is fast, so "leaden" wouldn't really apply, either.)

Not everyone thinks from their knob?
xp

(not that I'm saying you do)

(honest)

any band basically that played hard rock with extended organ solos

attila

(sorry!)

(but not really sorry)

(billy joel was)

Well this isn't about the best metal or modern metal album. I never argued that modern is implicitly better. Just different. The question is, when can that difference be pinpointed. I like a handful of proto-metal albums more than most modern metal. Of course overall there is just more modern stuff, which I also like for different reasons.

Obviously European music spans centuries and metal emerged toward the late 20th century, when pretty much all culture is accelerated. No reason one can't compare them in general. Modernism and postmodernism occur in differing time periods depending on whether you're talking about visual art, architecture, literature, European music and metal.

I'll always be dumfounded that this change was considered an improvement. Why is "not swinging" considered better -- or harder, or heavier, or more modern -- than swinging?

I don't get it either - I like a lot of stuff that doesn't swing but I certainly don't see it as an improvement; it's just different. I wish that metal had continued to evolve in both directions, but British Steel seemed to put a lot of nails in the classic swinging style.

that's why i picked judas priest instead of sabbath. obviously sabbath got the ball rolling but metal really did take the form of priest in a big way. and a modern way! for years. and even now. or maybe i should just say priest/maiden?

Why is "not swinging" considered better -- or harder, or heavier, or more modern -- than swinging?

If it actually is considered better, it's probably nothing more thought-out than that it seperates it from what came before - the music of *that* generation - and lends it a certain unfriendly extremity ie freaks out the squares

I mean, no doubt there are some out there with dubious Geirish cod-musicological theories, but I doubt it's the norm

i also think that a lot of 70's bands were well-versed in other genres. they had played in a zillion garage/bar bands and they had grown up on blues rock, but also r&b and other dancey musics. modern day metal warriors listen to LOTS of metal and they learn how to play metal and they are really, um, into metal. early thud rock "proto-metal" bands were heavily influenced by sabbath but they were also heavily influenced by bands like grand funk - a band whose influence should never be underestimated - and the blooze rock trios and quartets had funky feet at times. which is why i love 70's stuff so much. and bands that could blaze hard rock and then pull out an extended funky percussion break like it wasn't no thing. but modern dudes if they came from anywhere else but the metal world came from, like, the hardcore punk world. or the other way around. not much variety there. thus, most of them couldn't swing if their lives depended on it. or want to swing for that matter.

but you still love it?

the first glimmers of "modern" metal go back a LONG way too. here's a random example from 1972:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIsvaLkxtDw

Scott's post is great. I know the Coverdale/Hughes era of Deep Purple gets slighted, mostly because of what those guys did AFTER they left that band, but that band could fucking swing and rock like no other. When they got Tommy Bolin in the band, it sounded like Stevie Wonder on steroids (a good thing). Come Taste the Band is one of the most underrated things ever.

"and bands that could blaze hard rock and then pull out an extended funky percussion break like it wasn't no thing"

This sentence sums up Coverdale-era DP perfectly.

dubious Geirish cod-musicological theories

Ha ha, I've been listening to UFO's Force It this morning, and it's a good record, but what hits me is that it mainly seems to be about melodies. There's something missing for me; it feels thin, somehow. I like it, but don't love it. Wonder what Geir would think if he heard it.

maybe i should just say priest/maiden?

Yeah, I was wondering why Maiden weren't a bigger presence on this thread; seems what metal eventually evolved into is as attributable to them at least as much, maybe more, than Priest (who sound more rock'n'roll, of the two, right?) And obviously what's always most stood in my way with those two bands, what I've always probably held against them, is that they got rid of metal's swing. (Never liked their singing much either, so sue me.) And swing is a big part of what I always loved about both Motorhead and AC/DC (though I'd say both of them forfeited a lot of it, as time went on.)

Also wondering why Blue Oyster Cult haven't been mentioned here more. Didn't they sound pretty modern, early on? Or is it just that almost nobody later was able to replicate what they were great at?

Guess lots of Tull (and lots of other bands) would count as "heavy prog" too, come to think of it.

grand funk - a band whose influence should never be underestimated

... in the USA, no-one else in the world listened to them

skotm

"... in the USA, no-one else in the world listened to them"

not true. ask the members of buffalo or a thousand other non-u.s. heavy bands of that time.

This thread has moved from baffling to "I sorta get it" to downright hilarious (e.g., Drugs A. Money's "non-modern metal-Zep as transitional-first Sab=heavy metal, fully formed" trajectory). But I've had one question consistently throughout:

For the purposes of this poll, I consider power metal, NWOBHM, true, thrash, speed, black, death, grindcore and some others all as modern metal. Some of you view Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Budgie, early Scorpions, as just plain metal, pure and simple, rather than proto-metal. Understandable.

So did just plain metal ever exist, Fastnbulbous?

not true. ask the members of buffalo or a thousand other non-u.s. heavy bands of that time.

Well, I've never heard of Buffalo, so obv. I'm no expert! In the UK then, for certain.

Are they Australian perhaps?

just spinning wax out of gold, kjb.

Yeah, Buffalo were Aussies (and really great.)

