The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal By Martin Popoff (Collector’s Guide Publishing)
As you contemplate a vigorous dissent, another coworker ambles by.
Heavy metal was born around 1970 with a supernova of loud, pummeling releases, the most influential of which was Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. The press responded to their savagely rudimentary riffing, minimal ornamentation, and overarching aura of doom with little enthusiasm. Britain’s Disc magazine commemorated the chart success of the single “Paranoid” by putting Sabbath on its November 1970 cover under the headline “Fans We Don’t Want.”
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At that time, the fans in question were mostly British working stiffs who heard the music as a cathartic release from the grind of their factory jobs. Meanwhile in America, as rock’s maturing audience entered the 70s, it was gravitating toward more “substantial” subgenres like southern jam rock, British progressive rock, and confessional balladry. But though metal was generally ignored by radio programmers, significant numbers of younger fans were eating it up. Even so, the rock media maintained a cool disdain.
While the 1991 edition of the Trouser Press guide accorded some thoughtful assessment to a smattering of top-notch metal acts, including Metallica and Slayer, the current edition cuts back on even that, bypassing inventive, established metal mongers like Sepultura and Corrosion of Conformity and actually dropping Motorhead altogether, despite the fact that several of that band’s better records have appeared in recent years. The Rolling Stone book leaves out Pantera, even though that band’s more-than-respectable sales figures alone would seem to ensure its inclusion. It passes along the oft-repeated, easily refuted claim that Led Zeppelin was a major heavy metal band and a significant cocreator of the genre. The editors cite none other than Grand Funk Railroad as “the most commercially successful heavy metal act of its time.” And although the encyclopedia mentions Black Sabbath as one of metal’s more noteworthy proponents, nowhere does it bother to state the stupefyingly obvious: Black Sabbath invented metal. Period.
Similarly, in his analysis of Led Zeppelin’s first LP, Popoff takes a brief detour to examine the band’s metal credentials. “Led Zeppelin, although much heralded historically as one of the first metal albums, is not a record that….delivers anything resembling the heavy metal of today, existing as a hybrid of….adapted blues, breath-taking acoustic work, and 60s hippy sentiments….Quite simply, In Rock and Paranoid….laid waste to any inkling….that Zep knew metal. These records were from Hell, while Led Zeppelin was merely from England.” In other Zep reviews, Popoff acknowledges that “Immigrant Song” and “Black Dog” are metal touchstones but reiterates that the band’s overall approach can’t be strictly classified as such. And throughout the book he addresses in similar snapshot critiques the numerous stylistic fads and changes in metal and hard rock since the 70s.
