10 Bands That Invented Their Own Genre

In the grand scheme of things, metal was in its infancy at the start of the '70s. Even though the world of hard rock had progressed by leaps and bounds in the late '60s with the arrival of acts like Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, there was no real antecedent to the kind of music that had the potential to scare you to death. However, if you want to put an actual date on it, the birth of metal could arguably be traced directly back to Black Sabbath's debut album.

Coming together as just your average blues rock outfit, the bone-chilling riffs of Tony Iommi were some of the most disturbing things that the rock world had ever heard, which were pushed to the nth degree once Ozzy Osbourne started to bellow above it. Compared to the low down and dirty tales of woe coming from the blues, these songs were a lot more concerned with evil, tackling everything from dark magic to even a love song by Satan himself on NIB.

Though something like this was seen as almost taboo at the time, the next generation of kids who picked up this record started to emerge as the first heavy metal bands, from Rainbow to Iron Maiden to even Van Halen. Even though Black Sabbath is something that shouldn't have existed in the normal world, the sheer power behind their delivery was enough to make the entire rock landscape shift on a dime.