10 Classic Rock Albums That Were AHEAD OF THEIR TIME

The common curse that follows every band around is whether or not you fit in with the rest of the crowd. You may be able to play your instruments really well and even write a handful of decent tracks here and there, but it's not going to matter if you don't have the trendy effects of the day at your disposal. And it turns out these artists didn't have the sounds of today...they had the sounds of the future.

Compared to the usual sounds that were popular at the time, these were albums that marked a bit of a turning point for what you could do with rock and roll. Whether it be through the kind of production that they used or the overall approach to songwriting, these were definitely a different way of looking at making an album than just your standard recording sessions.

Though some of the fans may not have understood these records at the time, each of them have proved to be a lot more impactful later down the line, if you count the millions of bands that have used these albums as a reference point throughout their career. Considering the generations that came afterward, these artists weren't of their time. It took a little while for the rest of us to catch up to them.

In the way back years of 1971, there was no such thing as heavy metal. There were some heavy sounding bands like Led Zeppelin and the Doors to be sure, but there was never anything that tied them together into one genre other than their heaviness. And if you were to ask the members of Black Sabbath themselves, they were no exception to this either.

When Tony Iommi and co. were first coming up, most of them were just following in the footsteps of Cream, until Master of Reality started to take things in a different direction. Along with a more menacing tone in the lyrics, this is also one of the first times when Iommi decided to tune his guitar down to previously unheard of levels, making for a growling tone that sounded like an army of guitars that were about to stampede across the Earth.

To this day, songs like Into the Void and Children of the Grave can still compete with modern metal guitar tones, almost grabbing you by the throat from the minute you hear them. This isn't just the fast metal stuff though. These are the kind of slow and menacing tracks that take you on a journey during their runtime. With just one album, Master of Reality practically invented metal and stoner rock all in one go.