The First Metal Band

The question of who was the first metal band is a source of some controversy. Many people have different ideas of which band was the first metal band. I thought about this as a result of seeing the documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. The documentary mentioned Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Alice Cooper, MC5, and Led Zeppelin as possibilities.

I, for one, have never really considered this much of a controversy. I have always thought it was pretty cut and dried. Black Sabbath, in my mind, was very clearly the first real metal band. Many of the other bands named above were proto-metal or had the occasional metal song, but were not in and of themselves a metal band. Comparing Black Sabbath to current metal bands, one can still clearly identify them as being from the same genre. This is not true of the other bands. Black Sabbath started it all. Every metal band since owes a debt of gratitude to them.