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First metal composition


Mist

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Many of the hearers thinks that first heavy rock* track would be Black Sabbath by the same named band or Judas Priest or Blue Cheer or some other. 

But specialists or musicians said that BS plays in blues standards (rythm and many other), except of doom, słow, łow tuned guitar sound. 

In my opinion first truły heavy rock (or metal) composition was Emerald by Thin Lizzy, released in 1976.

It has all elements: heavy drums, crazy solo guitar and perfect melodic twin guitars that many bands use in later times in their tracks.

*why i wrote heavy rock? because if you ever watch or listen nowadays interviews with musiacians from older bands 80s (for example series "metal Evolution"), musicians laughs when they hear description "heavy metal" they never called their music like that.

"Heavy metal" was invented by journalists in that time, same as NWOBHM.

So I agree with creators of that music genre. 

Maybe you knows other good old tracks? Or you have other opinion?

 

 

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  • Mist changed the title to First metal composition

The 'first' heavy metal song is a debate that will be had forever and I doubt there will ever be one unanimous answer. Even finding a majority answer will probably be difficult given the number of choices people throw up.

The best part about people throwing out bands and songs the could fit the bill is that occasionally someone throws up some obscure band that almost no one has ever heard of and people get to hear something different.

 

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I have always considered the Beatles' Helter Skelter (1968) to be my personal pick for the first heavy metal song.

You can't just draw a line and say everything on this side of it is rock and everything on that side is metal. As with any major genre shift it was done gradually, little by little with lots of bands contributing to push the envelope farther and farther.

I agree with the dude that early Sabbath (first two albums) is much more blues rock than metal, but I would credit their third album, 1971's Master of Reality as the first true heavy metal album. Far heavier than anything Thin Lizzy (a great rock band in their own right) was doing in the 70's. Or even Judas Priest for that matter whose early stuff to me was clearly not metal at all, but just another hard rock band for the first 7 or 8 years of their existence up until 1978's Hellbent for Leather which is where I believe they started crossing over into metal territory. 

I also agree with Kuke that there will never be a real consensus on these answers. These were just my opinions.

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3 hours ago, Mist said:

In my opinion first truły heavy rock (or metal) composition was Emerald by Thin Lizzy, released in 1976.

It has all elements: heavy drums, crazy solo guitar and perfect melodic twin guitars that many bands use in later times in their tracks.

Are those all the elements?? I think we all could probably type 40 pages worth of posts on exactly what the definition of heavy metal is. 'Crazy' guitar solos and twin lead guitars while cool have really nothing to do with whether something is heavy metal or just hard rock. Emerald is a great song, and Robo & Gorham were great 70's rock guitarists but they were not a metal band, and they were hardly the only hard rock band using two guitar players or playing 'crazy' solos back then in that era. The 1970's was the era of the rock guitar hero and there were more 'crazy' guitar solos than you could shake a stick at well before 1976.

 

Before Black Sabbath: How Psychedelic Rock Became Metal, they cover Helter Skelter at 20:45.

 

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If the is still debate among the metal community over whether Viking metal is a real genre I’m doubtful this question can be answered. Besides heavy elements in music long predate metal in any case, particularly in classical music. I think it’s more fun to just discuss the plethora of outstanding proto-metal bands.

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The debates on whether lyrical themes or maybe originating in a certain town can be a valid enough criteria to base a sub-genre on will never be settled. There will always be some people who will insist that every band in a given sub-genre needs to sound exactly the same to qualify for inclusion. I reckon it's a real genre if you want it to be a real genre. Give every band their own special & unique sub-genre if you want. Who's gonna stop you? 

Likewise the is it metal or is it rock debate has been raging for 40 years. In the big scheme of things it means absolutely nothing but it can still be a fun time waster. It wasn't until about '79 or 1980 that bands really started to proudly self identify as "heavy metal" anyway, before that I don't think anybody was even thinking in those terms. 

