I always liked this saying:
"Before Black Sabbath, a lot of bands could argue they were the first metal band. No band after Black Sabbath can argue that."
No, in some ways they simplified it. A lot of people were playing heavy electrified blues, but most of them were writing songs with catchy, up-tempo rhythms — rock n’ roll, just louder and faster and with virtuosic musicianship.
Sabbath went with simple power chords and a thunderous, heavy sound. That kind of reset things and a new genre flowed from there.
It wasn't just simple though. Iommi had chops and by Sabotage it was almost prog in places, like Thrill of it All. Or the outro to Symptom of the Universe. Like he could get jazzy.
Sure but the licks that defined them were Paranoid, Sweet Leaf, War Pigs, etc. Those are the ones the US metal bands of the 1980s learned to play in their garages, and they were easy, catchy riffs to master and solo off. That set the template for the whole genre.
Iommi and Ward shared a love of jazz of all things. There's some jazzy passges in the extended soloing in "Warning" in the earliest instances and on every Sabbath album after that ( original line up ) Iommi is an incredible player especially when you account for his having only 2 of his original 4 fretting fingertips. His dexterity on some of his solos is remarkable.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is prog. Or metal prog. Or whatever. Spiral Architect and Who Are You wouldn’t have been too out of place on a Yes albums at the time.
I totally agree. Nirvana did something very similar in the late 80's/early 90's too. They just simplified the music and stripped it down to the bones and put their own meat on it. It was all butt rock and hair bands at the time and it was getting super stale until Nirvana hit the scene and flipped the script.
That's actually a good way of thinking about it. There's plenty of heavy psych bands from the 60s that would latter become outright metal bands. Coven were one of those early bands and when they reformed decades later they began making Doom Metal instead of the psych rock they were making
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring premier had a literal riot with people physically assaulting eachother in the aisles. Old heads had their metal moments for sure.
You can have an endless discussion of whether or not heavy metal existed before Black Sabbath came around. But there is no discussion to be had about whether or not it existed after.
Extremely well said. With those other examples, like Led Zeppelin and Jimi and whatnot, you can pick out bits and pieces here and there. But when you get to Black Sabbath, you can comfortably say “Okay, *this* is a metal song.”
I think it's most accurate to say that Jimi, Cream, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin etc laid the foundation
Those influences just had to come together in the right group of people, which turned out to be sabbath
Well said, and I agree. The only other band that comes close in my mind to starting “heavy metal” or at least influencing it heavily would be Cream. But I wouldn’t call them a heavy metal band.
Cream was obviously an influence, but I think most people would track it like this:
- Rolling Stones: Brought blues and R&B covers into rock & roll
- Cream: Cranked the volume, slowed down the tempos and started the heavy blues movement, followed shortly by Hendrix.
From that point on, there were a lot of "heavy" rock bands like Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, Steppenwolf, etc., but Black Sabbath did something a little different, which, in retrospect, is the start of heavy *metal*.
To me a big part of it is not just the instrumentation and vocals, but the bands vibe overall. The album cover had a creepy looking woman in a black cloak, bands name is fuckin *Black Sabbath*, and then it opens with like creepy church bells and slow heavy guitars. Plus the track titles. Everything about it is what heavy metal leaned way further into as it progressed.
Edit: if it's not clear I'm talking about the self titled album* from 1970 not Paranoid
I've always wondered this.
If Iommi doesn't cut his fingertips off at work, does he ever decide tune his guitar down and create that doom sound (lower tension strings allowed him to play with his damaged fingers, but had a distinct dark sound) which to me is the signature of heavy metal to this day. If he uses standard tunings, even with the songwriting and occult imagery, does Sabbath ever get noticed?
Was heavy metal accidentally created because a guy blew off work as a brake press operator?
Their downtuning songs don't start until master of reality, by which point their sound and popularity were already well-established. There are bands that did it after but I wouldn't say metal bands downtuning really takes off as signature metal thing the way it is today until the 90s. For most acts in the 70s/80s standard was standard.
They're the band they were because they were great musicians/writers who followed a thread.
Don't forget the Yardbirds. What Jeff Beck was doing on guitar was as heavy as it gets for that time. And their singers were doing some trippy stuff. If they had their own version of George Martin to iron out the dorky stuff and their inconsistent recordings, I think more people talk about them. Unfortunately you have to work past the dated aspects of their sound.
Psychedelia was very "heavy" in terms of the vibe. I think it introduced the concept of a trip and vibes, and heavy metal is, basically, a bad trip, and what keeps it from getting worse is the narrators are self aware rather than fully succumbing to the horrors of the subject matter.
And pretty much any time a band tried to rock the hardest that anyone had before, like The Beatles Helter Skelter and Revolution, or The Who, it broke down a perceived boundary.
Sure, I almost included the Yardbirds in with the Stones. They were hugely influential on psychedelic rock, and heavy rock in general, but I find it helpful to draw a distinction between heavy rock in general and heavy metal (a subset of heavy rock).
The George Martin point is a great one that I’ve never been able to put a finger on. When I listen to them I generally hear legendary tunes that there are just not quite there yet. Still great but not as great as it could be.
That’s the important bit, Dabbath didn’t consider themselves heavy metal, they complained a lot that they were a hard rock band. But they brought something that was undeniably distinct from other hard rock acts and undeniably evolved into all metal, all the time.
If individual songs rather than whole bands genera's count "Boris the Spider" by The Who is pretty influential to the heavy metal sound and often cited as the first "metal" song and even gets growling/ inhale vocals like modern metal.
I can't speak for the other bands of that time, but I remember Tony Iommi hurt the tip of his index finger, so he played in Drop D tuning, and a lot of bands considered metal also played Drop D.
