i've been kinda into heavy metal lately and i'm wondering what is some good early heavy metal, like the stuff that influenced alot of metal musicians. alot of people say "Purple Haze" is a pretty influential song for metal, the way it uses distortion and different techniques. any other specific songs which were "heavily" influencial?
Slayer, Queensryche, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. Black Sabbath, How early we talking.. Since the Delta Blues time period guitar distortion was pretty common. ZZ Top sig is really metal riffs played with different tones are you talking about just tone..and settings.. Or the earliest use of distortion in modern music.
Deep Purple with Gillan, Rainbow - Richie Blackmore's Rainbow and Rising, Diamond Head - Lightning to the nations. Heavy metal was really influenced by bands that were inventive with their distortion indeed: like Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, Cream, and I guess bands that just rocked hard for the time (late sixties, early seventies) like the Who, Led Zeppelin, but also bands like Uriah Heep and Rainbow. These are some of the few most known of course, there were a lot of heavy rockin bands in those time that are now pretty much forgotten but did influence later bands that shaped the heavy metal genre. Bands like Captain Beyond, Bakerloo, San Francisco's Shiver, Black Cat Bones, but perhaps also bands like Iron Butterfly and Steppenwolf.
The first band to be reviewed as "heavy metal" were Humble Pie, theyre kind of heavy bluesy rock similar to Led Zep. featuring steve marriot on vocals, quite possibly one of my favourite vocalists ever. Id recomend you listen to some of these, plus Led Zep, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple. Id say the first band to start metal as we know it tho was Sabbath, with Iommis tuned down guitar style and there dark musical style - definately the best place to start off.
the people above me pretty much nailed it. Iron Butterfly, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, all those bands and more are early metal bands.
