Which decade has the best Metal, 70s or 80s?
 

Heavy Metal (also referred to as Metal) is a genre of Rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock.
Which decade has produced the best Metal, the 70s or the 80s?

80's, the 70's didn't have that much "metal" black sabbath is hardly metal and judas priest didn't really come out with any real metal material til the 80's. Iron Maiden was more of Punk meets a little bit of metal with Paul and really didn't hit there fullest potential till the 80's. 80's were great they had the big 4 in thrash. Some death metal started making the scene. That was a very innovative year, but it also had the dreaded genre of glam.

But of course the 70s had alot of metal, I think that you are mainly talking about subgenre's of Heavy Metal (Metal)? (I do see where your coming from) not to confuse Heavy metal with its sub-genre's. :)
The Scorpions are a 70s metal band that also went on into the 80s, bands like Motley Crue (glam metal) are more 80s, Ozzy is another artist that falls into the 70s & 80s metal scene, there's alot of metal (bands) influence to choose from the 70s era, Led Zepplin would be one to mention.
Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are both innovative Heavy Metal bands of the 70s.

Black Sabbath hardly metal:confused: The most revered metal band of all time! And Judas Priest not having any real metal till the 1980`s!

Just because 80`s metal bands played louder and most importantly more agressively, doesn`t make the 70's band any less metal.

The only argument that could be put by a metal purist against the 70`s metal bands, is the influence of blues rock into their sound, which is hardly surprising, as when most of these bands evolved blues rock would`ve have been the dominant rock sound of the late 60`s and early 70`s.

The metal sub genres emerged sometime in the 80`s, and by their definition some of the 70`s metal acts probably wouldn`t qualify as metal. But Sabbath and Priest are without doubt metal both musically, image wise and lyrically. If there are blues rock influences there, well its just academic.

80s. 70s metal bands were still trying to figure out what differentiates hard rock from metal(something that people could debate for lifetimes, if there even really is one), and in the 80s with thrash it was very much more defined. The sound then was refined and perfected.

I think you can look back on certain 70's bands now and identify what they were doing as heavy metal but the way I have always thought of it is that there wasn't such a thing as heavy metal until the very late 70's or the turn of the decade. 80's for me wins hands down by sheer numbers alone.

In terms of decades, sure it has to be the 80`s with the thrash movement for me. As whether the NWOBHM or the thash movement were more influential on future metal acts....well this is another debate, especially given the fact, that the NWOBHM heavily influenced on thrash in general.

Most NWOBHM bands released debut's in 1980 or later anyway.

The term "Heavy metal" was actually coined in reference to Led Zeppelin's debut, if memory serves, so if we go by that basis, then there are plenty of metal bands in the 70's. Where it gets sticky is differentiating between heavy metal and hard rock.

I don't think that's true.

I love my 80s metal! The 70s had some pretty good **** as well though.

As far as I remember, it was coined to refer to the song "Whole Lotta Love" Whether that phrase came at the time or much later on I`m not sure, but I`m sure even the reference to that song is debatable though.

The differentiating between heavy metal and hard rock though, is far more open to personal opinion. Scorpions, UFO, Rainbow, Kiss, Van Halen, AC/DC, Uriah Heep etc to name just a few, often get labelled as one or the other and usually as both.

Good insight! ^, Despite this differentiation, hard rock and heavy metal have existed side by side, with bands frequently standing on the boundary of, or crossing between, the genres. Hard Rock is a derivative to Heavy Metal.

Anybody into 80`s metal, would probably like all of those above groups, as they were all pretty much influential on the metal scene at that time.

Another way of looking at it is the British and American models of what was heavy metal as they were very different:

British-Leather, chains, denim, satanic messages, sword & scorcery etc and shaking your fist at the audience (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Rainbow despite having an American vocalist)

American- Glam, make-up, theatrical, glamouros as opposed to glam and more open to pop elements (Kiss, Alice Cooper, Van Halen)

Even the so called American version of Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult were really just in essence a hard rock biker band, but because they sang about dark musings etc they got labelled metal or proto-metal.

Long before that.
It was coined in the late 60s to describe American bands like Mountain, Steppenwolf & Vanilla Fudge and bands like that who were heavier than most other bands around at the time who were popular with bikers & hells angels.

In that case we could say 1967, as that was the year the debut Vanilla Fudge album came out, and its always described as a key proto-metal album, despite the fact its full of covers. The likes of Steppenwolf, Mountain, Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer and Iron Butterfly all groups that played heavy at that time had their debuts out in 68 and 69, so late 60`s would be right.