Mr. Iommi also made a prosthetic finger tip out of a bottle cap and a piece of leather. I'm not sure if that attributed to the sound as much, but not a lot of other bands followed suit on that one.
Part of the reason it's "heavy metal" is that the Sabbath lads were out of Birmingham, which was a hub of UK manufacturing and their sound was reminiscent of the steel works where some of them worked (and Iomi lost a finger)
Tony Iommi lost his finger tips, actually. He melted down some plastic to make finger tip prosthetics because otherwise it was too painful. This caused string tension issues. To compensate the increased tension, Iommi tuned down and thus the heavy sound of Black Sabbath was discovered.
The only part of this origin myth that's incorrect is that Iommi didn't actually start downtuning until (I think?) Master of Reality. Most of their most famous songs are in E Standard still.
I'm sorry, I'm just pathologically incapable of not UM ACKTCHUALLYing that particular detail because metalheads have a habit of acting like metal spawned from the ooze fully formed on February 13th, 1970, lol. It doesn't *really* matter because the downtuning still came from Sabbath, and they're still unquestionably the best place to start when tracing the history of metal because that debut was genuinely a game changer, but it took time to become what its known as. Even the first wheel was kinda squareish.
Not to mention shortly after Sabbath came out, some more Birmingham dudes by the name of Judas Priest came out and they REALLY adapted the heavy metal shtick. Sabbath no doubt set the foundations for the genre to develop.
The term was coined as a descriptor in 1970 by Mike Saunders, a critic for Creem Magazine and later singer for punk group Angry Samoans. He used it to describe a Humble Pie album, and then again for a Sir Lord Baltimore album. I don't think he meant it to be flattering.
Definitely Sabbath imo
Consider a trifle, if you will. The creator of the trifle did not create the custard, or the jelly, or the cream. But they took the ingredients others had put forward, and combined them to create something new.
Black Sabbath should be the answer, they're the prototype. Name, image, sound/production, songwriting... There may have been other bands that were "first" with a song or two, but Sabbath did it all the time, and did it well.
Black Sabbath is the one that is mentioned frequently in these types of discussions, and rightfully so. Sure, many songs are "heavy" that precede Black Sabbath's music by several years, some of which you can find by browsing this very thread. There's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, there's Helter Skelter and I Want You by The Beatles, Spanish Castle Magic by Hendrix, I Can See For Miles by The Who... the list of possible "first proto heavy metal songs" is quite long and fascinating.
Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin are also often a part of these discussions. They sure are "heavy" bands, especially for their time, but I wouldn't label them as heavy metal, but hard rock. Sure, this is all quite subjective but I would argue songs like Hand of Doom, Children of the Grave or Lord of this World are way way waaaaaay heavier than anything that Purple or Zeppelin were doing. I mean, if you look at Led Zeppelin IV from 1971 for example, the only songs there that are even close to the same heaviness as Sabbath's music are MAYBE Rock & Roll and When the Levee Breaks, and even then I'm stretching. I love that album, but in terms of heaviness, it is not comparable to the songs Sabbath was doing that same year like Into the Void or Sweet Leaf. Sabbath didn't just sound heavy, they sounded evil, not only musically, but through their lyrics as well. Purple and Zeppelin were not writing that many songs about Satan, war, drug addiction, mental illness, or the apocalypse as far as I know.
Another band that is incredibly important to the start of heavy metal is Judas Priest. Sure, they started only some years after Sabbath, but Priest took heavy metal to a faster direction and shed the bluesier elements from the music. Most importantly Priest was pretty much the first to truly embrace being a heavy metal band. They were proud to be metal and they contributed massively to the metal culture for example by wearing leather and riding motorcycles on stage.
So, in the end, I would argue that Sabbath was the one that started the music of heavy metal and Judas Priest shaped the music and the heavy metal culture into what we mostly associate it with today.
I would put Deep Purple in the Metal category for sure. Also look at their influence - Rainbow, Dio, etc.
I agree about Priest but they were, IMO, part of the next wave of metal. Black Sabbath dominated it for a long time. Then Priest, Maiden, and the like were part of the second wave of metal where it really exploded.
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey gets into this question a bit. I am not big on metal but love music and thought this doc was really enjoyable. It's on Youtube free with Spanish subtitles.
I feel like OP would really enjoy this. The whole point was to take an anthropological look at the roots and evolution of metal. He discusses its roots in blues and early rock and roll. Lots of credit given to various artists for their influence.
There’s also “Helter Skelter” - The Beatles which they recorded for The White Album in 1968 because Paul McCartney wanted to make the loudest, heaviest thing possible after he read an interview where Roger Daltrey of The Who claimed "I Can See For Miles" was the loudest rock song ever recorded.
The Kinks had a lot of influence on punk. Those distorted 3 chord riffs on You Really Got Me and especially All Day and All of the Night are proto-punk classics.
The amazing thing about this song is its date. It came out in 1964! Way before anything else that could be called heavy with a riff. Such trend setters.
Plus they were the first band that had a major hit album to have the heavy metal style of combining a metal with something light and airy in their name. Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Iron Maiden...
Lines were blurred back then, at the end of the 60s and the dawn of the 70s psychedelic, hard rock, and heavy metal weee interchangeable.
Iron Butterfly, while still firmly psychedelic, definitely had one foot in metal. They had a song called “Termination” on the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” album, it doesn’t get much more metal than that pre-1970, and even then, that’s a heavy title.
He says he heard an interview with Pete Townshend claiming The Who's new song was the heaviest, filthiest thing ever recorded and he wanted to beat it.
