Who came before Black Sabbath?

From what I can gather, Black Sabbath's debut is a very drastic leap from the late 60s. I mean their self titled album is just so heavy. What led to it? Or was Iommi just ahead of his time?

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robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=nicki minaj
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Black Sabbath [Warner Bros., 1970]

The worst of the counterculture on a plastic platter--drug-impaired reaction times, bullshit necromancy, lengthy solos. They claim to oppose war, but if I don't believe in loving my enemies, then I don't believe in loving my allies and I've been worried that something like this was going to happen ever since I first saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. C-

Review literally does not make sense.

A Lot of earlier psych and blues acts experimented with distortion and came up with similar results
Led Zep
youtube.com/watch?v=ehwSEVbBZl4
Beatles
youtube.com/watch?v=qvypQtn4bVc
Jimi Hendrix
dailymotion.com/video/xvpfx6_jimi-hendrix-peace-in-mississippi_music
Blue Cheer
youtube.com/watch?v=nU5uDozoSSM
The Gun
youtube.com/watch?v=hj716pc1fC0

Basicly what I'm saying is Metal started from a bunch of hippies who had one too many bad trips.

That's because you're dumb.

no u

Iommi chopped off the end of one of his fingers, meaning he had to change the tuning of his guitar to be slightly lower and change the strings to be thicker. This caused him to play super low deep riffs that the band thought was spooky sounding so they built around that concept.

It does if you understand a little bit about the counterculture. He elaborated in his columns a bit more on the origins of metal, principally that it came out of psychedelic rock with its escapism, surreal imagery, and extended instrumental sections.

While true, he didn't downtune his guitar until Master of Reality, the first two albums being played in a higher tuning.

>thicker

*thinner

he used super light strings and loosened them so they'd be properly tuned

>mr. bluesy rawk punk man
>hated metal before it existed

makes sense

>control f
>no Cream
Cream.

Early Sabbath is just a shitty Cream ripoff. Cream basically kick-started heavy metal.

Christgau likes art students who pretend to be sheet-metal workers, not sheet-metal workers who pretend to be art students.

oh look someone read the Lester Bangs quote

ZOOT!

youtube.com/watch?v=6VbyhxElSAI

Can you post some examples that support your claims, please?

And let's avoid the flames. This thread is for education.

Yeah, that. Christgau was not a fan of hippies for the most part. He said they were delusional and also exclusionist snobs who thought they were better than everyone else. The bands he likes such as the Stones, The Who, CCR, etc were very un-hippie and they didn't play psychedelic stuff.

So, yeah. He likes his greasy barroom punk rock from the streets.

Don't forget The Who, they were making some pretty loud and heavy stuff in the mid to late 60s.

>oh look someone read the Lester Bangs quote
It's true though. Sabbath only got their own sound when they made Masters of Reality

>Sabbath only got their own sound when they made Masters of Reality

:\

Was there any kind of spooky rock music that influenced them or was it all that dark classical music? how did they singlehandedly give birth to doom metal and all the occult imagery in metal?

>not sheet-metal workers who pretend to be art students

When that happens, you end up with bands like Kansas and Starcastle.

>robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=nicki minaj
I hope no one takes him seriously. He rated every single Nicki Minaj's album with an A.

Sorry. Didn't mean to come off so dismissive.

I just like prog and metal and shit, and I get sick of reading Lester Bangs and Christgau constantly on this kick about how much of a fake poseur pseudointellectual I'm being.

Maybe I don't want to listen to Iggy and the Stooges and The Clash all the damn time and they need to get off my ass about it, hahaha.

It's this weird, intellectualized faux-populist camaraderie thing they have going on. Like, they only listen to the "real" "authentic" music of "real" people. They were/are Greenwich Village hipsters.

>being this ignorant
Screamin Jay Hawkins
Arthur Brown
Dennis Wheatley

Learn to deal with differing opinions.

When Sabbath first came out they were criticized for being "two bit Cream" so the correct answer is Cream.

There were a lot of signs by the late 60's that metal was going' to be a thing, Black Sabbath were simply the first to give it a face.

I mean obviously I read these opinions.

It's like a cult, though, a whole generation of Lester Bangs/Christgau stans telling me how important Bruce Springsteen is.

