Smoke on the Water - Heavy Metal?

[Happy Jack]

7 hours ago, Killed_by_Death said:

 

Black Sabbath's first album was undoubtedly Heavy Metal & still is today, so if it's timeless it will always be Heavy Metal.

 

Tosh. When BS came out the music they played was what we later called Heavy Metal. I don't know of anybody who called it that at the time - it was heavy rock.

Labels are things that go through a long journey over time. I'm old enough to remember the classrooom debates in the early 70s as to what was Heavy Rock and what was Hard Rock, like these were two completely different genres. Some of the albums I owned at 16 were later re-labelled as Heavy Metal (e.g. Budgie's Never Turn Your Back On A Friend), some were later re-labelled as Classic Rock (e.g. Deep Purple's Machine Head), but those terms are subsequent inventions.

The situation hasn't been helped by deliberate revisionism, in many cases by people who should know better, not to mention the memories addled by Red Leb and Thai Sticks as to what we were calling things back then. 🙄

[Hellzero]

With a friend, who like me was fed up of endless subcategories in the metal genre, we decided to call metal anything played with distortion and jazz everything played without distortion. It was a very effective way to categorise. 😎

That said, there's even a faster way to categorise things : music opposed to dire. 

[Barking Spiders]

The only time music categorisation has any point is for when you're having a shufty through the CDs in HMV. I'm ok with top level categories i.e. rock, pop, country etc but the rest is futile. Mind you it's nowhere as irritating an issue as fkin tired, worn out 'greatest' lists / debates.

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, stewblack said:

As others have said they were very much heavy metal. But just as R&B is unrecognisable today from what it used to mean ,Deep Purple sound closer to jazz than metal in 2021.

It's actually a very interesting topic @Killed_by_Death because it speaks to the evolution of popular music.

Good point Stew, when the younglings at work talk about R&B I tell them I liked that in my youth and play them some Dr Feelgood - you should see their faces 🤣

[Rich]

3 hours ago, Richard R said:

We don't need to join in, and equally we don't need to be dismissive. 

Bang on. Nobody is forcing anyone to participate, and IMHO @stewblack is quite right -- it encapsulates the evolution of popular music. Always an interesting topic.

1 hour ago, Happy Jack said:

not to mention the memories addled by Red Leb and Thai Sticks as to what we were calling things back then. 🙄

I never got on with Leb personally, I was definitely more of a Rocky Black man. I recall some absolutely banzai grass doing the rounds in our town for a few months too.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Rich

[Rich]

IIRC Eddy Grant was so fed up with the obsessive labelling and mislabelling of genres that he called one of his albums "File Under Rock".

Edited July 11, 2021 by Rich

[Munurmunuh]

10 hours ago, Bassassin said:

Needs a 'not any more' option. A lot of 'classic' hard rock would've been called heavy metal at the time but as the music's become more extreme, the term's been redefined

I recently read someone trying to claim that nothing pre-Metallica was metal, which if true would create the question: why tf did they call themselves Metallica? 🙄

It reminds me of Entryism. Metal exists; new bands join the genre and move it on; their supporters define the genre in terms of their band, and eject the bands which created and established the genre in the first place. I'm not sure what are the psychological motivations for this behaviour (unimportant people trying to give themselves consequence?) but I doubt they're anything especially healthy. 

[bertbass]

When I were a lad, You only had pop, ie, chart hits and pop groups.  From about 1967 things started to change and music became heavier and we started to get rock bands so we became bands and not pop groups.  Just the two categories.  Where the rest came from I've no idea.

[EssentialTension]

3 minutes ago, bertbass said:

When I were a lad, You only had pop, ie, chart hits and pop groups.  From about 1967 things started to change and music became heavier and we started to get rock bands so we became bands and not pop groups.  Just the two categories.  Where the rest came from I've no idea.

What about the halfway house of the beat group, or, daringly, the beat combo?

[bertbass]

1 minute ago, EssentialTension said:

What about the halfway house of the beat group, or, daringly, the beat combo?

