TOP TEN METAL ALBUMS OF THE '70s

TOP TEN METAL ALBUMS OF THE '70s

Gregg Turner

There was a sense of purposefulness in defying '67's Summer Of Love’s proposition of soft, mellow things to come (from James Taylor to Cat Stevens). In this regard, over-amped guitars and chords ringing ripe with fat layers of harmonic distortion and fuzz-tone became cogent symbols (common denominators) of an upright rebellion. From the drained-out dirge of Sabbath to the eye-opening shlock of the Ig and Alice, metal maniacs of this era were a fresh and relatively new breed of sports fans.

1971 was the banner year (of the decade) for heavy-metal and subsidiary jnetallic-oid releases. Metal Mike Saunders, ex-rock crit turned accountant, opined the following in his definitive April '73 ('Phonograph Record Magazoon,) rundown: “Alice Cooper, Led Zep, Black Sabbath and Grand Funk all made a large jump over erratic previous releases, while Dust emerged full-blown from the womb as crazed metal rockers. Master Of Reality, Love It To Death, Killer, Led Zep IV, Paranoid, E Pluribus Funk: these were all products of the same year. Add Look At Yourself by Uriah Heep, UFO’s fine first album, the great things on Deep Purple’s Fireball and you had, well, what else but...a trend.”

But the trend peaked with the initial flow of ingenuity and the general different-ness of product that year. Save for isolated outbreaks of spurious intensity and illusions of rebound ('Raw Power), the balance of power evolving out of the ’70s was depressingly fragmented—if not conspicuously absent altogether.

To be scientific about the whole thing, one needs to define or at least break down and distinguish the differences (i.e. parameters) between what all these groups were doing. Which in turn necessitates an analysis of the intrinsic components of the muzik itself. What concrete or tangible elements constitute or indicate the moves in the grooves to be “heavy-metal” instead of mere rock/roll? What’s intrinsic to the HM domain of sonics absent from most everything else? Are the Ramones HM? The Damned?

Could be the answer lies in a generality nowhere in the middle and somewhere off to the side: Heavy metal’s heavy: as in “Heavy Music" (ask Bob Seger) and heavy-sound. Rock 'n' roll was never heavy. Acid-rock probably was not heavy. Ron Wood will never be, and Joni Mitchell could never have been (heavy). Are we talking about a state of mind or an act of defiance? And how heavy is heavy metal? (Pretty heavy.)

Well, it’s not a matter of one or two gtrs. blaring away, three or six-minute solos, etc. More a question of the extremes perceived necessary to validate the aforementioned heavy-quotient and the M. O. utilized to deliver the goods. Most of all, then, this perception/execution angle. Course, there's peripheral conditions like (uh) originality (or lack of—sometimes a valuable asset), production (after all, if it's rec’ds we’re rating, then how marginally the sound passes for heavy-sound counts for something) and cleverness. The contention being that the best HM's concocted by way of the least smarts—that metal-music is by no other name rock-formorons from morons and if viewed in this light we can appreciate to a greater degree such rampant elitism. Counterexample: BOC managed to promulgate deceptively articulate visions subordinate to topical landscapes the likes of alchemy, sado-sex, Hitler and teen 'tang (“Teen Archer" off Tyranny And Mutation,)— graduate philos. stdnts. Sandy Pearlman and Richard Meltzer (Brandeis and Yale resp'ly) choreographed most of the words. And speaking of smarts, the selfproclaimed Smartest Man in Rock 'n' Roll, Adny Shernoff, created the all-time greatest masterpiece of vinyl, 1975's Dictator’s Go Girl Crazy which more or less manifested the first of a new school of smart-stoopid lyric humor. With less than a majority of the album's tunes qualifying as bonafide metal anthems (“Next Big Thing" and “Two Tub Man") the rec’d escapes evaluation from this piece (the band live assumed more of an HM posture). The point being that intelligence per se’s been a fringe element of the scene—and particularly so throughout the '70s. One finesse was worth a hundred blows to the head.

