When was the term ‘heavy metal’ first used?
Heavy metal isn’t something that could have been created by design. Although the genre may be ubiquitous in rock music today, the beginnings of rock and roll were far from the heavy sounds of what we think of metal, with bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones playing semi-heavy riffs throughout their career. As the 1960s started to unfold, the seeds of metal were firmly being planted.
Before metal had a proper name, though, the closest the genre had come to congealing was in the realm of garage rock. After getting used to the sounds of bands like The Beach Boys playing fun-in-the-sun music, artists like The Stooges and the MC5 were taking rock back to its origins, creating tracks that felt like the primal version of what the British Invasion had been doing years before.
It was in this scene that Steppenwolf first came into the equation, playing songs that resonated with the biker mentality on tracks like ‘Born to Be Wild’. While not known as a heavy metal band in style just yet, vocalist John Kaye would utter the two words that predicted a new genre of music, featuring the line “heavy metal thunder” when talking about the sounds of the motorbike.
Although no one picked up on the name then, rock and roll was still working towards something heavier. Informed by The Beatles’ recent turn towards heavy music on songs like ‘Helter Skelter’, bands like Led Zeppelin were popping up, warping the blues into something feral, with Jimmy Page coming up with the genesis of the metallic guitar riff.
Off the back of Zeppelin, a young band out of Birmingham, would come to unintentionally define heavy metal. Looking to make scary music, Black Sabbath had the world of metal awaiting at their feet, with the group practically starting the mentality of what a metal band should be with every lick that came out of Tony Iommi’s guitar.
Once the group got on the road, Geezer Butler remembered the ‘metal’ tag as an offensive term for them, recalling to Metal Evolution, “The only time I had ever heard us called ‘heavy metal’ was being derogatory about us. [They were] criticising us as usual, and one of the reviews said that it sounded like ‘a load of heavy metal being dropped’. Not musically whatsoever”.
While Sabbath may have identified as a hard rock band, the first band to truly embrace the term heavy metal was fellow Birmingham heavyweight Judas Priest. Although they may have started out playing hippy-adjacent hard rock, Rob Halford would end up adopting the look that would become synonymous with the genre, clad in different leather and bondage gear whenever he stepped out onstage.
By the time the next wave of metal bands began to crop up in response to the punk movement, the press had begun to call the genre ‘The New Wave of British Heavy Metal’, paving the way for bands like Iron Maiden to take the genre even further. Although the genre may not have had a structured name until the late 1970s, bands were ready to make songs that would shock any passive music fan who came across them. After years of optimistic rock music, metal was about to come in to give the genre a dark makeover.
