Nobody’s saying Black Sabbath didn’t invent metal, man. They did. Technically, the machine that chopped off the top of Iommi’s finger invented heavy metal, but let’s just credit Birmingham’s finest mope-wizards and be done with it. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of other long-haired freaks going bananas on their instruments in the late 1960’s, blowing amps and minds with screaming and bleating and caveman thumping and walls of psychotic fuzz.
There were armies of these proto-metal teenage noiseniks out there with fire and steel names like Pentagram, Warhorse, Night Sun, Hard Stuff, Bedemon, Tear Gas, Atomic Rooster and Iron Claw all hooked on speed and Satan, huffing napalm and sinking slowly into their couches of woe with Iron Butterfly blaring endlessly on their headphones.
Some crawled out of the basement and released classic albums. Some died quietly, gurgling on their own blood with the fumes of Altamont in their nostrils. Sabbath were the heaviest of ‘em all, but they sure as fuck weren’t the only hard rockers running amuck in the age of Aquarius.
