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When we talk about the dawn of heavy metal, we often find ourselves looking towards the same group of acts as having been responsible for starting the trend – and for good reason.
Prior to the 1970s, rock music had already mutated in plenty of ways that saw it become heavier and more raucous, and while the pioneers of rock and roll in the 1950s were arguably making ‘heavy music’ for its time, other acts in the following decade realised that things could be pushed further.
Those who were after gentle pop hits were aghast at these permutations, believing that heavier guitars would lead to rebellion, and you only need to hear songs like Link Wray’s 1958 hit ‘Rumble’ to hear exactly what was meant when people believed that music was becoming more raucous.
Fast forward a few years, and guitars had only gotten more full of aggression. When you listen to the distortion on songs like The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’, which came out in 1964, you’re hearing a guitar sound that was considerably heavier than anything that had come before it, but that still doesn’t mean that metal had been created by this point, we were simply on our way to finding it.
Towards the end of the 1960s, Led Zeppelin came considerably closer to what would become regarded as metal, but because there was still a significant amount of influence from blues music, we still reflect on it now as being closer to hard rock than heavy metal. That being said, the birth of heavy metal was only around the corner at this point.
Most would unanimously agree that Black Sabbath started heavy metal with the release of their self-titled debut album in 1970, and virtually every metal artist in existence looks up to them as being the godfathers of the genre, not least Judas Priest’s Rob Halford. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2020, while counting down his top ten albums of all time, he proclaimed that Black Sabbath was the true progenitor of heavy metal, and said that it left a mark on music history with its trailblazing sound.
“They were local guys from the same neighborhood, the same neck of the woods as Priest,” he told the magazine. “We literally grew up together, inventing this great music that we love and cherish so much called heavy-metal music.”
Further elaborating on why this album in particular is one of his favourites, and also a genre-defining classic, he said: “I chose the Black Sabbath album just because, like so many bands, your first one or two records really establish who you are as a band. It’s a bit like Priest with Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny; [it] becomes the one we love so much because it becomes defining.
“With Black Sabbath, here was the first example of what heavy-metal music should sound like, just the texture, the tone, the structure of all of the material, Ozzy’s very unique voice. It’s just become a very important record in the discography of Black Sabbath.”
It might seem like an obvious answer to proclaim that Black Sabbath was the very first metal album, but it’s a choice that’s hard to argue with due to how radically different it was to anything else around it, and how it established the blueprint for an entire genre of music. Without Black Sabbath, there wouldn’t have been countless other metal acts, or dare I say, metal may not have existed at all.
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