I still remember an argument I had with some girl online 20 years ago who insisted Nickleback were a heavy metal band. I laughed at her ignorance at the time, but I mean if it makes her happy to think that way who am I to piss on her parade?

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On 2/6/2022 at 9:47 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

....Or even Judas Priest for that matter whose early stuff to me was clearly not metal at all, but just another hard rock band for the first 7 or 8 years of their existence up until 1978's Hellbent for Leather which is where I believe they started crossing over into metal territory. 

You just had to prod me! Rocka Rolla = not metal. Sad Wings of Destiny = metal. And thereafter. The only thing that changed with Killing Machine was first use of the leather and studs image. That album is otherwise softer than Stained Class. Sin After Sin even has double bass drumming.

I'd also call Paranoid metal, on balance. War Pigs and Iron Man make any album within 200 paces into metal by mere osmosis. Shelves full of LPs were collapsing all over the world because War Pigs had infected all the other vinyl and turned it into metal. Fact.

 

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10 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

You just had to prod me! Rocka Rolla = not metal. Sad Wings of Destiny = metal. And thereafter. The only thing that changed with Killing Machine was first use of the leather and studs image. That album is otherwise softer than Stained Class. Sin After Sin even has double bass drumming.

I'd also call Paranoid metal, on balance. War Pigs and Iron Man make any album within 200 paces into metal by mere osmosis. Shelves full of LPs were collapsing all over the world because War Pigs had infected all the other vinyl and turned it into metal. Fact.

Sorry Jon-0 my plant-munching Kiwi friend, I do realize this shit is all quite subjective but with all due respect Sad WIngs, Sin After Sin, and Stained Class are hard rock albums. There's just no way I can bend, twist or stretch the definition of heavy metal far enough to be able to call these heavy metal albums. I'd have reservations even calling them proto-metal. The weak-ass thin as toilet roll production does have a lot to do with that, but plenty of other bands were managing to get much heavier sounds on their records by the mid to late 70's so that's not my fault, that's on them. Don't know how you can say that either one of these three records is softer than another because they're all soft. Double bass drumming won't make your song heavy metal all by itself, especially when it's presented as weakly as that. I didn't actually hear this double bass you've claimed mind you, I'm just taking your word that it was there, even though it's commonly been bandied about the interwebs for years that the song Overkill by Motorhead was the first officially recognized instance of double bass drumming. 

But anyway on balance these are rock songs my dude, (and mostly not very good ones at that, save Beyond the Realms which I do happen to like a lot, but it's still hard rock) these are not heavy metal songs at all. 70's Deep Purple was way heavier than this and they're not a heavy metal band either. This material isn't any heavier than Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, Thin Lizzy, Nazareth, Queen, Aerosmith, AC/DC or any other 70's rock band you could name. And I should know because believe me I listened to a lot of 70's rock back in the 70's when I was in school. Obviously we all know now looking back in hindsight that your boys Priest ended up being maybe the most quintessential of all the early the 80's heavy metal bands, I'll give them that. But they didn't get around to releasing anything that sounded even mildly "heavy" until Delivering the Goods came roaring out of my speakers in 1978.

Just so you know I did listen to Sad Wings in its entirety to refresh my memory when I typed that other post and I have SIn After SIn playing right now as I type this one. I'm on the last track now, 30 seconds to go, I guess I have no choice but to spin Stained Class next. Hey look, it just came on next all by itself, I won't even have to search for it. I did own all of these 70's Priest records once upon a time you know, but I traded all the crap from before Hellbent back into the used record store way back in the early 80's 'cause I knew I was never ever going to play any of them. Even the small handful of decent songs on these 3 underachieving albums were all better represented on Unleashed.

As far as Sabbath is concerned yeah Iron Man was a heavy metal song and their eponymous title track of their eponymous debut album was one as well, but the rest of those albums (War Pigs included) were still very much blues rock. Master of Reality was the first Sabbath album that was wall to wall heavy metal (not counting the instrumental interlude tracks of course). I don't think your osmosis theory has actually been tested and proven yet bruv.