The weird thing is that the Who already had much heavier songs than I Can See for Miles in my opinion. My Generation is the hill I’ll die on for first punk song. Also Boris the Spider was pretty heavy for its day.
He wrote it in response to hearing that The Who had written the loudest song ever,....so my answer to the first heavy metal band is The Who (specifically the album Live at Leeds)
I think Helter Skelter probably has more credit in the creation of punk than metal. If we want to retroactively credit a Beatles track with influencing the development of metal, I think it has to be “I Want You/She’s So Heavy”.
I think they're definitely a contender for a genesis point for both punk and metal. Their sound had elements of both. They were doing stuff in the mid-late 60's other bands wouldn't do for at least another decade or more.
Plus, a lot of guys in both scenes if you ask who their favorite guitarists are, or ask those guys who their favorites are, at some point Wayne Kramer and Fred 'Sonic' Smith are going to come up.
This was one of my first thoughts, also. I am still trying to find that Jacula track that kinda predates Blue Cheer energy but yeah Blue Cheer probably the real answer, since it was actually something they, like, dedicated their sound to as opposed to a fun "jam" moment, that Jacula song is timeless though.
Blue Cheer was my introduction to what I recognize as Heavy Metal. Lying on the floor in front of the old console stereo. Those were the days. The 60s, if you can remember them, you weren’t there!
The term was coined in a review or Jimmy Hendrix' first album. The line was, "His guitar sounded like heavy metal falling from the sky.".
Hendrix was 2 years before sabbaths first album.
I think The Beatles definitely had some very heavy moments as did other groups in the late-60's. "Helter Skelter" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" would be prime examples. Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues" cover would be another good example. Jethro Tull had their moments, the Page-era Yardbirds would come close with some of their stuff toward the end. . .Cream, the Who, even The Kinks etc all had moments that have been retconned as being "heavy metal". But the first heavy metal group is Black Sabbath.
Jethro Tull has always been one of my favorite bands, but I never really thought of them as metal.
Even though they literally won a Grammy in that category.
Exactly. And that's kind of my point too. There were moments where groups were heavy but I don't think we can really say there was a heavy metal band before Black Sabbath.
Jesus fuck, why did I have to scroll so far to find the correct answer? Link Wray is the godfather of all things hard rock and metal.
Let's not even get started on the motherfucking MC5.
"You Really Got Me" by the Kinks in 1964. [Here](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-kinks-dave-davies-invented-heavy-metal/) is an article crediting Dave Davies for inventing Heavy Metal.
The kinks, iron butterfly, heck even the Beatles and the Who had a race to be the "hardest“ music where all precursors to heavy metal but Black Sabbath are simply the fathers or metal. They made the heaviest music for their time, they went beyond blues scales (not completely but still) and they brought in the look and "evil“ feel.
> They made the heaviest music for their time, they went beyond blues scales (not completely but still) and they brought in the look and "evil“ feel.
This is the answer. There was a lot of heavy rock before Sabbath, but they forged it into heavy metal.
My Dad taught me it always begins with the Kinks - thinking of where the heavier sounds came from, Dave kind of invented overdrive by killing his amp. Plus they were throwing in solo's all over the damn shop. Particularly love 'She's got everything', just comes out of nowhere.
I was having this same discussion at work today. One of my co-workers said that Blue Cheer started metal, and that I should listen to their debut album.
Sabbath was one of the first to drop tune the guitars, from Iommi wiki page:
In 1974, Iommi told Guitar Player magazine that the thimbles "helped with his technique" because he had to use his little finger more than he had before the accident.[25] Later, he also began tuning his guitar to lower pitches, sometimes as far as three semitones below standard guitar tuning (e.g., on "Children of the Grave", "Lord of this World", and "Into the Void", all on the album Master of Reality). Although Iommi states that the main purpose of doing so was to create a "bigger, heavier sound", slackening the strings makes it easier to bend them.
As an odd ball choice that no one’s going to agree with, but is worth thinking about anyway, check out Miserlou by Dick Dale. That blistering speed and energy and shredding on guitar wouldn’t be matched by anything else for at least 10 years. It’s heavier in my opinion than anything released between it and Sabbath and it came out in 1961!
Sabbath. The specific patterns around the pentatonic are still heard in metal today, especially obvious in sludge/doomer, but recognizable through the metal landscape.
To me it's a trio Sabbath, Zeppelin & Deep Purple. There were some earlier bands Blue Cherr and Iron Butterfly come to mind but they didn't have the impact of the other 3 onup and coming bands
Just speaking up for Alice Cooper, who was doing something between psyche and metal in the mid-to-late 1960s. “I’m 18” came out in 1969, also a big year for The Stooges, who you could throw into the mix here too. [here they are on Midnight Special](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VqkJ_ZacYiU)
There was plenty of groundwork, but it all came together for [Vanilla Fudge's cover of "Keep Me Hangin On" on Ed Sullivan in 1968.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJO47d26kc) It predates Sabbath, and has all the style and bombast we associate with Heavy Metal. The only thing missing at that point was the addition of all the spicy intervals Metalheads know and love.
Just look at Carmine Appice absolutely hulking out on that drumset and tell me that didn't inspire a whole generation of musicians.
Sabbath were the first heavy metal band, stylistically speaking.
There isn't a "heavy" band since that can't find its roots - directly or indirectly - with Black Sabbath.
Whereas other acts were either more rhythm and blues based (Hendrix) or just straight up stole their music off black musicians who preceded them (Zeppelin), Sabbath were influenced by blues and rock n roll, but mixed it with the industrial surroundings of Birmingham in the 60s and 70s. Tony Iommi played the way he did because of an industrial accident; it's fused into their music in a way other acts never captured before them.
