Would you consider these groups "Heavy Metal"?
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
Comments
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No
Hard rock, maybe
Classic rock, definitely
Any group that puts out something akin to Led Zep III cannot evar be called heavy metal -
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).
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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.
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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
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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.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
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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.
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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.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).
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Is Iron Maiden a metal band? Uh yesPurple_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.
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Immigrant song is sinister as fuck.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
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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!"YellowSnow said:
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.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). -
You're just a sucker for threshing oar rowboat lyrics.YellowSnow said:
Immigrant song is sinister as fuck.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
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. -
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 -
Classic/hard rock
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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).
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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). -
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.
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This.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.
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Heavy metal is like porn. I know it when I see (hear) it.
Sabbath, for sure. Scorpions, maybe. ACDC, probably not - just hard rock.
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None of those bands are metal.
I believe time has made most metal bands sound hard rock nowadays.
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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.YellowSnow said:
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.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). -
WTF'd for comparing Iron Maiden to guns n roses. Jesus.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.
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Sorry Brosiv. Not meaning to come at you.UW_Doog_Bot said:
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.YellowSnow said:
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.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).
I posed the question because I find it chinteresting the difference between contemporary half brain metal head opinion as to what vs falls into the genre vs what the rock history books told me growing up. When I listen to songs like Communication Breakdown or Whole Lotta Love I hear the birth of the genre just as much as I do when I listen to the early Sabbath albums. Same with Deep Purple.
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Sabbath is the progenitor for heavy metal. Zep and Deep Purple were huge influences on several metal bands of the 80s, but Sabbath had a different vibe and edge with their sound - heavy distortion, power chords, and minor keys. These are main staples of heavy metal bands along with palm-muted guitar pedal tones (Metallica made these very popular). Guitar and amp technology made huge strides from the late 60s to the late 80s (thank you digital circuitry), and this has distorted (hardy har har) our perception of the earlier metal bands as metal or not.
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If you grew up on what would be called pop today but was considered rock back then like the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the like, where the Rolling Stones were considered edgy and a bit hard core then Black Sabbath would have freaked you out. And your parents.
There is a reason Ozzy is a cultural Icon -
the difference is I like porn...PurpleThrobber said:Heavy metal is like porn. I know it when I see (hear) it.
Sabbath, for sure. Scorpions, maybe. ACDC, probably not - just hard rock. -
Yes, its because Sharon fucked over everyone involved with Ozzy who wrote all of his shit for him. Tony Iommi is the real icon of Heavy MetalRaceBannon said:If you grew up on what would be called pop today but was considered rock back then like the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the like, where the Rolling Stones were considered edgy and a bit hard core then Black Sabbath would have freaked you out. And your parents.
There is a reason Ozzy is a cultural Icon -
All 4 Yellow listed definitely inspired metal bands but none should be considered Heavy Metal.
Deep Purple certainly has some heaviness but I'm afraid the use of a keyboard in every song disqualifies them. Sure its been used by Sabbath, Dio and others on some occasion but even Blackmore himself considered them an instrumental jam band who just happened to be able to use lyrics... Not metal
AC/DC uses about 5 chords, no palm muting, sings only about sex. Not enough depressing shit. Love them to death... Not metal.
Zepplin is too blues based, has too many folky sounding tunes. Certainly has elements of heavy... Not metal.
Van Halen is imo the closest, Eddie can be really heavy, has plenty of chunky riffs, super hot rodded solos. Arguably the most influential guitar player ever, but as much as I love them they have way too many songs with Motown-esque harmonies... Not metal
Also, you're a straight up fag if you dont think Iron Maiden is metal -
NojoeEDangerously said:
Yes, its because Sharon fucked over everyone involved with Ozzy who wrote all of his shit for him. Tony Iommi is the real icon of Heavy MetalRaceBannon said:If you grew up on what would be called pop today but was considered rock back then like the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the like, where the Rolling Stones were considered edgy and a bit hard core then Black Sabbath would have freaked you out. And your parents.
There is a reason Ozzy is a cultural Icon
The front man is the front man
The wife took care of her man
Page was 5 times the artist of Plant but Plant made Zeppelin -
You know who Jimmy wanted before Plant @RaceBannon ?RaceBannon said:
NojoeEDangerously said:
Yes, its because Sharon fucked over everyone involved with Ozzy who wrote all of his shit for him. Tony Iommi is the real icon of Heavy MetalRaceBannon said:If you grew up on what would be called pop today but was considered rock back then like the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the like, where the Rolling Stones were considered edgy and a bit hard core then Black Sabbath would have freaked you out. And your parents.
There is a reason Ozzy is a cultural Icon
The front man is the front man
The wife took care of her man
Page was 5 times the artist of Plant but Plant made Zeppelin -
Probably some fag named Rod
