"The Roots of Metal" Project

Catching up: 

"Hard Rain Fallin'" - Hard Rock, no Metal. 

"Lady of Fire" - Daniel describes it perfectly here, no Metal. 

"Lake Isle of Innersfree" - In the context of the rest of the album, still Psych Rock / Prog Rock. No Metal.

"Pumped Up" - Still Hard Rock to me now that I'm getting more acclimated to the spread of albums around 1970. No Metal.

How about the title track from "Kingdom Come"? Metal or not? Subgenre?

An easy one. Pure Sabbath-inspired stoner metal. Sounds very different to the rest of the album.

Yeah, I'm going stoner metal and traditional heavy metal on this one.

Ah, this is what I remembered. Since we tend to be describing this kind of psych-heavy metal as stoner, stoner it is.

Turns out the edition I heard when I made my first comment had sides A and B reversed, so my comment on the first track was from muscle memory on the wrong tracklist.  So I switch my commentary on the first track to this rym standard:

Hard Rock, Blues Rock

Heavy Metal

I didn’t reject any argument for Lucifer’s Friend Morpheus. You said it wasn’t a metal release & I took your word for it as I haven’t heard it. I was also conscious that RYM has a largely negative vote tally for "Lucifer's Friend" which isn't the case for "Budgie" so was looking for some sort of justification. I’m perfectly happy to include it if you think it’s justified.

I was kind of throwing it over to everyone else's judgment as considerable debate amount it and it might be interesting to discuss.

Morpheus, I thought it'd be worth me giving "Lucifer's Friend" a few listens this week in order to see what we're dealing with & would subsequently suggest that it's much more of a hard rock/heavy psych record than a metal one. It's only got about one & a half songs worth of metal in my opinion but it's probably worth noting that I said exactly the same thing about "Deep Purple in Rock" which seems pretty similar in terms of metal content to be honest. In fact, Lucifer's Friend sound a lot like Deep Purple on this album which is a fucking great record too just quietly.

How about "I Got A Woman"? Metal or not? Subgenre?

I've got it down as a blues rock/heavy psych hybrid.

Kinda psych but mostly blues rock.

Heavy psych gets my vote.

How about "Hell Hound"? Metal or not? Subgenre?

This one is Led Zeppelin-inspired hard rock for mine.

Hard rock in every sense of the term.

Which word? “Hard” or “rock”?

Fixed.

I'm going to break from you two and go for heavy psych/hard rock.

How about "Helium Head (I Got A Love)"? Metal or not? Subgenre?

I've got blues rock/heavy psych on this one.

And finally, the final track from "Kingdom Come" in "Ain't Got Hung On You"? Metal or not? Subgenre?

I've got this one down as a dirty blues rock track which means that I've only found a single metal track on "Kingdom Come" in the title track so I can't justify the claims that it's a metal record. Anyone got a different result?

We'll start to look at the self-titled 1970 Lucifer's Friend album from tomorrow.

I found about a third of it to be "traditional heavy metal" and that's about it.

Helium Head, heavy psych.

Ain't Got Hung on You, dunno beyond not metal.

I think that outside of the title track it wasn't very metal. Bits of it got into metal, but no more than your average album from then got into methinks.

Let's kick off our deep dive into the self-titled Lucifer's Friend album with their most popular track "Ride The Sky":

Metal or not? Subgenre? I've got this one down as heavy metal. It sounds exactly like Deep Purple's more metallic moments only with that obvious bit of Led Zeppelin plagiarism. Great song though regardless.

Major Rainbow vibes here.  Heavy metal.

I think the horn is distracting people on this one. Hard rock.

I think the horn is distracting people on this one. Hard rock.

I listen to power metal.  Horn doesn't bother me.

I think the horn is distracting people on this one. Hard rock.

Nah, the horn is just peripheral. "Ride The Sky" is built around a chuggy, galloping, palm-muted bottom-string metal riff that sounds like something Iron Maiden would have come up with a decade later. You can easily hear Steve Harris playing it. 

Anyway... how about "Everybody's Clown" then? Metal or not? Subgenre?

The start & finish is a little ambiguous as there are one or two harder riffs that could go either way but I feel that the rest of the song & the overall feel tie "Everybody's Clown" to hard rock with a strong progressive rock influence running through that middle section.