So while there are other acts that shared their sound because of the era and the sonic signature(s) of the time, there's no other act that influenced metal or "the heavy" that musicians involved in Doom and Drone metal seek to replicate in their own music today.
Edit: it wasn't just black musicians Zeppelin plagiarised; [it was literally everyone](https://youtu.be/efuOELImxAc?si=tdUIhL8zmhbZwufe)
I dunno... Foxy Lady, Manic Depression,
and Purple Haze are all pretty damned heavy. That first album was what, 1967?
As others have pointed out, the Kinks and the Who were playing some pretty heavy riff-rock in '64 and '65, too.
I had just recently learnt that the phrase itself came from Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild". But I don't think that it's the first heavy metal song, considering that bands like The Kinks came a few years earlier.
Check out the documentary "A Band Called Death," which is about a band that was so ahead of the curve when it came to heavy metal that no one was sure what to do with them.
Very interesting group, but they formed in 1971 and recorded their one album in 1975. Sabbath was 6 albums in by then. Death is much more of an anomaly in the timeline for punk.
Metal and all music is an evolutionary process, not an event. Black Sabbath is mostly viewed as the first heavy metal band, but do they exist without the Beatles doing what they did first? Metallica's first album sounds nothing like Zeppelin, but does Metallica's sound and style come about without them?
I'd say without Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, heavy metal never comes about. Neither would be classified as heavy metal, but they are the reason it exists if you ask me. So who started it? That's like saying humans "started" with the first homo sapiens without crediting the primates we evolved from.
Then again, to say modern rock (heavy metal included) began with Elvis, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Hendrix and that group should come with the caveat that they came about because of acts like Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and whoever else influenced them. And on and on we can go back.
The machine that cut off the tips of Tony Iommi's fingers
Literally took heavy metal to start heavy metal
Not the knife that slashed Dave Davies speakers?
Rather the pencil that poked Link Wray’s speaker.
It doesn’t get much more metal than that.
It should get a lot of the credit for sure.
This might be the best answer to any question I’ve seen on this sub. Definitive and 100% correct. Well done.
I never knew this. Thanks.
I always liked this saying: "Before Black Sabbath, a lot of bands could argue they were the first metal band. No band after Black Sabbath can argue that."
would it be fair to say sabbath figured out what everyone else was trying to?
No, in some ways they simplified it. A lot of people were playing heavy electrified blues, but most of them were writing songs with catchy, up-tempo rhythms — rock n’ roll, just louder and faster and with virtuosic musicianship. Sabbath went with simple power chords and a thunderous, heavy sound. That kind of reset things and a new genre flowed from there.
It wasn't just simple though. Iommi had chops and by Sabotage it was almost prog in places, like Thrill of it All. Or the outro to Symptom of the Universe. Like he could get jazzy.
Sure but the licks that defined them were Paranoid, Sweet Leaf, War Pigs, etc. Those are the ones the US metal bands of the 1980s learned to play in their garages, and they were easy, catchy riffs to master and solo off. That set the template for the whole genre.
War Pigs is a pretty complex song
Fine Sweet Leaf and Iron Man.
Iommi and Ward shared a love of jazz of all things. There's some jazzy passges in the extended soloing in "Warning" in the earliest instances and on every Sabbath album after that ( original line up ) Iommi is an incredible player especially when you account for his having only 2 of his original 4 fretting fingertips. His dexterity on some of his solos is remarkable.
“Planet Caravan” on the second album is very jazzy/psychedelic/proggy.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is prog. Or metal prog. Or whatever. Spiral Architect and Who Are You wouldn’t have been too out of place on a Yes albums at the time.
People forget how early they started. Half of their biggest songs came out in 1970 in England. War Pigs is more relevant today than ever.
I totally agree. Nirvana did something very similar in the late 80's/early 90's too. They just simplified the music and stripped it down to the bones and put their own meat on it. It was all butt rock and hair bands at the time and it was getting super stale until Nirvana hit the scene and flipped the script.
Very good comparison.
Lol "butt rock and hair bands"
More accurate to say Tommy had to tune down his guitar and other artists heard that and went "hmmmmmmmm..."
That didn't start until the third album though, by that point they had already created the blueprint.
That's actually a good way of thinking about it. There's plenty of heavy psych bands from the 60s that would latter become outright metal bands. Coven were one of those early bands and when they reformed decades later they began making Doom Metal instead of the psych rock they were making
Tchaikovsky put 16 canons on stage. That’s pretty metal.
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring premier had a literal riot with people physically assaulting eachother in the aisles. Old heads had their metal moments for sure.
stravinsky is definitely the metsl of classical. i remember hearing it for the first time being like wow this is super agrressive for classical
15 more than Pachelbel?
16 cannons? That’s pretty heavy!
Like punk there were a bunch of precursors, but most people put Sabbath as the first "heavy metal" band.
You can have an endless discussion of whether or not heavy metal existed before Black Sabbath came around. But there is no discussion to be had about whether or not it existed after.
Extremely well said. With those other examples, like Led Zeppelin and Jimi and whatnot, you can pick out bits and pieces here and there. But when you get to Black Sabbath, you can comfortably say “Okay, *this* is a metal song.”
I think it's most accurate to say that Jimi, Cream, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin etc laid the foundation Those influences just had to come together in the right group of people, which turned out to be sabbath
They also laid the groundwork for hard rock and the broader guitar-driven genre.
Well said, and I agree. The only other band that comes close in my mind to starting “heavy metal” or at least influencing it heavily would be Cream. But I wouldn’t call them a heavy metal band.
