Heavy Metal
Summertime Blues
Heavy metal is a loud and aggressive kind of music that grew out of the genre “hard rock” around 1968. Heavy Metal has a very distinctive sound that was in its embryonic state when the band called Blue Cheer did a version of “Summertime Blues” that exemplified the heavy metal sound.
Many agree that psychedelic rock band Blue Cheer’s version of “Summertime Blues” is considered to be one of the first “heavy metal” songs along with the first “metal” album “Vincibus Eruptum”. The “heavy metal” sound seems to have come out of the “power trio” experimentations, that is to say a band consisting of a bass guitarist, a drummer and guitarist doubling as a rhythm and a lead guitarist, who collectively rely on amplification, electronics and sheer volume.
In “Summertime Blues”, Blue Cheer puts its own spin of extra riffs complete with tempo changes, solos sections for all three instruments (bass, drums and guitar) and a more street level, “do it yourself” ethos recording that added to the mystique. The distortion feedback on the song was amazing for the day in 1968 but was a culmination in a “heavy” sound that had been pursued in rock & roll since the days of Link Wray.
Dick Dale in 1962-63 spearheaded the riff & power chord techniques and surfed a wave of popular “surf rock & pop” music along with the Beach Boys which had a great influence on British “hard rock” bands like The Who, the Stones and the Beatles. The speed of a song like “Miserlou” by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones were a particular favorite because of the finger picking dexterity and electronics usage that were vital in “Heavy Metal’s” development. Metal would be formed by a constant tug of war across “the big lake” (Atlantic Ocean) with the UK on one side and the US on the other, just like with many other rock genres (ie: Punk).
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Another great example of the heavy metal riff and structures in early “heavy metal” is the sprawling epic song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly and its album by the same name “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. The song takes up the whole b-side of the LP at more than 17 minutes long beating out Zappa on his twelve minute “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet” from his 1966 LP “Freak”.
A big feature in Heavy Metal is in song length and structure with songs layered by several elaborate riffs and alternate versions and songs frequently breaking the 3 minute length. Heavy Metal shares this feature of breaking the song length barrier, with genres like “Progress Rock” or “Prog Rock” and/or Jazz Fusion.
Heavy Metal Thunder
Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” and the memorable second verse line of “heavy metal thunder” only name checks the genre but is not truly “Metal”. “Born to be Wild” is a hard rock song that was number one in 1968 but as the music style is concerned, it is classic hard rock unlike Blue Cheer or Iron Butterfly.
British psychedelic rock group Vanilla Fudge’s Supremes cover “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” on tour along with new Yardbirds group Led Zeppelin were bands that were occasionally referred to as “heavy metal” in 1968, along with other “hard rock” bands Deep Purple, Cream, Hendrix, Jeff Beck. Hard Rock was starting to win over the air waves with rock band Free and the iconic “All Right Now”.
Then there were other bands from both sides of the pond being referred to as “heavy metal” like Humble Pie, Spooky Tooth, Budgie, UFO, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Hawkwind, Alice Cooper, James Gang and Mountain. In retrospect, only some of the above named bands became true “Heavy Metal” but most would be considered to be great bands of the genre “Hard Rock”. At this point rock was fragmenting into all these different genres like country rock, funk rock, southern rock, etc.
Black Sabbath
The best example of “heavy metal” is by far Black Sabbath who released their first album “Black Sabbath” on February, Friday the 13th, 1970 which contained the song “Black Sabbath“. The song broke many boundaries and started the dark genre in its purest form. Basically all the components of what makes up “heavy metal” are contained in this song.
One of the main features of “heavy metal” is the sound of the electric guitars. Feedback distortion and the overloading of the circuitry of amplifiers and electronic gadgets led to another rock “revolution” in sound. In the passing of the baton with this sound’s experimentation, it went from Link Wray to Dick Dale, from Dave Davies of the Kinks to John Lennon, then to Pete Townshend, to Keith Richards, to Clapton, Beck and Page and to Jimi Hendrix and then finally landing in the hands of Tony Iommi.
The Guitar
The “heavy metal” sound is in the way a song is played rhythmically and its structure harmonically. Rhythm guitar in “metal’ chugs or crunches along with the beat rather than a 12 bar blues style of swing that rock & roll often incorporates in its vamp or jamming patterns. Metal tends to crunch along with staccato impatience, marking time for the bouts of jumping in the pit with extended athletic bursts of energy.
