70s Heavy Metal
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The first decade of metal proper — where doomy, blues-rooted riffing hardened into a self-aware style distinct from hard rock. Sound: down-tuned-feeling, tritone-laced power-chord riffs, twin-guitar attack, organ on some early acts, thunderous bass, and a swing from slow ominous grooves to fast driving numbers. Vocals range from Ozzy's plaintive wail to Halford's operatic metallic shriek and Dio's powerhouse belt. Production grows from murky and live in 1970 to punchy and layered by decade's end. The mood is dark, heavy, and theatrical — occult dread, fantasy, and rebellion rendered in monolithic riffs.
History
Heavy metal became a genre on Black Sabbath's self-titled debut (Feb 1970) and Paranoid (1970), whose tritone riffs and bleak mood gave the form its blueprint. Through the decade the style branched: Deep Purple and Uriah Heep brought organ-driven hard heaviness; Judas Priest (Birmingham, like Sabbath) stripped away the blues, added a second lead guitar and the leather-and-studs look on Sin After Sin (1977) and Stained Class (1978), effectively codifying the modern metal template; Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio added neoclassical grandeur on Rising (1976); UFO, Scorpions, Thin Lizzy and Budgie refined the twin-guitar art. American acts like Blue Öyster Cult, Kiss, Ted Nugent and Montrose carried a harder-rocking strain. By 1979 this groundwork fed directly into the NWOBHM explosion and the global metal boom that followed.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Ian Christe, Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal
- Martin Popoff, The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal Vol. 1: The Seventies
- Daniel Bukszpan, The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal
- AllMusic / Encyclopaedia Metallum genre essays