Hold up, with Malmsteen comes the new thought which is this: the original metal composer if you really want to get into it was Bach.

Although it is a very “dark” and “evil” band, it is dark and evil in a manner that lacks the Wagnerian mellow-drama that is the thing that is the emotional quality of heavy metal (be it serious or goofy, that highly passionate “MYUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” quality is what I noticed that all heavy metal bands have in common, and Black Sabbath simply lacks that quality.)

Instead, Black Sabbath’s “darkness” is more in the realistic, day-to-day, boredom/depression, bluesy sense; I personally think of the band’s genre as hard blues.

To make a comparison to genres of fictional writing and movies, heavy metal generally falls into one (or possibly both) of the following categories: bad horror movies, like any of the Nightmare on Elm Street or Jason movies (death metal and black metal all fall into this categoy); and fantasy adventure, like Lord of the Rings, Willow, or Eragon (power metal and symphonic metal are usually in this category.) My point is that heavy metal is completely devoid of reality, and is vigorously passionate, mellow-dramatic (oftentimes ridiculously so) fantasy. Black Sabbath would be comparable to a slow moving, realistic, and depressing story (Of Mice and Men could be a good example.)

P.S. Although I consider Black Sabbath a heavy blues band, Black Sabbath has at least one song that I would consider heavy metal (perhaps blues metal?); Iron Man is most definitely one of them, due to the Wagnerian quality to it; and Paranoid probably qualifies as well, as it is quick-moving and lacks Black Sabbath’s usual slow, moping, depressed quality.

Keep in mind also, that Sabbath continued to be metal after Ozzy’s departure – the Dio years were heavy – Neon Knights, Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, etc., all the way through to the Tony Martin years, which were metal by any definition.

Zep is a different deal all together – they were bastardized blues rock – psychedelic, and heavy – with influences ranging from traditional Celtic music, Middle eastern/Serbian/gypsy music…. Plant was influenced heavily by Motown records. Zep is just too hard to classify – the first two records are primarily heavy blues, the third mellows out with a lot of Celtic and folk influences, the fourth combines all of them and overblows it with huge production, Physical Graffiti and Houses are probably their most “metal” albums, with tracks like In the Light, Ten Years Gone, No Quarter,The Ocean, etc – but even one those albums, you hear metal influences combined in a larger experimental framework.

Sorry to be so wordy, but a musician friend of mine and I have had a similar discussion lately – and I believe that all metal spawned forth from the loins of Sabbath….you could chart it out, like the Kevin Bacon game. All metal bands are within 7 degrees of Sabbath:

Dillinger Escape Plan was admittedly influenced by Opeth which was admittedly influenced by Slayer who started out as a cover band playing Iron Maiden songs that were influenced by Deep Purple who started out has kind of a hippy pop band until 1971′s Machine Head, which was heavily influenced by the first two Sabbath records. In actuality, all of those bands were directly influenced by Sabbath, with the exception of maybe Maiden.

Anyway. The line between hard rock and heavy metal is pretty hard to define. I always argue with people over a simialr question- where do we put Guns N Roses?

To me, good music is good music. Classic rock is particularly hard to classify as rock or metal because the music isn’t heavy in the same way as metal is now- it’s more ‘chunky’ and less brutal, so it’s still heavy but with a different sound. Does it matter? Not really. Hell, I listen to Journey, I probably shouldn’t even be commenting on this at all.

Led Zep on the other hand have nothing to do with evil (even though they did a couple of psychedelic songs – No Quarter), most of their songs have a kind of ”let’s have a party” vibe.

I never really listened to Hawkwind and Iron Butterfly (except a In-A-Gadda-A-Vida Slayer cover), but I would classify Blue Cheer, as well as Sabbath, as stoner metal (along with a couple of other bands of the time – Pentagram, for instance).

So, is Black Sabbath metal…? My blackened heart set to full motion, says: hell yeah!

The answer, of course, is, “No.”

But even if the definition has broadened, I feel like the genre’s roots have stayed the same. No matter what direction metal goes, I always see Sabbath as its start.

Even those screamo pukes.
Even Wagner, from a few centuries previous to them somehow, are all ripping off Black Sabbath. The diminushed fifth is so dark and brutal ( thank you too Pickles the drummer doodleeedoo ) that anything down tuned is metals. Now gets me a dragons!
-d—

@K: Downtuning makes an excellent case.

I don’t enjoy the “heavier than thou” aspect of “what is metal”, but I’m happy that there is so much variation within the genre. I was wondering if the definition of metal has changed over the years because I was reading recently that ‘Zeppelin and ‘Sabbath were originally called heavy metal in the early years by rock critics, who used the term in a derogatory way.