10 Hard Rock Albums Everyone Takes For Granted

At the end of the '60s, there was no such thing as metal just yet. While the original Black Sabbath albums were just on the horizon, the idea of blowing people away through the sheer volume and darkness of your music wasn't really getting off the ground. Even though Sabbath may get the credit for laying the groundwork, heavy metal may have come a few years earlier with Blue Cheer.

Then again, it's not like these guys were intending to found a genre or anything. Across the runtime of Vincebus Eruptum, most of the songs are the traditional bluesy ventures from around the same time, only pushed to the nth degree in terms of raw volume. Taking Summertime Blues to the brink of destruction, each of the instruments on this album are dialed in to the max, almost like you're witnessing the death of an amplifier across every single song.

This proved to be just the lynchpin though, with Sabbath taking what this record did just a few years later and giving it a much more sinister twist in the lyrical department. Having fans in people like Geddy Lee of Rush, Blue Cheer's first album is the clarion call for the more rowdy side of rock to make their presence known. Just find a good riff and turn things up loud!