[markm1]

Quote:

It's funny. The older I get the more I realize how seminal Black Sabbath were. I remember discovering "heaven and hell', and loving Dio's voice. Then later realizing it was the 1st few albums that now are credited for spawning an entire sub genres of metal. Back to that top 20 list- I think Master of Reality is one of the most important albums in the history of heavy music. If you haven't heard that album-please give it at least one listen!
 
Oh, yeah-Van Halen were OK too-hee, hee

 Really, wouldn't you have to give Van Halen some credit for the plethora of tech-fill in the blank-any sub genre you like?

Sorry couldn't resist this. Maybe some of you think it's grandpa metal, but here is what All musci guide writes of Masters of Reality:
 
The shortest album of Black Sabbath's glory years, Master of Reality is also their most sonically influential work. Here Tony Iommi began to experiment with tuning his guitar down three half-steps to C#, producing a sound that was darker, deeper, and sludgier than anything they'd yet committed to record. (This trick was still being copied 25 years later by every metal band looking to push the limits of heaviness, from trendy nu-metallers to Swedish deathsters.) Much more than that, Master of Reality essentially created multiple metal subgenres all by itself, laying the sonic foundations for doom, stoner and sludge metal, all in the space of just over half an hour. Classic opener "Sweet Leaf" certainly ranks as a defining stoner metal song, making its drug references far more overt (and adoring) than the preceding album's "Fairies Wear Boots." The album's other signature song, "Children of the Grave," is driven by a galloping rhythm that would later pop up on a slew of Iron Maiden tunes, among many others. Aside from "Sweet Leaf," much of Master of Reality finds the band displaying a stronger moral sense, in part an attempt to counteract the growing perception that they were Satanists. "Children of the Grave" posits a stark choice between love and nuclear annihilation, while "After Forever" philosophizes about death and the afterlife in an openly religious (but, of course, superficially morbid) fashion that offered a blueprint for the career of Christian doom band Trouble. And although the alternately sinister and jaunty "Lord of This World" is sung from Satan's point of view, he clearly doesn't think much of his own followers (and neither, by extension, does the band).
 
 
Black Freaking Sabbath!!~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Redcarmoose]

For me Black Sabbath is everything. In 1972, when I was ten, I had a really strange cassette, maybe bootleg, it had a couple of songs from Black Sabbath number one and a couple of songs from Led Zeppelin number one. 
 
 
A couple years later someone put headphones on my head and played Iron Man really loud. My life was changed from that moment on. It was like I then knew who I was musically. What really never gets talked about in this thread is maybe how big Zeppelin was. In America in the mid 1970s there was no cultural break-up. If you were a teen then you were really into Zeppelin. Every person knew all the songs and they got played at parties and everywhere else.
 
 
Still though Sabbath was slightly less commercial and not everyone liked them.
 
 
The biggest difference from now days was there was just less music around. Everyone had a couple records and really that was it.No one had all the Sabbath records, no one had all the Zeppelin records. You were always trading your record collection around in exchange for more music to listen to.
 
I remember walking into a small town record store at 13 to get Black Sabbath's "Iron Man Album". They didn't have it used but had a copy of number one. So my first Black Sabbath record is the first pressing gate-fold on Vertigo. The song set it slightly different from the Warner Brothers release as they could not get the copyrights worked out to release Evil Women in the States then.
 
 
I get home and put it on the stereo and hear this rain sound and church bell...............well you know the rest.
 
The great part was that even just the bands name "Black Sabbath" was totally over the top and would perfectly freak out any church going parents. If you really listen to the lyrics they are totally pure and sweet, but the sound of the music. Just the sound of the guitar was too much for some then. lol

 

[macrocheesium]

Quote:

 
Van Halen? Really? You have got to be kidding me... They only started in 1972, Judas Priest was almost around when Van Halen picked up his guitar professionaly. Deep Purple, Cream and Black Sabbath man!