"Whole Lotta Love" was out in 1969 and probably had the biggest impact both sides of the atlantic, probably for this reason it was referred to as the first heavy metal song! Which is an oxymoron, considering that the above groups were putting heavy stuff out before that.

Ok, after spending about 15 minutes trying to hunt down the source of the term, it appears as though nobody has any idea. Seriously. Although this isn't the only place I looked, I refer you all to the wikipedia article. The first sentence is "The origin of the term heavy metal in a musical context is uncertain."

Heavy metal music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The article is debatable, but the one thing that most articles like this have in common, is that they agree, that it started amongst bands that were playing either blues rock or psychedelic rock loudly. Hence the term dating back to the 67 or 68 era.

Explain why it couldn`t be the 90`s? I think a lot of great metal came out in the 90`s, and its probably my favourite decade for metal.

The 90s definitely had some good metal but unfortunately I think it also had the largest amount of shitty metal out of any decade. For my money I'd actually say the 00s were my favorite decade for metal so far. The variety and level of creativity in the past decade was really astonishing.

The 90`s either had the emergence of some of the best metal bands ever, or if they had formed before then, they released their best material in the 90`s! Also the diversity in metal was huuuuge, ranging from the really heavy stuff to the very light stuff, along with the emergence of a whole host of other genre influences into metal as well.

My best metal bands of the 90`s are as below. I wouldn`t be able to build the same list in quantity, from any other decade either:

Pantera, Sepultura, White Zombie, Machine Head, Melvins, Neurosis, Nevermore, Iced Earth, Overkill, Kreator, Death, Morbid Angel, Atheist, Amorphis, Anathema, Evergrey, Fates Warning, Dream Theater, Corrosion of Conformity, Galactic Cowboys, Kyuss, Sleep, Tiamat, Opeth, Type O Negative, Meshuggah, early Korn, early Deftones. I`m not a fan of industrial metal at all, but the best albums of Fear Factory and Ministry came out in the 90`s. Finally, you`ve got practically all of the Swedish melodic death metal scene as well (IMO one of the best things to ever happen to metall)

Sure the 90`s had rubbish like a huge amount of the Nu-Metal mob, but the 80`s were blighted by hair metal, and the 00`s blighted by metalcore and the terrible alternative metal brigade with groups like Disturbed, Godsmack and Sevendust. Along with the dominance, by that terrible extreme metal group Cradle of Filth, who hit their popularity peak in the 00`s.

I actually really like Cradle of Filth. They are very commercialized for such an extreme metal band, but they come out with some decent stuff. Nymphetamine is such a killer song (not necessarily the whole album, sadly).

I have to agree with Janzoon, I think the '00's was the best decade for metal. So many of the really good metal bands that formed in the late '80's/early to mid '90's put out their best material in the last decade. Don't get me wrong though, the '90's had a stellar amount of amazing metal albums, my metal album of all time being a '90's metal album, but a lot of the really good '90's metal albums were bands who formed in the '80's. Sure the mainstream metal might suck for the '00's but the technology was so advanced that it didn't matter, to many people the radio became obsolete, you didn't need to special order CD's online or from record stores, you could just go out and see what else was out there besides the wall paste dribble being spooned into our mouths by the mainstream media.

Hope you guys don't mind if I jump into the conservation.

Personally I prefer the metal of the 70's, the early 70's to be be more exact. Proto-metal, heavy psych, acid rock, heavy prog. and hard blues rock were all contributing factors to the foundations of heavy metal. Most bands of this era are obscure for one reason or another and don't get the credit they deserve for the development of the genre IMO.

As time has moved forward so has heavy metal which has morphed and progressed into many sub-genres that it has become hard to keep an ear on all of it, at least for me. The 2000's have so much to offer some of it dentrimental and some of it excellent and others have experimented to break new ground. All arguable on the basis of critical acclaim, musianship, and personal taste.

I can't decide which decade is the best as all are very good IMO.

I kind of sound like a politician as I never really answered the question which was asked. Scary.:eek:

I know that I can say that the 90's were the worst with the whole scene uncertain where to go and how to sound. Of course there were exceptions but it did give us bands in the 00's who knew the scene was stagnant and really began to experiment with their sound as the fans were much more open hearing a new sound in Metal, especially disillusioned fans from the 90's who lamented the stagnation of the scene.

The 70's had some great bands, you just need to look for them ( Hard Stuff's 1972 album Bulletproof is phenomenal) but the 80's had some brilliant bands too that still hold up today.

The '90's were definitely the most inconsistent and stagnated decade for metal, but there were some really good metal albums to come out during it, here's just a short list of some of my favorite '90's metal albums.

