My journey through metal chronologically

Interesting, I didn't realize how much a lot of it is like Jimi Hendrix, since I never really sat down with him, just hearing hits on the radio. That does make their inability to make it big back then, since I think they do have the sensibilities to be looked back fondly on by the same audience who usually listens to classic rock radio.

Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Paranoid is more what I expect out of a Black Sabbath album, but still finds ways to be odd in retrospect. The sort of thing that reminds you that this is still really before metal is metal as we know it. We might owe heaviness to Sabbath, but in many ways it just isn't what we expect of metal.
Take War Pigs. There's nothing weird about War Pigs, right? Wrong. No one outside of a progressive or technical band would make anything like War Pigs. Metal bands don't devote sections of their song to short guitar riffs followed by drum fills. The more loose song structure here is far more alien to the average metal song, than say, a comparable hard rock song from a non-metal band.
In this sense, the hero of the album is Bill Ward. He might as well be called Peter, for he is the rock the rest of the band is built around. There might be better technical drummers, but in this moment, there is no drummer more precise than him. No drummer more perfect than him. Without him, songs like Paranoid or Iron Man would still be as heavy, but without him, they would lose that feeling of tightness that they enthralled the world with.
On an album full of hits, I feel like the real best song on the album is Electric Funeral. Keeping the doom metal spirit alive through sound rather than vibes. Takes a lot of skill to make a song with effectively one riff work for 5 minutes. Oh, sure, it has variations, but it's one riff. I guess there's a solo, but it has to be the simplest solo ever made.
Paranoid still remains within the confines of this weird heavy rock that retroactively became heavy metal. I think if anyone else did what this album did you'd see a progressive tag for sure. Which isn't a mark against it, just an observation about how it remains beloved in and out of the metal community.

9/10

Good call regarding Bill Ward, Morpheus. I don't think he gets anything like enough credit. He was heavily influenced by jazz drummers I believe, which I think you can often hear in his playing style and classic Sabbath wouldn't be the same without him.

Sir Lord Baltimore - S/T
If nothing else, Sir Lord Baltimore is not content to sit on their laurels since Kingdom Come. A lot of bands, in so short a time, would release something similar to the last album, but this is not the self-titled, no sir, this is something different. At least for them, in general this sounds more like a typical rock album of the time.
To start with there's the epic Man from Manhattan. It's not bad, but it isn't that interesting either. It strikes me as unfocused, and in some places like a poor copy of Thin Lizzy. (Yes, I know this was before Thin Lizzy, it still sounds like a copy) It's an odd choice to start the album off on.
I have to wonder if Henry Conklin heard either of these albums at some point, because this is the first time I've heard someone like him before he started singing. Maybe this guy was always like that and I only noticed on this album because it's a stronger resemblance.
The album is a lot more approachable. There's still that crazy guitar, but it no longer drowns out everything else to the detriment of the song. Now it's more of one part, though this comes at the cost that some solos feel like there's only there because that's necessary. The non-10 minute tracks are all broadly good. I dig Chicago Lives for it's bizarre proto-Blaze Bayley Iron Maiden sound; Caesar LXXI for being a simplistic but effective predecessor to epic metal.
It's a shame that the band dropped off after this, because I think here they managed to start finding their groove. Alas, outside of a rerecording of old material three decades down the line, this is it for Sir Lord Baltimore.

7/10

What do you think of its metal claims then Morpheus? I label "Sir Lord Baltimore" as a hard rock record personally although closer "Caesar LXXI" is certainly a heavy metal tune.

I don't really think there's anything special about them in that sense. They primarily shift between psych and hard rock, and on this album, I think the hard rock wins out. On the whole there's the third album, but that one does not sound like it was recorded in the '70s, so I can't help but think of it somewhat negatively. Like that one Italian band who did the obvious modern recordings claiming to be some lost '70s metal band. (and IIRC, did have some actual '70s recordings, which didn't sound unusual in this regard)

Flower Travelin' Band - Satori
A weird whistling sound. A man screaming like he stubbed his toe. These sounds proceed the music of this album and it does not give confidence. For such a respected album, I'm surprised at the disconnect the music has starting off. You get a guy wailing over some heavy sounding music and it is such a goofy sound. He eventually gets serious, but it's such a poor introduction.
Once the music starts, it gets pretty interesting. Musically, there's quite a journey going on here. A pleasant little trip through psychedelic mysticism. The ebbing and flowing of a nice, long instrumental track. It's very simple, yet it feels like nothing I've ever heard before. I suspect this is down to the guitar tone, it's an odd one, sounding quite different to most guitar tones I've heard.
This is pretty much a guitar and drum show, everything else is secondary. There are some more vocals besides that awkward wailing, but I think outside of the second track it just sort of detracts from the piece. This album doesn't really work when it's trying to be more mundane in it's intentions compared to when it goes more freeform. I do think the lyrics on the second track fit the vibe the album is going for though.
An overall nice album with some distinct flaws.

Thin Lizzy - S/T
Thin Lizzy is a weird inclusion, because most people will know them exclusively from The Boys are Back in Town and maybe the album it's from, which isn't quite metal, yet I know they did have a metal album later on. Sadly, this debut isn't a metal album, instead it's some kind of weird acoustic prog thing. I like me some acoustic stuff, but this feels like stuff I just don't care for. There are occasional bits of electric guitars, but they're firmly in the realm of rock rather than metal. Doesn't really interest me.

After this I checked to see if I removed any Lucifer's Friend albums from my list, since I'm not entirely sure I see the point, I didn't, but I was shocked to discover that they had a reunion dating back about a decade. I wonder if this is strongly connected to the reason why they're on M-A?

I would suggest that none of those three bands have any genuine metal releases, although all three have the odd metal song.

Budgie - S/T

Budgie is such a weird band in historical context. While there have certainly been some metal songs at this point, they tend to trend towards the lighter side of things. Nobody really seemed to have the riffing and the heaviness Black Sabbath had. Budgie follows that format, albeit in comparison to Sabbath's strangeness, these guys feel more mundane.
To start with, vocalist Burke Shelley is a great deal more mundane as far as vocalists go. He's your basic hippy with a high-pitched voice you'd expect to hear in a rock album from this time. There's a fluctuating heaviness to the album, but it mostly centers at, less heavy than Sabbath, way heavier than the competition.
The album starts off strong with Guts, a very bass heavy song which as its only flaw is that the rest of the song is overpowered by the bass. It's well constructed, but with such a nice bass line that it feels somewhat wasted to have all these neat little guitar flourishs going on. It's just so driving and doomy.
I have two problems with the album. Basically every song plays out the same. They're good songs, but outside of a few acoustic parts, they're about the same speed and structure. By the end of it, the album feels like it's dragging quite a bit. It can be quite hard to understand what is going on lyrically even with the lyrics in front of you.
Ultimately, I think it's a good album, and my issues probably have more to do with me overlistening to it for a review than any inherit to the album.

4/5

I don't think Budgie were ever a metal band, at least they weren't on the releases I've heard from them which equates to the first four full-lengths & 1980's "If Swallowed, Do Not Induce Vomiting" & "Power Supply" records. They did throw in the odd metal track here & there but no more than other artists like Deep Purple, Randy Holden, Flower Travellin' Band, Lucifer's Friend or Sir Lord Baltimore did at the time. None of those one-off metal songs appear on the debut either as it predominantly stays in hard/stoner/blues rock territory throughout. I know I've said it before but I honestly doubt that anyone would talk about Budgie in terms of metal if not for Metallica having covered a number of their songs.