And yeah, I've been wondering, too, why fastnbulbous seems to think things would have gone straight from "proto metal" to "modern metal". Which is kinda what I've been asking since the very beginning.

xp And I guess, for me, when you get rid of the swing, the blues, the dance, that Scott talked about in '70s rock, what ultimately happens is the music gets colder, more clinical. And right, more reined in, influence-wise. Which doesn't mean it can't still be great. Just hard for it to get better that way. (And probably a lot of that has to do with me being an American who grew up on soul music and pop and funky rock'n'roll as much as metal. When I was really young, I even liked '50s rock'n'roll as much as most current '70s stuff. If metal is all I'd ever listened to, my ears would be different.)

i will say this, as far as international borders go, van halen hit the u.s. hard in the same way that judas priest hit the u.k. hard. meaning, a thousand spotty u.k. kids started playing guitar/forming bands when they got bit by judas priest and a MILLION pimple-pussed american kids did the same when they heard VH. but judas priest created a thousand NWOBHM bands and VH created metal bands and hard rock bands and glam rock bands. people took different things from van halen. people took leather and studs from judas priest. americans were a little slower in embracing priest. but it wouldn't be long before they were gods on earth here.

well, chuck, that's probably why you like modern stuff that takes elements of other genres and sounds like goth or folk or whatever and adds it to modern metal. because that IS a way to make it better. for you. or make it different. more enjoyable? for you. me, i'll listen to anything.

Right. Jigs are dance rhythms, too! But I still don't think I like even the best of that stuff anywhere near as much as my favorite metal from the '70s, even '80s. It's not even a close match.

because of nostalgic reasons or because you've known them for nearly 40 years its comfortable?

Its perfectly natural though, not everyone is john peel. I still love stuff from the early 90s when i really got into music, i just love modern stuff as much i guess.

or almost as much

xp And I'm not saying all metal should have "dance rhythms," btw, or even that "dance" is the only kind of rhythm. Voivod are probably my favorite "modern metal" band of the past quarter century, and I don't know how much of their stuff I'd say swings; probably almost none of it. But they're not stiff, either. I'd still usually rather listen to Nazareth, though.

because of nostalgic reasons or because you've known them for nearly 40 years its comfortable?

Neither. As I've been saying here, it's because of musical reasons. (And I don't get the John Peel comparison. I'm the guy who makes ridiculously long lists of 100 or 150 albums I like most years. I can't help it! So it's not exactly like my ears are closed to new music.)

chuck, do you know this song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIt60Q2dLi4

do the funky priest!

i wasnt comparing you to peel

Also, lots of the '70s and '80s stuff I love, I only just heard, for the first time! (See: The Riot and Yesterday & Today LPs mentioned upthread.) So "known them for 40 years" nostalgia doesn't come into play. (Hell, I can't even remember the last time I put on Toys In The Attic. I don't play my old favorites very often. Probably should more. But I'm always obsessively looking for new stuff to like. It's just that most of the very best stuff that's new to me is, uh, old!)

love it all really. 1974 metal ruled hard though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2pVqymfaq0

"BOC" -- Didn't they sound pretty modern, early on? Or is it just that almost nobody later was able to replicate what they were great at?

Tyranny really did. And no one did replicate what they were great at. Mostly because of manpower limitations and art. No Buck Dharma on guitar, no Pearlman lyrics. No image as the simon-bar-sinisters in leather and nazi regalia of heavy rock. Until Judas Priest, who also did the leather thing, but from the bdsm heavy traffic gay underground thing. Another story, entirely.

Force It is not one of the more melodic UFO albums. The really nice-sounding singer on it is Jimmy Dewar of the Robin Trower band guesting on a couple things. Very hard rocking and tough.

And the next album after that, No Heavy Petting, has them fully arrived. It's polished and
steely plus loaded with the band's desire to tell stories and still do Frankie Miller things.

As for Van Halen, the band not only spawned too many others, it also was responsible for transforming the guitar industry. And not utterly in a good way. For a time in the US, the market was completely overrun and dominated by Eddie van Halen-style guitars and a nauseatingly large number of trivial variations on them.

john justen to thread

So did just plain metal ever exist, Fastnbulbous?

To me, everything from mid-70s Sabbath, Scorpions, Priest, Maiden, Saxon, Raven, all the way through Metallica, Slayer and High On Fire, Mastodon and Slough Feg are "plain metal." Obviously very few people use "modern metal" in everyday speech. I used it for the purposes of this poll to differentiate from early metal or proto-metal.

There is little consensus about what this first modern metal album is. I think that's why it's an interesting question worth discussing. The discussion here has been great!

I sent the questions for Glenn to him, hopefully will get response tonight.

grand funk - a band whose influence should never be underestimated

... in the USA, no-one else in the world listened to them

― tom d: he did what he had to do now he is dead (Tom D.), Tuesday, August 10, 2010 12:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well I guess that means they totally suck then.

well, they do!

Uh, this coming from a guy who likes Pearl Jam.

Next!!

I dont know how you can say you like hard rock/metal and think that Grand Funk sucks.

A lot of people are maybe only familiar with We're An American Band which I'm not crazy about. I just finally heard their first three albums last week. A couple do sort of suck in parts, but I think Grand Funk (1970) is quite good.

If you are only familiar with WAAB, go get Grand Funk Live and prepare to have your mind blown. Everything a hard rock fan would want in something from 1970

I think Grand Funk (1970) is v good tbh. It's the only I've listened to so far though.

i love grand funk. from first to last. but i'm special in the head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHUvhJufYwA&feature=related

I think Grand Funk (1970) is v good tbh. It's the only I've listened to so far though.

