SOME OF THE PIONEERS
This is an ongoing project, I will fill this list from time to time with the latest ones at the top. As always, please report dead links!
Hailing from the town of Dumfries in South West Scotland, the origins of the band Iron Claw started in the summer of '69! Founder member Alex
Wilson, who was then aged 21, and was at the time assisting in the management of another local band, as well as recording music as a hobby, was inspired by seeing Led Zeppelin on their first concert tour of Britain at a show at Newcastle City Hall on June 20th 1969. This "revelation" planted a seed of the ambition to start a band good' enough to eventually release recordings of their own songs. Having been involved in the local music scene, Alex knew the best young guitarist and drummer in the area who were still uninvolved with any other bands, and on August 1.gth 1969, jimmy Ronnie (1 5) (guitar) joined, followed by Ian McDougall (15) (drums) on August 23rd 1969. Finding a vocalist proved more deiced, and Alex bad to handle vocals as well as bass during the early rehearsals and for the lint three public appearances! Playing cover versions at first to "tighten up' , songs by the likes of Johnny Winter, Free, Taste, to rears After, Blind Faith, Reef Hartley Band, and Black Cat Bones gave an indication of the type of blues based material that the band were developing.
A mix of Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Psychedelic Rock and a touch of Metal. Sir Lord Baltimore was an American band from Brooklyn, New York City, formed in 1968 by lead vocalist and drummer John Garner, guitarist Louis Dambra, and bassist Gary Justin. Some have cited the 1971 review of their debut record, Kingdom Come, in Creem magazine as containing the first documented use of the term "heavy metal" to refer to a style of music. AllMusic described them as "arguably America's first bona fide heavy metal band". Sir Lord Baltimore featured a drumming lead singer, traditionally a rarity in rock and metal music.
Lucifer's Friend was a German rock band, formed in Hamburg in 1970 by guitarist Peter Hesslein, singer John Lawton, bassist Dieter Horns, keyboardist Peter Hecht, and drummer Joachim Reitenbach. The group was an early practitioner of a heavy metal-ish sound, combined with progressive rock. They also incorporated elements of jazz and fusion into their music, especially in their fourth album Banquet of 1974.Beyond heavy metal, the band has been cited, too, as one of the pioneers of doom metal, helping to define both genres due to their heavy sound and dark oriented lyrics of their debut Lucifer's Friend of 1971, and returning to their roots in 1981 with Mean Machine, although more influenced by speed metal.
This Brooklyn four-piece released an early metal masterpiece in 1972’s Hard Attack, one that flirted with textures that would become key aspects of the doom subgenre, but were forced to break up when – get this – their parents wouldn’t let them drop out of high school to tour. Indeed, the band’s story is pretty funny, but at least drummer Marc Steven Bell would still make a name for himself in the music world, later reinventing himself as a punk legend operating under the name Marky Ramone. Bizarre, but true. / Text courtesy of Astral Noize
Dust ”Hard Attack” [LP] 1972
MOUNTAIN
Mountain was an American rock band formed on Long Island, New York, in 1969. Originally consisting of vocalist-guitarist Leslie West, bassist-vocalist Felix Pappalardi, keyboardist Steve Knight, and drummer N. D. Smart (soon replaced by Corky Laing), the group disbanded in 1972, but reunited on several occasions prior to West's death in 2020. They are best-known for their 1970 smash hit song "Mississippi Queen", which remains a staple of classic rock radio, as well as the heavily sampled song "Long Red", and their performance at Woodstock Festival in 1969. Mountain is one of many bands commonly credited with influencing the development of heavy metal music during the 1970s. The group's musical style primarily consisted of hard rockin blues rock.
Mountain ”Climbing” [LP] 1969
BANG
American hard rock trio formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in August 1969, by 16-year-olds Frankie Gilcken and Frank Ferrara; Tony Diorio joined after answering an ad in a local newspaper looking for a drummer. They broke up in 1974, after releasing three albums for Capitol Records, and reunited in 1996 after a 25-year hiatus. There are plenty of of metalish riffs on their debut album.
Bang ”Bang” [LP] 1972
ATOMIC ROOSTER
Atomic Rooster are a British rock band originally formed by members of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, organist Vincent Crane and drummer Carl Palmer. Their history is defined by two periods: the early-mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The band went through radical style changes, but they are best known for the hard rockin, progressive rock sound. The opening track of the album ”Death Walks Behind You” have a very doomish sound.
Coven’s well-documented occult lyrics and proclivity for guitars make them an obvious candidate for influencing metal, but as a band whose sound were outdone by Black Sabbath in 1970, they too are often omitted from metal’s history. Older readers may be surprised to see a name like Coven listed among “forgotten” artists, but as a young metal fan, this writer can attest that there are plenty who’ve probably never even heard the name. The band have even been credited as the origins of the devil horns, a title that seems to often go to Ronnie James Dio, who helped popularise the gesture in metal.
