10 Greatest Pre-Metal Metal Songs

In the grand scheme of rock music, heavy metal is still a relatively new genre. When compared to the sounds of Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry starting rock and roll, it wasn't until Black Sabbath came along that the genre had an overarching sound to call its own. At the same time, it's not like heaviness just became a thing overnight.

Ever since the '60s, bands were ready and willing to experiment with just how much you could do with guitars, amps, and a whole lot of youthful rebellion. Across the rock and roll scene, you could find different bands that were pushing the traditional rock structures into places that it had never been before. While most of these were still rooted in the blues tradition of days gone by, there was a slightly demented edge to the music that always stuck out as strange amid the Flower Generation.

Though the years before Sabbath may have been about peace and love, there was a different side to that coin that some rockers were more than willing to expose. From psychedelic rock to protopunk to your average rock and roll, these are the most caustic rockers that would have inspired devil horns a few years earlier.

If you wanted to sound heavy before metal was a thing, all signs pointed back to the blues. Even before Led Zeppelin started making waves on the British blues scene, the heaviness of rock and roll was made up of a bunch of kids trying to ape the macho swagger of Howlin Wolf and Willie Dixon. There were a lot of copycats of blues purists to go around...and then you have Cream.

Being the vehicle for a young Eric Clapton, this power trio was taking all of the elements of the blues they loved and injecting it with jazz, psychedelia, and everything in between. While Disraeli Gears gave them their biggest hit with Sunshine of Your Love, the real menace comes on the B-side with Tales of Brave Ulysses. From the song construction to the actual sound, this is all you need for your standard metal song, as Slowhand punishes his wah-wah pedal with some of the most ferocious lead licks of the era.

The lyrics of Jack Bruce also bring in an adventurous element, as we follow this traveler across the world. Though it may seem by the numbers now, everyone from Black Sabbath to Zeppelin to Deep Purple would start talking about the rock and roll lifestyle like a wary vagabond, always venturing towards new lands. With a meaty backbeat to tie it all together, Tales of Brave Ulysses is practically the moment where the blues got a taste for the dark side.