What's the first modern metal album?

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.

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