Metalution Part 6: The Least Metal Year (1973)

1973 is the least metal year in the history of metal. It had very few metal releases but did see a few new metal dabblers with Nazareth, Buffalo, and Budgie dipping their toes in the genre. It also saw a new release from Metal Fathers, Black Sabbath.

In May of 1973, Nazareth released their third album Razamanaz with probably their darkest song “Sold My Soul” which was an Early Doom Metal song.

Budgie released their third album Never Turn Your Back on a Friend in June with their first metal song, progressive early heavy metal “Bread Fan”. A fast pace metal track with a prog rock middle.

Australian band Buffalo put out and upbeat heavy rock song, “Shylock” with the tempo pushing it into the classification of Early Heavy Metal similar to the style of Sir Lord Baltimore before them.

Back in November, Nazareth’s next album "Loud ‘n’ Proud” featured another metal song which was a Psychedelic Early Heavy Metal version of a the Bob Dylan song “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”.

Closing out a year with little metal, Black Sabbath released "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” on December 1st. Although I would consider this a fantastic album, it is the least metal Sabbath album as it is predominantly a heavy rock / hard rock album. This album is also the first of three which I would consider their progressive albums. In a rarity, Tony introduced a more rock style with strumming where normally he would stick to down picking. This could be because of better fitted tips for his fingers or simply experimentation, but this style of playing was not typical of him. The album opens with Progressive Early Doom Metal “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, followed by Progressive Doom Metal “A National Acrobat”. The album continues with Progressive Heavy Rock songs, “Sabbra Cadabra” and “Killing Yourself to Live”, Progressive Rock “Who Are You"?”, Progressive Hard Rock “Looking for Today”, and closes with "Symphonic Progressive Rock “Spiral Architect”.

In our next part, 1974 sees a bit more metal released from dabblers both old and new.

Part 5