I disagree, I do not think Led Zeppelin are a metal band at all.
Heavy Metal first came about with Black Sabbath's S/T album.
Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath share their similarities, but Led Zeppelin do not have a heavy atmosphere to their music that Black Sabbath has, which is present in all metal.
I am not going to bother with the "Led Zep have rock riffs and rock drumming" arguement, because there is something more important regarding the matter.
A good summary of what metal is might look something like this:
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| A focus on the guitar-riff as the main element around which a song is written, combined with a sound/production that is 'heavy' (with sub-genres differing on how 'heavy' is interpreted) and an attidude in lyrics, vocals, imagery and song-structures that has been come to known as 'metal attitude', an attitude which is basically about rebellion against the status quo or elements of society |
There is also a particular style of metal drumming, but generally the focus remains on the guitar.
(The guitar riff focus has ultimately changed in some genres, progressive and avantgarde metal taking it to a more free-form style, Drone Metal discarding riffs all together, Funeral Doom Metal based around Keyboard melodies, etc etc)
Black Sabbath down tuned to C (the lowest tuning of the time), they sang about dark topics, they were unconventional, their music had a rich atmosphere, and thus the birth of metal.
Led Zeppelin, IMO, have none of these characteristics.
Explaining the metal 'Rebellion' and it's difference to the Punk 'Rebellion'
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Originally Posted by mornox
I think a certain degree of 'rebelliousness' is by necessity implicit in every metal-act, by virtue of the types of people involved in making it. There's just a certain mindset at work in metal that is at odds with the general societal mindset and that mindset shines through so clearly in a metal song that any metal fan will instantly recognise it as 'true metal', regardless of the specific form the metal takes (power metal or black metal; a world of difference, but both metal). I chose to call that rebelliousness, someone else may call it 'evil', or 'darkness' or whatever, but there is most certainly a shared 'metal' mentality that is instantly recognisable by any metal-listener.
Hmm. Well, for one thing, real punks are usually quite openly politically rebellious (usually in a leftist way, but RAC and the like show that this isn't a hard and fast rule). Metal seems to be less about politics or changing the system from within, as it is about just discarding politics, or even the rules as such; the general metal-head is an outsider, while the punk is more of an activist.
Then again, the infusion of punk/hardcore characteristics during the birth of thrash, death and black metal undoubtedly brought along a change in this attitude as well, so you could say that the metal attitude in the later era's has shifted more from an outsider culture into a somewhat activist one;however, more often than not, extreme metal views on 'rebelling against society', even when they propose sound alternatives to this society, tend to remain highly idealistic and fantastical; no one, not even the musicians themselves, honestly believe in a return to the pagan past, or the dawn of the new satanic era, or the coming age of chaos and death or whatever.
So, punks seem more pragmatic, while metal-fans seem more idealistic. I also think that's why metal has such a greater amount of staying power than punk, since it can't be as easily subverted by the system, since it wants nothing to do with the system (opposed to punk which is all about spreading the message through the system, opening itself up to exploitation), while it also doesn't lose fans to cynicism as much, since cynicism is already at the heart of rejecting society; the general metal-fan, in my experience, doesn't directly need to change society, just rejecting its principles and superficially interacting with it when you need to, while keeping your own counsel and ideals already works well enough.
Punks rebel externally, metallers rebel internally (while there's the image thing, this image is allowed in the democracies in which metal thrives, so this isn't an active political rebellion, but an internal rebellion about mores and having the appropriate image)
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Taken from a discussion thread on the Metal-Archives forum.
Metal gives the freedom to go "**** you, I'll say what I believe!"
Side of the Moon