― a fucking stove just fell on my foot. (Colonel Poo), Tuesday, 10 August 2010 18:21 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

seconded, also The Obsessed covered 'Inside Looking Out' off of it which counts for something imo

love. nothing but love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsFdzHQPfdc&feature=related

so phat...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHsh5T0ntk

Man that vers. of Into the Sun is killer.

Sabotage came out before Sad Wings and really seems to predict thrash et al. I don't think you can convince me that Sabbath's s/t isn't metal. So Black Sabbath is the first metal, and Sabotage the first "modern metal" per the justifications in the thread title.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

This would have been loads easier if the poll were conducted on songs eh? Black Sabbath LP might be corrupted by blues rock but the title track certainly isn't. In fact the title track ticks most boxes except those of speed and virtuosity. The first old metal song is 'Jupiter' by Gustav Holst.

There's a particular form of madness amongst some journos in the UK for giving the first heavy metal song to 'You Really Got Me' by the Kinks, which is mistaking novelty for originality. Like claiming that nu metal was spawned from Walk This Way rather than She Watch Channel Zero (or whatever, I don't really care that much).

mistaking novelty for originality

Please expand. (How is novelty -- or the '60s Kinks, for that matter -- not original??)

But anyway, the answer to that question is Link Wray's "Rumble." Obviously. (Or maybe Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio's "Train Kept A Rollin"? Doubtful, but possible.)

I guess I meant in the sense of those songs being more like experiments that at the time stood on their own as curios than the origins of a new sound. Although Walk This Way is a novelty record in more ways than You Really Got Me is. I didn't mean that they aren't original.

You say obviously. I'd say it's not obvious at all, otherwise there wouldn't be threads like this or a twenty year plus debate rumbling on about it. Obviously.

Link Wray is no more the father of heavy metal than Blow Fly is of hip hop. But again this is just my opinion, innit.

Seems to me that most gamechanging metal records (ditto most other genres, but as we're here) have been deemed both novel and original at one point, often simultaneously

Yeah but a novel record on it's own is often just a novelty record. A novel record that catches the imagination and inspires others is a keystone.

I'm fully aware how critically mauled the first two Black Sabbath albums are.

My thinking is that KORN were probably thinking of Public Enemy, Godflesh, Killing Joke, early FNM etc when they first kicked off and were probably not saying 'We've got to sound like Walk This Way.'

Yeah, the "obviously" was a joke. Obviously.

Still don't understand how "You Really Got Me" is a novelty record, though. (Maybe you're confusing the Kinks with, I don't know, the Trashmen?) Also always thought "All Day And All Of The Night" (and probably "My Generation") sounded more proto-metal than "You Really Got Me," fwiw. But that's just me.

I don't think it's a novelty record. It has a novel sound (the distortion was created by a ripped speaker cone, giving it that distinctive filthy distortion), rather than it being, I dunno, 'Star Trekkin'' by The Firm or 'Shaddapayaface' by Joe Dolce. (It's worth mentioning that many great leaps forward in music have happened because of accidents like this, it's just that no one really followed on from this single, giving it more of a novel nature.)

Now, imagine an alternate history where loads of groups had purposefully modified or fucked up amps to mimic this sound, with loads of groups having this really raw distortion, then the history of popular music as we know it would be totally different. But for better or worse, they didn't.

However, when Black Sabbath combined a heavy chord progression based roughly around the devi's interval, that occupied the ground between classical tradition and brutal primitivism played at punishingly loud volume, with an electric urgency of delivery, a guitar solo and lyrics of a dark and mysterious spirituality they were (obviously unwittingly) setting up and codifying loads of genre conventions which would go on in the future to be known as heavy metal (or doom metal at the very least).

It doesn't matter that they were almost universally reviled by the media at the time. Even people like Lester Bangs (who popularized the use of the term heavy metal in association with music), I'm pretty certain, saw Sabbath as a novelty band (and a piss poor one at that) until Masters Of Reality came out.

But convention after convention is solidified on the first album... the rejection of cosmopolitan London trends for working class solidarity in the provinces, the summoning up of elemental powers by having the album open with a 'field recording' of rainfall, thunder and a tolling bell and the bleak, disturbing cover imagery. Throwing Satan into the mix (albeit in a terrified cowering response to him)...

I totally get where people are coming from when they say Link Wray and The Kinks etc but it's tantamount to playing a parlour game.

FWIW. I think people who give the modern metal nod to Priest are bang on the money. They'd be my first choice with Venom and Slayer and Metallica coming close second, third and fourth for various reasons already stated.

Priest vanquished the blues though. And set the uniform.

From talking to bands like Cathedral, Electric Wizard, Ramesses etc. I know there are supposed to be examples of doom metal from before Black Sabbath but I've never heard them so I can't comment.

the rejection of cosmopolitan London trends for working class solidarity in the provinces

Y'what?

In UK terms it was important that Sabbath came from Aston in Birmingham. Zeppelin may count two guys from the midlands from their ranks but I've seen the houses they grew up in and they're from a different world entirely. One of the important factors in the strength of heavy metal (again, imo) is that it was totally ignored by the press for ages and when it was reviewed it was nearly always in negative terms or concentrated on almost sub-human descriptions of the fans. This wasn't virtuoso middle class guitar gods in paisley playing solos while someone warbled on about elves. This was something different. More ungainly. More ugly. Certainly more working class.

Again, I can't talk for the US but I feel that in the UK certain scenes have become phenomenally strong for taking hold outside of London with little or no positive press coverage, instead relying on fanzines and alternative media to promote itself. You could say the same thing (outside of one or two London clubs) about acid house.