I suppose it is possible that you and I just have different ideas about what constitutes heavy metal and maybe we wouldn't necessarily agree on where the line betwween rock and metal is drawn. And in that case we'll just have to agree to disagree! Thanks for the debate Jon-0, this has been fun. I'm sure you'll have a rebuttal for me which I eagerly await, but being 6pm here that means it's 11pm over there and I don't think you're much of a night owl so I expect I will have to wait til tomorrow to read it. So til then, Cheerio!

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8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I suppose it is possible that you and I just have different ideas about what constitutes heavy metal and maybe we wouldn't necessarily agree on where the line betwween rock and metal is drawn. And in that case we'll just have to agree to disagree! Thanks for the debate Jon-0, this has been fun. I'm sure you'll have a rebuttal for me which I eagerly await, but being 6pm here that means it's 11pm over there and I don't think you're much of a night owl so I expect I will have to wait til tomorrow to read it. So til then, Cheerio!

Sorry, not much of a rebuttal as I quit my job yesterday and waiting for the fallout to land today. 

I guess I just have a wider remit of what constitutes metal. It is partly a defence mechanism so I can say that everything I listen to is metal, including Beethoven.

Metal to me is simply not being afraid to be sonically heavy at the risk of alienating people who will declare it a racket. Some may say the same of rock in general, but there is usually a secret sauce to metal which sets it apart. No one really knows (or should care) the proportion of that secret ingredient.

I consider Queen II a metal album because it has some crushing riffs on it that were state of the art and the band won't have said "oh, we can't do that. It is too heavy." It has flowery stuff on it, sure, but then the light and the dark, the contrast, is what I like about music most. An open mind and no boundaries.

So, no clever debate really. Sad Wings of Destiny is my favourite album so it must be metal. It has Tyrant, Genocide, Victim of Changes, The Ripper, delivered with palm muted percussive riffs and a lot of controlled screaming. 

I only started reading this post because of the bizarre declaration : "In my opinion first truły heavy rock (or metal) composition was Emerald by Thin Lizzy, released in 1976."

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I think the lines were definitely being blurred between Hard rock and metal by around the mid 70s, you could make a case either way for the likes of deep purple, rainbow, Judas Priest and their contemporaries. My Stants has always been those bands have more in common with rock then metal, I’ve got a much harder time being told thatStained Class is a bad album but hey that’s the fun thing about taste it’s always subjective.

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On 2/6/2022 at 9:47 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

As with any major genre shift it was done gradually, little by little with lots of bands contributing to push the envelope farther and farther.

Of course. Objectively we can't say that one band create whole new genre of music.

Several hard rock and punk rock bands, single musicians participated in the creation of heavy music.

On 2/6/2022 at 9:47 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Far heavier than anything Thin Lizzy (a great rock band in their own right) was doing in the 70's. Or even Judas Priest for that matter whose ea


Thin Lizzy was close to playing classic metal music. 

I recommend you to listen their next album "Bad Reputation", where you can find a few tracks in style of heavy music. 

Also album"Chinatown" include 2 tracks and "Renegade" with "Angel Of Death".

John Sykes joined Thin Lizzy, so guitarist playing much harder and faster. 

"Thunder and Lightning" was clean metal album.

Thin Lizzy is very underrated band with huge influence on 80s NWOBHM playing style.

On the internet they often do not write about it (in magazines yes, for example in my country ) so you see by yourself.

On 2/9/2022 at 11:20 AM, JonoBlade said:

War Pigs and Iron Man make any album within 200 paces into me

 

On 2/6/2022 at 10:36 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I think we all could probably type 40 pages worth of posts on exactly what the definition of heavy metal is.

When we add later elements
but in the beginning all playing similar.

I knew that Uriah Heep also add heavier sounds.

