Rockpedia
Heavy metal branch Full entry · 1968

Proto-metal

Emerged 1968 Origin USA / United Kingdom Subgenres — Vocals Sung
Heaviness
6
Speed
5
Melody
7

Sung. Melodic singing throughout.

In short

The heavy bands from before the term existed: over-amplified acid rock, already built around the riff.

How it sounds

  • Volume and distortion beyond what the technology of the era allowed, with natural saturation.
  • A repeating riff in place of a blues progression, but still inside rock and roll structures.
  • Heavy drums up front and vocals in the high register.

Hear what that means

  • Volume as a technique

    Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum

    An Eddie Cochran song from 1958 played so loud the recording cannot hold it. Nothing is tuned down and nothing needs to be - the weight is entirely amplifier and fuzz pedal.

    Open on YouTube
  • Bass doubling the riff

    Sir Lord Baltimore - Kingdom Come

    Guitar and bass distorted equally and playing the same line. That single arrangement decision is what the whole metal branch inherits, and it is already fully formed in 1970.

    Open on YouTube
  • Where the blues starts leaving from 13:07

    Budgie - Squawk

    A riff written as a riff rather than as a figure around a twelve-bar, with the swing draining out of the rhythm section. Listen for how little blues phrasing survives.

    Open on YouTube at 13:07

Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. 1 of 3 is cued to a second read from the upload's own tracklist.

The specifics

Tempo
90-140 bpm
Song length
3-7 min
Tuning
E standard, and the heaviness comes from volume and fuzz pedals rather than from tuning — down-tuning had not been thought of yet.
Production
Recorded loud and badly on purpose, or loud and badly by accident; at this distance the two are hard to separate. Everything clips, and the clipping is most of what later bands heard and copied.
Written about
Drugs, Doom and apocalypse, Bikers and the road, The occult, newly fashionable

What each part is doing

  • Guitar A fuzz pedal into an overdriven valve amp, played through blues phrasing that is starting to abandon the blues. The riff is becoming a written thing rather than a figure around a twelve-bar.
  • Bass Distorted as heavily as the guitar and playing the same line, which doubles the riff's apparent weight. This is the single trick the whole metal branch inherits.
  • Drums Loud, loose and jazz-schooled, with heavy tom work and cymbals left ringing. Nobody was playing to a click and it shows.
  • Vocals Sung high and hard, in the blues-shouter tradition, and beginning to be pushed past what the voice comfortably does.

What it isn't

That it is a retrospective category invented to give Black Sabbath ancestors. The bands are real and were doing something identifiable before the word metal existed to describe it — Blue Cheer's 1968 record is louder than almost anything released in the following five years. What is retrospective is the tidy line drawn through them; at the time this was simply very loud rock, and nobody in it knew they were a prologue.

Told apart from

  • Blues rock Proto-metal is blues rock with the volume past the point of control and the swing draining out. The material is the same; the intent is starting not to be.
  • Hard rock Hard rock is where the same instincts got organised — tighter, better recorded, riffs written as riffs. Proto-metal is the messy year or two before that.
  • Doom metal Doom is the branch that kept proto-metal's tempo and fuzz and threw away its boogie. Sabbath is on both sides of this line.
  • Acid rock Acid rock has the same volume and the same fuzz aimed at a psychedelic experience rather than at heaviness. The bands frequently shared bills and occasionally members.

The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.

History

Between 1968 and 1971 several bands arrived at nearly the same sound almost simultaneously, with no name yet for it. The phrase 'heavy metal' turns up in a Steppenwolf lyric and in Creem's criticism before it describes a genre. Sabbath supplied the missing ingredient: the atmosphere of dread.

Descended from

Siblings on this branch

Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree

  • Stoner rock identical ratings · no shared ancestor
  • Grunge 1.0 apart by rating · no shared ancestor
  • Desert rock 1.4 apart by rating · no shared ancestor

Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim. These share no ancestor with it at all.