I can understand Vice Magazine's fascination with donk a few years back, even though it's got no real interest to me, I can see where they're coming from...

Anyone interested should look up early Black Sabbath reviews on Rock's Backpages etc. I've got loads of books on Sabbath that reprint savage early reviews as well.

This wasn't virtuoso middle class guitar gods in paisley playing solos while someone warbled on about elves.

lol, tom d could take this 2 ways ("i wasn't a virtuoso") haha

Jimmy Page reference?

Or Richie Blackmore? (Don't actually know Richie's background tbh)

It was a throwaway comment rather than some sort of deeply thought out statement but...

(And I will say that too much is made of Iommi's supposedly untutored, bludgeoning style (probably by me on this very thread) and how this was down to his none-more-doom finger tip accident. You only have to hear Planet Caravan or Sleeping Village to hear that he was a pretty shit hot guitarist from the get go. I guess he wouldn't have been asked to join Jethro Tull. But he wasn't virtuoso or showily virtuoso in the way his peers were.)

Wouldn't have been asked to join Jethro Tull if he weren't a brilliant guitarist, I mean.

Throwaway comment which described Jimmy Page to a T! Iommi was oft mocked for his lack of ability at the time, as were the entire band, which is clearly ludicrous - Bill Ward, for one, is awesome.

I don't know much about Blackmore either. My mate played me some albums by Blackmore's Night the other week. It was an emotionally draining experience...

I'm loving this thread now. Any time Bill Ward is talked up is a great thing.

My mate worked with Bill Ward for a few months recently. He said his sincerity was so profound it was almost psychedelic and he found himself almost bursting into tears after the most mundane of conversations with him.

an alternate history where loads of groups had purposefully modified or fucked up amps to mimic this sound, with loads of groups having this really raw distortion

Have you heard of garage rock?

Yeah, I was wondering when someone would say this. I understand what you're saying but The Sonics and MC5 and The Trashmen etc don't trace their proud lineage back to a 45 by The Kinks.

Just for once, you could ignore tradition and read what I've written instead of going for the easy snark.

My mate worked with Bill Ward for a few months recently. He said his sincerity was so profound it was almost psychedelic and he found himself almost bursting into tears after the most mundane of conversations with him.

He had me welling up a few times on that history of heavy metal thing on BBC4

XP: Garage rock, despite some similarities is not the forebear of heavy metal. (Although it may well be an influence on some players.)

My mate worked with Bill Ward for a few months recently. He said his sincerity was so profound it was almost psychedelic and he found himself almost bursting into tears after the most mundane of conversations with him.

― Duran (Doran), Thursday, August 12, 2010 9:29 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This post almost makes me burst into tears. Ive heard he's one of the nicest guys ever. When you see his interviews he seems so goddamn cool.

A feeling that Blackmore doesn't inspire in me somehow... (even though I respect his right to dress up as Mediaeval minstrel on a dirty weekend...)

http://www.thehighwaystar.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/bn_promo_2003.jpg

Balls.

http://www.thehighwaystar.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/bn_promo_2003.jpg

Never gets old that photo (same cannot be said of Richie)

He doesnt look that bad compared to some of his contemporaries. Has anybody seen a picture of Mick Ralphs lately? Holy shit.

"Garage rock, despite some similarities is not the forebear of heavy metal."

its certainly one of them. along with cream and hendrix and others. the roots of metal are found in the roots of garage rock. the who, animals, them, pretty things, kinks, etc.

I don't disagree. As are Hammer House of Horror soundtracks, but I wouldn't say that the OST to the Abominable Dr Phibes was the first heavy metal album.

Another way I might put it is to define "modern metal" as "NWOBHM"...
Force It came out in '75, sounds like it could be '85...
Montrose does not sound like a 1973 heavy rock record.

Okay, I'm finally getting this. "Modern metal" basically means "fast '80s metal (but not hair and not necessarily thrash and what came after)", then.

this is what I'm thinking this poll is getting at, the sound that accompanied metal's rise to prominence as a genre during the 80s. metal is too disparate to identify one single album that contains all its impulses, but if you want to see who set the tone for the late 70s through to slayer, ya gotta go with priest's sad wings.

I love sabbath above all other metal bands, but the only bands in the 80s who were trying to sound like sabbath were freaks like kilslug and drunks with guns. today there's a bunch of ppl who try to sound like sabbath but that's a revivalist subgenre, stoner/sludge/doom/whatever. if I listen to more recent metal stuff like dillinger escape plan, kylesa, rwake, mastodon, howl, neither paranoid nor sad wings can really be seen as templates for what they're doing. too much water under the bridge, or years of slayer/metallica pollutants.

but if you want to talk about who generated the connective tissue between early bluesy/hard rock metal and speed/thrash/death, I'm going with priest. or spinal tap.

roots of metal are found in the roots of garage rock. the who, animals, them, pretty things, kinks

Troggs, too -- who had some direct connections with Sabbath, right? (Too lazy to look up the specifics right now.) And even if garage rock was not in the lineage of metal (which it totally was -- lots of guys from '60s garage bands -- or the kinds of bands that were later called "garage", anyway, since nobody used the term at the time apparently -- wound up in early '70s metal bands. And obviously there were lots of bands on the cusp, from the Amboy Dukes to Black Pearl to Chocolate Watchand etc), to say the Kinks didn't inspire " loads of groups had purposefully modified or fucked up amps to mimic this sound, with loads of groups having this really raw distortion" just sounds wrong. I was thinkig the same thing as Col. Poo, before he typed it. You don't need alternate history; it's already there.

