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Heavy metal. Characteristics include loud volume, distortion, sreeching vocals, emphatic beats, extended guitar solos, technical skills on instruments, and provides an ideal outlet for frustrastion.
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Heavy metal • Characteristics include loud volume, distortion, sreeching vocals, emphatic beats, extended guitar solos, technical skills on instruments, and provides an ideal outlet for frustrastion. • Themes include Social Chaos, good vs. evil, the afterlife, dark/morbid issues, and the supernatural
Heavy Metal • visual imagery plays a large role in heavy metal • heavy metal band's "image" is expressed in album sleeve art, logos, stage sets, clothing, and music videos • Some known for outrageous and wild performance personas
Prototypical Heavy Metal Bands • Led Zeppelin • Black Sabbath • Deep Purple • (Blue Cheer’s Summertime Blues often cited as first heavy metal song)
Working Class Values • Heavy Metal rose out of distrust of American Government “Nixon Scandal,” Anti-War sentiments, high unemployment, increasingly more depressed society, wanting to explore issues such as drugs, mythology, and the afterlife
Term “Heavy Metal” • First appeared in a few William Burroughs books The Soft Machine and Nova Express.“Heavy Metal Kid.” (Heavy Metal Kid was refferred to as someone with drug addictions). • Steppenwolf’s Born to Wild “Heavy Metal Thunder”
Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven” from Led Zeppelin IV • Led Zeppelin formed in 1968 in London. • Jimmie Page, guitar • John Bonham, drums • John Paul Jones, electric bass and organ • Robert Plant, vocals • Guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant were fascinated by mythology, Middle Earth fantasy, and the occult. • They became one of the most enduring bands in rock history, selling over 50 million records. • Influences drew from various sources: urban blues, San Francisco psychedelia, the virtuoso guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix
“Stairway to Heaven” • Anthem of heavy metal music • Thunderous volume • The eight-minute track was never released as a single. You had to purchase the album to own a copy of the song. • The album cover did not bear the name of the album, band, or record company. • Led Zeppelin IV eventually sold fourteen million copies and reached Number Two on the Billboard Top 10 LP charts; it stayed on the charts for five years.
“Stairway to Heaven” • Text composed by Robert Plant • References to mythological beings • The May Queen and the Piper • Rural images • Paths and roads, rings of smoke through the forest, a songbird by a brook, the whispering wind • Helped create a cumulative mood of mystery and enchantment • Structure of the song • Basic building blocks are straightforward four- and eight-measure phrases • Three main sections • The arrangement is constructed to create continual escalation in density, volume, and speed.
Black Sabbath • British Band • Formed in 1968 by Ozzy Osbourne(vocals), Tony Lommi(guitar, Geezer Butler(bass), and Bill Ward(drums). • Originally formed as heavy blues band named Earth covering Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf songs
Deep Purple • English Rock Band formed in 1968 • Once listed in Guiness Book of World Records as “loudest pop group.”