C'mon. It's ridiculous.

Springsteen is amazingly boring to listen to, yet so-called professional critics line up at the tap to slurp his cum.

...

The first Rolling Stone Magazine Record Guide from 1978 said about Judas Priest's debut album Rocka Rolla "For lovers of stolen Led Zeppelin riffs only" and proceeded to give Sad Wings and Sin After Sin one star each.

The second RSMRG from 1983 gave nine Priest albums one star each.

Post songs by Cream that exemplify the comparisons between them and sabbath

Born To Run [Columbia, 1975]

Just how much American myth can be crammed into one song, or a dozen, about asking your girl to come take a ride? A lot, but not as much as romanticists of the doomed outsider believe. Springsteen needs to learn that operettic pomposity insults the Ronettes and that pseudotragic beautiful-loser fatalism insults us all. And around now I'd better add that the man avoids these quibbles at his best and simply runs them over the rest of the time. If "She's the One" fails the memory of Phil Spector's innocent grandeur, well, the title cut is the fulfillment of everything "Be My Baby" was about and lots more. Springsteen may well turn out to be one of those rare self-conscious primitives who gets away with it. In closing, two comments from my friends the Marcuses. Jenny: "Who does he think he is, Howard Keel?" (That's a put-down.) Greil: "That is as good as `I Think We're Alone Now.'" (That's not.) A

Good tastes
Listen to Disreali Gears

>Stones, The Who, CCR, etc were very un-hippie
This is a narrow view. If you had long hair, played rock, were into dope and against the war back then, you were a hippie.

Jimi Hendrix was the guy who made metal guitar all possible by playing those overdriven, reverb-filled riffs. On the other hand, Keith Richards just kept on playing his jangly-clangly 50s-60s blues guitar as if Hendrix had never happened.

One reason for the Stones hiring Mick Taylor was actually to update their sound a bit for the 70s; he was a young kid more directly influenced by the new Hendrix/Zeppelin/Sabbath school of funk rock riffs.

youtube.com/watch?v=uJqgk2XAg4k
Also, Sunshine of your Love.

Blues + higher wattage amps & fuzz + white guys = heavy metal

Christgau and his crew weren't always wrong, we can all agree with them that Journey was nauseating puke.

When it comes to thinking The Number of the Beast wasn't badass, then our opinions diverge.

>He said they were delusional and also exclusionist snobs who thought they were better than everyone else
This so much
I know too many smelly, unshowered, underachieving hippies who won't give you the time of day if they feel you can't contribute anything to their clique status.

But eventually by the time you get to the mid-80s, the blues sound had largely vanished from metal.

That's because of the punk influence.

Yeah, it was already on the way out with the first Van Halen album.

>constantly shitpost about music and "pleb taste"
>Not one of you has made millions in music or played an instrument well in your fucking lives.

Go ahead, prove me wrong. That's PROVE me wrong by the way, not just shitpost more.

Let's see the literal lack of talent /M/U/ has.

Specifically rich douchebag hippies like Stephen Stills. Christgau really couldn't stand his kind. And he wasn't wrong, none of those guys except Neil Young were worth jack and he was the only of CSNY with a real rock pedigree instead of being a self-absorbed douche with an acoustic guitar.

(Nice dubs)
I think to look for the roots of early BS especially the first album one might look to the likes of John Coltrane Charlie Parker and Miles Davis with maybe a little Dave Brubeck thrown in for good measure.

I think it was mostly them just wanting to make a horror soundtrack musically and the innovation of distortion guitar leading to power chord use

Though some would say Kiss had largely done away with blues sounds even before Van Halen.

It's rare to see such good bait around these parts anymore. Upvoted.

Also James Taylor. Lester Bangs wrote a piece where he fantasized about murdering James Taylor.

Stephen Stills performed at my dad's college in 1975. I think this was when he was touring his "Stills" album. Anyway, my dad didn't actually attend the show, but someone who was there told him some dude in the audience was talking and Stills told him to shut the hell up.

James Taylor blows mightily...well, I guess Chili Dog isn't a bad song. Another rich liberal idiot pretending to care about the less fortunate.