Well, they were a huge influence, anyway. Especially in the guitar work. I'm not much of a Sabbath fan so I guess I don't really consider them. Deep Purple definitely helped, but Cream?

 

[markm1]

Quote:

For me Black Sabbath is everything. In 1972, when I was ten, I had a really strange cassette, maybe bootleg, it had a couple of songs from Black Sabbath number one and a couple of songs from Led Zeppelin number one. 
 
 
A couple years later someone put headphones on my head and played Iron Man really loud. My life was changed from that moment on. It was like I then knew who I was musically. What really never gets talked about in this thread is maybe how big Zeppelin was. In America in the mid 1970s there was no cultural break-up. If you were a teen then you were really into Zeppelin. Every person knew all the songs and they got played at parties and everywhere else.
 
 
Still though Sabbath was slightly less commercial and not everyone liked them.
 
 
The biggest difference from now days was there was just less music around. Everyone had a couple records and really that was it.No one had all the Sabbath records, no one had all the Zeppelin records. You were always trading your record collection around in exchange for more music to listen to.
 
I remember walking into a small town record store at 13 to get Black Sabbath's "Iron Man Album". They didn't have it used but had a copy of number one. So my first Black Sabbath record is the first pressing gate-fold on Vertigo. The song set it slightly different from the Warner Brothers release as they could not get the copyrights worked out to release Evil Women in the States then.
 
 
I get home and put it on the stereo and hear this rain sound and church bell...............well you know the rest.
 
The great part was that even just the bands name "Black Sabbath" was totally over the top and would perfectly freak out any church going parents. If you really listen to the lyrics they are totally pure and sweet, but the sound of the music. Just the sound of the guitar was too much for some then. lol

That's awesome dude! 1972, I was 7.
 
I'm just glad I'm not the only guy on this metal list who was alive in the 70's.....Yeah Sabbath always had that black magic factor, and they were anything but. That's a great point. You can read Ozzy's lyrics on his first couple of solo efforts and the talks about "learning how to love and not hate".
 
I got really into the hard rock of the time (Kiss, Van Halen, AC/DC) and then when I was in college started to wake up to Sabbath and Zeppelin. For me Zeppelin are what the Beatles were to my parents, know what I mean?
 
I'm just getting into the headfi thing. I've got my first cans-Grado 225i, I'm waiting for a Schiit amp and just today, I've got a new CD player (an Onkyo 7030) that I'm playing into a 1990 Pioneer system. Finally have a decent source and I'm playing Samothrace-Reverence to Stone-which is totally appropriate riffing on a Sabbath post-DOOOOOOM!
 
It's a beautiful thang....Thank you Black Sabbath for starting this trend.
 

 

[ferday]

Quote:

Well, they were a huge influence, anyway. Especially in the guitar work. I'm not much of a Sabbath fan so I guess I don't really consider them. Deep Purple definitely helped, but Cream?

 
As an extremely passionate (but very amateur LOL) hobbyist in music history, i'm not gonna argue anything or try to make a point...but i will say Know Your Roots!  
 
I would say Blue Cheer more influenced metal than Cream (certainly in sheer loudness and hedonistic attitude)...but then again Cream had a much wider audience so i'm not gonna argue that point too hard.  Van Halen was certainly a huge influence on later metal but really had nothing much to do with the "origins"... 

 

[GetsugaSSJ]

Dragged into Sunlight announced their followup to Hatred for Mankind on their facebook today, awesome. Widowmaker was an excellent interim release so I'm really looking forward to it.
 
MORE IMPORTANTLY, they also released a single track, collaboration with black metal/noise masters, Gnaw their Tongues, so the nastiest band and the most terrifying band come together, haha.

HERE

 

[Trogdor]

Dragged into Sunlight announced their followup to Hatred for Mankind on their facebook today, awesome. Widowmaker was an excellent interim release so I'm really looking forward to it.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, they also released a single track, collaboration with black metal/noise masters, Gnaw their Tongues, so the nastiest band and the most terrifying band come together, haha.

