The Batlord

Obviously the book begins with Black Sabbath, cause how else would you introduce heavy metal? The prologue is a euphoric ode to the band that gets me pumped to listen to Sabbath regardless of the fact that I need nothing to make me listen to them besides thinking about them. ****ing Black Sabbath, dude. Chapter 1 continues with the Sabbath worship, before moving on to cover 70s hard rock and proto-metal, doing everything from Led Zeppelin to Deep Purple to Judas Priest to the Scorpions. Cause obvs. It also touches on many other acts, but those are the groups that get the most time, and Sabbath more than any of them combined. Cause obvs.

I'm surprised by just how many bands I didn't check out at the time I first read the book, but I suppose that's to be expected when reading a book while having a dial-up connection and no money. You couldn't even download whole albums at the time (2002/2003 I guess), but had to settle for single songs on P2P programs like Kazaa and Limewire. So downloading a whole album was a nearly daylong affair without any guarantee that you'd even be able to find every single song you were looking for. If I were undergoing this journey of discovery now I'd be able to download faster than I could listen to albums, but at the time I had to carefully budget my time, and so I skipped a lot.

I of course checked out Sabbath's first two albums, and god damn did I wear them out. A little later I'd buy Master of Reality, and then Heaven and Hell, but back then Black Sabbath and Paranoid were Sabbath to me. I love that my discovery of metal was from the ground up, as it was a traditional education that really gave me a feel for the genre that I wouldn't have had if I worked my way back after a few years of Lamb of God and Killswitch Engage or whatever. And there just isn't much that is more fun than discovering Black Sabbath when you're 14.

I didn't give much time to Zeppelin since I could hear so many of their songs on the radio at any given time, but Deep Purple's Machine Head I actually bought on one of the rare times I actually had money to spend. It's an indispensable album these days, but at the time I guess it was too rock, with too warm, fuzzy, and dated a production to truly wow me, although certain songs definitely rocked my world, like "Highway Star", "Smoke on the Water", and "Space Truckin'".

Rereading the book now though, I'm sad that I didn't take the time to really check out a lot of the recs that I really should have. Flower Travellin' Band, Rainbow, King Crimson, Blue Oyster Cult, Hawkwind, The Stooges, and so many more are bands that I'd come to dig over the years, but if I'd given them the time of day back then... well, who knows. They were probably too old school for me anyway, but at least my horizons would have broadened even more. There are even a few bands listed that I still haven't listened to, and some that I'm completely ignorant of at the moment, such as Asterix, Titanic, Guru Guru, May Blitz, Master's Apprentices, and Suck (I'm listing these as much for myself as you bitches).

Another thing of great note about this book is that it gives many bullet point lists of albums for beginners to check out, from Black Sabbath's early discography to seminal albums from other notables of relevance to each chapter. These lists very much informed my early metal education, and just looking back at them is giving me that old desire to explore. So, I guess till next time, when we get to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal...

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