Would you consider these groups "Heavy Metal"?

YellowSnow

Deep Purple
AC DC
Van Halen
Led Zeppelin

On occasion, I've seen some here comment that groups like "AC DC" are not "heavy metal". I'd be curious to hear people's opinions.

For reference, AllMusic.com, which I consider to be a definitive source for rock bios, album reviews, etc. puts all 4 in the heavy metal genre.
https://www.allmusic.com/style/heavy-metal-ma0000002721

BearsWiin

No

Hard rock, maybe

Classic rock, definitely

Any group that puts out something akin to Led Zep III cannot evar be called heavy metal

UW_Doog_Bot

Yes (or predecessor to what would become metal)
No, soccer moms might disagree. A great band but only heavy for those looking from the outside in. Rock n roll all the way.
Van Halen is borderline. "Glam Metal" if they are. They are a part of the "pop metal" that drove the heavy sounds and darker tone of other groups resisting "pop-metal" and the assimilation to mainstream media. Whitesnake, guns n' roses, winger...
Definite No for me. Zepp is hard/heavy rock. I'd put them in a similar category to deep purple but less "Metal". They DID have a big influence on what would become metal but I would never put them there as a "metal" band.

In no list of "top metal bands" would you ever see anyone other than Deep Purple which given the success of these bands, you'd expect them to unseat someone like Manowar(who regularly makes top 50 lists but is nothing special).

Swaye

None of that is metal but ACDC was very close in their time. TBH, in the 80's ACDC was considered metal. In modern times it is considered hard rock. Deep Purple is one of those "getting to heavy metal" kind of bands, even though they existed alongside and after Sabbath, which is metal. It's a strange thing, I know.

BearsWiin

There needs to be a sinister element to a band for it to be considered heavy metal. Singing about drinking and fucking isn't sinister, no matter how strong the guitarplay

MariotaTheGawd

BearsWiin said:

There needs to be a sinister element to a band for it to be considered heavy metal. Singing about drinking and fucking isn't sinister, no matter how strong the guitarplay

lyrical content is about the least important thing when determining whether something is metal or not. lots of folk metal is about booze. power metal has all sorts of high fantasy stuff.

Purple_Pills

Is Iron Maiden “heavy metal?” As a kid viewing their album covers I thought so. As an adult after to listening to many of their concert staples such as “Fear of the Dark,” “Powerslave,” “Hollowed be thy Name,” “When the Wild Blows,” etc. I think they are more epic rock (ala GnR) than heavy/death metal. Maybe years of Rock music have numbed me. Stuff like Slayer, Pantera, GWAR, etc. = heavy metal for sure.

YellowSnow

UW_Doog_Bot said:

Yes (or predecessor to what would become metal)
No, soccer moms might disagree. A great band but only heavy for those looking from the outside in. Rock n roll all the way.
Van Halen is borderline. "Glam Metal" if they are. They are a part of the "pop metal" that drove the heavy sounds and darker tone of other groups resisting "pop-metal" and the assimilation to mainstream media. Whitesnake, guns n' roses, winger...
Definite No for me. Zepp is hard/heavy rock. I'd put them in a similar category to deep purple but less "Metal". They DID have a big influence on what would become metal but I would never put them there as a "metal" band.

In no list of "top metal bands" would you ever see anyone other than Deep Purple which given the success of these bands, you'd expect them to unseat someone like Manowar(who regularly makes top 50 lists but is nothing special).

So basically football wasn’t invented till 1994 and Metal wasn’t invented until the late 70s and early 1980s with the first Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Metallica records? This is simply not historically accurate. The genre was birthed in 1969 with the first LZ and Sabbath recordings which were a huge departure from the heavy blues rock of Cream, Jeff Beck and Hendrix. Sabbath and Zeppelin may sound quaint in comparison to Metallica but they were heavy as fuck for the time. And the people listeing at the time called it heavy metal.

MariotaTheGawd

Purple_Pills said:

Is Iron Maiden “heavy metal?” As a kid viewing their album covers I thought so. As an adult after to listening to many of their concert staples such as “Fear of the Dark,” “Powerslave,” “Hollowed be thy Name,” “When the Wild Blows,” etc. I think they are more epic rock (ala GnR) than heavy/death metal. Maybe years of Rock music have numbed me. Stuff like Slayer, Pantera, GWAR, etc. = heavy metal for sure.

Is Iron Maiden a metal band? Uh yes

YellowSnow

BearsWiin said:

There needs to be a sinister element to a band for it to be considered heavy metal. Singing about drinking and fucking isn't sinister, no matter how strong the guitarplay

Immigrant song is sinister as fuck.

MariotaTheGawd

YellowSnow said:

UW_Doog_Bot said:

Yes (or predecessor to what would become metal)
No, soccer moms might disagree. A great band but only heavy for those looking from the outside in. Rock n roll all the way.
Van Halen is borderline. "Glam Metal" if they are. They are a part of the "pop metal" that drove the heavy sounds and darker tone of other groups resisting "pop-metal" and the assimilation to mainstream media. Whitesnake, guns n' roses, winger...
Definite No for me. Zepp is hard/heavy rock. I'd put them in a similar category to deep purple but less "Metal". They DID have a big influence on what would become metal but I would never put them there as a "metal" band.

