"The Roots of Metal" Project

I didn't misread or mistype my response Rex. I just thought you were saying that the only section of the track that takes things outside of the conventional doom space & into the traditional doom one is the last two minutes which see more up-tempo psychedelic rock & heavy metal components coming into effect. Clearly that wasn't the case but I'd argue that this section is a clear example of the sort of cross-pollination of genres that we generally see in the traditional doom metal model nonetheless.

Ok, let's get a bit more interesting because I don't think anyone was ever gonna argue against "Black Sabbath" being a metal track. We'll put it down with a generic Doom Metal tag for the moment. That brings us to "The Wizard" which isn't as straight forward. What are your thoughts here? Is it metal? How would you tag it? Heavy metal? Blues rock? Hard rock? Heavy psych? Something else?

I completely agree. If you ignore the vocals then it sounds exactly like Led Zeppelin. Bill Ward & Geezer Butler play a swinging groove that gets your toe tapping more than your head banging. I'd suggest that "The Wizard" sits somewhere in between blues rock & hard rock personally. Anyone else have any thoughts on this one?

I just realized, which edition are we going with?  The original European one or the North American one with the different tracklist?

I would suggest the version that doesn't include "Wicked World" as I think it's better to come up with a position that's relevant to all versions of the album.

Wicked World was on the American one.

How about "Behind The Wall Of Sleep" then? Hard rock? Heavy metal? Traditional doom metal? Heavy psych? Blues rock?

More bluesy hard with, but only with a slight hint of prog.

1-2 Metal vs. rock with 7 minutes of metal to 9 rock minutes.

Song total: 33%

Time total: 43.75%

I agree that "Behind the Wall of Sleep" is more rock than it is metal. It obviously has that doom riff in the verse but it feels slightly psychedelic in its minimalism & Bill Ward gives it a real swing that's quite foreign for metal. The guitar work in the remainder of the song is unapologetically rock-based though so I'm gonna throw out a curveball here. I know that it wouldn't fly on other websites where they seem to care a lot about when a subgenre tag was first created but I'd suggest that if this track was released by a new band today it would be tagged as stoner rock. That's my hill & I'll die on it.

I agree that "Behind the Wall of Sleep" is more rock than it is metal. It obviously has that doom riff in the verse but it feels slightly psychedelic in its minimalism & Bill Ward gives it a real swing that's quite foreign for metal. The guitar work in the remainder of the song is unapologetically rock-based though so I'm gonna throw out a curveball here. I know that it wouldn't fly on other websites where they seem to care a lot about when a subgenre tag was first created but I'd suggest that if this track was released by a new band today it would be tagged as stoner rock. That's my hill & I'll die on it.

Piss them off, bro.  Take their graves and drown them in it.  This is metal; we live to anger the world.

What do we think about "N.I.B." then? Heavy metal? Hard rock? Heavy psych? Blues rock? Traditional doom metal? Conventional doom metal?

Kind of an amalgam of it all.  It's mostly heavy metal, but the tone it creates can easily but faintly be compared to psych, doom, blues and even stoner.  Two metal, two hard rock.

Metal tracks: 50%

Metal time: 12 min. vs. 8 min. = 62.5%

Sorry, I was busy the past couple of days and didn't have much time for on-line stuff.

I think we're all agreed on the first 4 minutes of Black Sabbath, but I'd say the last two lean into heavy metal.

The Wizard, eh, I think you could say it's leaning between hard rock and heavy metal. Yeah, some Zeppelin sounds like it, but arguably those tracks are borderline too. Guitar tone is also an important factor and Sabbath's heavier tone carries it a bit into metal for me.

Behind the Wall of Sleep, hard rock/prog. I could see Van Der Graaf Generator or someone similar making a song like this.

N.I.B., heavy psych/metal, possibly even just heavy psych. The only part of this song that feels unambiguously metal to be is the first solo. The intro is pure psychedelic rock and the verses just feel like a metalified version of those.

I think we're all agreed on the first 4 minutes of Black Sabbath, but I'd say the last two lean into heavy metal.

Wouldn't the traditional doom metal tag cover the 1:40 of heavy metal & psychedelia at the end of "Black Sabbath" given that it's essentially a diluted form of doom?

I think "N.I.B." is close enough to metal. I'm gonna stick my neck out again by claiming it as stoner metal though. It certainly sounds a lot more like Orange Goblin than it does Judas Priest or Iron Maiden in my opinion. The stoner tag also covers the mildly psychedelic feel.

What's everyone's thoughts on "Evil Woman, Don't Play Your Games With Me" then? Hard rock? Blues rock? Heavy metal?

Totally hard rock.  Not even gonna pretend it's remotely metal.

Yeah, it's a hard/blues rock tune for mine. No metal there whatsoever.

In this instance, the breakdown would go as follows:

Metal tracks: 2/5 = 40%

Metal time (more accurate): 12.5 metal min. to 11.5 non-metal minutes = 52%

Minimum currently met on both accounts.

Wouldn't the traditional doom metal tag cover the 1:40 of heavy metal & psychedelia at the end of "Black Sabbath" given that it's essentially a diluted form of doom?

Eh, I'm not quite sure, since that does sound quite different to what I think of as psych.

Also, Jesus, Evil Woman sounds completely out of place, no wonder they removed it from the US release. That song would be on the soft side on a KISS album. Maybe just barely edging into hard rock.

Hhmm... I forgot that "Evil Woman, Don't Play Your Games With Me" wasn't on some versions of the album. That complicates things a little. Perhaps we come to a position on "Wicked World" at the tail end of this exercise & then treat the whole collection of songs as one record?

Hhmm... I forgot that "Evil Woman, Don't Play Your Games With Me" wasn't on some versions of the album. That complicates things a little. Perhaps we come to a position on "Wicked World" at the tail end of this exercise & then treat the whole collection of songs as one record?

Maybe, but if our ten minute closer is deemed as metal, then over half the album will be metal anyway.  But if this is a list entry, and we cover the differences between the European and American editions, then we'd have to cover the two medleys, too, which will complicate things as the different pieces will undoubtably be different genres.

Just a note for the future: in the event that we do "first ten" lists for other genres, we should take into account the possibility of including a section in the list for metal albums that influenced the genre, like if we wanted to handle black metal we'd need to mention Venom.