The Backdoor Wolf [Chess, 1973]

There's more artistry in this 63 year old's large intestine than passes through Sunset Recorders in a month. You think Steve Stills could come up with something as clever as "Coon in the Moon" and turn it into an ironic call of pride? The Wolf hasn't been in this fine a form in years. Suggestion--get rid of the electric piano. A-

Metal also got faster as opposed to the slow, dirgy 70s stuff.

As cliche as it is Cream, Zep and Hendrix are the right answer:

youtube.com/watch?v=vZuFq4CfRR8

By the late 60's distortion and the blues and acid had collided to make some HEAVY jams. Black Sabbath was into all of this stuff and wanted to be a proggy band but their unique feature was the "punky" aspect that they really couldn't play that well. Being young stoners in the late 60's in UK they were into a lot of trash culture like the later period Hammer horror and occult films that definitely influenced the aesthetic and lyrics.

>rich el lay hippies gtfo

It helps if you understand that Black Sabbath (and the Stooges) were born out of the early 70s disillusionment with the counterculture movement. Something meant to bring peace and love and brotherhood just caused everyone to hate and fight with each other.

Won't Get Fooled Again means exactly what it means.

It was Jeff Beck. It's always Jeff Beck.

youtube.com/watch?v=nmO0OZC6Ifk

Neil Young was the only of CSNY to have not come from a coddled rich liberal background, he was one of those motorcycle greaser types in high school and got expelled for driving a bike through the school hallway. Hence why he had that greasy rocker from the street mindset that Stephen Stills didn't.

Jefferson Airplane. Don't forget them. Also Iron Butterfly.

And also of course Tolkien, who was beloved among one and all British hippies.

Also Christgau admitted he doesn't like cockrock because it reminds him of jocks kicking his ass in high school.

They were also distant (Birmingham, Detroit) from the counterculture.

1964. The Sonics - The Witch
1967. Clear Light - Street Singer
1969. King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man

You are welcome.

Some good answers in this thread, to add, Iommi was influenced by the melody and cadences of Mars by Holst when writing the opening riff.
youtube.com/watch?v=Jmk5frp6-3Q

Heck, the big critics like Christgau and Bangs were New Yorkers, that was also not a hippie hotbed either.

He hates female folk music for similar reasons.

Iggy Pop was a Detroiter who moved to SoCal kind of like how Kiss were New Yorkers who moved there. Also Grand Funk Railroad and Ted Nugent were Detroiters and reflected a lot of that region's blue collar mentality.

Bangs was Detroit until the late 70s. NY wasn't as hippie as CA, but it a 50s-early 60s hipster center (Greenwich Village) and Dylan was based there.

What? He loves Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Rait.

If you mean Joan Baez or Carly Simon, hell yeah, he couldn't stand them.

>Screamin Jay Hawkins

Hawkins tracks like I Put a Spell on You and Frenzy are dope

Link Wray's Rumble is also highly influential
youtube.com/watch?v=ucTg6rZJCu4

Radio Birdman being Detroit motor city tough guy rock n rollers transplanted to Syndey Australia is my fave

Don't forget the MC5, weird blend of blue collar and new left hype.

New York did have a lot more of the eccentric music scenes, as I said, Kiss were New Yorkers. In between NY and LA, you had the vast expanse of flyover country which were represented by GFR, Ted Nugent, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and CCR and those guys.

I think what Iommi really deserves credit for is fading the blues phrasing and style of playing to the background

Sabbath's riffs are clearly based on the blues, but Iommi plays them in a new way that makes all the difference

Screaming Jay Hawkins and Little Richard invented shock rock, long before there was an Iggy Pop, an Alice Cooper, or a Marilyn Manson.

Also for some reason the Midwest produced most of those shitty American prog bands like Styx.

Creedence was Berkeley tho, pretty close to Frisco.

Grand Funk might have been the first midwest band to break the big time.

So you're fine with pretending there isn't more to it than that?

I can see where you're coming from if you only refer to the first bands to be called "heavy metal" but from sabbath onwards (within the progression of the genre) it became a whole different beast.

Birmingham was a grimy English industrial town, Sabbath and their cross town compatriots Judas Priest said in interviews over the years that their music was inspired by that atmosphere and a musical career was a way for blue collar kids to get out of a life working in the mills.