Whereas contemporary xeroxes of the genre fasten sacred to tenets of CONFORMITY and to the propagation of some idealized status quo (threads, hair and sonics MTV pre-packaged), early progenitors latched onto a seemingly opposite set of values and rules as trumpcard from trump-card starved kids to grab hold of. The standard pathetic-ness of the current batch of metal lamebrains (Ratt comes to mind) magnifies the calling of the originals in the '70s (not neglecting the seeds of metal on the '60s side—Velvets’ White Light/White Heat eg.) as real vanguards of a dated scene: It was all a lot better the first time around and in case you weren’t there here’s a round-up of what you did or didn't miss.

THE GODZ

Nothing Is Sacred

(Casablanca) 1979

#10: Pursuing (for the moment) the line of thought that the best heavy-metal mines some unchartable wavelength of cretinism, that all participants are basically a very special sub-breed of homoimbecilus, one inevitably confronts the underlying question: HOW DUMB IS GOOD DUMB?? Enter Nothing Is Sacred. This record is so idiotic, so impossibly retarded, it could only have been conceived as a term project at a clinic for mentally disfigured.

Song titles (“Gotta Muv,” “Festyvul Season," “I’ll Bi Yer Luv,” “714,” “Snakin’ ” etc.) point to non-original Slade inclinations or intensily impaired spelling skills (my guess). And “Bi Yer Luv” 's not the you-receive/l-receive switchhitter one might expect (i.e. “Bi” = purchase). And there’s a reason not to expect fruitcake fantasy: seems we have a uhm, biker motif (more Easy Rider than Altamont) congruent to the hard-rock beat—all four Godz (Casablanca Godz, not the ESP version) straddling Harleys enveloped in this seeping mist coverfront. Trouble with this is that these clowns are the scrawniest looking dips and the macho-man metaphor we’re supposed to buy never for a nineteenth of a second comes close to believeable.

This creates big credibility problems (!) which instantly undermines the stark seriousness in the delivery of the songs (ponderous two-fisted bassing and lots of ridiculous power-chord bombast are eventually hilarious beyond belief): it’s soon apparent that the yuks evoked are not solicited and the laughter’s directed at instead of with. This disc could be the Plan 9 From Outer Space of ’70s metalmusic-lead-singer (songwriter & producer) Eric Moore a suitable Tor Johnson or Bela Lugosi surrogate.

Where this all comes together is the too-incredible “Luv Kage,” a seven+ minute tirade that really defies description (I’ll try). The fact that most of the other songs on the platter aren’t all that hot and not even particularly metallic (more like confused boogie w/loud gtr.) is compensated for here. Take about heavy, this one’s a wooly rhinocerous with soured story-lyric to boot:

“When we first met and started living together We both agreed we would still be free

To run around and have

fun on the side

But now it seems that you’ve

changed on me

I said you’ve got me

In a Luv Kage

You know you got me in misery Got me in a Luv Kage And I can’t find the key...”

Not since L.A.’s very own Gorilla (band personnel wore ape-fur costumes and singer was enclosed in a cage of his own) has heavy-metal vocalized such a blank let-me-loose whimper of anthemic pain. Honest-2-God, the song’s worth the album and the reason (alone) the album ranks tenth. In the best tradition of metalas-heavy the leads and solos start overrunning obligatory roles of filling space and punctuating the stomp so that somewhere near the finish it all converges on an infinite loop of grungy noise; the singer growls the words mad and angry as a hornet (the middle of, say, John Kay and Bob Seger) and the whole tale, I’m afraid, is quite sad and depressinglike, ‘this kind of thing happens, y’know, when your woman just changes on you man and it’s really a downer, uhhhhhh...’

Pretty cheesey stuff for 1979.

KISS

Destroyer

(Casablanca) 1976 #9: Paul Stanley’s prolific songwriting abilities and way-overlooked prowess as metal-monger rhythm-gtrst extraordinaire deserves special mention. With that out of the way, and at the same time paying tribute to earlier anthems “Black Diamond,” “Strutter,” “Deuce” (see new Red Kross rendition) etc., I’m cutting this short (not really in the mood to elongate the merits of Kiss—substantial as they are) and just pointing out that Destroyer’s the personal choice of four voting-age fans from way back (10 yrs. old when this came out so they qualify as judge and jury!)—I’m more or less ambivalent as to which one’s the best, might as well be this. Lots of echo smears all over ringing resonant guitar and booming drumtracks, some of the finer moments include “Detroit Rock City,” “God Of Thunder,” not forgetting Kiss’s “Stairway To Heaven”—“Beth.”

PERE UBU

30 Seconds Over Toyko b/w Heart Of Darkness + Final Solution b/w Cloud 149 (Hearthan Records) #8: Although these four sides were eventually reincarnated on el P-vinyl under the auspices of DataPanik In The Year Zero, I’m fudging by listing the four trax in their orig sighting (as two back-toback 45’s). Not sure how this washes as a sub-rated best of best LP’s (for instance Roky Erickson’s “Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)” on Mars rec’ds (1975) warrants typeset in the same breath)— but what the heck.

Lead singer Crocus Behemoth—preDavid Thomas (pre-Jehovah’s Witness) —warbles larger than life and quasiepileptic over barrages of gtr and synth sound parroting the industrial white noise unbiquitous to the town (Cleveland) Ubu call(s)(ed) home.

The heaviness of the tracks leaks out in different sizes and shapes, the chugging guitar drones being one of the earmark experiments of '70s freak-out metal-explorations. Guitarist was the late Peter Laughner (ex scribe for CREEM) who, despite periodic fixations on Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Tom Verlaine, managed to carve his own rhythm runs just as memorable for their spirit and decipherable code as for their pyrotechnic punctation.

“Final Solution” ’s the closest to one resembling a rocker (’s got a beat and you can dance to it), “Heart Of Darkness” my fave for its dark-black mosaic of incessant, grinding growl. All of these owe a lot to, say, the V.U.’s “European Son” &/or maybe “I Heard Her Call My Name” more with texture and amplification than with structure and vision.

GRAND FUNK

Grand Funk Live

(Capitol)

#7: I defer analysis to GFR aficionado Todd Homer: “The best examples of Heavy Metal are always in the form of live recordings where volume can best express the grandeur of power-chords, earth-shaking bass and the explosive reactions of drumsticks slamming skin. The rawest metal album ever is naturally that of the loudest three-piece monsters on the face of the Earth—Grand Funk Railroad. GFR Live is the hottest American live-album bar none, runner-up maybe Deep Purple’s Made In Japan.

“Mel Schacher’s relentless improvised bass-riffing outweighs the Empire State Building and collides with landmines planted by every blow on Don Brewer’s stick (sic-gt). All this overlaid by Mark Farner’s rebellious feedback-induced solos that scrapped the groundwork laid down by any previous solo minus Werner Von Braun’s bizz-bomb.

“ ‘T.N.U.C.,’ my all-time favorite song (it spells “cunt” backwards), features Brewer in top form. The para-military drum solo lasts some 10 minutes. ‘Mark Says Alright’ has a one-word lyric line. And ‘Into The Sun’ hogs all of side four with out of tune guitar while Mel plays some swell slide-boogie bass 'til your fingers bleed in sympathy. Nothing could or will be more raw and crude.”

ALICE COOPER

Killer

(Warner Bros.) 1971

#6: Love It To Death's the superior Cooper platter by a long shot and in all respects (performance, sound, songs [“Black Juju”]). But I’d be hard-pressed to claim heavy-metal as a format even slightly tangent to hall-of-fame tunes the likes of “I’m Eighteen,” “Ballad Of Dwight Frye,” “Caught In A Dream” etc. Could be because they’re too streamlined (well-edited!) and not nearly redundant, excessive or arrogrant demeanorwise to be filed in the heavy-metal column.

Killer’s the closest Cooper alb to what might qualify metallic in the ’70s scheme of things. Six-string crony Glen Buxton really pushes things to the limit with these frayed, complemented rhythms and melodic once-in-a-while leads that are usually mixed loud and dominant. Neal Smith crashes and pounds the skins to Dennis Dunaway’s throb-throbbing bass: there’s no denying the caliber of playing. The attack is restrained—but animalistic when it has to be and more than all else—demonstratively heavy.

Then there’s this thing about “outrage” and shock-rock (what later was labeled —and passed itself off—as “glitter”) and in this respect the lowpoint of the record centers on the conceptual side of things. The singer became notorious for dabbling androgynous—sporting make-up (preKiss, Bowie, NY Dolls and Twisted Sister) and costume to accommodate a showand-tell type narrative for each tune. OK live, but the rec’d gets bogged down in its attempts to wax psycho-sinister. “Dead Babies,” f’r instance, goes on a bit long and “Halo Of Flies” seems uncertain just exactly what it wants to do. Of course all of the theatrics had less to do with the faggy stuff Bowie and Dolls’ head-honcho (David) JoHansen were preoccupied with and more in the spirit of an H.G. Lewis trick or treat. Most of the songs mirror the hype and even “H.O. Flies” has some frame-able moments: it builds up slowly to (typico) Cooper-oid crescendos then explodes with singerAlice snarling vitriolic like a deranged weasel in heat.

Killer ranks a "high watermark” v-a-v prototypical style and sound. The record’s musical crosstalk has been dissected and stored in computer memory for output at any given second by an uncountable legion of high-tech plagiarists. Some have opted for the whole routine—if you’re a fan of Twisted Sister’s bummer, dig the Cooper version 12 years its senior (and, of course, way better).

BLUE OYSTER CULT

Blue Oyster Cult

(Columbia) 1972

#5: Stories of the O’Cult trade hands pointing to an original sighting as the Stalk Forrest Group (AKA The Electric Elves—they’re all shorties!) deep into the '60s w/an Elektra long-player that was ultimately shelved (couldn’t meet the rec’d co’s release dates so they say) along with classics like the "Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy,’’"Arthur Comics,” "What Is Quicksand?” (these two on a 45 that was issued—all 500[?] copies). Under the tutelage of mgr/producer Memphis Sam (Sandy) Pearlman and suddenly-acquired lead voke/rhythm guitarist Manny (Eric) Bloom, the E. Elves regrouped (still to this day anticipating liberation of the S.F.G. session) and rebounded (add to this mixture Richard Meltzer—somewhere in and out of the background) with this, their first U.S. Patent-Pending Columbia waxing.

Cryptic and obscure as deliberately as the Godz (see #10) were heavy-handed and toad-like upstairs for real, BOC offered an asymmetrical marriage: heavy, pounding metal-vibes by way of top-grade lead gtr. prodigy Donald "Buck Dharma” Roeser and ferocious rhythm section Joe and Al Bouchard with ponderous, often densely technical lyrical text and misc. alchemic diatribe (Pearlman’s "Workshop Of The Telescopes,” for ex). All this plus teen-lust spirituals (Meltzer: "She’s As Beautiful As A Foot”) and the ballad of "Sir Rastus Bear” ("Redeemed”).

Where most HM period-vinyl was familiarly bad or good (the realization of this being somewhat instantaneous), Cult LP’s infected (or infested) the listener with fragments of recognizable riffs and melody—not until the fifth or sixth spin did anything make a lot of sense. The loud edge of the drums and gtrs, production otherwise understanding of the standard explosions of sound typical to most metal efforts, is just not anywhere to be found. It’s all pretty murky (actually)—you don’t have, for instance, the razor edge as on Tyranny And Mutation (their 2nd disc)— but the material more than compensates. "Cities On Flame (With Rock ’n’ Roll),” "Stairway To The Stars” and Bucky’s hint of "Reaper”-to-come, "The Last Days Of May,” are untouchably state-of-the-art.

BLUE OYSTER CULT

The Blue Oyster Cult Bootleg EP

(Columbia AS-40)

#4: Turn the aforementioned LP’s grooved murk inside out and you wind up with the opposite end-of-the-universe set of sound parameters and dynamics. Production and mix of live-show best-songs energized gtrs, bass and drums to mammoth magnification and intensity. The resultant a cacophany is so impressive (Al Bouchard’s drums jump out like a 780 MPH locomotive on cold steel rails), so quintessential^ HEAVY and awesome (no exaggeration) that most all other vinyl-live recordings seem hapless (GFR Live the exception of course!) or are relegated to a minimal status viz-a-viz metallic artifacts of concert footage.

Bad news is that AS-40, a 12" EP consisting of four songs ("Workshop Of The Telescope” + “Cities On Flame” from first alb, "The Red And The Black” from Tyranny And Mutation, and the not previously available "Buck’s Boogie”—a popular live request in Long Beach, CA) was only pressed promotionally back in 1972 and not issued to the public at large. So that the diminished number of copies circulating today’s used rec’d bins are infrequent and the ones on auction lists used to fetch about 40 to 50 bucks-what that translates to on this year’s economy is anyone’s guess.

BLACK SABBATH

Master Of Reality

(WB/Reprise) 1971

#3: Next to Paranoid, one of the hallmark metal albs of the decade. Great songs ("Children Of The Grave,” "Into The Void,” "Lord Of This World”) with lots of unrefined not-distilled guitar grunge and fuzz-chords.

No doubt aboubt it, Ozzy Osbourne’s vocal pipes rank light years beyond all pretenders to the throne. The bratty, whiny treble-end to the voice added extra imperativeness against the erratic leads and otherwise two-chord lommi slugfest. Where most metal-men quack high-pitched and screech loud and anguished (like the hairy ape in Krokus)—not very convincing or terribly listenable—Oz delivers with a natural snarl, this transcendent petulance, that’s both beliveable and (at the same time) hyperextended to the manic throttle of the band.

The extra added bonus here is “Sweet Leaf,” heavy-metal’s foray into P-O-T which is so unearthly S-T-U-P-l-D it escapes comment! One shining example of why this record and the Sabbs are so signif—Oz and lommi were at one point (they’re both bums nowadays, not to mention best friends) blessed with an innocence and wide-eyed vision that precluded any and all chances of poor self-esteem and second-hand embarrassment. Check it out—who else could get away with:

“My life was empty forever on a down

Until you took me, showed me around

My life is free now, my life is clear I love you sweet leaf—though you can’t hear”

Wait! there’s more:

“Straight people don’t know what you’re about

They put you down and shut you out

You gave to me a new belief And soon the world will love you sweet leaf...”

Enough.

IGGY AND THE STOOGES

Raw Power

(Columbia) 1973

#2: Beyond the Velvets, MC5, Sabbath (and Lost Generation), no single life-force on the face of this miserable planet has had as profound an effect or influence on the shape of things to come than the Stooges and Raw Power. You can take your Sex Pistols and Saints (two fine bands) and your X and your Shmex—if RP hadn’t of happened alia the others might have—but not as soon or at least w/a noticeably softer bark and bite. Disposition’s the nature of the dog when we’re talkin’ H-metal; it’s this quality and the conviction with which RP's delivered that raised eyebrows back in ’73. Bits and pieces (often entire chunks) of any of the eight tunes on this waxing appear anonymous on most any/every-thing you’ve probably put ears to (on the loudgtr side of the slate—I’m not pretending you’re gonna dig the “Penetration” riff on the next Bananarama...)

True that punk-rock ca. 1976 (and L.A. punk ’78) owes it’s pledge of allegiance to the RP scheme of things and true also that if the Ramones, Dead Boys, Flesheaters, Controllers and on and on had a spiritual guiding light, a common pulse breathing life into the same the vector-field, it would converge on fiveeighths of the stuff on this vinyl.