I do like Duran Doran's focus on the British class system, though. Interesting -- and the comparison with donk probably makes sense. Though I doubt people will still be playing it four decades from now.

Even people like Lester Bangs (who popularized the use of the term heavy metal in association with music), I'm pretty certain, saw Sabbath as a novelty band (and a piss poor one at that) until Masters Of Reality came out.

Metal Mike Saunders, who used the term heavy metal to describe the genre (in a Sir Lord Baltimore review in Creem iirc) before Bangs did, loved Sabbath from the gitgo, as I recall. But he was basically a kid at the time, way more in Sabbath's target demographic than older critics then were.

I do like Duran Doran's focus on the British class system, though. Interesting

... but not entirely convincing tbh

never trust an old fart critic is the moral of the story then? ;)

"I understand what you're saying but The Sonics and MC5 and The Trashmen etc don't trace their proud lineage back to a 45 by The Kinks."

Large % of garage rock does trace back to the noise-ier end of the Kinks, Yardbirds, Stones, Who, Troggs, Pretty Things, Them, etc...

XP: There's a definite difference to the way that garage rock, heavy rock and heavy metal are related in the US though. Over here for example, there are loads of garage rock groups that we think of as being par for the course because of the internet and CD reissue culture etc that Black Sabbath just wouldn't even have heard of when they were starting out. And the heritage of US rock is always easier to define. There's an easier to follow family tree. I can see how Link Ray relates to The Sonics relates to Blue Cheer much easier than I can hear Helter Skelter or You Really Got Me or what have you being an influence on The Village or Black Sabbath.

If you read about what the various members of Black Sabbath were listening to in the late 60s, sure The Kinks were probably in there somewhere (as probably were The Troggs and Hendrix and The Yardbirds as well) but this is all kind of secondary to the novel aspect of introducing the element of horror. The devil's interval. The tolling bells. The bludgeoning sound that suggested primitavism. This is all the stuff that introduced the break with what went before hand. I know heavy metal wasn't invented in a vacuum but it was different enough from what went before to be remarkable. (And can you really say that about Vanilla Fudge or Blue Cheer?)

But still, to get back to the poll, I'd say that it was still also part of a tradition enough to be just a sub genre of rock music until the dawn of modern metal. But when did that start? I'd say with Judas Priest. That's when metal became a genre in it's own right. Right?

"but this is all kind of secondary to the novel aspect of introducing the element of horror."

Screaming Lord Sutch and Crazy World of Arthur Brown so bitter.

Judas Priest. That's when metal became a genre in it's own right. Right?

Wrong. At least if you trust all the people who considered it a genre in its own right before then.

But again, throw the ambiguous "modern" in there, and you might have a point.

XP: ""I understand what you're saying but The Sonics and MC5 and The Trashmen etc don't trace their proud lineage back to a 45 by The Kinks."

Large % of garage rock does trace back to the noise-ier end of the Kinks, Yardbirds, Stones, Who, Troggs, Pretty Things, Them, etc.."

Look, I'm only saying how I see it, but one more time: that one record wasn't the start of garage rock but Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath, the track arguably was the start of heavy metal. I'm sorry I haven't made myself more clear on this thread.

As for the working class roots of metal... well, this is another argument for another day. I'd almost say metal's roots as a provincial working class genre are so obvious as to make the argument almost redundant but I'll lay out my case tomorrow if anyone's interested.

When did metal become so middle class in the UK? It definitely was like that when I left school in 1990

"but Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath, the track... was the start of heavy metal."

I actually agree with this. That's why I voted for that album.

Alex In SF: there's that idea of novelty again.

XHUXK: That's exactly what I'm saying.

Pfunk: It may be a regional thing. I left school in the mid 80s and it was definitely a working class thing. There again, I went to a nearly 100% working class school in a working class area, so I've just realised I've got no real way of telling...

I blame that Bruce Dickinson

XP: I mean, would it be any easier to pin point when hip hop 'became a white thing' (in terms of who buys it) in the US? Or even if this is actually the case...

so did i, but there was still some middle class kids and they were the few that listened to metal. Most people were into U2, INXS, Simple Minds & co

xps

Yes, the Beastie Boys.

Most people were into U2, INXS, Simple Minds & co

The Minds, you mean

but Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath, the track... was the start of heavy metal."

I actually agree with this. That's why I voted for that album.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Thursday, August 12, 2010 10:37 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

absolutely

well Ayr wasnt actually 100% working class, it always had a tory mp, but it was a catholic school so pupils came from all over the place.I lived in Prestwick which was like 50/50.

I blame that Bruce Dickinson

ha, me too! maiden went from songs about finding yr deadbeat dad and stabbing ppl at tube stations to adaptations of coleridge poems wtf

I'm voting for "Boris the Spider" as the start of heavy metal (Hendrix's fave. Who song)

anyway it wasnt kids whose parents bought their house and working hard to pay for it, it was definitely kids of teachers, doctors,lawyers that were into maiden and the like. Could just have been my school, if there was more than 10 people in my school who liked metal I'd be shocked (gnr were the exception)
Some ilxors who went to private school say metal was really popular in the late 80s.

mussorgsky invented metal when he wrote "night on bald mountain"

first metal video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Ca_edg6RE

i think we were just hung up on the wrongness of this:

"it's just that no one really followed on from this single, giving it more of a novel nature."