"The Rolling Stones were a bunch of coddled momma's boys who all went to college and then moved to London to live in squalour and gain cred. Not that I didn't like some of their songs, but they could never touch the Beatles for melody, songwriting, sense of humour, or presentation. All they had was Mick Jagger's dancing. The Beatles, they were gear."

Christgau lost me the moment he actually thought Yoko Ono made listenable music.

lol you fucking pussy

Shit taste
This is a meme. To anyone who actually thinks this, Walking on Thin Ice is the first dance-punk song Life With the Lions is a masterpiece. Yoko Ono was actually one of the more innovative figures in rock music.

Yeah, heavy metal, '68-69 variety is to my ears amped up blues at the core. Though is some kind of machine-like grind to the guitars starting from Sabbath which sets it apart. And gradually metal would hone in on that part and further away from blues.

Truth

>Though there is (edit)

Even more horrible than that, he actually thought Courtney Love made listenable music.

Both YO and Hole's entire discographies should have had bomb symbols placed next to them.

The Stones were middle class kids pretending to be blue collar, the Beatles were blue collar kids pretending to be middle class.

In that case I completely agree, especially in the case of led Zeppelin.

I think Keith Richards came from a more lower class background, but I could be wrong.

Californication [Warner Bros., 1999]

New Age fuck fiends ("Scar Tissue", "Purple Stain") *

Audioslave [Interscope, 2002] *bomb*

Out of Exile [Interscope, 2005] *bomb*

Christgau bombing shitty buttrock

>Raw Power was the only heavy metal album that succeeded

It's possible. Jagger and Watts were def. effete rich fags.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZCkHanF4v1w

the real genius of Iommi and Sabbath was taking the blues scale and blues riffs that the likes of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton perfected and removing almost all the traditional blues phrasing from them and coming up with something innovative with a lot of room for further development

it's really that idea that you can be strongly based on pentatonic scales while not "playing the blues" that built metal

Like you didn't own those CDs when you were 13.

I should add I was listening to "Paranoid" the song when I wrote this. The rhythm guitar is almost early Velvet Underground in how unswinging and metronomic (ie. unblues) it is.

>there are people who think RHCP are listenable music near me

I didn't. And you should aspire to have more taste than 13 year old buttrock fans.

Also don't forget a song like The Wizard which is an early kind of groove metal.

Henry's Dream [Mute/Elektra, 1992]

Cave's admirers crow about his literary virtues--a rock musician who's actually published a novel! and scripted a film! about John Henry Abbott, how highbrow! Then they proffer dismal examples like "I am the captain of my pain," or the bordello containing--what an eye the man has--a whalebone corset! (Whalebone is very literary--it hasn't been used in underwear since well before Nick was born.) If this is your idea of great writing, you may be ripe for his cult. Otherwise, forget it--the voice alone definitely won't do the trick. C

No More Shall We Part [Reprise, 2001] *bomb*

He's right.

you have no clue about strings and guitars don't you?

I used to like Slipknot too. That doesn't mean you should still be listening to them.

Agree.

>I invented heavy metal.

Backstreet Boys [Jive, 1997]

I'm not claiming I would have gotten the message without a 13-year-old I know broadcasting it from her boombox. But keynoted by two guaranteed pop classics, one dance and one heart, this is genius teensploitation. I give half credit to songwriter-svengali Max Martin, who's put in time with Ace of Base. But as someone who still suspects Abba were androids, I award the other half to the Boys, without whose sincere if not soulful simulations of soul and sincerity Martin's slow ones would be as sickening as any other promise that's made to be broken. Together the team manufactures a juicy sexual fantasy for virgins who get nervous when performers grab their dicks and think it's gross when teenage ignoramuses copy the move. They deserve one. After all, it is gross. A-

In The Court of the Crimson King [Atlantic, 1969]

The plus is because Pete Townshend likes it. The same can also be said of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Beware the forthcoming hype--this is ersatz shit. D+

it's really heavy psych and makes more sense when you understand it as such. there was a lot of fuzzy stuff at the time, they just turned it up a notch

as for the darkness, it was an intentional response to psych culture

I know tvu is popular here and there's that one "he's pointing at us" meme, but lou reed should really be the god of this board for the way he carried himself.

Paranoid [Warner Bros., 1970]

I suppose I could learn to enjoy them as camp--the title cut is certainly screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, can they? Anyway, I always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place C-

How come every fucking thread about prog or metal ends with some retard spamming Christgau reviews?

