What's the first modern metal album?

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Metal Mike claimed first use of it re music.

dow, Sunday, 8 March 2015 04:03 (nine years ago) link

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.

dow, Sunday, 8 March 2015 17:26 (nine years ago) link

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

niels, Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:15 (nine years ago) link

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

soref, Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:21 (nine years ago) link

oh, dow mentioned that above

soref, Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:23 (nine years ago) link

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)

dow, Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:36 (nine years ago) link

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

dow, Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:40 (nine years ago) link

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

dow, Sunday, 8 March 2015 18:41 (nine years ago) link

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?

xhuxk, Wednesday, 11 March 2015 18:18 (nine years ago) link

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).

Vic Perry, Wednesday, 11 March 2015 18:33 (nine years ago) link

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

Vic Perry, Wednesday, 11 March 2015 18:37 (nine years ago) link

YESSSSSS

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

Ignore my SN for this post

^^^ NOT METAL (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Thursday, 12 March 2015 05:20 (nine years ago) link

six months pass...

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

Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 13:35 (eight years ago) link

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

glenn mcdonald, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 13:38 (eight years ago) link

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.

Dominique, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 14:36 (eight years ago) link

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.

Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 21:57 (eight years ago) link

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

Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 22:11 (eight years ago) link

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

Fastnbulbous, Friday, 25 September 2015 12:47 (eight years ago) link

six years pass...

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”

brimstead, Thursday, 23 June 2022 03:21 (one year ago) link

oh also, rob goddam vocals trills holy shit

brimstead, Thursday, 23 June 2022 03:24 (one year ago) link


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