The History of Heavy

The term "heavy rock" I don't see used much anymore. Some time back, "metal" was "heavy metal" which was, at least as I vaguely remember even longer ago, a sort of sub-category of heavy rock. Now of course there's the usual out-of-control fractal growth of barely distinguishable sub and sub-sub-sub genres.

But what I'm getting at is this - there's a history in all this that I lost the thread of sometime in the 80s. The history I want to trace is fairly simple - the evolution of recorded music that emphasizes "heavy". Obviously distortion and big bass are essential to the concept. But there's a studio-trickery aspect to it that nowadays probably carries most of the burden of coming up with new ways to sound heavier than ever.

That's what I lost the thread of - the cutting edge of heavy - what bands and studio geniuses took over the vanguard of creating new ways to sound yet more impressively heavy.

I assume the grunge scene was part of this? Or was the really heavy stuff already so heavy that the grungers were just kind of loud and scratchy but not really amazingly heavy in their day?

And since the early grungers....what are the landmarks of progress in joyfull eardrum-destroying distortion and bass and all that?

Is this clear? I don't mean who is the most popular or interesting metal artist or shredder or thrasher or noisecore demon or whatever. I mean who created actual new sounds that made the big distorted chunks of sound even bigger and weightier and made astonished people go "wow...that's the heaviest thing I've ever heard!"

nat whilk ii

as I see it: Those formulaic "Buzz Ballads" of the mid-90's kinda killed the concept of Heavy Metal as such...

Suddenly these new young post-grunge artists wanted to think of themselves as "Alternative"... or even just "Rock".

I'm way out of the loop now on the various sub-genres of "heavy". I liked the early heavy bands, when it was a totally new sound - the likes of Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Zeppelin (of course, although with hindsight they were more blues-rock than outright heavy rock), Pink Fairies and, probably the band most responsible for the term "heavy metal", Black Sabbath (although I and my friends back then thought they were a bit of a joke - a likeable joke but a joke all the same). Later bands seemed to me to just be recycling the same sounds and I started to lose interest. As I understand it, the term "heavy metal" comes from the fact that Sabbath, like a number of other early metal bands, hailed from the industrial midlands of England (as do I), where the majority of people were employed in what we used to call the "metal bashing" industries - foundries, iron and steel works, car manufacture etc. If I recall correctly Tony Iommi lost the tip of his finger working in such a place.

Iron Butterfly.

As a teen, in the 80s...I was always looking for "heavier".

I remember when Accept's "Balls to Wall" came out...that was about as heavy as I'd heard, at the time.

THen came Metallica, Slayer, etc...more "metal" than plain heavy, and there really wasn't a whole lot of bottom end to their sound.

Albums I remember having a bit more "heaviness" than the norm, in the 80s were the eponymous Whitesnake album and Judas Priest's Turbo.

RUN-DMC's King of Rock was "heavier" than those albums, by comparison.

I think Pantera , in the early 90's redifined "heavy"...their albums had a tremendous bottom. I wouldn't consider the grunge bands necessarily heavy, although Soundgarden and AIC carried more "weight" than the other bands of that genre. After Pantera, a whole slew of bands followed that bottom-boosted, 7-string or baritone guitar-driven hard rock/metal.

Some would add ominous keyboards, which added to the heaviness.

Don't know if that helps, at all...just my opinion.

I'll check out the RUN-DMC stuff.

I recall that, when CDs came out, the possibility of bigger, louder bass became technologically possible at the sound playback stage. Vinyl records have a physical limitation with reproducing bass. The grooves are analogical of the actual waveforms, and bass waveforms are so big that the needle will jump out of the groove if the bass gets too loud on vinyl.

Digital playback has no such limitation. So I recall artists like Bomb The Bass and such were able to produce those boom-box thumps and thuds to bless the neighbors and other vehicles in traffic with.

The mention of Iron Butterfly above makes me think also that the way the music is played, the composition itself, can add to the heavy factor. The bass and lead unison riff in InnaGadda,etc is slow and has those 4 up-strokes on the off beats, just like Sunshine Of Your Love, which was a milestone of heavy in my personal heavy historybook.

nat whilk ii

Do you consider Kyuss, Wolfmother, or other things to be heavy?

Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath were also the first major acts to tune down below concert pitch. Jimi did it to accommodate his vocal range and Tony did it to make the guitar easier to play with his damaged fingers.

I think Metallica really defined the "scooped-mid" sound that became so popular. They also weren't afraid to play slow sometimes (which always makes things sound heavier).

How about Napalm Death? Grindcore and Death Metal bands redefined heavy in the late 80s. It's interesting how the older acts responded to this - Ozzy Osbourne released "No More Tears" which has some incredibly heavy riffs and Judas Priest released "Painkiller" which is way heavier than anything they ever did before.

I don't think most of the Grunge bands were particularly heavy. They were loud but their sound was fuzzy and unfocused. "Loud and scratchy" was a good description.

As mentioned above, Pantera raised the bar for heavy. I think a lot of it is their stripped-down sound. You can hear everything and it's like being punched in the chest.

The popularity of the 7-string guitar was a big development but IMHO it's often too unfocused and sludgy to have a lot of impact. Seems to be hit or miss. Meshuggah used 8-string (now 9-string) guitars to get even heavier.

