Top 10 Ways Black Sabbath Created Heavy Metal

Black Sabbath's debut is the first proper metal album because of the heaviness of the riffs, dark atmosphere, and occult themes. Deep Purple In Rock is not a metal album because it lacks the heaviness to be considered metal. One can easily tell if an album is metal because metal has a certain degree of heaviness that hard rock simply doesn't have.

Black Sabbath created heavy metal, not Deep Purple, because they incorporated darkness and occult themes. Deep Purple only sings about rainbows, and I hate rainbows.

Some people on this site believe that Deep Purple combined all these genres and invented metal with fast tempos and monster guitar solos, but Black Sabbath had some of that too.

Listen to Paranoid and Children of the Grave. While Deep Purple helped influence some aspects of heavy metal, Black Sabbath is the true inventor of metal.

It all began with Black Sabbath, a few months before In Rock by Deep Purple came out. Even then, that album isn't metal. Deep Purple is not metal. How can they invent something that they don't play?

Its title track was the darkest and heaviest song at its time. Other songs like Kick Out The Jams, Speed King, 21st Century Schizoid Man, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida are not heavy enough to be considered metal. All of them are just hard rock with the exception of 21st Century, which is heavy jazz fusion.

Its title track was by far the darkest and heaviest song at the time. MC5 is soft compared to the gods of extreme metal.

True, but doom metal is one of the smaller genres. Black Sabbath also created all extreme metal genres because of their heaviness and occult themes, which Deep Purple did not have.

Sorry, it's really doom metal and hardcore punk. I didn't know that before.

Progressive Metal was formed alongside Progressive Rock. The creation of the genre was a dual effort between some heavy metal bands (Black Sabbath) and some prog rock bands (King Crimson). Deep Purple and Black Sabbath both influenced progressive metal, but the genre is very broad. Some bands (Dream Theater) sound close to power metal, whereas others (Opeth) sound more extreme.

Black Sabbath had more influence over extreme metal, and Deep Purple had more influence over power metal due to the lack of occult themes in the genre and Ian Gillan's operatic vocals.

The Writ (1975) and several songs from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) can be classified as early prog metal. Child in Time by Deep Purple (1970) is also a progressive song, but it isn't necessarily metal. King Crimson and Atomic Rooster also created some music that can be classified as progressive proto-metal.

Christian metal isn't a genre but a lyrical theme inspired by Christianity. "Christian" metal bands play all metal genres. Tourniquet and Deliverance play thrash, Mortification plays death, Theocracy plays power, Shadow Gallery plays progressive, and Trouble plays doom - all with Christian lyrics.

Paranoid (1970) is somewhat like thrash metal. Children of the Grave (1971) and Symptom of the Universe (1975) are even closer.

Other songs worth mentioning are Breadfan by Budgie (1973) and Stone Cold Crazy by Queen (1974).

Some of Judas Priest's early music can be considered a precursor to thrash metal, specifically Tyrant (1976), Call for the Priest and Dissident Aggressor (1977), and Exciter and Saints in Hell (1978).

Lightning to the Nations by Diamond Head (1980) and Welcome to Hell by Venom (1981) can be considered the first albums with several thrash metal songs, but Kill 'Em All by Metallica (1983) was the first with an album's worth of thrash.

Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Venom, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Dream Theater were all influenced by Black Sabbath. Some of these bands were also influenced by Deep Purple, but Black Sabbath is almost always the biggest influence.

Ask Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Dream Theater who their biggest influence was, and they will say Black Sabbath. Without Black Sabbath, none of these bands would exist.

Say what you want about Sabbath not being influential. If you ask metal musicians, they will acknowledge them as pioneers.

Black Sabbath's imagery inspired many metal bands. Deep Purple's did not. Rainbow's inspired some power metal and symphonic metal, but Sabbath inspired all other genres.

Ozzy Osbourne created heavy metal. Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson, Hansi Kürsch, and Ronnie James Dio were all inspired by him.

Tony Iommi invented the guitar riff.

Most metal drummers sound more like Bill Ward and not Ian Paice.

Keyboards aren't a metal instrument, and Black Sabbath didn't have them.