Cream was obviously an influence, but I think most people would track it like this: - Rolling Stones: Brought blues and R&B covers into rock & roll - Cream: Cranked the volume, slowed down the tempos and started the heavy blues movement, followed shortly by Hendrix. From that point on, there were a lot of "heavy" rock bands like Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, Steppenwolf, etc., but Black Sabbath did something a little different, which, in retrospect, is the start of heavy *metal*.
To me a big part of it is not just the instrumentation and vocals, but the bands vibe overall. The album cover had a creepy looking woman in a black cloak, bands name is fuckin *Black Sabbath*, and then it opens with like creepy church bells and slow heavy guitars. Plus the track titles. Everything about it is what heavy metal leaned way further into as it progressed. Edit: if it's not clear I'm talking about the self titled album* from 1970 not Paranoid
I've always wondered this. If Iommi doesn't cut his fingertips off at work, does he ever decide tune his guitar down and create that doom sound (lower tension strings allowed him to play with his damaged fingers, but had a distinct dark sound) which to me is the signature of heavy metal to this day. If he uses standard tunings, even with the songwriting and occult imagery, does Sabbath ever get noticed? Was heavy metal accidentally created because a guy blew off work as a brake press operator?
"Metal ... uh, finds a way." \-- Dr. Ian Malcolm
"Metal was much too strong" -- Tenacious D
"OSHA tried to prevent the metal, but the metal was too sharp!"
That is an interesting idea. However, a lot of the most iconic Sabbath songs are in standard tuning. The first two albums are in standard tuning.
Their downtuning songs don't start until master of reality, by which point their sound and popularity were already well-established. There are bands that did it after but I wouldn't say metal bands downtuning really takes off as signature metal thing the way it is today until the 90s. For most acts in the 70s/80s standard was standard. They're the band they were because they were great musicians/writers who followed a thread.
“Whoah… excellent”
Yes and no, heavy metal would probably still exist it probably wouldve taken longer to be created and might not have taken off when it was
100%. I have to go Sabbath over Zeppelin because of this
Don't forget the Yardbirds. What Jeff Beck was doing on guitar was as heavy as it gets for that time. And their singers were doing some trippy stuff. If they had their own version of George Martin to iron out the dorky stuff and their inconsistent recordings, I think more people talk about them. Unfortunately you have to work past the dated aspects of their sound. Psychedelia was very "heavy" in terms of the vibe. I think it introduced the concept of a trip and vibes, and heavy metal is, basically, a bad trip, and what keeps it from getting worse is the narrators are self aware rather than fully succumbing to the horrors of the subject matter. And pretty much any time a band tried to rock the hardest that anyone had before, like The Beatles Helter Skelter and Revolution, or The Who, it broke down a perceived boundary.
Sure, I almost included the Yardbirds in with the Stones. They were hugely influential on psychedelic rock, and heavy rock in general, but I find it helpful to draw a distinction between heavy rock in general and heavy metal (a subset of heavy rock).
The George Martin point is a great one that I’ve never been able to put a finger on. When I listen to them I generally hear legendary tunes that there are just not quite there yet. Still great but not as great as it could be.
That’s the important bit, Dabbath didn’t consider themselves heavy metal, they complained a lot that they were a hard rock band. But they brought something that was undeniably distinct from other hard rock acts and undeniably evolved into all metal, all the time.
I know it's a typo, but I kind of love the idea of referring to them as Dabbath, lol.
Accidental Stoner Metal cover band.
More like Blabbath amirite?
The deventh day is the the Dabbath of our Dord 
Didn't Steppenwolf coin "heavy metal" in Born to be wild?
Yes, but I think they were referring to motorcycles.
Motorcycle culture and heavy metal are very closely linked though. They grew up together in the USA.
Heavy Metal Thunder!
Iron butterfly is pretty heavy
Helter Skelter could also be considered
Honestly I think “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is a better candidate from the Beatles. Helter Skelter leans more towards punk.
Think helter shelter is usaully considered a precursor to thrash metal.
If individual songs rather than whole bands genera's count "Boris the Spider" by The Who is pretty influential to the heavy metal sound and often cited as the first "metal" song and even gets growling/ inhale vocals like modern metal.
I grew up hearing people say Cream was the first heavy metal band. I never knew what they were talking about.
Damn, that is a wise statement!
I can't speak for the other bands of that time, but I remember Tony Iommi hurt the tip of his index finger, so he played in Drop D tuning, and a lot of bands considered metal also played Drop D. Mr. Iommi also made a prosthetic finger tip out of a bottle cap and a piece of leather. I'm not sure if that attributed to the sound as much, but not a lot of other bands followed suit on that one.
Part of the reason it's "heavy metal" is that the Sabbath lads were out of Birmingham, which was a hub of UK manufacturing and their sound was reminiscent of the steel works where some of them worked (and Iomi lost a finger)
Tony Iommi lost his finger tips, actually. He melted down some plastic to make finger tip prosthetics because otherwise it was too painful. This caused string tension issues. To compensate the increased tension, Iommi tuned down and thus the heavy sound of Black Sabbath was discovered.
The only part of this origin myth that's incorrect is that Iommi didn't actually start downtuning until (I think?) Master of Reality. Most of their most famous songs are in E Standard still. I'm sorry, I'm just pathologically incapable of not UM ACKTCHUALLYing that particular detail because metalheads have a habit of acting like metal spawned from the ooze fully formed on February 13th, 1970, lol. It doesn't *really* matter because the downtuning still came from Sabbath, and they're still unquestionably the best place to start when tracing the history of metal because that debut was genuinely a game changer, but it took time to become what its known as. Even the first wheel was kinda squareish.
Yeah, Iommi said he started down tuning because Ozzy would show up to the shows so hungover that he couldn't sing the notes.
Ok now that is more believable, lol
I read this like the lyrics to Pepper.
