Listening to a bout of Cirith Ungol recently got me thinking… Were they the first real American heavy metal band? Being a rather opinionated person, and as a fan of Metal for 37 years, I have been stuck forming all sorts of opinions about what is and isn’t Heavy Metal. Traditionally, I’ve ignored the Blue Cheer, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Purple, origins of heavy metal to say that, regardless of Pre-Metal origins, Heavy Metal started with Judas Priest, with the sounds that they emitted between 1976 and 1977 on Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin. By 1980, after following those up wtih Stained Class and Killing Machine, they had basically laid the entire groundwork for Heavy Metal, before anyone else had started. Iron Maiden’s first album didn’t come out until 1980, Saxon’s Wheels Of Steel was also 1980 (Venom didn’t even release an album until 1981!), Accept not until 1979, Diamond Head not until 1981. Listen to Unleashed In The East to get a good earful of what Priest was doing way back in ’79…
To me, there is a distinct gap between the hard rock and prog experiments of the 1970’s (which is where I put Scorpions, in case you were wondering) and the heavy metal explosion of the 1980’s and those four Judas Priest albums are what filled the gap, and were the origins, thereof, of what became known as Heavy Metal. As I age, I do start to agree that Black Sabbath (especially the self-titled album) should be considered heavy metal, and some Deep Purple ((In Rock) and a variety of other things)…
So where is the USA in all of this? Aside from absent among the list above of classic original metal releases… True that Cirith Ungol’s Frost and Fire didn’t come out until 1981, but there wasn’t anything homegrown before that. Note that I’m talking of albums released… Who knows what bands might have been out gigging around… But if Cirith really were the first American band to release a metal album, then it seems like they certainly deserve more credit than they get! Sure, lots of bands and big old school metal fan fly the flag of Cirith Ungol, but to the population at large they have basically no knowledge. Also, Frost and Fire used as cover art the amazing Michael Whelen painting done for the 6th Elric “novel” Stormbringer!
I didn’t read the book until probably 1983, but I still feel connected to the old Cirith albums because of the art even if I hadn’t heard them yet..
Manilla Road released an album in 1980, but I haven’t heard it so that may be a contender as well… But they are also a severely under-acknowledged band…
Honestly, I think I just get tired of hearing about Pantera and Operation Mindcrime when people talk about old American metal…
Oh yeah and you don’t have to tell me that Alice Cooper invented heavy metal in the 70’s… I’ve heard ol’ Vincent say it in so many interviews that I just ignore it now. Oh and, even if domestic Heavy Metal didn’t really start getting released until Cirith/Manilla in 81ish, I want to recognize that Dio, the greatest metal vocalist of all time, was American and was a singer before those years, but he really wasn’t domestic Metal until he released Rainbow in the Dark in ’83…
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