These days, when I listen to the songs from Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc. I realize that's it's not really that heavy. I still love the music, but it no longer fits the definition of heavy metal.
Helter Skelter and Paranoid are still heavy to me. St. Anger still sounds like slapping a trash can lid.
Just because some music isn't as heavy as other music doesn't mean you can just disqualify it from heavy metal.
If you had of told 12 year old me that AC/DC would be in Disney / Pixar movies I would have punched you right in the face!
Yes, this is a problem with those that seek to continually categorize music. Today's and even 20 years ago, Punkers don't think anything earlier than Black Flag is worthy of being called Punk. Gen-Xer was happy with the music of their era being simply called Alternative music. But as the internet that followed, blogs, websites, and now social media tend to parse the music into what seems a thousand subgenres. Country music did the same thing, mostly casting away Grand Ole Opry stars during their New Country era where Garth Brooks and Shania Twain became the big stars using the penchant for electric guitars over more traditional instruments. Then like Alternative becoming mainstream, New Country was not longer new and became the status quo. But it's not like this didn't happen previous to this, C&W ditched western cowboy songs as well and just became Country. This is going on here, where there's a thread discussing the merits of clasifying music that came out of CBGB's as genre of it's own. And this seems misguided. CBGB was supposed to be a Country, Bluegrass and Blues venue. But what it became was the second half the for name OMFUG which was Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers. The problem that the OP in that thread struggles with is the Ramones who don't quite fit in with acts like Blondie, Television and Talking Head. Music, or more clearly, what is accepted as good music is something that is different from what others are doing. People latch onto the new thing. This is why CBGB is so reknown, everything was new and there was so much to latch onto. People forget that evolution happens from ideas and ingenuity. I tend to think that those that would overly categorize music into subgenres think music is musicians copying a style rather than innovating and bringing something unique to what already exists.
……ok. Born 1960. Sabbath/Purple/Zeppelin were heavy rock. I never heard the term heavy metal used (in the UK) until the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal in 1979. And of the three I’ve mentioned only Sabbath I would class as anywhere near metal. No, post-Disturbed/Rammstein etc it doesn’t sound that heavy. I don’t care for metal but I love Motorhead, who I think occupy a unique position- listen to the first four or so albums, and hard rock, certainly, but metal? [Lem of course always denied Motorhead were metal- they were loud, fast rock ‘n’ roll]
I completely disagree. You're mixing up heavy metal with extreme metal (thrash, death, black, doom, etc ). Of course Black Sabbath (heavy metal before the term was coined or at least before it was commonly used), Judas Priest and the likes are and will always be the epitome of heavy metal.
Just because the lead singer isn't growling and the drums are not so fast that there is no way an actual human is playing them doesn't mean it isn't metal.
Correct. Helter Skelter is a sonic swamp of limp fizzy blues rock. Nothing even remotely metal about it. So many people here in denial. It's quite comical actually.
Getting to read the lyrics i realized recently that the singer is the murderer, that changes everything...
If the Beatles created heavy metal with Helter Skelter then Bob Dylan created rap with Subterranean Homesick Blues. Which is to say neither did.
Is Willie Nelson no longer country because he doesn't sound like Taylor Swift? Was Louis Armstrong no longer considered jazz in the 70's? Music evolves. That doesn't mean bands stop being from a genre just because they don't sound like today's iteration of a genre.
I agree with what you are saying. But it seems to me, if you tell the average person today that you listen to heavy metal, they think death metal and/or thrash. Back in the day, it meant Priest, Sabbath or Maiden. I remember when the Scorpions were considered heavy metal. What about "hair metal"? At some point groups like Poison, RATT, and Bon Jovi were considered heavy metal. But now it's not really heavy metal, so the definition has changed, which is my point, I guess.
Please don't get me wrong, the last think I want to do is to make you feel attacked. What follows is only me being honest about my point of view. No hard feelings at all. So, the impression I get is that you see how things really are but want to adapt or abolish the proper categorization that reflects history and reality in order to follow what today's ignorants on the matter think about it. No, definitely the definition of heavy metal has not changed, and the bands you named still qualify as heavy metal. The past and the facts can't be changed, or at least shouldn't. Indeed you can find all those bands (except Bon Jovi) in metal-archives.com, a site built with the contribution of thousands of metal fans around the world. Honestly I don't care about what an "average person", I mean, a casual listener, a non knowledgeable person lacking in historical perspective, may think and say about this subject. There's hard rock, there's heavy metal, there's pop-metal, etc and there's extreme metal (death, black, etc.) no matter what uninformed people think or say. On the other hand, regarding what people who know what's talking about think about heavy metal, extreme metal and hard rock, we can check for example the Banger TV - all metal genre debates, or the videos where music critic Martin Popoff asks people about what they think are the best metal albums of X year (Popoff himself and people in general discusses hard rock and metal, etc). Following the thoughts of "average persons" we could hop on his/her/their bandwagon and end up saying things like Chuck Berry is not rock'n'roll, because for many average persons rock'n'roll only refers to the likes of The Rolling Stones, "The greatest rock and roll band in the world", or to the likes of Motörhead ("We are Motörhead and we play rock N roll"). Or say that Ruth Brown, Roy Brown, The Platters, Louis Jordan, etc don't make rhythm & blues because nowadays average persons identifie rhythm & blues with Beyoncé.
Right, or Elvis, for that matter. His version of rock 'n' roll sounds nothing like the Rolling Stones ("the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world"), for instance. So if we're going to use the Stones as a yardstick for that kind of music, should we say that Elvis isn't rock 'n' roll anymore? It's silly.