Talk:Proto-metal

Discussion
As of right now this is just a definition so this needs to be expanded or deleted. Matterson52 17:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Added a list of relevant bands. They need to be turned into links. Anon 9:00 a.m., 24 June 2006

Right, so would someone please explain why Judas Priest is on here? Though they had an enormous impact on metal, they were not simply proto-metal, they were, and are, the DEFINITION of metal. I mean, they ARE the original metal gods... So unless someone can refute this, I'll delete it. Durandal1717 00:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Many so-called proto-metal acts went on to play actual metal later on. Early Priest was not really metal. If you look at the early footage of Judas Priest, they look like a bunch of hippies and their sound is not quite what it became later. I would argue that they weren't really "metal" until the Killing Machine/Hell Bent For Leather era, when they actually started wearing spiky leather things. The problem with just listing bands in an article is that it's all subjective. Lynyrd Skynrd, for examaple, is not proto-metal in my book. Anon 10:21 p.m., 30 July 2006

I'll just add one more thing - I think the point of the article should be to trace the development of heavy metal from its hard rock roots. Priest is an example of a band that just took hard rock and helped move it in a new, heavier direction. They were not just practicitioners of heavy metal, they were crucial to its development. If you listen to their first album, though, it sounds like plain old hard rock in a sort of Black Sabbath style. That reminds me - whoever's deleting Sabbath, stop it! Sabbath are a proto-metal band if ever there was one. Anon 10:50 p.m., 30 July 2006

Well in my eyes, and many others, Priest has always been metal, or at least always after Rocka Rolla. Anyone who says that Sad Wings Of Destiny isn't metal deserves to be shot. Or should at least listen to the album. Hell, if Victim Of Changes and Tyrant aren't metal, then I don't know what is. Sure, their first album was definitely proto-metal; bluesy, psychedelic, heavy, etc. However, everything after it is irrefutably metal. It doesn't really matter if they didn't adpot/create the traditional metal image until later on, they've pretty much always been metal. Same goes for Sabbath. I didn't delete Sabbath, but they're still defining of metal. Much like Priest, their first album was more of a heavy blues-rock bout, but everything after it was solid metal. Even the first album had metal enough tracks like Black Sabbath or N.I.B. And I don't think that being slightly not heavy enough to be metal for the first album automatically defines Priest and Sabbath to be proto-metal. Plus, I don't think that they help define metal in their non-metal state at all; that was all the result of their later work. Also, I DO completely agree that we should have some sort of way to show the development of metal out of hard and blues rock. I think I have a chart somewhere that showed exactly that somewhere. Perhpas it'd be useful here...

Well, like I said, it's all subjective. One could argue that Priest were the first true heavy metal band (as opposed to hard rock). And it's worth pointing out that they called their music heavy metal from pretty early on. But a lot of these pioneers were making "heavy" music at a time when the term "heavy metal" either didn't exist, or wasn't very well known. In the early 70's hard rock and heavy metal are pretty much indistinguishable. As the article points out, many of the musicians on this list went on to play heavy metal as time went on. So, delete Priest if you feel you must. That chart sounds interesting...

Unfortunately, the chart isn't as I remember'd it. It actually details the evolution of rock and metal parallel to each other, into all of their respective sub-genres. That could be helpful somewhere else, but highly doubtful it'd have any relevance here. After all, it starts with just Blues Rock, which then branches into Hard Rock and Metal; nothing before Blues Rock at all, i.e. Psychedelic, Acid Rock, Progressive, etc... There must be somewhere where it could be used though... Durandal1717 15:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Problems
The problem with this article is that it assumes metal didn't form until the late 70s or 80s. It's a common belief nowadays but it's just wrong. "Heavy metal" has been used as a genre term since the mid-70s or so, to the point where a rock encyclopedia published in 1977 by the NME describes Led Zeppelin as the definitve heavy metal band. Certainly proto-metal exists as a term, but I've seen it refer to late 60s bands such as Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge, not bands like Black Sabbath and AC/DC. There's a reason a movement was called the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal"; there was a prior wave to it. WesleyDodds 10:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Ian Christie's "Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal" includes AC/DC, Judas Priest, and Kiss under the category of "1970's proto-metal." In the book, later albums by these bands are included in other categories such as NWOBHM and Classic Heavy Metal. The point is that these bands helped develop the genre, and then continued to play it. Did Black Sabbath call themselves a metal band when they wrote "Black Sabbath"? Doubtful. That was, what, 1970? Led Zeppelin always denied being a heavy metal band. But there's no denying that they helped develop heavy music. If we use the mid-70s as the cutoff point, Led Zep definitely qualifies as proto. Same with Sabbath. Priest is debatable. The NME article was just looking back. --Anon


