10 Most Important Metal Bands Of All Time
2. Black Sabbath
There isn't any real guide to how metal really started. As opposed to the more omnipresent genres like soul and rock, metal blossomed out as a natural evolution of rock music that was far meaner than the typical blues acts of the day. However, if there is one band that you could justifiably say started the heavy metal movement, it's got to be Black Sabbath.
From the first moment you put on the band's debut record, all of the lighthearted idealism of the '60s was buried once and for all to make room for this ominous music. Though Sabbath often gets remembered for the madman persona of Ozzy Osbourne, the real heart of the band's sound is Tony Iommi, whose guitar riffs are still some of the scariest musical movements of the past 40 years. Once Geezer Butler added lyrics of doom and gloom to fit the music, the modern formula for a metal band was born.
Even without Osbourne up front, the band's work with Ronnie James Dio on albums like Heaven and Hell showed there was no limit to just how much evil you could fit onto one record. A lot of metal bands these days try to get by on shock factor and obnoxiously low tunings, but Black Sabbath were one of the few bands who could get their point across through the raw muscle behind their music.