What's the first modern metal album?

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)