Dr_Rez

??? Led Zep was considered one of the first heavy metal bands... I can give a list of others they take after, all around the same time period.

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lucifer_sam

They were NOT heavy metal, they were NEVER heavy metal, but they were among the greatest pioneers in hard rock. Close to 1/3 of their songs were acoustic and apart from the sparse mechanical sound, there isn't too much which can be traced to metal. The lyrics, instrumentation and songwriting all points to hard rock and blues rock, but not metal.

Black Sabbath & Deep Purple are heavy metal. Led Zeppelin was NOT.

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Dr_Rez

...Early heavy metal/metal was not like you know of it today or even in the 80's or 90's for that matter. Bands like Queen, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Zep.

Also it was the tone and style Jimmy Page played with that contributed to the labeling of heavy metal. Typically bands start of much heavier (such as Zeppellin) then start falling more towards the hard rock category.

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lucifer_sam

I am fairly coherent about what constituted metal in the seventies. Whitesnake, Krokus, Trust, UFO, etc were really when it began. Early arena rock bands like Queen could be called influences, but they weren't themselves. They could be listed as influences for heavy metal, certainly, but Zeppelin themselves never were. Go listen to ANY Zeppelin record and show me ONE heavy metal song. The fact is they had neither the songwriting nor the lyrics to be called "metal."

And being glam rock pioneers doesn't change what Zeppelin actually played. Jimmy Page's tone and style was hardly much of a departure from his beginnings in The Yardbirds. Collectively, they had more in common with blues rock and folk rock than anything else. Led Zeppelin's status as "heavy metal" has oft been disputed, even by their own members. I believe both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page reject this misnomer.

Please understand that I enjoy metal (and Led Zeppelin), but as a fan of both I can't see the similarities.

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Dr_Rez

All i can say in response to that is go and read about the beginnings of heavy metal, who the pioneers were, and where its base started. You will see that it does indeed start there.

Anyone care to help me out here?

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lucifer_sam

I can try.

I think Moby Dick was the heaviest they ever got, and it only seems that way because of the absence of Plant's vocals. But nothing in it really screams metal. The drumming is typical of blues rock (including the solo), the bass is moderate and the guitar distorted very mildly. When you compare this, the heaviest of Zeppelin's songs, to stuff from Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, or Judas Priest, you can hear a huge discrepancy in the gravity of the sound. Whereas Zeppelin was steeped in blues rock, those other bands used distortion and amplification to create a thick, massive sound, something that Led Zeppelin never really achieved.

I understand how big of an influence on modern metal Led Zeppelin was. In fact, some of their songs were actually ported in a heavy metal vein (just look at the differences between Tool's version of No Quarter and the original). But nothing Zeppelin ever did - even in comparison with the first heavy metal bands - could really be called heavy metal.

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Dr_Rez

Well i think we just disagree on what can be classified as (heavy) metal, or hard rock.

Agree to disagree.

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TwistedEffect

1. Arch Enemy
2. Trivium
3. Slipknot
4. Children of Bodom
5. As I Lay Dying
6. Megadeth
7. Metallica
8. Pantera
9. Slayer

Scream Bloody Gore

Hard to narrow it down to my top 10, but eh, here they are:

1. Pantera
2. Deicide
3. Metallica
4. Death
5. Black Sabbath
6. Iron Maiden
7. Children of Bodom (The vocals aren't thrilling, but I enjoy the instruments)
8. Motorhead
9. Slayer
10. Superjoint Ritual

Mordoth

1. 1349
2. Tsjuder
3. Marduk
4. Windir
5. Wintersun
6. Ragnarok
7. Amon Amarth
8. Gorgoroth (with Infernus)
9. Immortal
10. Nattefrost

BMIK \m/