Proto-metal song thread

[lynx]

This band opened for some of the biggest bands in the day, but for some reason are not that well known.

[bigfootkit]

This band opened for some of the biggest bands in the day, but for some reason are not that well known.

This ties in to something I was thinking about this just the other day, how so many of the bands from the really early days were just abandoned by the audience after their initial impact. Whilst Stray themselves made a decent splash they never attained 'top division' status, but the likes of Grand Funk Railroad, Steppenwolf, the James Gang etc went from being arena headliners in the early 70s to playing clubs & state fairs just a few short years later. Granted, all those groups tarnished their legacies (to some degree) with some of their releases during that time, but they never seemed to claw back any of that lost ground with any of their better releases. They were only ever travelling in the wrong direction after the initial success.
In later years you'd see bands bounce back & forth over their careers between periods of success & more 'selective appeal', but those early trailblazers got dropped hard & the good times never came back. Many of those guys managed to carry on playing in some form or another, and many still do, but to be 'yesterday's men' whilst still so young must've been really hard to take.
It really is a cruel old business, but it makes me smile to see the likes of Del Bromham still dragging a version of Stray round the pubs & clubs some 50 years later, clearly now at peace with his place in the grand scheme of things, but still with the itch to play his music for a loyal if small audience. More power to 'em.

[lynx]

This whole album is pretty doomy.


By the way, there is no "Population I", it was the name of the band/project because there were only two people in it and the drummer played the bass lines on a keyboard at the same time.

It's also an astronomical term for a star group, interview:
http://www.pooterland.com/index2/lookin ... olden.html

However, it seems Population I stars have more metal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_p ... on_I_stars

[Ernest Thesiger]

This whole album is pretty doomy.

Another artist with shitloads of amps:

[lynx]

Terry Brooks & Strange

[Maxim]

Estonia, 1972

[bigfootkit]

Nice! Ruja is a new band to me, and from that track they sound very worthy of further investigation.
I always thought that we Scots were the masters of the rolling 'R', but that singer is different level!

[Maxim]

Well I never really dug into this band, but as far as I know most of their stuff is more progressive rock.

[bigfootkit]

Well I never really dug into this band, but as far as I know most of their stuff is more progressive rock.

Yeah, that seems to be the case from what i'm hearing on a compilation album i downloaded called 'Need Ei Vaata Tagasi...(1971-1988)'. Still, it's really well done & there are some ballsy moments along the way too, so i will make the time to give it a proper listen.

[malegys]

Dutch Doom from 1970 !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAZZwdgtpYE

[malegys]

Did a cover of this one recently. TRACTOR (UK) 1972 "All ends up"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj2DC5cwlLQ

[Cochino]

Not as old as most of the (great) stuff that already has been posted, but still counting as Proto Metal, I think. El Reloj from Argentina sounded in 1976 like The Weird Lord Slough Feg would sound 25 years later. Great stuff, if you ask me....

Also not as old or probably "proto" as most stuff posted here but Uruguay's Psiglo was certainly on the forefront of heaviness in South America, at least with this track, back from 73.

This other one has its fair share of heaviness too

The rest of the album is a mix of jazzy and hippie prog rock with the odd heavy riff here and there but we were quite late bloomers when it came to heavy stuff down here. In some places you pretty much had to wait until the mid 80s for real Heavy Metal to show up.

[bigfootkit]

we were quite late bloomers when it came to heavy stuff down here. In some places you pretty much had to wait until the mid 80s for real Heavy Metal to show up.

I'm not sure if you're referring to Argentina specificallly or South America in general, (and it also depends on your definition of 'heavy' of course), but i think you're being just a wee bit harsh.
Whilst there weren't a huge amount of releases that you could realistically call heavy, i'm sure there were of plenty of bands playing hard who simply never got the exposure.
Even the ones who did record seem to have been somewhat hampered by a belief (or an insistence from their labels) that they record something commercial (or cover a UK or US band), but there are a few non-LP 45s where those bands true selves got a brief chance to shine on at least one side of the record.

[Cochino]

we were quite late bloomers when it came to heavy stuff down here. In some places you pretty much had to wait until the mid 80s for real Heavy Metal to show up.

I'm not sure if you're referring to Argentina specificallly or South America in general, (and it also depends on your definition of 'heavy' of course), but i think you're being just a wee bit harsh.

Yeah, maybe I was a bit blunt. There were some exceptions here and there, but as you mentioned, mostly limited to 7", if that, and they didn't really make an impact on the scene. Some of them are also just hearsay and who knows if they were actually heavy or not. Outside Argentina there was certainly more heavy bands than around here, so I'm not all that familiar with them but compared to the rest of the so called "western" world, we were quite behind as a continent. Of course, there's a lot of context reasons for that (many South American countries were under dictatorships that would ban such music) but the truth is that we didn't get a real wave of heavy music until around the mid 80s. In part, I think it also explains the uniqueness of South American metal, specially the extreme stuff, because they were kids who went from AC/DC to Slayer in just a matter of months. The same kinda thing happened later in the European Eastern Bloc.

[bigfootkit]

we were quite late bloomers when it came to heavy stuff down here. In some places you pretty much had to wait until the mid 80s for real Heavy Metal to show up.

I'm not sure if you're referring to Argentina specificallly or South America in general, (and it also depends on your definition of 'heavy' of course), but i think you're being just a wee bit harsh.

compared to the rest of the so called "western" world, we were quite behind as a continent.
kids who went from AC/DC to Slayer in just a matter of months. The same kinda thing happened later in the European Eastern Bloc.

Yeah, that is probably true, though the majority of South American countries seem to have managed at least one release that could be termed 'heavy' (at least in the context of the style & time frame we're discussing). As you say, lots of complex reasons for that which varied from country to country, but the urge/will to play harder seems to have been there at least, even if the equipment or audience were scarce at that time. Many of the prog/psych bands which existed managed to smuggle some heavier passages into their sound at least, and if you like that style of music South American had some great highly individual & unusual bands in that mould.
Is there some kind of historical or cultural reason why Uruguay seems to have been quite well represented in hindsight with regard to heavier acts in the 70s? There were quite a few worthwile Uraguayian releases despite the country's comparatively small population. Not a lot, but they definitely punched above their weight for their size.
I can't begin to imagine the culture shock of that almost instant transition from blues based hard rock to full tilt thrash that you describe from my perspective here in the UK. It was enough of a headfuck for me to first hear a record like Kreator's 'Pleasure To Kill' at that time, and i had been closely watching the evolution in real time from about 1980 onward. I still remember thinking that they must have 2 drummers or that studio trickery must have been involved as mere humans couldn't possibly be playing that racket that fast in real time. To have come across a record like that with only say, 'Back In Black' as any kind of a reference point must've completely destroyed minds (and reaped souls ).
Some parts of Eastern Europe did seem to embrace the emerging harder sounds, with Yugoslavia in particular an example of somewhere that had a Hard music scene and a plethora of releases to preserve it for we future folk to enjoy. Granted, the likes of Grupa SOS didn't go on to become household names or anything, but their existence did at least introduce audiences to the hard stuff & give the next generation of musicians something to build on. Again, a lot of that stuff was really 'just' heavy blues-rock, heavy psych or Hard prog, but the seeds of what would come to be were being sown.