"Now, imagine an alternate history where loads of groups had purposefully modified or fucked up amps to mimic this sound, with loads of groups having this really raw distortion, then the history of popular music as we know it would be totally different. But for better or worse, they didn't."

the other stuff you have been saying seems less wrong. though i still think metal bands of the 70's were more inspired by the four million metallic and distorted kinks covers recorded in the 60's then they were hammer movie soundtracks. hammer MOVIES i definitely see as an influence for bands like sabbath and zior and other 70's doomsters.

Well, I can only apologize. I don't think that the Kinks are uninfluential. I don't think that metal doesn't have some roots in garage rock. I'm just interested in looking at things from a non-canonical point of view and I don't 'feel' a visceral link between You Really Got Me and Children Of The Void... purely a personal thing. As for the Hammer thing, I'm only going on what the band have said themselves (even though I know bands aren't always the most reliable of witnesses.

Poster upthread is right about Dicko. He's insanely posh. My colleague had a lecture on Coleridge's Ancient Mariner from him while at school. He flew to the lesson in his spitfire and landed on the rugby field, walking into the classroom wearing a leather flying helmet and goggles.

I was speaking to him outside a Metal Awards bash in Hackney some years ago and when two young ladies walked past he said, in the style of Terry Thomas (apologies to American posters and anyone under the age of 35): "Oh hello! Ding dong!" I was both appalled and elated simultaneously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c5IC9YZqi0&feature=related

I feel that I shouldn't have to keep on saying, by the way, that the Kinks reference is specifically in relation to the birth of heavy metal and not to rock music in general. Slightly aggravating case of internet literalism. As much as I don't like The Kinks, I am vaguely aware of their heritage...

... now there was a working class band!

terry-thomas rules

Although he's more proto-Sparks than proto-Maiden.

terry-thomas had a pretty substantial part in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, just for example, so it's not as if he's totally unknown in the US

I misread that as It's A Man's, Man's...

Look man... I was just being polite... but thanks for clearing up that up, who knows what would have happened if you'd just left it unmentioned.

Good story Doran, and some other great posts. Definitely the best discussion of any poll threads of my making. Hopefully more than like eight people voted this time!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

A wholesale rejection of the idea of modern metal then, heh. Well, great discussion anyway.

I think 30 of you are wrong, but hey great vote turnout! Think of it this way, bands with obvious similarities to Sabbath are doom metal and stoner rock. So half the early Sabbath acolytes are basically retro-metal, and the other half aren't even metal. The Sabbath debut started it all for sure, but the majority of modern metal owes 90% more to Judas Priest, Scorpions . . . and Sabotage.

For the record I voted for Sabotage. Judas Priest are certainly key in the development of modern metal, and for years I would have considered Sad Wings as the obvious answer. But both Sabotage and In Trance are closer to Priest than what came before to my ears. Sabotage and In Trance may have been mere giant steps compared to Sad Wings' great leap, but they were first.

Dio may have been metal personified, but he wasn't enough to overrule Blackmore's archaic, decidedly un-metal chooglin' rock 'n' roll on those Rainbow albums. Van Halen came out the same day as Stained Class on Feb 10, 1978. A great day for metal and hard rock. Despite their huge influence on metal, they were nothing more than hard rock 'n' roll.

Feb 10 should be a heavy rock/metal holiday. Or it should be metal month, as Sabbath debuted that month too.

Fastnbulbous, you should ask your friend Glenn to pinpoint where (British rock magazines maybe?) Sabbath were so lumped, or who was doing the lumping. It makes sense, in a way, since they definitely (as I said before) seemed to be moving away from blues structures toward more Yurropean, maybe classical ones (I think I've heard people compare them to Grieg and Dvořák before, but I'm classically illiterate and I have no idea whether that's baloney.) Also, is Glenn saying the genre name "heavy prog" was actually used at the time, or is that his own formulation? Curious who else would qualify for that genre, from that time, either way....Uriah Heep, I guess? Some King Crimson? Who else?

A belated answer from Glenn -

I'm also too young to have any first-hand knowledge of Black Sabbath being considered heavy prog. But it's something I've heard at least a few people talk about. I don't have much of a library of rock criticism, but there's a half-sentence about it in the foreword of Popoff's '70s metal book. I don't think "heavy prog" was a specific label at the time. There was art/prog rock in the last few years of the '60s, and then Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, King Crimson, and Uriah Heep came along and, from what I've heard, they were thought of, by at least some people, until the better term "heavy metal" became more widespread, as a heavier form of art/prog rock. But I'm not an authority on this.

Anyone old enough to remember?

"As much as I don't like The Kinks, I am vaguely aware of their heritage..."

i don't think i could ever truly understand someone who doesn't like the kinks. or at least a fan of rock who doesn't like them. i could understand an opera fan who doesn't like the kinks. is it a u.k. thing? like brits who don't like queen or the jam? i guess i can understand that kinda thing a little. cuz then someone could be like * i hate the kinks because they remind me of my tory uncle and my sad summer bank holidays as a child to the spa at scarborough and that time that we saw eileen derbyshire from coronation street at seafest and she made fun of my stammer.* or something else suitably parochial and obscure.

I was watching a re-run of Sam Dunn's Metal Evolution Part 3.
http://www.vh1.com/video/metal-evolution/full-episodes/early-metal-uk/1676778/playlist.jhtml

There's a funny scene where Dunn sadly sits in the office of Led Zeppelin's manager where no one will talk to him as the band don't want to be associated with metal.

