HamburgerBoy
Active Member
- Sep 16, 2007
- 15,042
- 4,723
- 113
WAIF, you got exactly what I was trying to say, and I agree. I mean, it seems to me that it took many years before another band equaled "Symptom Of The Universe" in heaviness, but still, heavy metal in the 70's had a very warm guitar tone with not a whole lot of distortion. Drum beats were pretty standard 4/4 waltz style until thrash metal gave us triplet and "skank" beats. Even clean vocals (I'm ignoring screams and growls because that's too obvious) changed a lot from the 70's to the 80's. I'm just wondering if at some point a distinction needs to be made. To use rock 'n' roll as an example, Little Richard was considered rock in the 1950's, but I doubt too many people would categorize his "piano riff WOOO" shit as rock these days.
The guitar tone was a matter of heavier-sounding distortion not really existing. Any of Judas Priest's faster and heavier songs (Call for the Priest, Dissident Aggressor, Exciter, Saints in Hell, etc) would be no less heavy with some modern tr00 hevy guitar tone. Unless it was downtuned and they changed the drumming to make it more syncopated and made the vocals a bit more harsh/screamy, at which point it would become groove metal and therefore not metal.