10 '60s Hard Rock Albums You Need To Listen To

If you were looking to put some nastiness into your rock music, you were pretty much stuck with digging back into the blues. Outside of the usual rock and roll songs from the '50s, there was no way that you were going to make something like the Everly Brothers sound dangerous or anything. Some bands took the blues, some bands tried their hand at psychedelia, but Blue Cheer got their point across with pure volume.

Drawn to the more aggressive sounds of rock and roll, this power trio out of California were one of the most intense musical experiences of the time. Take their version of Summertime Blues, for instance. Since the Who's cover version of the rock classic was already on the horizon, Blue Cheer beat them to the punch with a version that sounds like its on the verge of collapsing at every second, especially with a guitar that sounds like it's trying to break the sound barrier.

Considering this came out in the middle of the '60s counterculture, there was pretty much no other way a band like Blue Cheer could have surfaced. At a time when hard rock didn't even have a definitive sound yet, Vincebus Eruptum potentially started the genres of metal, punk, and noise rock without even trying.