I think the over-use of compression has really compromised heavy music - the dynamics get lost and it loses its impact after a few moments.

I recall the first two Jeff Beck Group albums (1968-69) as being landmarks of "heaviness" at the time -- especially songs like "I Ain't Superstitious", "Spanish Boots", and "The Hangman's Knee". In fact, the liner notes to "Beck-Ola" used the term "heavy music", IIRC (don't have the album handy) -- not a familiar term at the time, and almost "heavy metal".

If you're going to point to the beginnings of "heavy" - where one band took the heaviest songs of The Kinks, The Who, the Bay Area bands, electric blues, and garage rock, and amalgamated all of those influences into a coherent band concept, then I would have to say the eponymous Vanilla Fudge debut (which debuted in July of 1967) is your originator.

Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin I sounds very close in instrumentation and sheen to Vanilla Fudge), Jeff Beck, Iron Butterfly, Deep Purple all obviously took a lot of cues from that album.

Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart both became good friends with VF, which led to later collaborations - Beck, Bogert & Appice, and Carmine worked with Rod for several years.>

I remember being a young child in the early 70s, and looking through my Dad's very large and eclectic record collection, and I found this album - it's electric, freakout cover was interesting. I put it on and was rather terrified of those cacophonous "Illusions of My Childhood" song inserts. The music sounded angry, sad, and tortured all at once.

I would think that scaring young children should be a badge of honor for any heavy band.

Definitely..."stoner rock", in particular is some badass stuff.

Monster Magnet, Slow Burn, Mondo Generator, Fireball Ministry, Masters of Reality, and my personal favorite, Fu Manchu...they're all good for some heads-down rockin' without the overt aggression of metal.

So does Nine Inch Nails figure into any of this? Or do synths just not count?

nat whilk ii

Sure...but until someone does an exhaustive history...you're bound to get some glaring omissions.

I suppose it really peaked around either 1986 or 1989, especially the late 1980s when that big-house slick production styles were applied to heavy metal albums to get the biggest sound possible.

That's strange though, because for me, 1988 had rather SMALL sounds if that makes sense. 1988 basically was the year that mid-scooping went overboard (basically everyone copying Metallica's ...And Justice For All) and the guitars sounded like overlayered buzzing bees rather than heavy chunk.

1986 was rather 'reverby' and probably not as chunky sounding, although the tones cut through better and punched you in the face. Even the mid-scooped tones were very heavy sounding, in fact more.

So I guess now I'd say that around the mid-1980s was the cutting edge of 'heavy'. Anywhere from 1985-1987, ok say 1986, was the cutting edge.

Yet 1986 was also a major year for over-the-top Stock Aiken & Waterman pop records!

I gotta say that Black Sabbath's 1971 song Children of the Grave really slams the heaviness down for me

It's not the original heaviest thing, but it's close to the beginning and it IS heavy. It even laid out the phrase! Can you guess the song?

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Yep, Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild. It had the classic chunky-heavy guitar, the big bass, the chugging drums, the growling vox. It also, like Vanilla Fudge and Deep Purple and ProcolHarum, had bad-ass awesome Hammond organ. To my ears, that sound has always been heavier than ANY two-guitar attack.

"I like smoke and lightning, HEAVY METAL THUNDER!!...."

How much heavier can it get??

Other heavy bands would include Floor, Grief, and The Melvins.. I've seen The Melvins and they were mindbogglingly heavy, just slabs of sound, unbelievably good back in the day. This 1990 version of The Melvins is by far the heaviest band I've ever seen live. This is stuff that most forumites will not be familiar with, although a lot of you have probably heard of The Melvins. The first two are extremely heavy and are of the heavy super slowcore variety.

For less heavy but more popular stuff, some might also consider Prong and Tool.

You read my mind.

So the picture I'm getting is that, as far as guitar/bass heaviness goes, by the time you get to a date like, say, 1999, the idea of evolving techniques in heavy sound was an old idea that had played itself out sometime earlier? No further progress appears in the works?

nat whilk ii

I don't know. I hear heavy bands locally, but it doesn't seem to seep into the mainstream quite as much.

I like this one band called Black Mountain (from Canada, I believe), who are not really the loudest band always, but can get really heavy. And that's the way a lot of really heavy bands are anyway. It's the light/shade that make 'em heavy. The dynamics.

hmmm. "She's So Heavy" - The Beatles comes to mind as does "I Am the Walrus".

Someone mentioned Vanilla Fudge; I remember reading that they were on the bill with Hendrix (also 'heavy') and he hated to follow them on. Under rated band for sure.

I keep watching this thread to see if we triangulate heavy.

I'm curious about the devices, effects, flourishes, textures, tones and harmonics that create the overall effect.

I think of things like the Wendy Carlos arrangement of the Dies Irae for The Shining soundtrack. That was pretty heavy. That was also in the very early 80s when you mentioned losing the thread of heavy. I think heavy might have gone a little sideways then.

Delivery changes didn't serve heavy. I don't think the rise of video really did anything for heavy. I don't think the CD helped heavy. I don't think the mp3 does heavy. They can all do loud, but of the three only modern multi-channel video can get close to the disturbing edge of heavy in the same way that vinyl could approximate it.