“Metal” revolves around the “flatted fifth”, also known as the “tri-tone”, also known as “the devils chord” or “diabolus in musica”. Remember, “Metal” is all things taboo. The music also thrives on minor chords, complex chords, a technique known as down-tuning or drop tuning and does not shy away from dis-chordancy or dissonance in general.
After careful tweaking, a guitar can take on the quality of a large, billowing and towering sound that puts up a walls of canons or stacked Marshall Amps capable of high level long range ballistics of decibel destruction. Power, rhythm, and the devil’s chords are what make up the metal guitaring technique. Everything comes in threes or pentagrams and three sixes. Many other factors go into a metal guitarists sound such as type of amp, electronics, guitar make, style, wood choice, pick-ups, strings, miking techniques etc.
So, my argument is that Tony Iommi’s guitar sound and style of playing is the sound of ‘heavy metal”. Of all the aspects that differentiate “metal” from “hard rock”, its the guitar with its distortion sound, staccatto crunch playing, use of flatted 5ths and general dissonance that defines the genre separate from the genre of “Rock”. The other guitarists I named above all were hard rock guitarists who helped germinate “heavy metal” and had elements of “metal” in their sound, but, as far as song structure and feel, they are all Hard Rock. Sabbath is different.
The Lyrics
The subject matter that Geezer Butler’s universe had to offer was one of no limitations. Nothing was taboo. One could write about whatever the imagination could think of. Geezer Butler would go on to test the boundaries by starting off with the extreme subject matter. Satan, the occult, and evil in general along with the horror show audio effects put forth a multi-dimensional sensory explosion for those who dared to enter Black Sabbaths “house of horrors”. Geezer’s imaginative lyrics complimented the “diabolus in musica”; the devils chord shunned since the days of ancient Greece in music.
It seems as though nothing was taboo in subject matter and there were many songs on the occult, drug addiction, nuclear war, religion, insanity in the beginning and, as time went on, more lyrical barriers were to be broken. The freedom to sing about any topic no matter how disturbing is a major feature of heavy metal and why it has such a mystique. Black Sabbath helped tear down a lot of walls early on in its career and tested how far it could go with the sensors, the critics and the general public.
The Vocals
Ozzy Osbourne and his blood curdling wail of hopelessness on the song “Black Sabbath” raised the hairs on many necks and ears, completely eclipsing Arthur Browns hit single “Fire”, as the most outrageous song. Ozzy Osbourne would go on to show the world just what Heavy Metal was all about, being the leading solo figure in the face of the genre to orchestrate the successful Ozfest tours which currently keep “metal” alive. Along with Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey and Ian Gillian contributed to the quintessential rock front man image, but it was Ozzy’s outrageousness that helped give the heavy metal front man a unique mystique.
Bass & Drums
The rhythm section of Black Sabbath is bombastic and explosive to say the least. It was like that metal rhythm section was born as a fully formed adult. The way Bill Ward uses a primordial battle attack along with Tony Iommi’s tri-chord slowly growing louder but with using dynamic tact in the build-up to the climax of the song, which breaks into full gallop utilizing the fight or flight response.
Ward, who was a great blues and jazz drummer, used a very symphonic or operatic crescendo in his rolls and fills while sometimes laying down a funky groove. Geezer’s bass playing shows his influence on metal bass guitar, not only as a rhythm instrument but a melodic instrument occasionally taking up the lead. His mastery of timing blending in with the rhythms and counter-rhythms of the guitar and the drums is impeccable.
The song, Black Sabbath, is but one song in a vast canon of music that would explore many heights and depths of the human condition. The first eight albums show a pioneering of unexplored topography in sound and concept, an alternate land where nothing is taboo and anything goes.
Just the Beginning
In the beginning the phrase “heavy metal” referred to several bands who played an aggressive form of hard rock in the late sixties (Vanilla Fudge, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, Mountain, James Gang, Grand Funk Railroad even Neil Young), but as the seventies progressed the term “heavy metal” would apply to a specific form of music that Black Sabbath spearheaded and that would eventually explode in a new scene in the late seventies and early eighties, as if in response to the punk movement. Early on there were several bands who would carry the “heavy metal” torch throughout the early seventies. However two bands would come forth as being true heavy metal bands within the parameters set by Black Sabbath, those bands were Judas Priest and Motorhead.