"The Roots of Metal" Project

Thanks for that Shezma. Please let the conversation continue around the "Deep Purple in Rock" topic but at the same time let's start to look at the next significant metal-related record to have been released in Black Sabbath's "Paranoid". So... "War Pigs" then. Metal or not? If so, what specific subgenre?

By its definition, I once again think "War Pigs" is closer to the modern stoner metal sound than it is to what we now know as your classic heavy metal one.  This description of stoner metal from RYM seems like the perfect way to describe this song as far as I can see:

"Combines elements of Doom Metal with elements of Psychedelic Rock and Blues Rock to create a melodic yet heavy sound."

It's another mixer, but it's mostly psych metal and doom metal with blues rock and a dash of prog attached.  This is dirtier and doomier than anything off the debut.  So if stoner metal's the tag we want, I guess it fits.

I say "War Pigs" is a mid-tempo hard rock/heavy metal track with a doomy intro, along with a progressively advanced structure though nowhere near as much as the more progressive bands today.

Deep Purple In Rock as a whole is proto-metal. It has elements that would become synonymous with heavy metal, but I feel like the jam nature of it is much closer to standard blues rock than anything metal. "Hard Lovin' Man" has a galloping triplet groove, which is close to metal ("The Trooper", "Raining Blood", etc.), but Heart's "Barracuda" uses it too; it isn't exclusive. 

Black Sabbath are heavy metal. They are the first heavy metal band, and the more through composed structure of tracks such as "Paranoid" and "War Pigs" makes it sound a lot closer to heavy metal than Deep Purple In Rock, even though sonically, it's probably less "heavy" than Deep Purple. 

Moving on with Black Sabbath's infamous sophomore record, what do we think of the ridiculously popular title track then? Metal or not? What subgenre exactly?

Personally, I've always viewed this one as one as being pure heavy metal & that still sounds right to me.

Hard rock, heavy metal, proto-punk.

Btw, did you know this was intended to be a filler track and was recorded in 20 minutes?

Pure heavy metal with a pop-ish tone.

Btw, did you know this was intended to be a filler track and was recorded in 20 minutes?

Isn't that one of the most famous bits of metal trivia? Like the various bits of black metal infamy and how And Justice for All has no bass as a joke?

Something that might not be as common. The cover art was picked back when the title was still supposed to be War Pigs, and that's supposed to be a war pig. The band felt the cover didn't fit the new title, with Ozzy going as far as to say it now looked like "a gay fencer", with Bill Ward replying, "a paranoid gay fencer."

No real differences of opinion on the last three songs. Stoner metal sounds like an interesting way to describe War Pigs, but it fits. I thought ahead of time I would have disagreed on Paranoid, since my memory was more hard rock than metal, but yeah, metal.

In Rock was always going to be controversial, since in the end even if some of us think it's metal, it's also one of those albums your dad thinks is metal. I bring that up not because I think anyone said no because of it, merely that it's the kind of aura that hangs around an album like this one. I'm curious if that kind of aura is still going to show up when we do Lucifer's Friend or, I guess Bow Wow?

Side note, Daniel, do you have a plan should Youtube do to embeds what it's doing to stuff on the main site?

"Hard Lovin' Man" has a galloping triplet groove, which is close to metal ("The Trooper", "Raining Blood", etc.), but Heart's "Barracuda" uses it too; it isn't exclusive. 

I would suggest that "Barracuda" is an example of a rock band utilizing a metal tool. I don't think it means that palm-muted, bottom-string triplets should automatically be added to the rock kit bag just because a rock band is using it as a one-off creative tool.

In Rock was always going to be controversial, since in the end even if some of us think it's metal, it's also one of those albums your dad thinks is metal. I bring that up not because I think anyone said no because of it, merely that it's the kind of aura that hangs around an album like this one. I'm curious if that kind of aura is still going to show up when we do Lucifer's Friend or, I guess Bow Wow?

Side note, Daniel, do you have a plan should Youtube do to embeds what it's doing to stuff on the main site?

Interestingly, I first got into Deep Purple through my dad's albums back in the mid 1980's & we've even seen them play live together on multiple occasions. Dad was into hard rock in a major way & occasionally bled over into metal too on occasion (Note: his favourite record ever is Metallica's "The Black Album" just quietly) which is really where the roots of my heavy music obsession come from to begin with. I just happened to be with my dad when I read Morpheus' above post so I took the opportunity to ask him some questions about Deep Purple & "In Rock"s metal status. He said that he's never regarded any of the Deep Purple records he's aware of as metal. I asked him where he thought the line between hard rock & metal was & he said that the stuff that I was listening to in the mid-to-late 1980's when I drifted away from his hard rock albums was what heavy metal really is in his opinion. He was referring to the Ozzy-era Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden & Judas Priest records that first saw me branching out from the Def Leppards, Motley Crues & Guns 'n' Roses'. He also said that he didn't hear Deep Purple being spoken of as heavy metal back in the day either which is interesting because it seems to be pretty common knowledge that they were. None of that proves anything but it was intriguing to gain his insights nonetheless.

In regards to "aura", I don't think bands like Lucifer's Friend or Bow Wow can be compared as they're simply so underground. I'm not intending on us covering every single release listed on Metal Archives here as a large portion of those clearly aren't metal. IF a release isn't already listed on Metal Academy then it won't be an automatic discussion point. It'll need a recommendation from a member who thinks it should qualify as metal for us to investigate it. On that topic, what does everyone think should follow "Paranoid"?