A mix of Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Psychedelic Rock and a touch of Metal. Sir Lord Baltimore was an American band from Brooklyn, New York City, formed in 1968 by lead vocalist and drummer John Garner, guitarist Louis Dambra, and bassist Gary Justin. Some have cited the 1971 review of their debut record, Kingdom Come, in Creem magazine[4] as containing the first documented use of the term "heavy metal" to refer to a style of music. AllMusic described them as "arguably America's first bona fide heavy metal band". Sir Lord Baltimore featured a drumming lead singer, traditionally a rarity in rock and metal music.
CAPTAIN BEYOND
Captain Beyond was an American group formed in Los Angeles in 1971. Consisting of former Deep Purple singer Rod Evans, former Johnny Winter drummer Bobby Caldwell, former Iron Butterfly guitarist Larry Reinhardt and former Iron Butterfly bassist Lee Dorman, the band had an eclectic style bridging elements of hard rock, progressive rock and jazz fusion with space rock. They released three albums between 1972 and 1977.
The now legendary debut album "Captain Beyond" from 1972 is a mishmash of Hard Rock, Prog Rock, Blues Rock, Southern Rock, Psychedelic Rock and Space Rock.
RÅG I RYGGEN
Råg i Ryggen (Translates to something like ”To have a backbone”) is considered one of Sweden's very first hard prog rock bands. It was founded in 1974 by the brothers Jan and Björn Aggemyr together with the guitarist Björn “Nysse” Nyström and the singer Jonas Warnerbring. The group played together for two years and made an LP in 1975. This LP is sought after by hard rock fans all over the world, and Råg i Ryggen has fan club sites in among other countries Japan.
THE STORM
Spanish hard rock-progressive band The Storm was formed in 1969, under the name of Los Tormentos. They soon changed it to the definitive Storm at the request of their manager, José Luis Fernández de Córdoba. Regulars on the club circuits of Madrid and Barcelona, they gained enough fame for the BASF label to record their first LP, titled The Storm, which mixes heavy and psychedelia, and alternates songs in Spanish, English and instrumental songs. On December 13, 1974, they shared the bill with the group Queen,1 and they received a public congratulation from Freddie Mercury himself.[citation needed] During this period, they eventually introduced rhythmic elements of flamenco origin into their music, which is why some authors include them among the pioneers of Andalusian rock.
A trend amongst many of the bands on this list is just how short their careers turned out to be, but South Africa’s Suck exemplify this more than most. The group formed in 1970 and lasted just eight months, recording one LP in the process. Though Time To Suck featured just one original song, ‘The Whip’, amongst covers of King Crimson, Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad and more, the band showed real promise, and helped kick-start a wave of hard rock in South Africa. Most notably, they were an early indicator that metal would branch out from its British origins and become a global force. / Text courtesy of Astral Noize
An early sign of metal’s enduring capabilities as a channel for political narratives, Japan’s Flower Travellin’ Band had strong links with ’60s counterculture. Forming in 1967, the band’s Cream and Hendrix-inspired mix of proto-metal with psychedelic and progressive strains of rock saw them attain critical acclaim, but struggle commercially. The band would disband just three years into the 1970s, but they retain an enduring legacy amongst those who’ve had the pleasure of discovering them. The band actually reunited back in the tail end of 2007, but permanently broke up after the death of vocalist Joe Yamanaka in 2011. / Text courtesy of Astral Noize
Bridging the gap between the hard rock of the late ’60s and the heavy metal of the ’70s, Josefus embraced Led Zeppelin’s bluesy stylings to help pioneer the sort of Texas hard rock with which ZZ Top would soon yield success. The band have rather harshly been forgotten to the ages, with some not untruthfully suggesting that they ultimately lacked the songwriting ability needed to keep them around for the long haul. Intermittent reunions have come about since they originally disbanded in 1970, with their most recent release being a 2004 live album. / Text courtesy of Astral Noize
Blackwater Park was a hard rockin progressive rock band from Berlin, Germany, with an English vocalist. They released only one album, "Dirt Box", which included a cover of The Beatles' "For No One". The album was originally released in 1972 and re-released in 1990. The name of the band comes from the name of the gothic mansion setting of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.
Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth named one of his band's albums after this band.
The band released one album, Dark Round The Edges, in 1972. This legendary band, which was responsible for the UK's most expensive album, was formed by Steve Giles whilst at school in Northampton in 1968. They met local entrepreneur Alan Bowley who'd recently converted a derelict house into a recording studio, and this led to four acetates of "RC8" and "In The Sky". They performed at a few local gigs, and as their playing got tighter, decided to go into SIS Studios, Northampton, with engineer Alan Bowley, to record an album. The six tracks, written and arranged by the band were recorded over a weekend in 1972 and consist of melodic progressive rock laced with lots of fuzzy guitar riffs. Only a handful of copies were pressed, and Giles, who had a strong interest in photography, made the first twelve copies into full-colour gatefold sleeves, complete with booklets of photographs stapled together, augmented with handwritten notes. They were handed out to band members and their girlfriends. The band then split with Clive and Martin going their own ways, and Steve and Ron continuing to record for their own pleasure until 1977 when Ron married and moved to Cornwall.