Somewhere mentioned:

1971 "Bird Of Prey"

compare this with BS and later style of playing.

BS influenced metal scene. 

Many parts of metal music are borrowed from other 70s bands  especially powerful vocals and more complicated structure of composition.

 

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6 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Sorry, not much of a rebuttal as I quit my job yesterday and waiting for the fallout to land today. 

I guess I just have a wider remit of what constitutes metal. It is partly a defence mechanism so I can say that everything I listen to is metal, including Beethoven.

Metal to me is simply not being afraid to be sonically heavy at the risk of alienating people who will declare it a racket. Some may say the same of rock in general, but there is usually a secret sauce to metal which sets it apart. No one really knows (or should care) the proportion of that secret ingredient.

I consider Queen II a metal album because it has some crushing riffs on it that were state of the art and the band won't have said "oh, we can't do that. It is too heavy." It has flowery stuff on it, sure, but then the light and the dark, the contrast, is what I like about music most. An open mind and no boundaries.

So, no clever debate really. Sad Wings of Destiny is my favourite album so it must be metal. It has Tyrant, Genocide, Victim of Changes, The Ripper, delivered with palm muted percussive riffs and a lot of controlled screaming. 

I only started reading this post because of the bizarre declaration : "In my opinion first truły heavy rock (or metal) composition was Emerald by Thin Lizzy, released in 1976."

 

Sorry to hear that your work situation has come to the point where you felt you had to quit. You don't seem like a reckless or irresponsible guy to me so I hope you have some kind of a plan in mind and can turn this into a positive for you and your family. I know plant munching ain't cheap. This news does kinda make our little proto metal argument seem pretty pointless now.

But I will just say I think maybe part of my problem is that I do care to know what the secret sauce is, you could even call it a burning desire to know and in decades past I had devoted many many hours thinking about all of this stuff in attempts to deconstruct it and define it. So these types of friendly rock/proto/metal debates have some happy nostalgia attached to them for me because they occur so infrequently these days.

In the end though I have always maintained that sub-genre labels are personal things, we all have our own varying secret sauce recipes and ideas about what defines various sub-genres. So if something feels like metal to you then it's metal to you and that's all that really matters. No matter what loudmouthed Yanks like me might say. 

Still, I'll never understand though why people like those songs Tyrant and Victim of Changes. Regardless of which genre you'd like to put them in, I would be quite happy if I never had to hear either of them ever again.

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3 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Sorry to hear that your work situation has come to the point where you felt you had to quit. You don't seem like a reckless or irresponsible guy to me so I hope you have some kind of a plan in mind and can turn this into a positive for you and your family. I know plant munching ain't cheap. This news does kinda make our little proto metal argument seem pretty pointless now.

I appreciate the sentiment, but don't worry about me man. I have a new job to go to....and hilariously there has been no fallout so far today. My bosses are such cowards that they can't even face talking to me. They know why I am leaving: that they sold the business out from under us with no warning and pocketed the cash. It was perfectly legal, but the unsavoury point which I would never be able to get over is that the business was 100 years old and they inherited it (for free, by being next in line) from past generations of partners. Rather than pass on the business to the next generation and gracefully retire (like every partner before them) they sold us to new owners. The 100 year legacy evaporated over night. 

The same thing happened to me in NZ in 2017 (that one was 125 years old). So I had to quit that job too. 

But, again, I need no sympathy. I've found a good role, with better prospects. 

-----

If you work out the recipe for your secret sauce I'd be interested to know, on an academic level. I'd probably add a dash of poseur and more wailing vocals.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Mist said:

Of course. Objectively we can't say that one band create whole new genre of music.

Several hard rock and punk rock bands, single musicians participated in the creation of heavy music.


Thin Lizzy was close to playing classic metal music. 

I recommend you to listen their next album "Bad Reputation", where you can find a few tracks in style of heavy music. 