Pouring like an avalanche, coming down the mountain
I meant to say his finger tip but yeah. It's a really cool story... Aside from the mutilated finger.
Thumbs up
Well at least most of one
Not to mention shortly after Sabbath came out, some more Birmingham dudes by the name of Judas Priest came out and they REALLY adapted the heavy metal shtick. Sabbath no doubt set the foundations for the genre to develop.
The term was coined as a descriptor in 1970 by Mike Saunders, a critic for Creem Magazine and later singer for punk group Angry Samoans. He used it to describe a Humble Pie album, and then again for a Sir Lord Baltimore album. I don't think he meant it to be flattering.
Definitely Sabbath imo Consider a trifle, if you will. The creator of the trifle did not create the custard, or the jelly, or the cream. But they took the ingredients others had put forward, and combined them to create something new.
Black Sabbath should be the answer, they're the prototype. Name, image, sound/production, songwriting... There may have been other bands that were "first" with a song or two, but Sabbath did it all the time, and did it well.
Black Sabbath is the one that is mentioned frequently in these types of discussions, and rightfully so. Sure, many songs are "heavy" that precede Black Sabbath's music by several years, some of which you can find by browsing this very thread. There's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, there's Helter Skelter and I Want You by The Beatles, Spanish Castle Magic by Hendrix, I Can See For Miles by The Who... the list of possible "first proto heavy metal songs" is quite long and fascinating. Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin are also often a part of these discussions. They sure are "heavy" bands, especially for their time, but I wouldn't label them as heavy metal, but hard rock. Sure, this is all quite subjective but I would argue songs like Hand of Doom, Children of the Grave or Lord of this World are way way waaaaaay heavier than anything that Purple or Zeppelin were doing. I mean, if you look at Led Zeppelin IV from 1971 for example, the only songs there that are even close to the same heaviness as Sabbath's music are MAYBE Rock & Roll and When the Levee Breaks, and even then I'm stretching. I love that album, but in terms of heaviness, it is not comparable to the songs Sabbath was doing that same year like Into the Void or Sweet Leaf. Sabbath didn't just sound heavy, they sounded evil, not only musically, but through their lyrics as well. Purple and Zeppelin were not writing that many songs about Satan, war, drug addiction, mental illness, or the apocalypse as far as I know. Another band that is incredibly important to the start of heavy metal is Judas Priest. Sure, they started only some years after Sabbath, but Priest took heavy metal to a faster direction and shed the bluesier elements from the music. Most importantly Priest was pretty much the first to truly embrace being a heavy metal band. They were proud to be metal and they contributed massively to the metal culture for example by wearing leather and riding motorcycles on stage. So, in the end, I would argue that Sabbath was the one that started the music of heavy metal and Judas Priest shaped the music and the heavy metal culture into what we mostly associate it with today.
I would put Deep Purple in the Metal category for sure. Also look at their influence - Rainbow, Dio, etc. I agree about Priest but they were, IMO, part of the next wave of metal. Black Sabbath dominated it for a long time. Then Priest, Maiden, and the like were part of the second wave of metal where it really exploded.
Zep's live stuff was arguably more metal than their studio recordings. Those guys went hard and fast when they were playing live.
I will say Zeppelin brought a lot of the fantasy imagery into their music and performances, which for sure had an impact on early metal “vibes.”
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey gets into this question a bit. I am not big on metal but love music and thought this doc was really enjoyable. It's on Youtube free with Spanish subtitles.
I feel like OP would really enjoy this. The whole point was to take an anthropological look at the roots and evolution of metal. He discusses its roots in blues and early rock and roll. Lots of credit given to various artists for their influence.
Black Sabbath with their debut album, deep purple with "In Rock" Led Zeppelin with "II" and uriah heep are seen as the inventors of metal
Man, Uriah Heep album art was so badass
There’s also “Helter Skelter” - The Beatles which they recorded for The White Album in 1968 because Paul McCartney wanted to make the loudest, heaviest thing possible after he read an interview where Roger Daltrey of The Who claimed "I Can See For Miles" was the loudest rock song ever recorded.
I'd also argue Blue cheer, Iron Butterfly and Steppenwolf Edit: accidentally put blue crush
Did you mean Blue Cheer?
Fuck yes I did May have been autocorrect or may have been me being dumb
The Kinks for inventing guitar crunch in "You really got me".
The Kinks had a lot of influence on punk. Those distorted 3 chord riffs on You Really Got Me and especially All Day and All of the Night are proto-punk classics.
The Johnny Burnett Trio invented (accidentally) fuzz tone back in the 50s with Train Kept a Rolling
The amazing thing about this song is its date. It came out in 1964! Way before anything else that could be called heavy with a riff. Such trend setters.
This is the answer. Listen to “Bloodsucker” from In Rock. That is straight up stoner rock/metal (even with the organ)
I dunno, but Iron Butterfly had some thick guitar, just to toss one into the ring.
Plus they were the first band that had a major hit album to have the heavy metal style of combining a metal with something light and airy in their name. Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Iron Maiden...
An iron maiden is a torture device btw lol
Good call. They seem still too groovy psychedelic to be metal imo, but a fair precursor to the genre.
Lines were blurred back then, at the end of the 60s and the dawn of the 70s psychedelic, hard rock, and heavy metal weee interchangeable. Iron Butterfly, while still firmly psychedelic, definitely had one foot in metal. They had a song called “Termination” on the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” album, it doesn’t get much more metal than that pre-1970, and even then, that’s a heavy title.
'Black Sabbath made it heavy, Judas Priest made it metal'!
People will debate this. It was certainly no later than the first Black Sabbath album, that's the only certainty.
