"The Roots of Metal" Project
Today's track is Pentagram's "20 Buck Spin". It's built on a blues rock riff that's then expanded into extended bluesy pentatonic guitar solos so, despite it being quite heavy, it still doesn't make it out of the hard rock space in my opinion.
Yeah, a great song no doubt, but definitely too bluesy to be considered metal. Doesn't sound a million miles away from Cream playing live in my opinion.
The final track from the "Bias Studio Recordings" demo is "Review Your Choices" which I'd suggest sits somewhere between stoner rock & stoner metal as it sports a groovy doom metal riff & a psychedelic solo accompanied by a mixture of crunchy hard rock open chords & darker metallic power chords.
So... that leaves me with a result of 28% metal for the release overall which isn't enough to qualify as metal by the criteria agreed at the beginning of this exercise. It was nice to see a non-Black Sabbath release giving it a shake nonetheless though. Tomorrow we'll be starting on Buffalo's 1973 "Volcanic Rock" sophomore album.
This morning's track is the opening track from the 1973 "Volcanic Rock" sophomore album from Sydney's Buffalo which I consider to be heavy metal:
A couple of days behind:
Pentagram - "Review Your Choices" - Starts off very stoner rock, but the final two-thirds has a much more metal feel to it. Borderline metal as a whole for me.
Buffalo - "Sunrise (Come My Way)" - This is a great album and has been a favourite of mine for a while. Sure this opener has some rockiness, but this feels a lot heavier than most of the band's contemporaries (Sabbath aside) and I feel there is enough in that infectious riff and the guitar soloing for it to qualify as a genuine metal track - and what a cracker it is!
Today's track is Buffalo's "Freedom" which I wouldn't say is metal but I would claim as one of the very finest heavy psych tracks ever recorded & a true pinnacle of Australian rock music:
Today's track is Buffalo's "Till My Death" which I would suggest is simply hard rock:
Today's track is Buffalo's "The Prophet" which I've tagged as being heavy psych.
Today's track is Buffalo's "Pound of Flesh" which I regard as sitting between blues rock & heavy psych:
Catching up, so I will cover the rest of the album:
"Freedom" - a hypnotic, psychedelic feeling to this one that definitely sees it sitting comfortably under the heavy psych umbrella. Zero metal.
"'Til My Death" - heavy blues rock definitely. Metal content - 0.
"The Prophet" - heavy for sure, but metal, no. Heavy psych / hard rock for me.
"Pound of Flesh" - Heavy psych, almost super-heavy acid rock. Nil metal.
"Shylock" - You know what, I'm gonna go 50/50, heavy metal / heavy psych on this one.That main riff is real Sabbathy, not unlike Symptom of the Universe.
Overall I make that 20% metal, so not really metal for our purposes - still a great record though.
Just seen that there is a live version of the album on Spotify, released in 2022:
"Shylock" - You know what, I'm gonna go 50/50, heavy metal / heavy psych on this one.That main riff is real Sabbathy, not unlike Symptom of the Universe.
Overall I make that 20% metal, so not really metal for our purposes - still a great record though.
I'm gonna go with heavy metal for "Shylock" which sees "Volcanic Rock" finishing with just the two metal tracks for mine & I agree that it's not enough to qualify. Tomorrow we're gonna start our next release in Black Sabbath's classic 1973 fifth album "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath".
Today's song is the title track from Black Sabbath;s classic 1973 fifth album "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" which I regard as being heavy metal:
I sense so many early traces of what would become hair metal in this song.
This morning's track is Black Sabbath's "A National Acrobat" which I'd suggest sits best under the stoner metal tag:
This morning's track is Black Sabbath's "Fluff" which I'd suggest fits best under the chamber folk tag:
Also, I checked out Bang's 1973 third album "Music" this morning & there's no metal there whatsoever. In fact there's really very little hard rock either. It sits in between rock, soft rock & progressive rock in roughly equal portions in my opinion so we won't be investigating it in this exercise.
A National Acrobat is right between stoner rock and stoner metal for me. But there's really no debating Fluff. Another standard 70's folk song.
Today's track is Black Sabbath's "Sabbra Cadabra" which I consider to be hard rock:
Today's track is Black Sabbath's "Killing Yourself To Live" which is a really difficult one to categorize. It's certainly more rock than it is metal but the chorus & solo section are so critical to the way the song plays out that I've allowed it to qualify as metal regardless. I'm going with a multi-tag arrangement of heavy metal, hard rock & stoner rock.
Today's track is Black Sabbath's "Who Are You? which I would suggest is symphonic prog:
I checked out Thin Lizzy's 1973 third album "Vagabonds of the Western World" this morning & didn't find any metal to speak of there. I'd suggest that it's a hard rock record with blues rock & funk rock influences so we won't be investigating it in this exercise.
Don't waste your time with examining early Thin Lizzy. Great band, but very little metal influence. Now I've only gotten up to Black Rose, but from what RYM says, they took the jump in heaviness in 1980 and their final album was the only metal one. Although this song jams harder than most heavy metal songs of those two decades.
I'm aware of that Rex. I'm actually conducting this exercise as a part of another initiative I'm looking at doing in the future though & it's important that I check out or revisit all of these proto-metal records if I'm gonna make a good fist of that. And for the record, I don't think "Thunder & Lightning" is a metal record either just quietly.
Today's track is Black Sabbath's "Looking For Today" which I'd suggest is simply hard rock: