50 years ago a bunch of Brummies released an album that changed Rock music forever. Black Sabbath took the heavy blues-rock formula of Cream and Hendrix, turned up the amps, fed it through a filter of Horror movies and created something darker and heavier than anything heard before.
Later on other bands would refine the formula and Heavy Metal would gleefully lift bits from every other music form you could think of: Punk, Prog, Pop, folk music, hardcore, hip-hop and the kitchen sink but it all started with the sound of rain and a menacing three note riff.
These days Heavy Metal bands and metal fans can be found pretty much anywhere that has working electricity and that includes countries where unsmiling men will throw you into a windowless cellar for wearing a black t-shirt.
Metal has survived Punk, Disco, Grunge, Rap, moral crusaders, the blatant disdain of the music press and Axl Rose being a knob. If anything it keeps spreading further.
I am confident that in 30 years time there will still be somebody putting "Black Sabbath" in their nanite, cortical sensory implants and losing their freaking mind.
Anyway, enough waffling. let's have some metal ..
and always remember Heavy Metal Rules.
