Who was the first heavy metal band?
13869#45
Critics disagree over who can be thought of as the first heavy metal band. Most credit either Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath, with American commentators tending to favour Led Zeppelin and British commentators tending to favour Black Sabbath, though many give equal credit to both. A few commentators—mainly American—argue for other groups including Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf or Blue Cheer. Deep Purple, the third band in what is sometimes considered the "unholy trinity" of heavy metal (Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple), despite being slightly older than Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, fluctuated between many rock styles until late 1969 when they took a heavy metal direction.
Heavy metal music
43857787#2
The Argentine Rock of the late 1970s included bands such as Pappo's Blues, El Reloj, Vox Dei and Pescado Rabioso. The fans of those bands would eventually create the first heavy metal bands. There was no specialized press at the time, and bands and concerts were scarce. Pappo, who was already a famous musician and had been in Europe for some time, created a band influenced by the new wave of British heavy metal, Riff. V8, a band with less popularity, mixed heavy metal and punk rock, and became notable during an incident at the "Buenos Aires Rock" concert.
Argentine heavy metal
43857787#0
The Argentine heavy metal is a heavy metal music movement that originated in Argentina in the 1980s. The first popular artist was Pappo, who created the band Riff influenced by the contemporary new wave of British heavy metal. V8 was formed at that time as well, and most of its members created notable bands after their respective departures from the band: Ricardo Iorio and Walter Giardino, currently in Almafuerte and Rata Blanca, are still popular. The second half of the 1980s saw the success of hard rock bands such as Kamikaze, Alakran and Rata Blanca, with an aesthetic similar to the contemporary glam metal. Thrash metal bands, such as Hermética, Horcas and Lethal, appeared in the early 1990s.
Argentine heavy metal
171080#50
Heavy metal is characterized by aggressive, driving rhythms, amplified and distorted guitars, grandiose lyrics, and virtuosic instrumentation. Heavy metal's origins lie in the hard rock bands who took blues and rock and created a heavy sound built on guitar and drums. Most of the pioneers in the field were British; the first major American bands came in the early 1970s, like Blue Öyster Cult, KISS, and Aerosmith. Heavy metal remained, however, a largely underground phenomenon. During the 1980s the first major pop-metal style arose and dominated the charts for several years kicked off by metal act Quiet Riot and dominated by bands such as Mötley Crüe and Ratt; this was glam metal, a hard rock and pop fusion with a raucous spirit and a glam-influenced visual aesthetic. Some of these bands, like Bon Jovi, became international stars. The band Guns N' Roses rose to fame near the end of the decade with an image that was a reaction against the glam metal aesthetic.
Music of the United States
43409647#0
Canadian heavy metal music has a long history. Going back to the late 1960s, Canada has produced metal bands that have and continue to influence metal bands to this day. In 1964, Toronto-based band The Sparrows was formed. This band later changed their name to Steppenwolf and featured Canadians John Kay, Goldy McJohn and Jerry Edmonton. Steppenwolf's 1968 single "Born to be Wild" was the first use of the words 'heavy metal' in a song's lyric. In 1970, Woodstock, Ontario based Warpig released their metal music debut, which, although never reaching mainstream success like fellow heavy metal bands Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, has become a cult favourite within the Doom metal scene.
Canadian heavy metal
13869#43
One of the most influential bands in forging the merger of psychedelic rock and acid rock with the blues rock genre was the British power trio Cream, who derived a massive, heavy sound from unison riffing between guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce, as well as Ginger Baker's double bass drumming. Their first two LPs, "Fresh Cream" (1966) and "Disraeli Gears" (1967), are regarded as essential prototypes for the future style of heavy metal. The Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut album, "Are You Experienced" (1967), was also highly influential. Hendrix's virtuosic technique would be emulated by many metal guitarists and the album's most successful single, "Purple Haze", is identified by some as the first heavy metal hit. Vanilla Fudge, whose first album also came out in 1967, has been called "one of the few American links between psychedelia and what soon became heavy metal", and the band has been cited as an early American heavy metal group. On their self-titled debut album, Vanilla Fudge created "loud, heavy, slowed-down arrangements" of contemporary hit songs, blowing these songs up to "epic proportions" and "bathing them in a trippy, distorted haze."
