Proto-Metal

Proto-metal gathers the late-1960s and early-1970s rock recordings that anticipated heavy metal before the genre had a name: blues-based bands that pushed volume, distortion and riff weight beyond psychedelic and hard rock norms. *Blue Cheer*, *Iron Butterfly* and *Vanilla Fudge* slowed and amplified the blues and pop repertoire, *Steppenwolf* coined the phrase 'heavy metal thunder', and *Sir Lord Baltimore*, *Uriah Heep* and *Budgie* added the dark imagery, occult themes and downtuned momentum metal would codify. Figures such as *Led Zeppelin* and *Deep Purple* straddle the boundary, their early records claimed by both the hard rock and metal canons.