Speed metal, as a term, has been specified and broken down with other terms that are under heavy metal such as power metal, thrash metal and black metal, and is known to often be succeeded by such related terms at the time that an artist’s style or sound is defined specifically. Speed metal, as a term, was used also in a very broad sense by some of the NWOBHM groups and glam metal during the eighties, mainly because of the X Japan success.
Origins of Speed Metal:
The precise origin of the speed metal music genre is rather difficult to pinpoint due to the fact that it was never actually established fully as a heavy metal sub-genre until the early eighties. However, there are many that consider the earliest forms of a speed metal song to be “Highway Star” by Deep Purple which was on their ’72 album entitled “Machine Head”. The song introduced riffing that consisted of a single note at very fast tempos as well as the keyboard solos and complex guitar solos which were performed by Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore respectively, borrowing from the seventies progressive rock but was still influenced heavily by classical music.
Commonly, all of these features moved on to be associated with metal genres that were more modern but still at the same time were very typical of the speed metal music genre. One other early example of the speed metal genre would be “Stone cold Crazy” by Queen from “Sheer Heart Attack” which was their ’74 album. For the rock and roll music genre, the song was referred to as being extremely fast-paced and it was among the fastest song that Queen had ever played as well as one of the songs that was heaviest recorded at that particular time.
In addition to the fast tempo of the song, the staccato riffs by Brian May and the jackhammer drums of Roger Taylor are quite similar to the latter styles of metal music. This would later be revealed by Metallica. Some of the other earlier efforts that shared a similar style included “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath from their ’70 album entitled “Paranoid” as well as “Speed King” by Deep Purple from their album entitled “In Rock” as well as “Fireball”. |
