Metal Roots - History of Heavy Metal. Metal Roots - History of Heavy Metal. The Metal Archives. Metal-Rules.com presents: the 100 best metal albums of all time! Top 25 Metal Albums - Music Feature at IGN. The origins of the term "heavy metal" have been contested for years, at least in respect to its relationship to modern music. The term itself is of both chemical and metallurgical nature, used by chemists and the like for centuries. Those with strong literary ties will no doubt proffer up the indomitable William S. Burroughs who named a character in his cult classic The Soft Machine "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid. " He furthered the term in Nova Express. Both books came out in the early '60s. Steppenwolf dropped the term in their 1968 classic "Born To Be Wild"; likewise Iron Butterfly named their 1968 debut album Heavy and the band's name incorporated a popular (and obvious) form of metal in its moniker.
Known as an industrialized, blue collar, hard working community, Birmingham gave the world Black Sabbath, unquestionably the earliest and most popular proponents of Heavy Metal. Which is exactly why we decided to tackle a Top 25 Metal Albums list. One more thing before we let loose. Top 200 albums. 25 Albums at the roots of Heavy Metal...
See the definitive guide about Heavy Metal. History of Heavy Metal Music and the Metal Subculture. "Certain individuals I like, but people as a whole suck! Nothing but talking monkeys with car keys. " - Kam Lee, Massacre Death metal existed without a name for many years, being influenced by both the extremes of speed metal (Destruction) and Thrash (Cryptic Slaughter), as well as carrying forward influences from hardcore (The Exploited) and Gothic influences to original heavy metal and industrial. In fact, like a genetic profile, the genre is not identifiable by a single trait alone, but by a collection of traits and the common ideas that allow them to be organized as such.
Riffs from The Exploited, for example, could be transplanted into modern death metal without being out of place (especially from their "Let's have a war... " album); similarly, distortion and song structures from Destruction can be played "in style" by death metal bands without seeming out of place. From here the genre bloomed, splitting into several different styles. Map of Metal.