10 Greatest Pre-Metal Metal Songs

It's drastically underselling it to say that Jimi Hendrix was a pretty big deal amongst guitar players. With only just a handful of albums to his name, Hendrix and the Experience were able to turn the entire rock world inside out through the sheer power of volume, distortion, and some of the most tasteful playing ever laid on vinyl. Though Hendrix did end up getting better and better, nowhere was he more savage than on his debut with Manic Depression.

Compared to something like Sabbath that would surface just 3 years later, Hendrix's tone was on par with the doomy clangor of Tony Iommi, making his guitar absolutely scream across every bit of this track. For a song that is this heavy, it's almost deceptively metallic in its delivery. Whereas bands like the Stooges were taking a more back to basics approach to their songwriting and using volume as their weapon of choice, this track is a natural hodgepodge of every genre imaginable frankensteined into a colossal ball of beautiful music.

Though the sharp guitar stabs scream heavy metal, you can find traces of soul music in Hendrix's delivery, bluesy bends in his phrasing, and even the slightest traces of pop smarts in the way he decides to stop the riffs on a dime to make way for the hook of the song. While Hendrix may have been the absolute king of the fretboard, what he created on Manic Depression moves something else in your gut the same way metal acts do today.