Also album"Chinatown" include 2 tracks and "Renegade" with "Angel Of Death".

John Sykes joins Thin Lizzy, so guitarist playing much harder and faster. 

"Thunder and Lightning" was clean metal album.

Thin Lizzy is very underrated band with huge influence on 80s NWOBHM playing style.

On the internet they often do not write about it (in magazines yes, for example in my country ) so you see by yourself.

 

When we add later elements
but in the beginning all playing similar.

I knew that Uriah Heep also add heavier sounds.

Somewhere mentioned:

1971 "Bird Of Prey"

compare this with BS and later style of playing.

BS influenced metal scene. 

Many parts of metal music are borrowed from other 70s bands  especially powerful vocals and more complicated structure of composition.

 

Yeah, obviously heavy metal didn't just spring into being one day out of the clear blue sky, there were many years of blues and rock music and hundreds of bands that paved the way for heavy metal. The list of influencers and contributors would be too long to even try to type out. That's why they invented 'proto-metal' as a sub-genre name to bridge that gap between rock and heavy metal. For the bands that had that little something extra that clearly pushed the envelope for their time. I've heard Lizzy called proto-metal before and I wouldn't argue too vehemently against that.

I think it's quite clear that when Sykes joined the band he pushed their sound much closer to metal, one could even say he shoved it right up against metal. But still in my mind Lizzy has always unquestionably been a rock band, yes even on the Sykes albums. Most certainly they were a rock band in the 1970's and I'm pretty sure everyone who was in the band back in the 70's would tell you the same thing if they were here, that they were not a heavy metal band.

I'm not saying that Emerald is not a good heavy rock song, I think it's a great song, and I love Thin Lizzy. But it's a hard rock song, no more metal than hundreds of other hard rock songs in the 70's. By 1976 heaviness had already been done for years, it was old hat. There was nothing new or groundbreaking on the heaviness front specifically about the Bad Reputation album that hadn't been done before. Rock music can be heavy without being metal.  

8 minutes ago, JonoBlade said:

If you work out the recipe for your secret sauce I'd be interested to know, on an academic level. I'd probably add a dash of poseur and more wailing vocals.

I'll never be able to work it out and explain it thoroughly on an academic level Jon, only maybe on a visceral gut feeling level. I knows it when I hears it.

 

1970, wailing vocals, not metal.

D.P. Child in TIme - live

 

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Black Sabbath, the song, was inspired by the tonality used in Gustav Holst orchestral suite The Planets, it's got nothing to do with blues

Elements of metal was around earlier, distorted guitar riffs and such, like The Kinks, it wasn't until Black Sabbath, the record, was released that all the elements of metal was in place though, so yes, it was the first metal record. Pentatonic scales, which Black Sabbath also used a lot, are not exclusive to blues either, it can be found in traditional european and asian music as well, the tonality of metal is heavily influenced by classical music

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10 hours ago, Bogey079 said:

Black Sabbath, the song, was inspired by the tonality used in Gustav Holst orchestral suite The Planets, it's got nothing to do with blues

I was just reading about this the other day. I happened to throw on Sabbath debut LP on 13 February which coincidentally was the 52nd anniversary of its release. I did not realise that until reading the wiki entry along with listening, which I often do. The Holst connection was mentioned.

So, while Sabbath evolved as a band and learned to play from blues jams (and jazz), the classical influence could be the secret sauce that created something new. The whole record has a similar tone, despite having two covers on it. 

8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

So how's the new job working out for ya Jon-O? Is it everything you'd hoped it would be and more?

I don't start for months yet. In fact I do not even have a leave date. In my field we have really long notice periods.

I did get to rip strips off my boss and tell him what I thought of him and how he and the rest of the partnership betrayed the current employees. He had nothing of substance to say in reply in the way of justification. He just took it. One of the most fun conversations I ever had. A withering attack, yet delivered in a polite matter-of-fact tone. I was on fire. It was choice. 

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