Where Cream had tended to veer away from the straight blues format, Led Zeppelin in their early years stuck more faithfully to predictable patterns, and became the world’s best-selling group during the early seventies. Live concerts were performed at unimagined volume levels, battering audiences into blissful submission. Led Zeppelin continued to combine its offerings with hard-blues-rock numbers and the eclectic musical interests of guitarist Jimmy Page, whose dabbling in esoteric Oriental sounds and jazz harmonies of an earlier era made every Led Zeppelin album a multi-generic menu for the aural palate.
Black Sabbath in retrospect was the most prototypical of the early Heavy Metal bands. Formed in the Aston area of Birmingham, the band got their name from the 1935 Horror film starring Boris Karloff. Their songs contained lyrics of alienation, apocalypse, and the occult. Their music’s main features were monolithic riffs using detuning and low power chords (intervals of a perfect fifth played on the guitar's lower registers), voicings that were given a metallic-sounding distortion via an overdriven amp and/or fuzz box. The driving "bottom" of these power chords became Heavy Metal's trademark, and the ease with which they could be played was no doubt instrumental in the new genre's popularity among guitar players with little or no formal training.
Deep Purple would abandon progressive rock with their 1971 release ‘In Rock’. Gone was the psychedelia, symphonic noodlings and winsome vocals of the first three studio albums, replaced by Ian Gillan's soaring, aggressive vocals, thunderous rhythms and the blazing interplay between Blackmore's guitar and Lord's organ. Their third album with Gillan would produce a song with a riff that is perhaps the most recognizable in rock history… Smoke on the Water.
Over in the States bands would resort to wearing theatrical make-up; introduce bigger-than-life special effects and pyrotechnics into their shows, particularly Alice Cooper and Kiss. Alice Cooper's colossal shows, known to feature boa constrictors, mutilated female mannequins, and Alice Cooper himself in a beheading spectacle, shocked audiences and became a focus for protest from Pro-Christian groups. This only fuelled the outlandish image and association that Satanism and the occult had with heavy metal, that had came courtesy of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin's guitarist Jimmy Page had a strong fascination with the occult and magician Aleister Crowley (The album Led Zeppelin IV, is noteworthy for the Tarot symbolism and esoteric symbols on its album art), while many of Black Sabbath's lyrics within their ample range of themes, frequently dealt with the Prince of Darkness himself.
The distinctions between heavy metal audiences and progressive rock audiences began to weaken in the middle and late 70’s. Bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis had remained most of the time outside the heavy metal realms, while others like Jethro Tull, Yes, and King Crimson flirted with it more often. Characterized by complex song structures, odd-time arrangements, and a highly technical and virtuous use of instruments, progressive metal would be epitomised by Canadian band Rush, driving its progressive outings to their furthermost limits on albums like A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres.
In Britain the punk era was taking over strongly among the youth, which would knock Metal out of the limelight for a few years but it would eventually come out of hiding at the end of the 70’s as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). The highly important British invasion brought with itself new bands like the acclaimed Diamond Head, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Saxon, and gave the older established artists such as Motorhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Whitesnake, Rainbow, Gillan, and Judas Priest a new lease of life. Unlike early Heavy Metal, the bands were looked upon more favourably by the press and media and were given regular airplay on BBC Radio One’s Friday Rock Show (which ran from 1976 to 1991) hosted by Tommy Vance. The theme music to the show was Dixie Dregs' - Take It Off The Top, which could have been made for the job – and as with most BBC programmes of the time, live sessions played a prominent role. Many bands appeared on the show, including special recordings at the Reading Festival.
Iron Maiden would embark on sell out world tours, and Def Leppard became a smash in the States with their album ‘Pyromania’ although like previous bands, they had to break America before having any commercial success back in Britain. Saxon and Judas Priest would popularise the denim, leather, studs, and spikes attire that would appear on fans at the annual Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington.
Along with Metal’s excesses there were unfortunately a couple of casualties, both alcohol related. The death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham would end the band and although Australian/British outfit AC/DC would lose original frontman Bon Scott to the same fate, their following album ‘Back in Black’ (with Geordie singer Brian Johnson) would go on and break dozens of record sales and land them sell out concerts around the globe.