Heavy metal music
13869#50
On the other side of the Atlantic, the trend-setting group was Grand Funk Railroad, described as "the most commercially successful American heavy-metal band from 1970 until they disbanded in 1976, [they] established the Seventies success formula: continuous touring". Other influential bands identified with metal emerged in the U.S., such as Sir Lord Baltimore ("Kingdom Come," 1970), Blue Öyster Cult ("Blue Öyster Cult", 1972), Aerosmith ("Aerosmith", 1973) and Kiss ("Kiss", 1974). Sir Lord Baltimore's 1970 debut album and both Humble Pie's debut and self-titled third album were all among the first albums to be described in print as "heavy metal", with "As Safe As Yesterday Is" being referred to by the term "heavy metal" in a 1970 review in "Rolling Stone" magazine. Various smaller bands from the U.S., U.K, and Continental Europe, including Bang, Josefus, Leaf Hound, Primeval, Hard Stuff, Truth and Janey, Dust, JPT Scare Band, Frijid Pink, Cactus, May Blitz, Captain Beyond, Toad, Granicus, Iron Claw, and Yesterday's Children, though lesser known outside of their respective scenes, proved to be greatly influential on the emerging metal movement. In Germany, Scorpions debuted with "Lonesome Crow" in 1972. Blackmore, who had emerged as a virtuoso soloist with Deep Purple's highly influential album "Machine Head" (1972), left the band in 1975 to form Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio, singer and bassist for blues rock band Elf and future vocalist for Black Sabbath and heavy metal band Dio. Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio would expand on the mystical and fantasy-based lyrics and themes sometimes found in heavy metal, pioneering both power metal and neoclassical metal. These bands also built audiences via constant touring and increasingly elaborate stage shows.
Heavy metal music
13869#44
During the late 1960s, many psychedelic singers, such as Arthur Brown, began to create outlandish, theatrical and often macabre performances; which in itself became incredibly influential to many metal acts. The American psychedelic rock band Coven, who opened for early heavy metal influencers such as Vanilla Fudge and the Yardbirds, portrayed themselves as practitioners of witchcraft or black magic, using dark—Satanic or occult—imagery in their lyrics, album art, and live performances. Live shows consisted of elaborate, theatrical "Satanic rites." Coven's 1969 debut album, "Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls", featured imagery of skulls, black masses, inverted crosses, and Satan worship, and both the album artwork and the band's live performances marked the first appearances in rock music of the sign of the horns, which would later become an important gesture in heavy metal culture. At the same time in England, the band Black Widow were also among the first psychedelic rock bands to use occult and Satanic imagery and lyrics, though both Black Widow and Coven's lyrical and thematic influences on heavy metal were quickly overshadowed by the darker and heavier sounds of Black Sabbath.
Heavy metal music
11287279#2
The new wave of American heavy metal has its origins in a group of post-grunge acts from the 1990s that brought heavy metal "back to its core brutality" and drawing not from the traditional blues formula but from thrash metal and punk. In the book "The Next Generation of Rock & Punk", Joel McIver acknowledged Korn as the pioneers of the new wave of American heavy metal, and also credits them as the first band labeled as nu metal. The nu metal genre was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Other roots of NWOAHM are attributed to bands such as Pantera, Biohazard, and Machine Head.
The producers behind the 2005 documentary "" have written of the NWOAHM: "In essence, NWOAHM can embody the seething aggression of the 'hardcore' hormone, but play a type of acrobatic, precise, technical thrash/death metal synthesis regularly touched by the melody of traditional metal, but often just briefly. Vocally, these bands huddle around Pantera-derived roar, leaning toward a death metal bark, but often with 'clean' or 'sung' vocals as ear candy, sometimes from a member of the band who is not the front man." They also reference Unearth, Shadows Fall, and Lamb of God as "leaders of the pack".
New wave of American heavy metal
4353898#18
Millennium was formed in 1988 as one of the first Indian metal bands it laid the foundation for the Indian heavy metal scene. Demonic Resurrection laid the foundation for Indian extreme metal early in 2000 when extreme metal in India was a scarce minority, since then it has garnered popularity especially in the underground scene and spawned many bands such as Corroded Dreams, Escher's Knot, Crypted, Bestial Murder, and some bands have adapted to black metal driven sound with a rawer sound and satanic lyrics. Bands such as Dark Desolation from Bengaluru and Fortified Destruction from Chennai have gone down that path. Many prolific extreme metal bands have spawned from the Chennai local scenes like Siva from Crypted, Abhijit Rao from Escher's Knot, Vyas "Hex" Manalan from Fortified Destruction who are all frontmen of their respective bands and all known for their extreme vocal capabilities and the addition of guitar in the case of Hex. With many extreme metal bands from other countries, such as Behemoth, Gojira, and Cradle of Filth are setting foot on the India. Some of the most popular heavy metal bands in India are Undying INC, Zygnema, Bhayanak Maut, Albatros, Noiseware, Abraxas, Devoid, Sceptre, Kryptos, The Down Troddence, Crypted, Halakuah, Inner Sanctum, Scribe, and Cosmic Infusion. New emerging bands from India are now focused on spreading heavy metal and extreme metal music to the masses; there are frequent heavy metal gigs across India; though it is a niche in the genre, more and more people are becoming aware of the genre and bands like Orcus, Carnage INC, Primitiv, Eternal Returns, Killchain to name a few. From Central India, Nicotine, a band based in Indore, is widely credited of being the one of the pioneers of heavy metal music in the region. In recent years, the a wave of Indian extreme metal bands are growing in popularity with bands like Brazen Molok, being the flag bearer of this new wave.
Indian rock