Deep Purple

Smoke on the Water. A forbidden music store riff, and the first song I ever learned. The riff to smoke on the water is one of the most recognizable and iconic guitar riffs ever.

Deep purple is another rock band coming out of England. They are considered to be pioneers of heavy metal and hard rock after their work in 1970. In this year they released the album Deep Purple in Rock. A fun fact about them is they were listed in the 1975 in the Guinness book of world records as the globes loudest band after a performance in 1972.  Deep purple was one of the first bands to put the guitar into a drop tuning to get different and heavier sounds. Hearing Deep purples playing with drop tuning has encouraged me to experiment myself and write riffs in drop D. Deep Purple was most influential to other bands with their use of extreme distortion on the guitar and low sonorities.

Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath

Who is Ozzy Osbourne? Said nobody ever. The Prince of Darkness is one of the biggest names in metal and music history Black Sabbath is one of the most commercially successful heavy metal bands ever. Ozzy was introduced into Black Sabbath in 1968 during the bands formation. Ozzy stuck with them for around 10 years before being fired for drug and alcohol problems. He then moved on in the 80s to do solo work that would further solidify the genre of hard rock and metal into the music world.

Black Sabbath got their first major exposure in 1969 after receiving play time on the radio show Top Gear. Shortly after, the band released the albums Black Sabbath and Paranoid. The band experienced many personnel changes over the years, with no consistent bass player at first.

Following the success of those two albums, Black Sabbath returned to the studio to work on a third in 1971. However, the band was struggling with a serious cocaine problem at the time. This didn’t stop them. Master of Reality was released in in April 1971 with huge success. It reached top 10 in both the US and UK and was certified gold.

After a short slow period following this album, the band continued to deliver with the album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Drug abuse however continued to be a problem, and there were many changes in the bands members in the following years. While their members and style changed many times throughout the bands lifetime, but their core sound remains in grunge, doom metal, dark lyrics, and depressing sounds. The band often took advantage of the musical tritone. It greatly assists in creating tension and dissonance in sounds. When I was much more into metal a couple years ago, this interval was one of my favorite things to write with because of how “ugly” it sounds. This has influenced metal bands following Black Sabbath, such as Metallica or Judas Priest. Black Sabbath helped create sub-genres to metal, like doom metal and slow metal. However, the band has been credited with creating the genre of heavy metal itself.