Quote:
Originally Posted by Certif1ed
Thanks for the additional info. You're right, there is the issue that many bands are in a grey are, in that they played heavy metal, although not as a general rule, and also that there are many different styles of metal, including the hybrids you point out.
Image is certainly something I left out - and this is a crucial part of the genre (as opposed to the music), although I did mention the album covers.
The sole point of going back before Sabbath is to trace the roots more accurately than other studies have done. I think the roots lie before the Kinks - indeed, the Kinks are not even related to Sabbath except via the riff, and the fact that Van Halen covered them. Does this mean that Metal is rooted in Holst, since "Am I Evil" by Diamond Head is rooted in "Mars, Bringer of War" from The Planets suite?
Possibly - and I have already noted a potential Classical root in Sabbath's formal approaches - but I really want to limit the exploration into Rock music.
Sabbath themselves use something similar in "Children of the Grave" - hence my link to the vid, which shows a faster, less doomy side of Sabbath that was left largely untapped until "Heaven and Hell".
Before Sabbath, there was a band called "Spooky Tooth", who played riffs very similar to those Sabbath played, and were undoubtedly the bands' main influence. Spooky Tooth also wrote "Better By You, Better Than Me", (in)famously included on "Stained Class", which brought Priest a huge amount of publicity, even though it was, on the whole, very unwelcome and unpleasant. Spooky Tooth can't have been alone in playing that style - hence I really want to dig into the harder rock music of the late 1960s - but I also want to find out where that came from.
Your point about Priest is also noted - but note also that the self-titled Sabbath song has this quiet/loud structure, and that the Sabs were also prone to even quieter and far heavier moments (as in "Children of the Grave", "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and many more).
As I've noted in another thread, Priest's heavy sound and style has definite precedents in the music of groups like The Scorpions, UFO, The Sweet and Queen - showing the close links between Metal, Glam and Prog.
I want to trace the coming together - as well as the growing apart - of the roots, so we can show how groups as diverse as Bon Jovi and Slayer are essentially playing the same music. If, indeed, they are.
First I want to get at the defining characteristics that link all metal bands, by the simple process of examining the music of the bands that defined the genre, and getting a series of traits - or failing that, a combination of traits that uniquely identify the music and get away from silly, flowery descriptions such as the ones on Wikipedia which are mostly untrue, and almost entirely linked heresay rather than thoroughly researched (since Original Research is banned from Wikipedia articles!).
I've crippled myself for time again... back later! Thanks again for the useful points. It's contributions like this which are going to make this thread a success!
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Just the other day I was thinking about the cover songs that certain bands do, most notably metal Bands. For example, I was listening to "Your Arms, My Hearse" by Opeth and on it (My extended version) were two covers, one by Celtic Frost and the other By Iron Maiden, which to be fair are the type of covers you`d expect them to do. If you look at Slayer or Metallica and their covers stuff, often it includes punk bands again obvious choices and all stuff that would`ve have influenced them, but a lot of the time, metal groups do covers which seemingly are quite surprising! Van Halen in their early days were a good example of this, the Kinks cover was a good choice and they did it well, because the original song had the riffs ready made for a HR or HM outfit. But how do you account for their version of Dancing in the Street my Marvin ***e, not exactly material for a HM outfit! I think the US metal groups certainly had a pop sensibility that their British counterparts at that time didn`t. Saying that though, Judas Priest did a cover of the Joan Baez song "Diamonds & Rust"!!! in their early days.
As for the quiet moments, yes you`re correct as Sabbath did them to startling effect especially on "Master of Reality" Probably their best album.
I think anybody can go back and look at groups like Spooky Tooth and Budgie etc and like Sabbath they were playing a brand of HM/HR that was largely undefined in its era, and it was only years later that their music would receive its correct label. The reason people say that metal started with Sabbath, is that they were quite simply one of the biggest bands in the world and nearly all current metal outfits would`ve grown up listening to them, whereas other groups like Spooky Tooth and Budgie were far less known and largely forgotten by all, except of course for the hardcore enthusiast. It`s kind of like saying Britpop (Oasis, Blur etc) began with the Beatles and the Kinks etc. But any enthusiast could go back further, therefore some kind of line has to be drawn.
I think to say HM started with Sabbath and that Judas Priest were the first proper HM band to be fairly correct, from the viewpoint that there has to be some kind of defined starting line. Metallica and some of the other thrash bands of the time were credited with creating thrash, but anybody can go back further and point to Motorhead or Venom, point being there has to be some kind of starting position otherwise you can keep going back.
The comparison between Bon Jovi and Slayer is very valid. Bon Jovi like most of the glam metal/rock groups of that era had largely based themselves on Aerosmith (distinctly hard rock) and picked up metal riffs thanks to Van Halen and trashy glamour thanks to the New York Dolls and they along with Guns n Roses, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Motley Crue etc constantly crossed the HM/HR line from time to time (Def Leppard you could say were from HM roots whereas Guns n Roses distinctly HR roots) but in general the same type of music fan that liked one would probably like the other.
Slayer on the other hand, were largely a reaction to the trashy west coast metal 80's scene and helped HM restore its agressiveness and masculinity if you like, and they were certainly a world away from Bon Jovi, their influences would have been Sabbath, Priest, Maiden and any other logical groups but they also would`ve have largely been influenced by punk as well, and this in some respects is the link between them and groups like Bon Jovi. Slayer and groups like them took the masculine parts, the agression and the hardcore whereas Bon Jovi and groups like them, took the feminine parts, the glamour etc.