At 16:20
Sam Dunn: "To what extent did you consider yourselves a heavy metal band?"

Geezer Butler: "We just thought we were a hard rock band at the time. That's what we liked. And the first I heard of being called heavy metal was somebody being derogatory about us. I read this review when we were on tour criticizing us, business as usual, and they said it sounded like heavy metal being dropped, not musically whatsoever."

SD: "Black Sabbath clearly didn't self-identify as a heavy metal band."

Roger Glover, Ian Paice, Jon Lord

25:34
SD: "At that time in the early 70's period, did you see yourselves as a heavy metal band?"

Ian Paice: "We just called ourselves a hard rock band."

Jon Lord: "Some people said we had a hand in early heavy metal, and I accept that we could be one of the godfathers. But I defy the parenthood, that wasn't us. We weren't the parents."

Dunn then talks about how Zep, Sabbath and Purple began to shift their sounds. "I always wanted to know why these bands drifted away from their iconic aggressive sound." He's refers to Houses of the Holy, Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath where they work with Rick Wakeman.

But dude, what about Sabotage? I really wished he would have asked Ward and Geezer when they DID start to self-identify as a metal band. Might they have said around 1974-5?

The episode ends, of course, with Judas Priest proudly owning it, the first band to self-identify as metal.

"Heavy Metal" and "punk" were terms I first saw in early 70s Creem; I never heard any fans using those tags 'til the mid-70s. Of course, from the 60s on, there was "That's heavy," re a serious comment/situation (and Bob Seger's "Heavy Music," but that was out of my neck of the woods, didn't hear it 'til way later).
Never heard of "heavy prog" before this thread, but can recall listening to In The Court of The Crimson King in the same stack of records with early Sabs ("20th Century Schizoid Man" went well with "Iron Man," at the time), Cactus, Bloodrock's D.O.A etc. Emerson Lake & Palmer were heavy live, even Yes (when I was standing in the wings, and heard drums & bass over the rest of that stuff, on '72 tour).

The earliest use of "heavy metal" I can recall reading (not really remembering the context in which William Burroughs used it) was a Metal Mike Saunders review, a show review I think, of Humble Pie. Bangs used it for BOC as soon as they showed up.

Metal Mike claimed first use of it re music.

Oh well o course Steppenwolf's "I like smoke 'n' lightnin'/Heavy Metal Thundah!" and the whole song, via John Kay's guttural Germanic vox, is metal as fuck in retrospect, but at the time, I (literal-minded child) associated it more with bikers, which were still a thing in '68 ("*true* nature's child": word to the flower children), after Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga, and excellent b-movies like Hell's Angels On Wheels, with Easy Rider still to come.
Don't think the song actually mentions music specifically, but prob cited by Metal Mike, Bangs etc. in pitches to editors and/or readers.

also Kraftwerk's "Heavy Metal Kids" indicates that by 1971 the term heavy metal was well enough understood for Kraftwerk to parody the genre with their beautiful pastiche/homage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw8-TlQBcBA

'Heavy Metal Kids' is from Nova Express by William S. Burroughs I think?

oh, dow mentioned that above

Not quite, I couldn't remember his exact term; but in '67, there was an album by Hapsash and His Coloured Coat Featuring the Human Host and The Heavy Kids, which may have been the title too, don't remember (Spooky Tooth-related?) Heard it once, under hayzee weather, but don't think it was what anyone would be likely to describe as metal music; ditto '71 Kraftwerk, but they may well have been reading Creem already (Bangs later took a shine to them, interviewed, think even got Ralf und Florian to pose with the Boy Howdy beer cans)

Of course some of what was called glam at the time might also qualify as proto-metal (like Slade, later covered by hair metalists).

"The Human Host and The Heavy *Metal* Kids," I meant to say, sorry!

Yeah, that Hapshash LP is in Stairway (though it didn't sound particularly metal even to me at the time, to be honest; more like Kraut-rock -- which I didn't know was called Kraut-rock yet when I wrote the book, so I called it "unidentified flying rock" instead.) Was somehow oblivious to Kraftwerk's "Heavy Metal Kids" until now, or at least never made the connection. (And of course there was also the Todd Rundgren song a few years later of the same name, not to mention that sort of glam/pre-punk Brit hard rock band Heavy Metal Kids.)

(Think of, say, the Decibel Hall of Fame -- what the oldest album in that so far?)

I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but somebody told me that Bang's first album was added in a recent issue! (Only the second one from the '70s, I think they said?) And obviously, all sorts of current bands now identified as metal (stoner, doom, occult, whatever) are fully immersed in even the acid rock of the late '60s. Does that mean that opinions about when "modern metal" started have shifted in the past few years?

I don't know anything about metal but where do people place the song "A Trial in Our Native Town" by Savage Rose, 1969, in this continuum?

A big fave (as is "Long Before I was Born" which is a more Airplane-like classic).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbYsbT1akdw

YESSSSSS

Think that came out before the first Sabbath album, too?

