Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Mechadon

What are you listening to?

Recommended Posts

There's an endless debate about whether or not Blue Cheer was the first heavy metal band, as I mentioned when I posted their evil classic, "Doctor Please." They released 2 albums in 1968, predating both Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. We have demos of their music from 1967 which sound even heavier than the released versions on their first album, the aptly titled, "Vincebus Eruptum." One thing we have hardly any of is decent live recordings from the time.

 

A friend of mine sent me this today, and while it's not perfect, it's pretty damn good. This was recorded in 1968 on an episode of the Steve Allen Show. Pure 1968 technology on a TV show, for cryin' out loud. It's nice and dirty and sloppy and IMO heavier than the studio version. Based on this, I'm now leaning more toward the view that Blue Cheer was indeed the first heavy metal band, or at least, the first one to record a full album, given that some music scholars cite various singles released in 1967 as the first heavy metal recordings. It's all a judgment call, really. Blue Cheer was definitely an all-out sludgemonster of a band with a crazy-good guitarist, Leigh Stephens, who specialized in wildly distorted bluesy acid-rock solos but maybe didn't play as many power chords as one would expect from such exemplars as Black Sabbath. But Stephens is backed by a very heavy bass from vocalist Dickie Peterson and the wildass drumming of Paul Whaley. So whatever the truth is regarding the first metal band, Blue Cheer was heavier than shit.

 

So here they are, straight outta San Francisco, the one, the only, Blue Cheer!

 

 

Share this post


Link to post

 

I had no idea White Zombie started as a punk band, sounds like a Butthole Surfers influenced type of band with Rob trying to sound like dude from The Cult, the CD set this comes in from Numero Group is so nice it might be worth a purchase.

Share this post


Link to post

 

White Zombie post reminds me of the time I discovered that indeed Devo were far more demented and frightening than I first thought, also now reminds me of a time I got in a damn near fist fight with a total douchebag in a Foo Fighters shirt over Devo who he insisted sucked horribly, I wonder if Dave Grohl knows what mongos who only like modern radio shit music his fans are. 

Share this post


Link to post

@Steve D Blue Cheer are awesome, but I wouldn't consider them a heavy metal band.  They're not riff-driven enough.  Cool, evil, dark hard rock that was important for metal's development, certainly.

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, Cynical said:

@Steve D Blue Cheer are awesome, but I wouldn't consider them a heavy metal band.  They're not riff-driven enough.  Cool, evil, dark hard rock that was important for metal's development, certainly.

Most people and other bands of the 80s onwards already agreed about the fact that it's the Tommy Iommi riffs that defined Heavy Metal, only the oldies from 60-70s maybe still struggle with that thing lol.

Share this post


Link to post

 

classic, worthwhile-to-actually-listen-to nu metal. I miss these guys so much. The video ID even has letters that look like the last part of my username.

Share this post


Link to post

 

Asphyx are one of my absolute favorite death metal bands and are easily one of the best live bands I was lucky enough to see twice. I am rather fond of their first real unreleased 1990 album with original bassist/vocalizer Theo Loomans, though I do not much care for the later God Cries. Funny looking this song up to post on here, this mix is drastically different than the 2009 2CD reissue I have, the bass sounds colossal here, maybe they artificially pumped everything up and layered it with cheesy FX, in fact now I'm not even sure this is the same fucking session!  

Share this post


Link to post

@varth Agreed, Asphyx is awesome and I love most of their albums, easily one of my favorite bands, and they were also a very visible influence of the now split up band Hail of Bullets (just compare Death, The Brutal Way with anything HoB has released). However, I don't find myself listening to them all that much, instead playing albums from bands such as Carbonized, Centinex, Disma, Demonical, Funebrarum, Dead Congregation, Slugathor, Krabathor, and so on.

 

Something else that's part of my favorites, they even have an insane Bathory cover right here which really did them justice imo, even more so considering how mediocre are black metal covers from death metal bands in general. I also think they're getting much less attention than they deserve tbh:

 

 

Edited by Agent6

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×