Who invented heavy metal?

[All Englands Skies]

Earliest song personally that I feel has a truly "heavy" rock sound, would be this, in 1973;

 

[Sir Robbins]

^ really? Have you heard Child in Time from deep purple? Came out in 1969. Black Sabbath's album came out in 1970 too... Those were HEAVY for their time and Iommi's guitar tone on the first album pretty much became the staple of heavy metal

Even Paranoid came out before then and oddly your song choice has a similar riff.. (granted this clip is from 1999)

 

[All Englands Skies]

^ really? Have you heard Child in Time from deep purple? Came out in 1969. Black Sabbath's album came out in 1970 too... Those were HEAVY for their time and Iommi's guitar tone on the first album pretty much became the staple of heavy metal

Even Paranoid came out before then and oddly your song choice has a similar riff.. (granted this clip is from 1999)

I know them both and they are Heavy.

But that Montrose song just had a sheer "Wall of Heavy sound" feel to it, in my personal opinion, more so than the earlier songs you mentioned.

But I love Sabbath and Paranoid, always have, right from being a young kid!!!

 

[timothyu]

Whoever it was they were probably British

 

[Sir Robbins]

^ that's for sure....

 

[Davy]

Hendrix perhaps? Though not fully "heavy metal" you can easily see his style as one that simply needed another step added to it to be metal.

You won't find one band that just "invented it." You will find bands that played progressively harder for their genre until a band comes along and adds that final step which become metal.

It really does have more to do with being un-melodic and machine like.

Hendrix actually didn't use that much distortion like heavy metal does. Hendrix used a lot of watts, high volume, and feedback. 'Hear My Train A'Comin' on the Rainbow Bridge album spotlights that. And it was still very bluesy. Heavy metal uses some blues licks, but it's more percussive and un-melodic than even the Blues.

Black Sabbath really was one of the early examples of heavy metal, because of often being very un-melodic with chord structures.

Ritchie Blackmore contributed lots to the heavy metal sound after he left Deep Purple. But he was still melodic.

Melodic = staying with Diatonic scales and Modes.
Un-melodic = chromaticism, clusters, leaves Diatonic realm, set theory, etc.

 

[JohnPaul88]

Sabbath

You can also add Led Zeppelin.

 

[JohnPaul88]

Sabbath

Black Sabbath is my favorite band.