Definitive Poll: Black Sabbath - Heavy Metal or Not?

The more stupid poll ever. LOL

Next: The Ramones punk or not.

 

Black Sabbath have more in common with Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Saxon than they do with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Putting Sabbath in the same bag as Zeppelin and Purple is a common mistake.

 

"No, man, they were rock'n'roll."

 

The Ramones : punk :: Black Sabbath : metal

 

This for me.

 

Yes they are in my opinion. They created the 'sound' and benchmark for others to follow.

A more chellenging poll would be asking if Deep Purple Qualify for Heavy Metal...

 

As someone else mentioned, this may be the easiest poll question ever. Of course.

 

They are metal certainly but the 70s stuff is also very wide ranging at times stylistically whereas their 80s onwards material is more 'meat and potatoes' metal, stuff like Born Again. Eternal Idol etc.

 

I'm going to say absolutely yes...and I have not been wrong on anything since last Monday.

Actually, Paranoid came on while I was driving to work yesterday. I immediately latched onto the chunka chunka chunka guitar...how could anyone describe this as anything but Heavy Metal. Add in the lumbering power of their namesake tune...and it's really obvious that Black Sabbath were the architects of "Heavy Metal Rock".
Others following may have take the original blueprints to more extreme places.
But Sabbath laid out the plan and foundation.
And the real beauty of Black Sabbath...they had massive dynamics. A song like Planet Caravan is not only brilliant in its own right, but serves to make the heavier songs even HEAVIER.

 

Also Scorpions.

 

What makes a poll "definitive"?

 

The title.

 

Tuned down guitars, use of the tri-tone which is otherwise known as the Devil's interval, songs about alienation, war, paranoia, drug abuse and social instability, lead guitarist loses finger tips while working in a sheet metal factory--all the hallmarks of a great power pop band.

 

Yeah, I mean Into the Void is heavy as is, but coming just after Solitude?

 

What else would they be?

 

This.

 

We can say it is heavy metal only because of how the term has evolved since them. When I first heard them in 1970 the first thing I thought was how diverse they were. Prog, blues, jazz, rock and roll......it was impossible to peg them into one category and I think it still is.

 

Exactly.... Ramones = Rock 'n Roll
Sex Pistols = Punk
Sabbath = Metal, and just about every other rock style, even to medieval sounding acoustic... so prog, rock, jazz-rock, metal.
What a band!!

 

After some hard bands like Blue Cheer, MC5, The Who or The Kinks, Black Sabbath created a sound that should be known as the birth of Heavy Metal.

 

Someone's gotta take the blame.

 

From the man himself: I never called our music heavy metal. It was always "heavy rock" or just "heavy."
http://www.cosmik.com/aa-october00/iommi.html

 

According to Dudley Morris, that makes Iommi unqualified to talk about rock music. Sabbath (at least the first 4), are not metal. Not sure what happened after that, they started to suck so I quit listening.

 

Hello,
I JUST joined and this is my first post.
I gotta say I'm so glad there's other wise old guys here that remember the bands like BS invented metal and likewise the RAMONES punk.

It drives me nuts when newer fans of these genres diminish their importance by relabeling these bands as just Rock or Pop Punk.

 

Classic 70's Sabbath is way too diverse and original to be called metal. Stoner rock? Maybe. After Ozzy left they became just another 80's metal band for sure but I don't even consider it Sabbath.

 

Yes, absolutely. In fact, I consider the song "Black Sabbath" to be the birth of heavy metal as we know it.