Judas Priest - Jugulator (1996)
Death - The Sound of Perseverance (1998)
Strapping Young Lad - City (1997)
Katatonia - Brave Murder Day (1996), Discouraged Ones (1998), Tonight's Decision (1999)
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (1993), October Rust (1996)
Anathema - Judgement (1998)
Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley (1994)
Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse (1993)
Hypocrisy - Hypocrisy (1997)
Carcass - Heartwork (1994), Swang Song (1996)
Nevermore - The Politics of Ecstasy (1996)

Just to name a few.

Anything by Death is pretty much essential. The Hypocrisy and Nevermore releases are two very special albums. As for Nevermore, the following "Dreaming Neon Black" was even more absorbing than "The Politics of Ecstasy"

I have quite a few faves from the 90's but it was also the decade that I fell out of love with Metal for long periods of a time. Good call on Anathema though. I only want to hear Carcass as a Grindcore band though. Too many memories associated with them at that time.

It`s funny how these things go, Because its 90's metal that I first fell in love with. I`ve only really gotten into metal properly in the last 15 years or so. Before that, I only liked certain bands (the usual Sabbath, Slayer and Megadeth choices etc) and I would listen to them/it now and again. Its Sepultura that actually got me hooked, I saw them live in Holland and was exposed to their sheer anger and power........my life was never quite the same again after that. Since then, I`ve kind of studied and listened to all types of metal kind of non-stop.

So along with my lifetime love of soft rock (American west coast) and hard rock. Metal is now right up there with them.

Most of the good bands you listed for the 90s are actually from the 80s (Sepultura, Melvins, Neurosis, Kreator, Death, Morbid Angel, Corrosion of Conformity, Ministry) and all the bad bands you listed for the 00s are from the 90s. And stuff like Pantera, Machine Head, Fear Factory, Korn and Deftones are perfect examples of why I give the 90s some low marks (and, yes, I realize some of even those bands started in the 80s).

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l9...nH/pantera.jpg
"That guy just said we're shit.... GET HIM!!!!!"

I am going to have to insist you listen to Fear Factory's newest release Mechanize (2010) before you pigeonhole them with the likes of Korn, Machine Head, and the Deftones.

Woah, take it easy with that vulgar display of power guys.

I agree apart from Fear Factory but even I know that they are very generic. Pantera are awful and Deftones? Yuk. Korn are only one step away from Green Day for me and for a previous post- Fates Warning? Their debut was 1984!! but that is nitpicking.

The bands that matter were 70's/80's and the 00's for me.

I don't want to come across like some know it all but as Janszoon says- most of those bands are from the 80's and easily traceable. Kreator started in '84, Sepultura in '85 and we are not talking beginnings either but album releases.

Okay, but a 2010 release from them probably won't do much to change my opinion of 90s metal. ;)

And Ministry started in 1981! Not to mention that all but one of their best albums were released in the 80s.

No but it will at least show you that bands are capable of change and it sort of proves what I said earlier, that bands formed in the very late '80's/'90's released their best material in the last decade. Here's just a few examples of what I (and many others) think are the band's best albums.

Opeth
Formed 1990
Best album - Blackwater Park (2001)

Solefald
Formed 1995
Best album - In Harmonium Universi(2003)

Neurosis
Formed 1985 (So a little older than my criteria, but they started off as a hardcore punk band, so if we're just judging their metal stuff I'd say '92)
Best album - Given to the Rising (2007)
Some qualifying statements: I'm well aware that Through the Silver in Blood (1996) and A Sun That Never Sets (2001) are generally regarded as their best work, but I was listening to Given To The Rising (2007) before class earlier this week and I think it really is their best instrumentation and most progressive album.

Sigh
Formed 1990
Best album - Imaginary Sonicscape (2001)

Meshuggah
Formed 1987
Best album - Nothing (2002)
Qualifying Statement: I know a lot of people have cited Destroy Erase Improve (1995) as their greatest album, but there's just something about Nothing (2005) that gets me going, then of course Catch 33 (2005) and obZen (2008) take it to the next level.

Devin Townsend
Formed in around 1993
Best album - Terria (2001)
Note: This is me just judging his solo material, not his work with Strapping Young Lad.

Therion
Formed 1987
Best album - Secret of the Runes (2001)

Just to name a few.

I'm confused by your post Pete. I already said the 00s were my favorite decade for metal.

What I'm saying is that Fear Factory, a band I would consider to be a '90's band, released their best material in the '00's. It pained me to see them listed with the likes of Korn and Machine Head.

Ah, I see. Well send me that album if you want and I promise I'll give it a listen.