"The Roots of Metal" Project
Anyway... today's track is "Iron Man". It's the doomiest track we've looked at since "Black Sabbath"in my opinion. I'm going against the general consensus by choosing traditional doom metal on this one.
I find this track to be a mid-tempo heavy metal hit (that I don't like as much other people do) that speeds up in some places. If you're up for some doomy stoner-ish atmosphere, you'll find it in the next track that we will talk about tomorrow...
This one clearly needs no discussion because it's...soft rock. Clearly soft rock and not doom metal. ;p
EDIT: As I either missed Andy's post or he posted it just before I posted mine, there was some reason on my part to be sarcastic.
Speaking of that from Daniel's post, hi I'm back, Daniel summoned me and I'll try to paraphrase what I wrote back to him in regards to In Rock. So, gonna backpedal the discussion a little bit, but I've missed most of this since I'm not a diehard genre discusser.
I think it's an interesting perspective to have been born in the mid-90's since most of the dust between Rock, Hard Rock, and Heavy Metal had definitely subsided by then. Growing up, bands like Led Zeppelin, Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, and Deep Purple were kind of just Rock and not necessary Hard Rock like people who grew up during those bands' heyday would say. Those bands were heavier for the time, but for me they all got lumped into the same Classic Rock stations and overall umbrella, so there seemed to only be a distinction between Led Zeppelin Rock vs like...Yes or Pink Floyd's Prog Rock and The Beatles for Soft Rock. What does that mean for Deep Purple's In Rock?
Well...the funny thing is that Deep Purple were a two hit wonder by the 90's and 2000's. They were the band that did the funny "Smoke On the Water" riff that everyone makes fun of as baby's first guitar riff, and "Highway Star" for the awesome opening then not really caring about the rest of the song for some reason. Because of this, I never checked out Deep Purple. I was fuckin' wrong for that, In Rock is an incredible album that made me rethink Deep Purple as a band entirely. I thoroughly enjoyed In Rock way more than I thought I would, but...I still don't think it's quite there as a Metal album. I initially thought it was, but after sleeping on it and relistening to other 1970's Hard Rock/Metal albums, it's still too much in the grey area for me personally. The ideas are there, but they're muddied up by too many other influences much in the same way as Black Sabbath's debut. If anything, I'm more skeptical of Black Sabbath than I am In Rock just due to the massive Blues Rock influence that Sabbath has.
It's very apparent that Sabbath and Deep Purple were going for very different things though, since the Sabbath debut sounds definitely evil and plodding whereas In Rock is way more energetic and loose. It's cool to see the different Metal subgenre ideas appear before Metal was even really a thing, since like others have said before in this thread, Metal can take on many forms.
If anything, these sorts of discussions make me wonder about the validity and line that the Hard Rock genre has more than the Heavy or Doom Metal one. Hard Rock, to me, seems to have lost its footing as music continues to push its extremes and "Heavier Rock" just doesn't seem to cut it for a distinction sometimes. Especially for someone like me who, as said in the first paragraph, grew up in a world where Rock and Hard Rock were kind of the same thing.
After all that rambling, In Rock is a fantastic album but after reading all the arguments for and against it, I don't think it has quite enough teeth to it to really be considered Heavy Metal for me. Hopefully I can try to be more active in the discussion now that things have calmed down on the personal side of things, glad to see people still sticking around!
"Electric Funeral" then. Metal or not? If so, what subgenre?
Personally, I'd suggest that it's a heavily psychedelic dirge that's just as comfortable under the stoner metal or traditional doom metal tags.
Well I use the psych metal tag myself, although I admit it's been difficult to find a psych metal album that doesn't fit under another tag, but there's no way in hell I'm called Mestarin Kynsi psych ROCK. The first and last thirds of this song fit perfectly under my psych metal tag, and of course, we get a hard rock heavy metal midsection with some easy Deep Purple influence in the vein of the speedier stuff on In Rock which we went over. This is the song that practically covers every side of the album, and the reason I love this type of album so much.
Slow stoner rock atmosphere within a hard rock/heavy metal frame, with a somewhat progressive section midway through.
I uh...don't really know. Metal, certainly, but I'm going to go with a lazy but safe doom metal.
I'd agree with the traditional doom metal tag.
Now things start to get really interesting for the remainder of the tracklisting. What do you think of "Hand of Doom"? Metal or not? What subgenre?
Despite the doomy section at the start & end, I feel that this track simply "feels" more like rock than metal with the middle part sitting very clearly in the hard rock space. I'm gonna go with stoner rock on this one.
The first section feels freakishly on the border for me. But the midsection does get much more hard rock with a simple metal edge where the energy is concerned. So I'll tag it hard rock with heavy metal being a very close secondary, as the stoner aspect seems weaker than the previous songs off Paranoid as well as the stoner songs from the debut.