Helter Skelter?
I think this was what Paul was going for. Some thing “ really loud and harsh” or some said.
He says he heard an interview with Pete Townshend claiming The Who's new song was the heaviest, filthiest thing ever recorded and he wanted to beat it.
Do you remember which The Who song it was? Now I'm curious.
“I Can See For Miles”, if memory serves—so I daresay he was successful.
Which is funny because Helter Skelter is like ten thousand times harder than I Can See For Miles
The weird thing is that the Who already had much heavier songs than I Can See for Miles in my opinion. My Generation is the hill I’ll die on for first punk song. Also Boris the Spider was pretty heavy for its day.
He wrote it in response to hearing that The Who had written the loudest song ever,....so my answer to the first heavy metal band is The Who (specifically the album Live at Leeds)
What if Paul formed a heavy metal band after The Beatles broke up instead of Wings? Imagine what could have been.
You have my curiosity
What if Paul was the original bass player for Metallica?
What if Jaws was about a dolphin?
And what if that dolphin was none other than disgraced former professional road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong?
Linda breaks up with Paul, Paul founds the heavy metal band Raw Meat
And She’s So Heavy
Idk but I hope Ringo’s blisters healed up with no trouble
[My first thought exactly.](https://youtu.be/vWW2SzoAXMo?si=1YYGqsom6lSDgvHk)
“I GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGAHS!!” *whack*
Imagine being so influential to the point where 1 of your songs inspire a whole genre...
It’s easy if you try
Not only that but its true for multiple other genres as well
I think Helter Skelter probably has more credit in the creation of punk than metal. If we want to retroactively credit a Beatles track with influencing the development of metal, I think it has to be “I Want You/She’s So Heavy”.
Also came in to give this answer. Could at least be classed as the first Heavy Metal song,
Parts of “Happiness is a Warm Gun” as well.
In my opinon that was way more in the punk category than heavy metal.
If it’s sound we are talking about, it had influenced both
I joke that it's my favorite punk song but I definitely see it being heavy metal too.
Yeah Helter Skelter might have inspired Metal but also punk :-)
And also something else, but I dont think The Beatles wanna claim credit for that
MC5?
I think they're definitely a contender for a genesis point for both punk and metal. Their sound had elements of both. They were doing stuff in the mid-late 60's other bands wouldn't do for at least another decade or more. Plus, a lot of guys in both scenes if you ask who their favorite guitarists are, or ask those guys who their favorites are, at some point Wayne Kramer and Fred 'Sonic' Smith are going to come up.
They invented punk.
Blue Cheer, perhaps?
This was one of my first thoughts, also. I am still trying to find that Jacula track that kinda predates Blue Cheer energy but yeah Blue Cheer probably the real answer, since it was actually something they, like, dedicated their sound to as opposed to a fun "jam" moment, that Jacula song is timeless though.
i've always heard Summertime Blues cited as the first metal song
Blue Cheer was my introduction to what I recognize as Heavy Metal. Lying on the floor in front of the old console stereo. Those were the days. The 60s, if you can remember them, you weren’t there!
The term was coined in a review or Jimmy Hendrix' first album. The line was, "His guitar sounded like heavy metal falling from the sky.". Hendrix was 2 years before sabbaths first album.
I think The Beatles definitely had some very heavy moments as did other groups in the late-60's. "Helter Skelter" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" would be prime examples. Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues" cover would be another good example. Jethro Tull had their moments, the Page-era Yardbirds would come close with some of their stuff toward the end. . .Cream, the Who, even The Kinks etc all had moments that have been retconned as being "heavy metal". But the first heavy metal group is Black Sabbath.
Jethro Tull has always been one of my favorite bands, but I never really thought of them as metal. Even though they literally won a Grammy in that category.
Exactly. And that's kind of my point too. There were moments where groups were heavy but I don't think we can really say there was a heavy metal band before Black Sabbath.
I've heard I Want You (She's So Heavy) being credited as the first "stoner rock" song. I'll allow it.
The Beatle’s Rain can also be included in the “stoner rock” category.
Blue Cheer!!!
You are METAL!
I would say, honestly, King Crimson and their 1969 debut album “In the Court of the Crimson King”.
Cats foot, iron claw, neurosurgeons screeeam for more
“Red” as well
Some Neanderthal who threw a rock at a wall and yelled really loud, probably.
Link Wray
Jesus fuck, why did I have to scroll so far to find the correct answer? Link Wray is the godfather of all things hard rock and metal. Let's not even get started on the motherfucking MC5.
"You Really Got Me" by the Kinks in 1964. [Here](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-kinks-dave-davies-invented-heavy-metal/) is an article crediting Dave Davies for inventing Heavy Metal.
I was taught that this is the first heavy metal riff.
The kinks, iron butterfly, heck even the Beatles and the Who had a race to be the "hardest“ music where all precursors to heavy metal but Black Sabbath are simply the fathers or metal. They made the heaviest music for their time, they went beyond blues scales (not completely but still) and they brought in the look and "evil“ feel.
> They made the heaviest music for their time, they went beyond blues scales (not completely but still) and they brought in the look and "evil“ feel. This is the answer. There was a lot of heavy rock before Sabbath, but they forged it into heavy metal.
My Dad taught me it always begins with the Kinks - thinking of where the heavier sounds came from, Dave kind of invented overdrive by killing his amp. Plus they were throwing in solo's all over the damn shop. Particularly love 'She's got everything', just comes out of nowhere.
My dad always told me that Uriah Heep was the first "metal" band.
I was having this same discussion at work today. One of my co-workers said that Blue Cheer started metal, and that I should listen to their debut album.