 * I have that book, and it's a generally good overview of the genre. The problem is a lot of times he places groups or albums under the wrong genre (such as Metallica's black album being listed as alternative metal).  And the first chapter or so is pretty flawed as it automatically assumes Black Sabbath is the first metal band, and subsequently tries to fit everything around their style, when for the longest time bands like Led Zeppelin defined metal more than they did. By the way, "heavy metal" in the early 70s was used primarily to refer to both Zeppelin and Sabbath (both bands rejected the term). WesleyDodds 01:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is pretty much my take on the subject too. Back in the 1970's, "heavy metal" was mildly pejorative, and moreover represented a stylistic possibility of hard rock rather than a "lifestyle."  Hell, Dan Fogelberg's Face the Fire flirted with 1970s metal, and few people are prepared to argue that Dan Fogelburg "was metal."  I remember distinctly that people called me an "old metalhead" because I preferred Deep Purple and Iron Butterfly to disco back in my college dorm in the 1970s.  There was a Rolling Stone article I remember reading back in 1977 or so that considered Grand Funk Railroad to be the defining heavy metal act, and   Mitch Ryder and Detroit Wheels' reading of Lou Reed's Rock and Roll to be the greatest metal single ever recorded.  This stuff was all the metal there was until it was carried off by Vikings. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It's easy to disagree with the genres Christie put certain albums under. But there is a logic to it. Metallica, after all, did go on to join "alternative nation" or whatever you want to call it by cutting their hair, changing their sound and image, etc. The black album was where that all got started. Anyway, for consistency's sake, perhaps we should limit this article to the output of bands between 1967 and 1974, which the main metal article uses as the time period when metal was born? -Anon

Seems to me that Led Zeppelin/Black Sabbath etc. were heavy metal right off the start. The only reason they weren't termed heavy metal right of the start is because the term didn't exist yet! Listen to Communication Breakdown, for example- this 1969, you'll remember. It has the screaming vocals, the heavily distorted guitars, everything you need for a heavy metal song. So did Sabbath- (Deep Purple, I'll admit, wasn't really metal until Machine Head or possibly Fireball). The term heavy metal eventually came along, and these bands rejected it. But simply because a band rejects a term doesn't mean it doesn't apply. Rosencrantz1 22:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge with Traditional metal
The traditional metal article basically has the same info and predates this article. Pasajero 19:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The same with Classic metal, but someone flipped out when I suggesed merging them. Is there ANY difference between the three? They all say the same thing, have the same time period, all are pointed out to have influenced heavy metal, and list the same bands as being major contributors. Helltopay27 15:19, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Back From The Dead
I brought this article back, because I think there is more to be written about proto-metal than what can be squeezed into the main Heavy Metal article. Traditional metal has bit the dust - no big loss there. Classic metal is a seperate historical period (see main HM article) and so should remain a seperate article. Special:Contributions/68.227.187.254 17:37, November 25, 2006‎ (UTC)

Its own genre?
At Talk:Heavy_metal_music a discussion is underway about how proto-metal is or is not a musical genre. Binksternet (talk) 02:05, 22 November 2017 (UTC)