For most of the years so far it has always been about which albums to leave off the Top 10 and at times it has been a real struggle trying to decide, but in the case of 1976 that has not been so and I actually struggled to find quality albums for the year! As far as the heavy music genre went 1976 was a very poor year and easily the worst year I’ve featured so far. As always there are classic albums near the top of the list, but I really struggled to find good enough albums for the lower end of the list and ended putting releases that would not have even been considered in other years, as there was just so many mediocre and disappointing albums released within the heavy genre for the year. At the top end of the spectrum giants such as Led Zeppelin were a sure case of how the mighty had fallen as evidenced on the mediocre and dull
Presence, Black Sabbath firmly believed that a great band could do anything and were serving us up a portion of
Technical Drivel and Deep Purple were no more. Budgie had lost their fire, Uriah Heep their focus, Nazareth had totally lost the plot and I’ve no idea what UFO were thinking about when the released
Heavy Petting! The new debut albums were an average to woeful bunch from artists like Y&T, Granmax, Starz, Lone Star, Taste, Sammy Hagar, Krokus and Bow Wow which were all artists that really needed to do better and in a lot of cases could. Luckily it was bands like Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, Thin Lizzy and Kiss that kept the ship afloat and Rainbow were certainly one of the most creative and one of the very best throughout the year. Elsewhere to a degree the same thing was occurring, as the prog scene had dried up unless it happened to be Rush and polished bands like the Eagles and newbies Boston were leading the way forward and ruling on the charts. The most creative stuff was coming from the art rock genre by artists like Patti Smith and course most crucially punk had now reared its head with the arrival of the Ramones debut.
*By 1976 the amount of albums that were coming out and being described as hard rock was quite astounding and it seemed like parameters were failry non-existent as well. The reality was that a lot of these bands were primarily rock acts that had some heavy songs, had added a heavy backdrop to their sound or were just going through a transition period that included putting out a heavier album than normal, rather than being a hard rock band in the vein of either Led Zeppelin and UFO etc. So bands like Boston and Heart amongst many I've seen on various musical lists don't really belong on this list and would fit far better on an AOR list. Also the year saw the release of
2112 by Rush and yet again that goes better on a progressive rock list than here. I also some time ago eliminated bluesy artists such as Humble Pie who had featured early on as I felt their sound didn't fit here anymore. I've also largely ignored southern rock and the heavier aspirations of bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd who I feel at the end of the day are still very much southern rock and not hard rock. From 1977 I aim to tighten the parameters even more, as heavy metal starts to become a more prominent moniker for some bands than hard rock and any hard rock band that I include needs to be nearer the heavier end of the spectrum as well, so 1976 might be the final year where I feature albums at the lighter end of the spectrum*