Before my time, just.

[Barking Spiders]

11 minutes ago, bertbass said:

When I were a lad, You only had pop, ie, chart hits and pop groups.  From about 1967 things started to change and music became heavier and we started to get rock bands so we became bands and not pop groups.  Just the two categories.  Where the rest came from I've no idea.

or pop and underground

[Japhet]

They were a 'heavy' band back in the day but the genre has evolved into something completely different,  as R&B, Funk and Jazz have all spawned more modern versions of themselves. Can't wait to find out what Thrash Metal turns into.......on second thoughts, I can wait (the longer the better in fact).

[bertbass]

1 minute ago, Barking Spiders said:

or pop and underground

The underground was the London tube system.

[Dad3353]

S'all the fault of the Mods versus Rockers bun-fights, and Stones versus Beatles stuff. Old hat, really. 

[FinnDave]

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

S'all the fault of the Mods versus Rockers bun-fights, and Stones versus Beatles stuff. Old hat, really. 

That was what divided the playground when I was at primary school in the early 60s!

I'm off now to a rehearsal about 1/4 mile from that very school!

[Munurmunuh]

[ubit]

I would say definitely heavy metal. Just because it isn't like the heavy metal of today. When I was growing up it was definitely in the heavy metal category as that was all I listened to back then!

[ubit]

14 hours ago, OliverBlackman said:

It’s classic rock, with emphasis on classic 😉

It wasn't classic rock when it came out though.

[Bassassin]

12 hours ago, Killed_by_Death said:

 

Black Sabbath's first album was undoubtedly Heavy Metal & still is today, so if it's timeless it will always be Heavy Metal.

 

Would be Stoner/Doom these days.

Sabbath never considered themselves to be 'metal' & still reject the label.

[Bassassin]

2 hours ago, Ricky Rioli said:

I recently read someone trying to claim that nothing pre-Metallica was metal, which if true would create the question: why tf did they call themselves Metallica? 🙄

Prosaic answer:

From 1981, I'm sure Lars never owned a copy...

And how many artists mentioned on the front would by any stretch be considered 'metal' at any point after, say, 1985?

[tegs07]

21 minutes ago, Bassassin said:

Prosaic answer:

From 1981, I'm sure Lars never owned a copy...

And how many artists mentioned on the front would by any stretch be considered 'metal' at any point after, say, 1985?

And does it all begin when Muddy Waters first plugged in a guitar?

Prior to this you would have had acoustic country blues, then the resonator guitar could provide amplification to compete with banjos and the like. I’m sure the first time a crowd heard blues licks on an electric guitar it would have been pretty heavy. As has been said it’s all just evolution. Label it whatever you like.

Edited July 11, 2021 by tegs07

[EssentialTension]

11 minutes ago, Bassassin said:

Sabbath never considered themselves to be 'metal' & still reject the label.

 

Why Black Sabbath hated being a 'heavy metal band'

[Painy]

These kind of classifications are obviously entirely arbitrary and completely subjective and they've also evolved massively over time. 

As an analogy, it's like saying "is this a fast car or not?" Do you consider a Golf GTI to be a fast car or do you have to get into Porsche 911 territory for it to be classed as fast?

And what about how things have changed over time? Back in 1901 this car held the land speed record at 65.79 miles an hour (achievable now on a 125cc learner legal motorcycle) but today I wouldn't want to be stuck behind one for too long in my 10 year old 1.6 Diesel Peugeot. 

Long and short of it - there's no answer to this question. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Japhet]

21 minutes ago, ubit said:

It wasn't classic rock when it came out though.

Just like classical music wasn't 'classical' when it came out - it was just music.

[steantval]

For those of us old enough to remember record shops, every thing was alphabetical and categorised, that’s how you located your artist or band you were looking for.

I’m pretty sure from memory, Deep Purple we’re in the Progressive Rock sections, this is not to be confused as Prog as we now know it.