# Heavy metal music before 1970

Since the dawn of rock music in the 1950s and continuing through the 1960s, various artists pushed the boundaries of the genre to emphasize speed, aggression, volume, theatricality, and other elements that became staples of the heavy metal style. In the late 1960s, this experimentation coalesced into various rock subgenres like hard rock, acid rock, and psychedelic rock, which were all influential in the development of heavy metal. These albums would later be retroactively categorised as proto-metal.

## Quotes about Heavy metal music before 1970

* The common consensus is that Black Sabbath were the first heavy metal band. And maybe they were. But that doesn’t mean they wrote the first heavy song. Because while Ozzy and co. certainly took the concept of intense, sinister music played by evil-looking dudes to new sonic and visual heights, there were plenty of unnerving sounds designed to scare the bejesus out of listeners being created well before Tony Iommi’s deathly Black Sabbath tritone riff signaled the end (or the beginning?) of the musical world as we know it.
* Given that heavy metal didn’t completely take off until the 1970s – and the early part of the prior decade was dominated by pop, blues, R&B, surf music and rock ‘n’ roll – you’d be forgiven for thinking that the 1960s were lacking in significantly aggressive music. You’d be wrong, of course, but you’d be forgiven. In fact, it was around this time that artists such as Link Wray, Willie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and The Kinks started pioneering and popularizing guitar distortion, power chords and/or unconventional means of modifying amplifiers to get gruffer sounds. During the second half of the 1960s, even rock artists who’re known for their lighter, brighter and poppier techniques ventured into some surprisingly hectic territories. As the songs discussed below demonstrate, many of the era’s top-tier acts released tracks that could’ve rivaled the riotousness of the burgeoning metal forefathers.
** Jordan Blum of Loudwire
* Although many bands from The British Invasion could have fallen under the banner of punk had they been born a few years later, the seeds were already being planted from something heavier on the horizon. Artists like The Stooges had already been exposing people to heavier flavours of rock, and looking at the more raucous songs by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones like ‘Helter Skelter’, it wasn’t like there was no room for something more aggressive on the charts.
** Far Out (magazine)
* As the late 1960s bled into the early 1970s, the Age of Aquarius was under attack from cantankerous and extremely loud sonic forces. The bubbly psychedelia and sweet-tempered music that had fueled hippie hearts and minds were being assailed by steelier and more squalid rock, and many of those rough-necked, hairy harbingers of menace would inspire heavy metal’s ascendence. The debate about who was the first proto-metal artist is an endless circle of arguments and counter-arguments. You can reach back to the 1950s and find heavy metal’s origins in Willie Johnson’s blues, and Link Wray’s guitar rumbles. [...] Ultimately, you can throw everyone who was amplifying their sound and vision in the late 1960s and early 1970s into the gene pool that evolved into heavy metal.
** Pop Matters