Ignore my SN for this post

I've been working on a review of Martin Popoff's "Who Invented Heavy Metal Book," and I started digging again to try to nail down when both bands and audiences started to agree on the existence of metal. From articles, it's basically Mike Saunders wishing metal into existence through sheer force of will in his pieces in '72 to '74. A good summary of his way of shoehorning everything he liked into heavy metal in "A Brief Survey Of The State Of Metal Music Today," Phonograph Record, April 1973:

A year later, the outlook has changed drastically. 1972 was not a good year for heavy metal. Dust were the first to bite it, with their infuriatingly uneven and pretentious album Hard Attack. Alice Cooper came next in the washout category, followed by Grand Funk's abandonment of metal for mainstream rock and Black Sabbath's Vol. 4, a disturbingly unpleasant and depressing effort. Topping it all off, Led Zep failed to show, a huge disappointment when their double album was postponed until this February or so. Nitzinger had a good debut album and Uriah Heep had Demons And Wizards, but both wiped out badly with their following releases. New groups have not arisen to replace all these aging stalwarts, mainly because record companies have just not signed many metal groups and don't seem interested in changing this policy.

So the state of metal music today can be summed up in one word: stagnant. Outside of Blue Oyster Cult, The Stooges (whose stunning comeback is more than I'd dared even dream of), and hopefully Led Zep (their LP still not out as I write this), the field is simply in a state of outright decay. Many groups are either well past their peak or in a temporary slump – Grand Funk, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, possibly Alice Cooper, and particularly Black Sabbath, in whose case I really have extreme difficulty imagining any sort of viable future.

...It all seems to point to heavy metal's having been a transitional phase. A possible development might be the amalgamation of metal techniques into the three-minute pop form of the aforementioned current groups – such a trend could be quite incredible, making most of the old metal groups sound like dinosaurs. It's my bet that such a style would come from a new generation of metal rockers, though. None of today's metal groups seem capable of such a switch, with the possible exceptions of Led Zep and Blue Oyster Cult. Anyhow, it's all speculation, and we know where that leads. Into the void.

Read the whole thing at http://www.metal-archives.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=80629

Then in '74 Sandy Pearlman decided to promote Blue Öyster Cult as the embodiment and future of metal. From a Nick Kent article in 2 March 1974 NME:

The band don't talk too much, preferring to allow Pearlman to verbalise on their behalf, if only to outline the collective at work on the B.O.C. heavy-metal vision.

"Hey, I invented the term "Heavy metal' – did you know that? I was the first writer to use it. I was a scientist at college – graduated with tons of awards – and I used the terminology in my articles. I first used the phrase in a Byrds review in '67. That was before the 'Heavy metal thunder' line in 'Born to Be Wild', even."

Here's the first times I found other writers using the term:

9/73 - Keith Altham, NME, 2/74 - Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 3/74 - Nick Kent & Ian McDonald, NME, 4/74 - Wayne Robbins, Creem, 11/74 - Jon Tiven, Circus Raves, 2/75 - Max Bell, NME, 3/75 - Chris Salewicz, NME, 7/75 Ron Ross - Circus, 8/75 - Geoff Barton, Sounds, 12/75 - Jaan Uhelszki, Creem, 9/76 - Pete Makowski, Sounds, 5/77 - Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds

But when did anyone else outside of a couple journalists acknowledge the existence of metal? When did a significant subculture of fans start self-identifying as heavy metal fans, metalheads and headbangers? When did bands other than Judas Priest self-identify as metal? There's like a big gaping hole in metal history that must be lurking about in interviews and photos. From what I can tell in this NWOBHM documentary, there seemed to already be local metal scenes scattered throughout England by at least 1977, possibly 1976? Is there a decent Priest biography I've missed that covers this?

https://youtu.be/BZUUUIDIsqk?t=2m6s

Newly disciplined research reveals that metal was actually not invented until Queensrÿche's Rage for Order.

The more I listen and read about metal, the more it seems like it took punk to make metal what we think of today. Most people seem to agree that Black Sabbath was the first true metal band, as far as heaviness. However, when I think about "modern" metal, I think about bands like Motorhead and Venom (and other NWOBHM acts) taking cues from punk, regarding intensity, speed, vocal style, and pushing the envelope of what was acceptable to rock-learned ears.

There's certainly a strong case for metal not really existing until 1979! Judas Priest kind of held the fort all by their lonesome for a few years.

Has anyone read this? There doesn't really seem to be a widely published, well written Priest book.

Judas Priest: The Early Years (1983)
http://www.amazon.com/Judas-Priest-Early-Years/dp/B000KY3YGI/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442353790&sr=1-7&keywords=judas+priest

And yeah, along with Motorhead, lots of hard rock influenced metal - Scorpions, AC/DC, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Van Halen, etc.

This might be promising:

Neil Daniels - The Story Of Judas Priest - Defenders Of The Faith (2010)
http://www.amazon.com/Story-Judas-Priest-Defenders-Faith-ebook/dp/B003FV7G4E/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442354906&sr=1-10&keywords=judas+priest

The Birth Of Metal

Was heavy metal invented by a single band? Was it dreamed up by a journalist? Was it born on a particular album, perhaps premature and deformed, denied by its parents and returned to live in an orphanage until it was adopted years later by a DJ, a journalist, a bunch of younger bands and some headbangers? ...

http://fastnbulbous.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/blacksabbath-born-again.jpg

This is a really cool thread, like what is the Big Bang of metal or whatever… leaning towards sad wings right now because I’m uhhh listening to an og pressing* right now and:

1) the ripper, cmon, especially the beginning
2) dreamer, deceiver is so… lighters up

*sold the bullshit promo I had that had all these lame radio-friendly edits like omitting the fade in to “victim of changes”

oh also, rob goddam vocals trills holy shit