Metal Month-Day 1: What was the first Heavy Metal band? Well, before we can answer that question, we have to ask: what is Heavy Metal? Is it open Drop C chugga chuggas? Is it 300 bpm double bass drumming? Is it just plain loud music? It can be all that. But I think those are all characteristics, not essences. In other words, the aforementioned techniques fall under metal, but dont per se define it. Before Heavy Metal received its name, it was still simply known as hard rock. The name came from musical critics who thought it was harder than even hard rock, so they called it Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal has its roots in Southern Blues music (metal is based on the 12 bar blues scale) and rock n roll. However, its in metal where the guitars come into the forefront, and the drums become more than something to just keep the beat. The vocals are no longer judged by how they can swoon, but rather how they can invoke real visceral reactions. Distortion marks the sound of the guitars and bass and copious amounts of splash hits on the drums give emphasis to the beats. This is where artists broke away from the focus being on the singer with a band as back-up, and instead the focus was ALL members. Forceful, in-your-face, and played in minors instead of majors, heavy metal became the neighborhood kid you werent allowed to play with. And possibly the very first band to introduce these new musical elements to the rock world was Led Zeppelin. They defined the essences just described above and laid the groundwork for this new genre. The video below is from 1973, but Led Zeppelin put themselves on the radar already in the very late 1960s. So this month is kicking off with the pioneers, the fathers. And more than 40 years later, we will see that their impact still resonates. https://youtube/watch?v=jtN8oBjMr_E
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 20:30:55 +0000
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