In no list of "top metal bands" would you ever see anyone other than Deep Purple which given the success of these bands, you'd expect them to unseat someone like Manowar(who regularly makes top 50 lists but is nothing special).

So basically football wasn’t invented till 1994 and Metal wasn’t invented until the late 70s and early 1980s with the first Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Metallica records? This is simply not historically accurate. The genre was birthed in 1969 with the first LZ and Sabbath recordings which were a huge departure from the heavy blues rock of Cream, Jeff Beck and Hendrix. Sabbath and Zeppelin may sound quaint in comparison to Metallica but they were heavy as fuck for the time. And the people listeing at the time called it heavy metal.

That image is dumb also because I seriously doubt the person on the right would hear death metal and say "hey that's rock music!"

BearsWiin

YellowSnow said:

BearsWiin said:

There needs to be a sinister element to a band for it to be considered heavy metal. Singing about drinking and fucking isn't sinister, no matter how strong the guitarplay

Immigrant song is sinister as fuck.

You're just a sucker for threshing oar rowboat lyrics.

LZ had their moments, but they did too much other folksy and bluesy and even country to be called true heavy metal. Sabbath, obviously. LZ, not so much.

RaceBannon

There was rock like the Beatles and then hard rock like Zeppelin. Blues rock like Clapton

To me who was there Sabbath was the first metal band. A little scary and the missing fingertips made a new sound

Hair metal was just 80s Zeppelin. Heavy metal was Metallica et al

backthepack

Classic/hard rock

MariotaTheGawd

I would say the first metal album is Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath. It still holds up as metal today, whereas no one views that lame Greta Van Fleet band as metal, so Zeppelin and Deep Purple, not so much. Although I do love Deep Purple and its associated acts (Captain Beyond, Rainbow).

YellowSnow

The first usage of the term heavy metal in the rock press was a Mike Saunders piece in Creem in 1971.

In a May 1971 review of Sir Lord Baltimore’s debut, Kingdom Come (Mercury), Creem reviewer Mike Saunders wrote:

This album is a far cry from the currently prevalent Grand Funk sludge, because Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book. Precisely, they sound like a mix between the uptempo noiseblasts of Led Zeppelin (instrumentally) and singing that’s like an unending Johnny Winter shriek: they have it all down cold, including medium or uptempo blasts a la LZ, a perfect carbon of early cataclysmic MC5 (“Hard Rain Fallin’”), and the one-soft-an-album concept originated by Jimmy Page and his gang. (“Baltimore” 71).

Swaye

Metal started with Sabbath. It was perfected by Metallica 15 years later, and then splintered into a dozen "types" of metal in the years that followed. The end.

Dennis_DeYoung

Swaye said:

Metal started with Sabbath. It was perfected by Metallica 15 years later, and then splintered into a dozen "types" of metal in the years that followed. The end.

This.

PurpleThrobber

Heavy metal is like porn. I know it when I see (hear) it.

Sabbath, for sure. Scorpions, maybe. ACDC, probably not - just hard rock.

El_K

None of those bands are metal.

I believe time has made most metal bands sound hard rock nowadays.

UW_Doog_Bot

YellowSnow said:

UW_Doog_Bot said:

Yes (or predecessor to what would become metal)
No, soccer moms might disagree. A great band but only heavy for those looking from the outside in. Rock n roll all the way.
Van Halen is borderline. "Glam Metal" if they are. They are a part of the "pop metal" that drove the heavy sounds and darker tone of other groups resisting "pop-metal" and the assimilation to mainstream media. Whitesnake, guns n' roses, winger...
Definite No for me. Zepp is hard/heavy rock. I'd put them in a similar category to deep purple but less "Metal". They DID have a big influence on what would become metal but I would never put them there as a "metal" band.

In no list of "top metal bands" would you ever see anyone other than Deep Purple which given the success of these bands, you'd expect them to unseat someone like Manowar(who regularly makes top 50 lists but is nothing special).

So basically football wasn’t invented till 1994 and Metal wasn’t invented until the late 70s and early 1980s with the first Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Metallica records? This is simply not historically accurate. The genre was birthed in 1969 with the first LZ and Sabbath recordings which were a huge departure from the heavy blues rock of Cream, Jeff Beck and Hendrix. Sabbath and Zeppelin may sound quaint in comparison to Metallica but they were heavy as fuck for the time. And the people listeing at the time called it heavy metal.

Broski, I put Deep Purple down as a yes so Idk why you coming at me like this. Sabbath was the first true "heavy metal" band by most people's reckoning. There are bands that put out records or songs that sounded "Heavy Metal" before that but they were the first to really define the sound and genre consistently which inspired a whole lot of others. As with all things art there's going to be some arbitrary divide where things get a bit messy and reasonable people can disagree about what is this and what is that.