History of Heavy Metal Thread

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Certif1ed

Factually, but unsatisfyingly generally, the NWoBHM was a time of immense importance in the development of the metal sound we have now, and at the time that was Heavy Metal - and it's still called that, even though it sounds very different to Metal today.

The NWoBHM is very interesting because of the crossover between "Hard" or "Heavy" Rock and Metal. There was no actual borderline, yet there were distinct differences.

Sabbath and Priest were just part of the landscape of the NWoBHM along with fellow old-timers Motorhead, UFO, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy et al - and all those bands trod the border between metal and hard rock.

In the mid to late seventies as you say there was certainly a very thin line between HM and HR if any at all. With the exception of Motorhead all of the above were in many ways more hard rock oufits who long before the eighties arrived were bringing radio friendlly hard rock sounds to listeners along with keeping their core hard rock fans company. When looking at entries on these groups 90% of the time they willl have a hard rock and heavy metal entry next to them also add in the earlier Uriah Heep along with the Scorpions and you kind of have the principal groups 70`s hard rock,that at times were labelled heavy metal and certainly influenced nearly all the HM that would later follow.

Another point of note is the vocal delivery of singers at the time that ranged from shrieking, whaling and moaning for example Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Gillan and Robert Plant to the much cleaner delivery exampled by Dave Byron, Phil Lynott or Dio. For this reason Rob Halford is probably the best reference point for HM singers as he was neither of any of the above and fitted somewhere in between with his powerful and high speed vocal delivery. I don`t think it was until hardcore punk that we were really introduced to singers that you actually couldn`t understand a word they were singing about (maybe excepting AC/DC or Motorhead here but that`s very subjective) a style that would later go on and influence various thrash anddeath metal groups