There was quite a bit of hard rock from the 60's that influenced their sound.

Most specifically you can listen to NIB which is the exact same fucking thing as Sunshine of My Love/In a Godda Da Vita.

that being said I want to know what the influences for Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me came from. There's clearly a punk/post punk influence but there's no fucking bands that sounded like them or played their guitars like them.

Master of Reality [Warner Bros., 1971]

As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk Railroad switch three years ago, in which the critics defined Grand Funk as a good old fashioned white boy blues band, even though I knew of no critic, myself included, who actually played the records. I don't care how many incipient rebels and groovers are buying, I don't even care if the band actually believes their own Christian/liberal/Satanist muck. This is a dimwitted, amoral exploitation. D+

Dinosaur Jr is just noisy punk and postpunk + classic rock influences

Nothing personal, just that 15 is the maximum age one should be unironically listening to metal.

le kids can't into people back then not liking prog and metal

because unlike fans of that kind of music, Christgau actually has an understanding of music

Close to the Edge [Atlantic, 1972]

What a waste. They come up with a refrain that sums up everything they do--"I get up I get down"--and apply it only to their ostensible theme, which is the "seasons of man" or something like that. They segue effortlessly from Bach to harpsichord to bluesy rock and roll and don't mean to be funny. Conclusion: At the level of attention they deserve they're a one-idea group. Especially with Jon and Rick up front. C+

>guy who gave a Backstreet Boys album an A
>understanding of music
Nah, dude, nah.

I hate prog and metal too, it's just kind of annoying to see a thread shit up with the same reviews I've already read hundreds of times.

Have you listened to the album? Can you explain why it's bad?

i love keefs jangly-clangly riffs. no one had as much groove as keef charlie and bill

And they ended up sounding like surf-metal on top of it.

>doesn't like the rolling stones

quickest way to spot a pleb

The Stones are also awful buttrock.

well he's dead, what do you expect?

*didn't

spotted

On the early albums no. EOMS was the album they became buttrock. All the horrible hairspray excesses of the 70s-80s can be traced back to that album and Led Zeppelin IV.

All three of those bands played psych rock at one point

Rolling Stones did it as a one off exercise on an album they've since disowned. Your point?

HEY HEY MOMMA SAID

Not in one album. Aftermath and Between the Buttons were also psychedelic albums

>that being said I want to know what the influences for Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me came from. There's clearly a punk/post punk influence but there's no fucking bands that sounded like them or played their guitars like them.
Neil Young.

...

Actually this was the upgraded review from his "Consumer Guide to the '70s". The original review from 1970 went:

"Bullshit necromancy? Bullshit necromancy. E"

A Farewell To Kings [Mercury, 1977]

The most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit, not to be confused with Mahogany Rush, who at least spare us the reactionary gentility. Imagine a power trio Kansas or Uriah Heep with the vocals cranked up an octave. Or two. D+

>the zonked teen circuit
>tfw missed the 70s

Kek

Pieces of Eight [A&M, 1978]

Wanna know why Starcastle are heavying it up? They want to go platinum just like Styx. Fortunately they haven't yet gotten around to the cathedral organ. C-

I dunno, no one over the age of 15 should start spamming as soon as someone mentions something they don't like

We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll [Warner Bros., 1976]

By concentrating on songs (ten cuts from the first three albums and only six from the later ones) and omitting such pro-tempo-formula-virtuoso moves as "Rat Salad", this compilation makes a solid mock nostalgia document. Four cuts hail from their fourth album, cleverly titled Black Sabbath Vol. 4, which I never got around to putting on back in 1972. And you know what? I'm still not sure I've heard anything on it. C

He also gave A's to Nicki Minaj, Shakira and Soulja boy...

I

I think the dubious distinction of second rate Cream ripoff is more deserved of Led Zepplin. If anything BS combined the best elements of the first two Soft Machine albums with early Deep Purple.

Again that dubious distinction belongs to Led Zepplin. BS were more jazz oriented.

Atomic Rooster?

>Taking le edgy review meme reviewer seriously
He has always been a proffessional shitposter and a baiter who gets paid for doing entertainment in forms of reviews, unlike you, doing it for free.