HERE

Oh awesome, new Gane their Tongues...wow I'm surprised I didn't see this....thanks for that!

 

[Trogdor]

Is there anything else I should get from this label while I'm at it? I won't be ordering right away, but I always like to make my shipping charges count for over the pond.

Errr, this looks amazing, but expensive.

 

[macrocheesium]

Quote:

 
As an extremely passionate (but very amateur LOL) hobbyist in music history, i'm not gonna argue anything or try to make a point...but i will say Know Your Roots!  
 
I would say Blue Cheer more influenced metal than Cream (certainly in sheer loudness and hedonistic attitude)...but then again Cream had a much wider audience so i'm not gonna argue that point too hard.  Van Halen was certainly a huge influence on later metal but really had nothing much to do with the "origins"... 

I guess my original point was that Van Halen was the biggest contributor to "modern" metal, but somewhere you have to draw the line between what is "metal" and what isn't... For example, I consider Cream to be hard rock at the most.

 

[MorbidToaster]

Picked up the new Weapon album and put back Royal Thunder at the record store tonight. Did I do the right thing?

 

[MorbidToaster]

Also...
 
http://www.blood-music.com/newspost/strapping-young-lad-7xlp-box-set/
 
Hardly any info on this, but I don't think it's out yet. I want it. Now.

 

[macrocheesium]

Woah, I completely missed that Калевала released an album last year! Really excited to hear it now. If you haven't heard them yet, give them a listen. Superb Russian folk metal with an excellent female vocalist.

 

[Redcarmoose]

In my opinion things seemed to move very fast for hard rock in the mid-seventies. No one knew of Van Halen until their 1st album came out in 1978. There may have been a club following before but then you had to be 21 in the US to know about it. Van Halen did change music due to their sonic signature. If you listen to the high-hat sound in Running With The Devil and then go back to other recordings from the 1978 time period you will notice the difference.
 
The guitar effects in Van Halen were in short, fricking spectacular for the day. Not just the leads, but the crunchy bar cords were crazy cool. The recording process was really starting to change. Stained Class was released in Feb 1978 and showed the cleanest recording quality of Judas Priest so far.
 
There is a group who call Master of Reality the first metal record also a group that call Stained Class the first. In the end it really does not matter. The one true change in hard rock in many peoples opinion is the secret Jazz influence which became the basis for the Sabbath Sound. You had Cream, you had Blue Cheer and Deep Purple, but a little talked about fact was the change due to Sabbath sitting around every night listening to Jazz. Jazz is in every Sabbath album to a huge degree. We almost don't hear it but it is that change that took hard rock blues music and set the basic foundation for the metal style to come. You can almost not hear it in Sabbath. You have to retrain your hearing and go back and you will find it's there. Jazz is in the drum tempos/time signatures, it's in the breaks and the use of cords. It's the Jazz influences which made them sound soo much different from Atomic Rooster or Ted Nuggent.
 
If you actually sit back and listen to the lead guitar parts of Sabbath One, you will actually notice that they are coming from a Jazz perspective as much as a blues perspective. Once you realize that it's just Jazz your hearing and not just how the song was written, it all comes into view.

 

[ferday]

Quote:

Picked up the new Weapon album and put back Royal Thunder at the record store tonight. Did I do the right thing?

CVI really impressed me...I just find it so much fun
 
weapon is great (the band started in my hometown but really they are on very different points on the musical spectrum.  

 

[DaveBSC]

Quote:

Picked up the new Weapon album and put back Royal Thunder at the record store tonight. Did I do the right thing?

I have to say, I really don't get all of the fuss about Royal Thunder. Yes, the singer is very talented, hooray. I thought CVI was a giant bore though, I still haven't managed to even make it all the way through. As a band, I think the Sword is in a different league.