Ironcast

Introduction

I keep seeing lots of posts about what the first heavy metal song was and who made it, and names like Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath and Motörhead are thrown in the ring.

In my mind, people always seem to take their cue from something else that they have heard, and I started going back as far as the fifties.

While Heavy Metal is a Rock construct, it needed electric guitars and loud amplifiers. The electric guitar goes back to the forties, but really big, powerful amplifiers had to wait until the sixties.

Then I thought Heavy Metal is a monstrous sound, and though they had no electric guitars or big amplifiers, some orchestral pieces can still hold their own against Heavy Metal.

While Wagner's "Ring Cycle" and Grieg's "Hall Of The Mountain King" are cited as Heavy Metal influences, I am going to start this playlist with three pieces which I think slot into the Heavy Metal genre,

Every piece on here should be played LOUD!!

Gustav Holst - "Mars: The Bringer Of War" from "The Planets"

Music teachers at school managed to completely put me off classical music. On Saturday afternoon, Alan Freeman's rock show featured this, and the following week I went out and bought the album.

Modest Mussorgsky - "Night On Bald Mountain"

I first saw this when my mum took me to see "Fantasia". I loved the film, and I think this frightened me. There are two parts that I have shared here, and there is a version on "Saturday Night Fever" called "Night On Disco Mountain".

Carl Orff - "O Fortuna" from "Carmina Burana"

This is by far my favourite classical piece, and it demonstrates one of the problems I have with some classical music: how it goes from extremely quiet to extremely loud. I still love it, and this is my final classical piece in this article.

Link Wray - "Rumble"

I think this is the only instrumental that was banned as being likely to cause violence.

Released in 1958, Link Wray and His Ray Men’s track "Rumble" holds the distinction of being the only instrumental song ever banned from U.S. radio airwaves. Stations in markets like New York and Boston banned the record out of fear that its raw, distorted power chords and menacing title would incite teenage gang fights.

Google Gemini

The Kinks - "You Really Got Me"

To many, this is where Heavy Metal really started. I think Dave Davies was chasing Link Wray's sound.

The influential distortion sound of the guitar track was created after guitarist Dave Davies sliced the speaker cone of his guitar amplifier with a razor blade and poked it with a pin.

Wikipedia

Steppenwolf - "Born To Be Wild"

Featured in the film "Easy Rider" and features the line

"Heavy Metal Thunder"

Steppenwolf

Which I think is the first use of the term in a song.

Blue Cheer - "Summertime Blues" from "Vincebus Eruptum"

This is a heavy and loud take on Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues", which is Ok but doesn't really push many barriers. I think The Who's version on "Live at Leeds" is heavier, but The Who were never a Heavy Metal band.

Black Sabbath - "Black Sabbath" from "Black Sabbath"

If anyone were to tell me that this was where Heavy Metal started, I could not really argue with them. Three monstrous notes, thunder and Ozzy sounding like he is talking to a Shakespearean ghost. This song and album are a definite marker of Heavy Metal.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading, and I hope listening. These are my own personal opinions, and after Black Sabbath there came many, many, many more bands that slotted into the genre.