the 70s prog scene's attitude to early metal

SteveG wrote: ^I'm no expert on punk by a long shot but I think it started with the American band Television in 1973. Accounts probably differ so we might need to pick Dean's brain on this one. And then get back to the topic.

^Good Grief Charlie Brown! now  

Edited by SteveG - July 28 2014 at 08:51

Was it the NME or Sounds or some other UK music magazine that first identified the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" that took off in the late 1970s? In Denmark/Sweden that kind of music was called "betonrock", which means "concrete rock" in Danish, until around that time of the NWoBHM and it has kind of stuck as a slang term for 1970s psychedelic hard rock. Again, going off that book I mentioned in the OP.

Well, punk seems to often have been a "cultural movement" first and a genre of music second so I guess it's easier to analyze sociologically. The NWoBHM did have some of that kind of mentality but to nowhere the same extent. The only time any metal scene in the First World's approximated that was the early-1990s black metal "inner circles", except in a more cultish manner. (it's probably a different situation in places like Eastern Europe and Latin America where both are still considered genuinely subversive and dangerous by the populace at large)

I think it's pretty clear that heavy metal didn't crystallize as a well-codified genre artists deliberately set out to play until the mid-1970s, and didn't really pick up an associated subculture until the NWoBHM either. Conversely, that was by the same time that progressive rock's golden age was generally agreed to for the most part have ended or started declining. What I refer to is how big an ideological rift between most of the "proto-metal" groups on one hand, and the less heavy but more technically accomplished prog-rock groups on the other, there was prior to that.

I'm curious how popular JP were before Killing Machine came out, that album seems to have been their big break and also where they jettisoned both the progressive touches their music had before that as well as the more introverted lyrics. Speaking of connections between the prog/psych scene and early metal I do also believe that Roger Glover from Deep Purple produced Sin After Sin. (I'm not sure if DP ever embraced the "progressive rock" label either)

Toaster Mantis wrote: I'm curious how popular JP were before Killing Machine came out, that album seems to have been their big break and also where they jettisoned both the progressive touches their music had before that as well as the more introverted lyrics. Speaking of connections between the prog/psych scene and early metal I do also believe that Roger Glover from Deep Purple produced Sin After Sin. (I'm not sure if DP ever embraced the "progressive rock" label either)

Stained Class the album (1978) actually reveals their 'new-heavy-metal' direction; this album sounds slightly like a prog metal - the genre that will be labeled a decade after Stained Class were released. My fav album by JP.

Edited by Svetonio - July 29 2014 at 21:29

To put my five-penneth in - I think that the term Metal - (as far as I can remember - was possibly very late seventies, mind you I only started liking Sabbath, Purple, Motorhead , Saxon, Iron Maiden - late seventies so maybe it was in more common parlance mid seventies - I was just not aware of it....

SteveG wrote: Toaster Mantis wrote: Speaking of connections between the prog/psych scene and early metal I do also believe that Roger Glover from Deep Purple produced Sin After Sin. (I'm not sure if DP ever embraced the "progressive rock" label either) I was able to speak with a friend that spent some time up close with Blackmore and Glover in their Rainbow days and he had some interresting perspectives worth sharing regarding the prog and metal connection.  As  caprious as Blackmore is (he's playing lute and hurdy gurdy in his new band Blackmore's Night), my friend felt that Blackmore considered himself a contemporary of 70's guitar icons like Clapton, Beck and Page and would probably have rejected the prog label applied to DP as well as the metal tag. The other divide that my friend brought up aside from different fan bases was the lyrical content of hard rock vs. prog in the seventies. Smoke On The Water vs. And You and I. One genre was singing about sex, drugs and rock and roll while the other is singing about who knows what? Enlightenment? Something that the hard rock genre was said to loath, so  some other dividing  points were brought up that seem to make sense in keeping the two genres apart.

On the booklet notes from some Deep Purple albums I just got last year, they referred to themselves as prog. I think they included Led Zeppelin there, too.

^ Definitely. I suspect that back before "In Rock" Deep Purple probably did consider themselves to be a part of The British Progressive Underground scene but no one was actually called "Prog" at that stage.

...except those were recorded after Prog had been established. Their proto Prog stuff would necessarily have to come from their first three albums, like Anthem or April.

Edited by Dean - July 30 2014 at 16:13