On the YouTube topic, I haven't given it any thought. If the function is no longer there then I don't think it'd create a major issue for us to be honest. It's more of a "nice to have".

Let's take a look at Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan" today. Anyone bold enough to claim it as metal? If not, what non-metal subgenre do you think it should sit under? It's certainly not a rock track as far as I can see so the common feeling that it's a psychedelic rock song is incorrect in my opinion. I'm gonna go for psychedelic folk with tribal ambient & jazz influences.

There's about as much folk to me as jazz, otherwise it's mostly just acoustic to me.  Basically, if there was a song I'd tag with a "psych" primary as opposed to "psych rock" or anything, this would be it.

I was pretty close to going with just a "psychedelia" tag myself to be honest.

Just psychedelia, nothing else.

"Hard Lovin' Man" has a galloping triplet groove, which is close to metal ("The Trooper", "Raining Blood", etc.), but Heart's "Barracuda" uses it too; it isn't exclusive. 

I would suggest that "Barracuda" is an example of a rock band utilizing a metal tool. I don't think it means that palm-muted, bottom-string triplets should automatically be added to the rock kit bag just because a rock band is using it as a one-off creative tool.

I will note that I've seen people describe that track (and just that track from them) as metal before.

As to the next album, I kind of want to see Lucifer's Friend and I kind of don't. It's sort of weaseled itself into any conversation about early heavy metal and it feels like even if I don't think it's metal, it should still be discussed. Just the debut, since I don't think any of the later albums are much in the running AFAIK.

(I don't have any thoughts on Planet Caravan beyond not metal)

As to the next album, I kind of want to see Lucifer's Friend and I kind of don't. It's sort of weaseled itself into any conversation about early heavy metal and it feels like even if I don't think it's metal, it should still be discussed. Just the debut, since I don't think any of the later albums are much in the running AFAIK.

I'll need to take your guidance on the Lucifer's Friend debut as I've never heard it in full. I've only heard the opening track "Ride In The Sky". If you (or any other familiar members) think it's not a metal release then I'm not seeing enough evidence elsewhere to make it a necessity. Outside of Lucifer's Friend, here are the other remaining 1970 candidates (as per Metal Archives):

Flower Travellin' Band - "Always"

Sir Lord Baltimore - "Kingdom Come"

I haven't heard the Flower Travellin' Band record but RYM has a YES 2 NO 40 vote on heavy metal for that one so I would suggest that it's not worth pursuing unless someone tells me otherwise.

I'm not sure if all of you are across the old Metal Academy podcast but Ben & I did a trial episode before committing to creating the first legitimate show back in the mid-2010's. It was essentially a 45+ minute episode on Sir Lord Baltimore's "Kingdom Come" that went really deep into every aspect of that record. The reason it's not on the Metal Academy database is because (despite being really well acquainted with it) neither of us think that it's a legitimate metal record. It seems to have the strongest case of the three though so I'm open to other member's thoughts if anyone feels we're wrong & want us to take a look at it.

I only found Flower Travellin' Band's album "Anywhere" but it's just covers, suprisingly Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath is one of them and it does goes fairly hard considering it released soon after the song/album did. Otherwise, if you consider them doing 'harder' renditions of House of a Rising Sun and Twenty-First Century Schizoid man then sure but even then I don't believe it to be metal. I also concur that Sir Lord Baltimore is just hard blues rock because I got a good Jimmy Hendrix vibe and such whereas if that's the case we would need to look into the 50's and 60's for some metal (which there probably is some underlying forgotten gem of a metal record then to be fair).

I also concur that Sir Lord Baltimore is just hard blues rock because I got a good Jimmy Hendrix vibe and such whereas if that's the case we would need to look into the 50's and 60's for some metal (which there probably is some underlying forgotten gem of a metal record then to be fair).

Outside of one clear Black Sabbath-inspired metal song, the influences are pretty obviously Jimi Hendrix-style psychedelic rock & Led Zeppelin's brand of blues/hard rock as far as I can see but I admit that there seems to be enough of a cross-section of opinions on "Kingdom Come" that we may need to include it anyway. Everyone will need to bare in mind that in order for it to be eligible for inclusion in the final list it'll need to go through the Hall of Judgement though.

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.

Candlemass only exists because they took songs like this as an influence.  If someone wants to call it traditional doom or proto-doom or whatever, I'm not gonna blame anybody.  In fact, I would probably go as far as to blame anyone who would criticize the notion.  So we scored three songs out of four to be metal.

And suffice it to say, this album has been a major point in comparing hard rock AND metal albums for me since I first heard it, especially by the time I made good top 100's for each.  There are only four metal albums that beat it, and only one hard rock album, ironically my number one album of all time: Led Zeppelin IV.  In other words, this album helped set the standard of how I judge albums overall, being one of the major sources for my expressed love of variety.

The Hall of Judgement poll on the metal credentials of “Deep Purple in Rock” is evenly split at 3-3 at the moment which means that we’re gonna need quite a few more votes to achieve a clear majority & force a result. If you’re a member of The Guardians & are yet to submit a vote then I’d like to encourage you to participate.