Debate: Satori by Flower Travellin' Band is metal

^Great, it's about time! 

Sounds metal enough to me.

Sooo traditional heavy metal until we have a heavy psych tag?

^ agreed, therefore we REALLY need a heavy psych to include those few early bands that were still in that world like Blue Cheer and Flower Travelin Band. 

That's not actually what I meant. Heavy Metal existed in an early form since 1970 and Black Sabbath's debut. But it takes a bit of time before any genre evolves to have a standardised sound. Take later metal genres like black metal for instance: You have to of course throw out most of the so called first wave because a lot of those bands had nothing to do with the actual genre of black metal, but those that did like Bathory were much more based in thrash metal than the standardised sound as popularised by the early Norwegian scene is. Mayhem themselves were much the same.

That doesn't mean those early releases don't deserve to be counted as the new fledgling genre by any means. It just means they still have pretty strong aspects of other styles, in the case of early heavy metal mainly meaning hard rock and heavy psych but also blues rock, which Black Sabbath certainly had aspects of. It really wasn't until Sad Wings of Destiny that any metal band really began to shake the hard rock roots off (and even then Judas Priest had more hard rock leaning albums after that point). For the black metal example, thrash metal files the role that hard rock does for heavy metal. For another example speed metal is to (Euro) power metal what hard rock is to early heavy metal. It's not simply coincidence that many of those early German power metal bands played speed metal on their earliest releases.

Back to topic: No one here is denying that Satori is heavy psych, just making a case that it's heavy psych and heavy metal.

Unitron wrote: Would you call Black Sabbath heavy psych or proto-metal rather than Heavy Metal?

siLLy puPPy wrote: it's not really a metal album in the traditional sense

I'd argue that a traditional sense for metal didn't exist in 1971.

70's heavy metal is actually a very small pool of artists unless you want to count groups like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple who, while they may have been included in the fledgling heavy metal genre/scene then, are now widely considered 'just' hard rock bands.

Until the mid to late 70's there are actually very few groups that have a Heavy Metal tag either on RYM or here on MMA itself. From RYM's charts:

1970:

Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
Sir Lord Baltimore - Kingdom Come

1971:

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Budgie - Budgie
Bang - Bang

1972:

Black Sabbath - Vol 4
Budgie - Squawk

1974:

Budgie - In For the Kill

1975:

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

That's literally just four bands and ten albums and all of them considered part hard rock. That's nowhere near enough to consider the heavy metal sound standardised.

'76 brings Judas Priest and Rainbow into the picture and this is our cut off year for Proto-Metal, so between them Rising and Sad Wings of Destiny could be seen as the first truly defining heavy metal albums, especially Sad Wings, which is the earliest heavy metal tagged album on RYM that doesn't have hard rock as a co-Primary.

This paves way for further bands in '77 such as Riot, Motörhead and Quartz, whose self-titled is the earliest release typically included as part of the NWoBHM. Personally I can't help but wonder if that's a little too early, but that's another debate.

Bearing this in mind, I don't think Satori should be judged by standards that only came to be years after its release. It needs to be judged as a contemporary of Black Sabbath, Budgie, Sir Lord Baltimore and Bang.

It may not be in line with the popular view, but I do think this album warrants Flower Travellin' Band being considered a fifth true early heavy metal act on MMA.

TheHeavyMetalCat wrote: I'm also pretty sure that under site rules this can't be placed in Proto Metal if it's a fully fledged heavy psych album.

I'm also pretty sure that under site rules this can't be placed in Proto Metal if it's a fully fledged heavy psych album.

siLLy puPPy wrote: One question i have always had is why a band like this would be considered metal when it uses slow distorted riffs but a much more energetic band like Van Halen which has monster riffing and blitzkrieg guitar solos is only considered hard rock. Seems illogical