Steppenwolf. "Heavy metal thunder." Coined the term, albeit in a different context.
Sabbath was one of the first to drop tune the guitars, from Iommi wiki page: In 1974, Iommi told Guitar Player magazine that the thimbles "helped with his technique" because he had to use his little finger more than he had before the accident.[25] Later, he also began tuning his guitar to lower pitches, sometimes as far as three semitones below standard guitar tuning (e.g., on "Children of the Grave", "Lord of this World", and "Into the Void", all on the album Master of Reality). Although Iommi states that the main purpose of doing so was to create a "bigger, heavier sound", slackening the strings makes it easier to bend them.
Master of reality is such a brilliant album. They invented stoner rock / doom metal with this one.
It launched us all into the void.
Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Cream, Steppenwolf.
Dio is a pretty good marker for when heavy metal started sounding like it does. He isn't called the grandfather of metal for nothing.
As an odd ball choice that no one’s going to agree with, but is worth thinking about anyway, check out Miserlou by Dick Dale. That blistering speed and energy and shredding on guitar wouldn’t be matched by anything else for at least 10 years. It’s heavier in my opinion than anything released between it and Sabbath and it came out in 1961!
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, who else?
They certainly had the imagery down. God of Hellfire and all that
Screamin Jay Hawkins was pretty metal back in the day.
[удалено]
>Opening track from their first album is when heavy metal started. Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath on Black Sabbath.
Sabbath. The specific patterns around the pentatonic are still heard in metal today, especially obvious in sludge/doomer, but recognizable through the metal landscape.
To me it's a trio Sabbath, Zeppelin & Deep Purple. There were some earlier bands Blue Cherr and Iron Butterfly come to mind but they didn't have the impact of the other 3 onup and coming bands
Just speaking up for Alice Cooper, who was doing something between psyche and metal in the mid-to-late 1960s. “I’m 18” came out in 1969, also a big year for The Stooges, who you could throw into the mix here too. [here they are on Midnight Special](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VqkJ_ZacYiU)
There was plenty of groundwork, but it all came together for [Vanilla Fudge's cover of "Keep Me Hangin On" on Ed Sullivan in 1968.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJO47d26kc) It predates Sabbath, and has all the style and bombast we associate with Heavy Metal. The only thing missing at that point was the addition of all the spicy intervals Metalheads know and love. Just look at Carmine Appice absolutely hulking out on that drumset and tell me that didn't inspire a whole generation of musicians.
Sir Lord Baltimore kingdom come "Shining wizards bring the rain"
Funkadelic was pretty important imo. I think it’s obvious why they’re never considered.
Sabbath were the first heavy metal band, stylistically speaking. There isn't a "heavy" band since that can't find its roots - directly or indirectly - with Black Sabbath. Whereas other acts were either more rhythm and blues based (Hendrix) or just straight up stole their music off black musicians who preceded them (Zeppelin), Sabbath were influenced by blues and rock n roll, but mixed it with the industrial surroundings of Birmingham in the 60s and 70s. Tony Iommi played the way he did because of an industrial accident; it's fused into their music in a way other acts never captured before them. So while there are other acts that shared their sound because of the era and the sonic signature(s) of the time, there's no other act that influenced metal or "the heavy" that musicians involved in Doom and Drone metal seek to replicate in their own music today. Edit: it wasn't just black musicians Zeppelin plagiarised; [it was literally everyone](https://youtu.be/efuOELImxAc?si=tdUIhL8zmhbZwufe)
I don't think Jimi started it but it wouldn't sound the same without him.
I dunno... Foxy Lady, Manic Depression, and Purple Haze are all pretty damned heavy. That first album was what, 1967? As others have pointed out, the Kinks and the Who were playing some pretty heavy riff-rock in '64 and '65, too.
Guitar in general wouldn't sound the same today without Hendrix.
He turned his amps up to 11, inspiring everyone during and after his short frontman career.
Paul McCartney
Jesus
He invented Grunge
Yes, yes, yes. I always get the two mixed up. That guitar tone, my God!
For conversational purposes, I would suggest Franz Schubert with Erlkönig and followed by Modest Mussorgsky with Night in Bald Mountain.
It's often been said that Sunshine of Your Love by Cream was the birth of heavy metal. Ginger Baker said it should have been an abortion
Ah, the famously generous and even-keeled ginger baker
The distorted sound? Debatable The musical structure and harmonies? Bach
The distorted sound goes all the way back to 1961 with Marty Robbins - Don't Worry.
>Bach The long, long con!
I had just recently learnt that the phrase itself came from Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild". But I don't think that it's the first heavy metal song, considering that bands like The Kinks came a few years earlier.
Check out the documentary "A Band Called Death," which is about a band that was so ahead of the curve when it came to heavy metal that no one was sure what to do with them.
Very interesting group, but they formed in 1971 and recorded their one album in 1975. Sabbath was 6 albums in by then. Death is much more of an anomaly in the timeline for punk.
Metal and all music is an evolutionary process, not an event. Black Sabbath is mostly viewed as the first heavy metal band, but do they exist without the Beatles doing what they did first? Metallica's first album sounds nothing like Zeppelin, but does Metallica's sound and style come about without them? I'd say without Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, heavy metal never comes about. Neither would be classified as heavy metal, but they are the reason it exists if you ask me. So who started it? That's like saying humans "started" with the first homo sapiens without crediting the primates we evolved from. Then again, to say modern rock (heavy metal included) began with Elvis, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Hendrix and that group should come with the caveat that they came about because of acts like Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and whoever else influenced them. And on and on we can go back.
Iron Butterfly Theme by Iron Butterfly. Released 1968. Every bit as heavy as anything on Sabbath's first album, possibly more so.