In the United States, guitar wizard Van Halen was responsible for inspiring a nation of teenage ‘axe murderers’. Other bands from Los Angeles, particularly Motley Crue and Ratt, wrote relatively accessible songs that were big on hooks, and strongly influenced by the likes of veterans Sweet and T-Rex. Both bands also took the glam images from bands such as Alice Cooper, the New York Dolls, and Kiss. Taking them to the extreme, glam metal bands began wearing women's makeup, leather outfits, fishnets, headbands, spikes, and whatever they could basically get their hands on.
On the other hand, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer spearheaded the rise of the testosterone driven thrash/speed metal. Heavily Influenced by NWOBHM bands Motorhead, Judas Priest, and Diamond Head, their songs combined multiple riffing, snarling vocals, and a wide use of double-pedals in drumming to produce music that was totally uncompromising and ferocious, and were initially shunned by MTV and commercial radio stations. Regardless, Speed metal finally hit paydirt when Metallica's masterpiece, Master of Puppets, reached the gold mark (500,000 albums sold) in 1986. This catapulted Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth into stardom as well, and began the rise in commercial circles. The answer to Glam metal had arrived in the form of an uncompromisingly brutal form of heavy metal.
As heavy metal began diversifying itself continuously, certain musicians would decide to relieve its characteristic vocals to a second plane, or to completely eliminate them. Among these were guitar virtuosos Joe Satriani, his student Steve Vai, and Yngwie Malmsteen. The prominence of instrumental variations of metal has gradually grown through the years; however, only few of its exponents have achieved wide commercial and media exposure.
Hair metal bands Bon Jovi and Guns’N’Roses sold millions of albums and released hit ballad after hit ballad. Slippery When Wet and New Jersey took the world by storm, as would Appetite for Destruction. These two bands learned how to take metal's harshness and mix it with pop's accessibility, therefore producing a perfect blend for the MTV-influenced youth of those days.
Then Nirvana exploded upon the world with their song "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Its mixture of accessible simple melodies and punk angst quickly drew hordes of fans eager to listen to something new. Kurt Cobain's depressed lyrics attracted millions of teenagers who felt as if the old stars of glam metal had nothing to do with their lives; flash and sex just weren't reality anymore, or so everyone thought. Until the death of Cobain in 1994, the members of Nirvana were MTV darlings and helped impulse the so-called Seattle scene, taking away the heavy metal scene from Los Angeles.
After the wake of Nirvana, several bands quickly attained fame status. Soundgarden kept to its tried and true formula; Alice In Chains offered a dark, broody musical landscape; and Pearl Jam, perhaps, offered intricate guitar arrangements and melodies, along with Eddie Vedder's low growls and words from the heart on its masterful debut album Ten. The alternative metal scene quickly grew as MTV gave such bands heavy video rotation and took them to stardom.
While the hype around Seattle was continually growing, a musician named Trent Reznor, the brains behind Nine Inch Nails, took the spotlight increasingly as he revolutionized industrial metal through his angry, hateful lyrics. Impulses heavily by tracks like "Head Like A Hole," "Broken," and "Closer," alongside a memorable performance at the second Woodstock Festival, Reznor has achieved quite a household name through the years.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Extreme were vital in the popularisation of funk metal, especially after the Chili’s hit song ‘Under the Bridge’ was played on every radio station imaginable to mankind, and still enjoy a stellar status as, arguably, the strongest exponent of funk metal ever.
Rap metal, also called rap-core, a combination that had already been experimented with by older groups such as Anthrax, the Bad Brains, and Aerosmith has been taking a harder turn. Somewhat pioneered by the controversial Ice-T-led Body Count along with the popular and politically active Rage Against the Machine during the Nineties; The Deftones, and the ever-growing Korn have heralded the dark side of the coin so far.
The other new tendency is even more shocking and being led by what some people consider a lunatic, a menace, a misunderstood genius, a clown, the prime embodiment of evil, or just a cynical man who has learned that shock value and manipulation through the media can absorb the minds of youths eager to think that they are truly rebellious. Marilyn Manson has shocked the world overnight, with his album Antichrist Superstar antagonizing conservative as well as liberal circles. However, as Time magazine cleverly and eloquently put it, Manson seems to be quite in the same vein as Kiss; a cleverly planned product designed for a music industry's increasing income. Despite this, the bands seems be to be encompassing an ever growing audience, and several new bands have already ripped off the band's style; vein-slicing and white makeup included.
