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Led Zeppelin: Hard Rock or Heavy Metal?


Memnoch The Devil

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Quite a few Metal fans are divided on whether Led Zeppelin was just a Hard Rock band or one of the first Heavy Metal bands. Some say ''Led Zeppelin I'' is one of the first, if not the first Heavy Metal record (it predated Black Sabbath's first record by over a year). Others say Led Zep were simply Hard Rock.

What do you think? Were Zeppelin a forerunner of Heavy Metal or just a heavy Rock band?

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There's really nothing metal about Led Zeppelin I.

I guess if you want to really delve into things (did I just invent a word there?), Dazed and Confused sounded very dark in comparison to other stuff around that time, except maybe the trippier songs of The Doors. Zepp are better than Sabbath though, cause they were fucking fearless. Sabbath seemed to keep playing out the same basic riffs whereas Zepp experimented. Good thing Ozzy got kicked out or else we'd have had a few more crappy Sabbath albums instead of several pretty good Ozzy albums.

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Led Zeppelin created, or popularized, a lot of the lyrical and melodic cornerstones of heavy metal in the years following their rise to fame. The "fantasy" or abstract lyrics (e.g. songs about Tolkien and the entirety of "Stairway"), the acoustically heavy stuff, the general vibe they gave off -- that shit all gave birth to a lot of heavy metal bands. But I'd definitely refer to them as hard rock, in a musical sense. They were blues-based rockers.

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Guest deleted_19765
Led Zeppelin created, or popularized, a lot of the lyrical and melodic cornerstones of heavy metal in the years following their rise to fame. The "fantasy" or abstract lyrics (e.g. songs about Tolkien and the entirety of "Stairway"), the acoustically heavy stuff, the general vibe they gave off -- that shit all gave birth to a lot of heavy metal bands. But I'd definitely refer to them as hard rock, in a musical sense. They were blues-based rockers.

This is true, but in terms of their early discography, there was nothing that hadn't been done by Cream or Jimi Hendrix. I think Led Zeppelin is cast as Heavy Metal mostly because they came to prominence in or at least closer to the 1970s, and were appropriated by a generation with important differences from the rock music listeners of the 1960s.

But who cares?

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they're a generic rock band who borrowed elements from other genres in order to seem not generic, but all of their songs sound like cheap imitations of whatever genre they were borrowing from. sure, they were groundbreaking in the dense rock world of that time, but i don't hear anything truly new in any of their music. normally, that's okay as long as it's still enjoyable, but that's not the case here--i don't find them to be an enjoyable band. they're boring.

i went through the whole 'stairway to heaven' phase--i think everyone does--but unlike a lot of people, i grew out of that idiom.

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they're a generic rock band who borrowed elements from other genres in order to seem not generic, but all of their songs sound like cheap imitations of whatever genre they were borrowing from. sure, they were groundbreaking in the dense rock world of that time, but i don't hear anything truly new in any of their music. normally, that's okay as long as it's still enjoyable, but that's not the case here--i don't find them to be an enjoyable band. they're boring.

i went through the whole 'stairway to heaven' phase--i think everyone does--but unlike a lot of people, i grew out of that idiom.

Here's me pretty much agreeing with you, for once.

Bonham was still a great drummer though.

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they're a generic rock band who borrowed elements from other genres in order to seem not generic, but all of their songs sound like cheap imitations of whatever genre they were borrowing from. sure, they were groundbreaking in the dense rock world of that time, but i don't hear anything truly new in any of their music. normally, that's okay as long as it's still enjoyable, but that's not the case here--i don't find them to be an enjoyable band. they're boring.

i went through the whole 'stairway to heaven' phase--i think everyone does--but unlike a lot of people, i grew out of that idiom.

Please tell me a rock band today that wasn't somehow influenced by Zep or The Beatles. Are all rock bands generic and unoriginal, or only the legendary ones? You have a twisted sense of reality. I can admit that Zep had some boring moments, but they were far from generic.

They are hard rock BTW.

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