But the topic on the table asks for heavy-metal relevance so if that translates to why or how this record affected things like Quiet Riot (no) or Motorhead (yep)— the following itemizes some of the finer details:

RP's: (1) first rec’d where rhythm gtr and power chording emerge as thee dominant structure to which all else is glued (epoxy); all selections being primitive less than 3 or 4 chord repetitions cycled on endless loops—i.e., the tracks come off manufactured first and foremost as fast-chord combinations permuted up, down and sideways.

(2) first play-loud guitar-music rec’d with almost unlistenable 6-string production, or as Ig once explained in the pages of this very mag that “that fuckin’ carrottop sabotaged my album.” Bowie’s credited in the “co-mix” dep’t and no secret Mr. Ig subsequently confessed a certain sense of dread at the alb’s final sound. Dutch imports’re s’posedly pressed from a superior master (mix is cleaner, substantially improved)—though part of the charm is surviving the sonic-quagmire and evolving to the point where everything else sounds wrong!

(3) first “two-titles-for-the-price-of-one”: Song three side 1’s listed officially as “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell (Originally titled ‘Hard To Beat’)”!! Could be wrong, but I don’t recall another album informing us of a song’s quote-unquote original title. Pretty tricky...

Pop’s vocals are less whiny and '60s punk-snotty (like on first Elektra LP and Funhouse['\ 970]), more metallic, animated and semi-sociopathic (“Death Trip”). Ron Asheton (who’s the real hero behind the scenes) on bass strikes a more subdued pose and vinyl-presence (than on previous-mentioned rec’s) while guitar-monster James Williamson (currently an engineer working in Silicon Valley [true fact],) steals the effin’ show with muddled (sounding) but blazing downstroked muted-chords just as scorching as the ones hammered out in the classic “I Got A Right” (indep. released posthumous to this waxing).

The cumulative intensity’s what pushes RP over the top; if Webster's defines bimetal anything to do with obnoxious, hypnotic, neanderthal and manic-psychotic in the same breath, then this one’s the one to beat.

BLACK SABBATH

Paranoid

(WB/Reprise) 1970

#1: Numero Uno gets the Heisman Trophy for the best of heavy-hard rock period. 8-track studio, 48-hour production (’s what Ozzy says); not since the Sonics (“Cinderella,” “He’s Waitin’ ”) has the medium of primitive, raw distortion-laced guitar chording been taken to as high a spiritual plane.

Tony lommi’s sludge-hammer fuzztone is once and forever unleashed in and out between quick sparse leads and thick rhythm grinds. The overall dirge is trademark BS—a matched set of atonal drone next to similar aspects of Master Of Reality.

The numbers on this slab are hot enough to broil a lobster—“War Pigs," “Iron Man,” “Paranoid”—Ozzy wailing and moaning of peace and love turned sour and rotten. All that’s identifiable w/the decade’s better moments of metallic wisdom can be found in abundance: post-’60s hippie P & L propaganda pumped out furiously against diatribes on the forces of good and evil (let’s not forget that these boys were first with the Satan stuff). The sound of nuclear nightmare turned into a sermon against a backdrop of growling, groaning loud and soft twists and turns (“War Pigs”).

The story of this rec’ds the story of personified sludge and the no-holds-barred vengeance of possessed 2-chord riffs (“Paranoid” an improvement of “Communication Breakdown”). And before marijuana caught up with Oz and Co. ca. MOR (as a fertile field to plow) the sinisterside of raunch and rock-as-hard/heavy was epitomized all over the place in almost every nook and cranny of this album, lommi’s fuzz-chords ring with brashness, stretching beyond even the Stooges’ wildest dreams. Paranoid made allowable (or at least semi-acceptable) a different standard of low-budget thrash, allowing palatable alternatives to the bloated excess of standard metal efforts (Led Zep) and conventional sound. This, at the onset of 24-track technology and a decade pledged to AOR eff-em rock.