RYM STYLE
Hard Rock
Heavy Metal, Doom Metal, Prog Rock
"Hand of Doom" has a mid-tempo hard rock/heavy metal groove. Though it sometimes gets a bit progressive, and they speed up from there in the midsection, having a bit of a superior Alice Cooper Band-like psychedelic vibe.
Sounds kind of psychedelic to my not very psychedelic ears, so I'm going to go with the probably specifically wrong, but broadly correct psychedelic rock with heavy metal as a secondary.
I don't have very strong feelings on this one, but I agree that it REALLY toes the line. The ideas in the beginning are very doom-y, but I'm not sure if the execution backs it up. The tempo change is still super borderline because it comes across as a more bouncy rock riff rather than a chugging heavy metal one, but I wouldn't be able to explain why.
I'd have to go with Daniel on Hard Rock / Stoner
How about "Rat Salad" then? Metal or not? What subgenre?
I'm going with heavy psych with a strong jazz-rock influence.
Kinda Allman Brothers-ish. I'm going pure hard rock, unless you want to label a 2.5 minute song jam band.
A Led Zeppelin-inspired blues/hard rock/heavy metal instrumental.
Hard rock.
What about "Fairies Wear Boots" then? Metal or not? What subgenre?
This one isn't that straight forward to be honest. I can see the argument for a metal tag but personally I think it sits more comfortably under heavy psych.
That leaves me with a result that looks like this for "Paranoid":
1. War Pigs - Stoner Metal
2. Paranoid - Heavy Metal
3. Planet Caravan - Psychedelic Folk
4. Iron Man - Traditional Doom Metal
5. Electric Funeral - Traditional Doom Metal/Stoner Metal
6. Hand of Doom - Stoner Rock
7. Rat Salad - Heavy Psych
8. Fairies Wear Boots - Heavy Psych
Based on those results, I'm comfortable with the album's metal credentials & are allocating it dual stoner metal & heavy psych tags in order to cover the majority of the sounds it contains. Once again, there's very little actual heavy metal on offer here as far as I can see so I feel that "Paranoid" is a better fit for The Fallen than it is for The Guardians. What do you guys think on that topic?
Unless anyone has any last minute nominations, we'll kick off our investigation into Sir Lord Baltimore's "Kingdom Come" album tomorrow.
In the case of our closer, it really pushes that line between hard rock and heavy metal, but I think I'd go 60% hard rock, 40% heavy metal. There's definitely some heavy psych in parts, but I'm not really convinced it's a primary. But when I think about it, stoner metal seems a little like a direct subgenre of heavy metal when you count bands like Spiritual Beggars.
This is another case of too many subgenres of metal to really judge. We have three kinds of metal on your tags, even though I would add heavy metal to Iron Man. In other words, the most accurate way to do it would simply be to call it a "metal" album again, which we can't really do on Metal Academy, so it's another screwy situation.
Btw, you said "Electric Wizard," not "Electric Funeral."
After thinking about it over the last few days, I don't think tagging a release with a broad, all-encompassing up-stream genre like "Metal" really accomplishes anything though to be honest. Genre-tags are really about drawing an appropriate audience to a release so they need to provide a broad overview of what people can expect to hear. Therefore, I've always thought that I should choose a tag that encompasses as much of the release as possible. If you ask yourself the question "Who will be more likely to enjoy this release?", is it ANY fan of metal or is it stoner metal fans? I would have thought that stoner fans are likely to enjoy the vast majority of this material, even if some of it sits outside of the metal spectrum. This concept is only made more relevant by our clan configuration & I'd suggest that The Fallen members are more in tune with this sound than The Guardians members are so the tag should reside in the group of genres attached to The Fallen in my opinion.
Maybe, but there are some albums that would attract multiple people. Not saying Paranoid is necessarily one of them, but in the end the decisions won't cause a massive riot one way or another. I mysel largely don't care which clan we put it under.
What about "Fairies Wear Boots" then? Metal or not? What subgenre?
This one isn't that straight forward to be honest. I can see the argument for a metal tag but personally I think it sits more comfortably under heavy psych.
Blues/hard rock.
Here's how I would genre-tag the 8 tracks in the album:
1. War Pigs - Hard rock/heavy metal/doom metal/progressive rock
2. Paranoid - Heavy metal
3. Planet Caravan - Psychedelia
4. Iron Man - Heavy metal
5. Electric Funeral - Stoner metal/hard rock/heavy metal/progressive rock
6. Hand of Doom - Hard rock/heavy metal/progressive rock/psychedelic rock
7. Rat Salad - Blues rock/hard rock/heavy metal
8. Fairies Wear Boots - Blues rock/hard rock
Primary genres: Heavy metal, hard rock
Secondary genres: Progressive rock, blues rock
You guys have fun with this project, but I'm gonna head out of this thread. As much fun as I had exploring the earlier metal releases, I want to get my mind back into the present. There are a few newer releases from other bands of different genres that I plan to review. Will I continue my time in this Roots project someday? I don't know. But I'm done here for now.