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First heavy metal song ever?


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To me, the very first true metal song was Born To Be Wild. With the advent of genres like extreme metal and death metal, Born To Be Wild might sound wimpy by those standards, but it truly laid down some serious groundwork for heavy metal and hard rock.
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You Really Got Me.
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"You Really Got Me" isn't heavy in the slightest, and "Born To Be Wild" and "Summertime Blues" are just noisy psychedelic rock, if those are metal than so is Jimi Hendrix and Cream.

 

I think the first "metal" song is "Helter Skelter", followed by "Dazed And Confused" and "21st Century Schizoid Man".

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What do you think makes a song heavy metal? I'm asking because this song came out in 1967 and surely there must have been earlier songs.

 

What makes a song heavy metal is whether or not treeduck considers it one :cool:

 

Born To Be Wild and You Really Got Me are probably the two main ones. Summertime Blues has a metal toning to the guitar but the riff really isn't as prominent or in your face like on the other two songs. Then of course there's Black Sabbath's debut that come out in 1970 and that marked the true birth of the genre.

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Not helter skelter but I'm good with born to be wild or you really got me. They obviously aren't metal as we understand it but they have enough ingredients with the riff oriented songs and implied attitude.
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Ehm... Black Sabbath was first with heavy metal. There was no such thing as heavy metal before Black Sabbath. So the answer is Black Sabbath!
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Ehm... Black Sabbath was first with heavy metal. There was no such thing as heavy metal before Black Sabbath. So the answer is Black Sabbath!

 

Yes, Sabbath was the first metal band. But they were not the first band to use heavy metal style guitar tones and riffs. Which is the purpose of the discussion in this thread. To say that nothing metal came before Sabbath is just being plain ignorant about music.

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To me, the very first true metal song was Born To Be Wild. With the advent of genres like extreme metal and death metal, Born To Be Wild might sound wimpy by those standards, but it truly laid down some serious groundwork for heavy metal and hard rock.

 

 

did the line "heavy metal thunder" inspire you to build a case for this song?? He's talking about bikes or cars, NOT the genre of the song he's singing (who does that?). It's a cool song about the freedom of the road but it truly didn't lay down any groundwork for anything.. Especially when you consider the screaming vocals and distorted guitar riffs of the Kinks' 'You Really Got me' which came out about 4 years earlier!!

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Eh...I'm gonna have to go with Blue Cheer's version of Summertime Blues and You Really Got Me but would Boris The Spider being the first song with death growls suffice also?
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To me, the very first true metal song was Born To Be Wild. With the advent of genres like extreme metal and death metal, Born To Be Wild might sound wimpy by those standards, but it truly laid down some serious groundwork for heavy metal and hard rock.

 

 

did the line "heavy metal thunder" inspire you to build a case for this song?? He's talking about bikes or cars, NOT the genre of the song he's singing (who does that?). It's a cool song about the freedom of the road but it truly didn't lay down any groundwork for anything.. Especially when you consider the screaming vocals and distorted guitar riffs of the Kinks' 'You Really Got me' which came out about 4 years earlier!!

 

The utterance of the phrase before it became a genre builds a case for it, but I'm talking about the overall composition of the song.

Edited by fraroc
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A band called Bitter Creek had a 45 out in 1967 called Plastic Thunder .. There was no full album, but Plastic Thunder pre dates In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida which I would consider one of the first influential metal songs ..

 

I don't consider You Really Got Me metal at all, or Helter Skelter .. Blues guys like Pat Hare ( I;m Gonna Murder My Baby ) James Cotton and were doing stuff like that with distorted guitars in the 1950s, as was Link Wray ..

 

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Edited by Lucas
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To me, the very first true metal song was Born To Be Wild. With the advent of genres like extreme metal and death metal, Born To Be Wild might sound wimpy by those standards, but it truly laid down some serious groundwork for heavy metal and hard rock.

 

 

did the line "heavy metal thunder" inspire you to build a case for this song?? He's talking about bikes or cars, NOT the genre of the song he's singing (who does that?). It's a cool song about the freedom of the road but it truly didn't lay down any groundwork for anything.. Especially when you consider the screaming vocals and distorted guitar riffs of the Kinks' 'You Really Got me' which came out about 4 years earlier!!

 

The utterance of the phrase before it became a genre builds a case for it, but I'm talking about the overall composition of the song.

 

Well if there's anything I've learned about Metal it's that everyone has their own definition of what it is so all answers are valid.. But you're still wrong! ;) ;)

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Black sabbath - black sabbath

 

This might be the best answer. Lots of music came out before Sabbath that influenced metal but then Sabbath came along and clearly defined it. The first true metal album

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