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Heavy Metal
The early half of the decade witnessed an unparalled explosion of popular music. Vanguard acts, such as The Beatles (I Wanna Hold Your Hand), The Rolling Stones (Paint It Black), The Who (My Generation), and The Kinks (You Really Got Me), emerged as the "third generation" of rock and roll (behind the blues originators and the Elvis Presely/Little Richard generation). -
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When Heavy Metal began
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When Metal was introduced but not listened to much
Unlike the creation of, well, creation, which (allegedly) only took six days, Heavy Metal took a slightly longer bath in the primordial stew before making it's grand entrance onto the world stage. For the sake of brevity, we begin our journey in the 1960's. The early half of the decade witnessed an unparalled explosion of popular music. Vanguard acts, such as The Beatles (I Wanna Hold Your Hand), The Rolling Stones (Paint It Black), The Who (My Generation), and The Kinks (You Really Got Me), e -
The birth of Heavy Metal
ust as physicists point to the Big Bang as the origin of our universe, so too can we pinpoint the exact moment and location when heavy metal burst forth onto the scene. That place and time? England’s West Midlands, Birmingham to be exact, in 1968. What happens when you have a generation come of age in an economically depressed industrial town during an era of lost innocence? Well, Black Sabbath (Paranoid) happens. The quartet forged a sound that recalled the clamor of the steel mills (Iron Man) -
Heavy Metal conitnues
Each of these groups contributed to the creation the "rock band" archetype: loud, unpredictable, rebellious, and even dangerous. By the latter half of the 1960's, the next generation of "rock stars" began to sow first seeds of protypical Heavy Metal. Drawing inspiration from their blues and rock and roll forebearers, "hard rock" acts, like Cream (Tales of Brave Ulysses), Led Zeppelin (Communication Breakdown), and The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Voodoo Child), provided the soundtrack for a gener -
Hellbent for Leather
With the musical foundation laid by Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, it was only a matter of time before someone synthesized heavy metal into a complete and proper ethos. Enter Judas Priest (Victim of Changes). Like Black Sabbath before them, Judas Priest hailed from Birmingham and sounded every bit the part. Yet, Priest incorporated many of the musical elements pioneered by Deep Purple. The quintet successfully combined the darkness and intensity (Dissident Aggressor) of Black Sabbath with the mu -
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal
With the dawn of the 1980s came the birth of heavy metal’s second generation. Still centered primarily in England, this collection of bands earned the moniker the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal,” a play on the name bestowed to the “new wave” sensation in the pop charts. Vanguard acts like Iron Maiden (Hallowed Be Thy Name), Motörhead (Iron Fist), Saxon (Machine Gun), and Diamond Head (Am I Evil?) developed a distinctly new brand of heavy metal -
Grungy Days in Purgatory
The remaining audience not alienated by metal’s extreme diversion followed the exodus created by the Grunge movement in the early to mid-1990s. The emergence of Grunge truly signaled the death knell for hair metal. Led by Seattle’s Nirvana (Smells Like Teen Spirit), Soundgarden (Outshined), and Alice in Chains (Them Bones), Grunge picked up where hair metal left off: a simplified musical approach. However, the comparison ended there. Gone were the theatrics and upbeat lyrical subjects, replaced
