Not Black Sabbath Or Led Zeppelin: The Band That Time Forgot Helped Invent Heavy Metal

While Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are widely regarded, and rightfully so, as the groups that chiefly helped create and popularize heavy metal, there's a third, less remembered member of the loud and hard trifecta of bands that also deserves some credit: Blue Cheer. This American band released music well before either of those British groups, and they even had a hit single. With its experimental 1968 LP "Vincebus Eruptum" and a hitcover of Eddie Cochran's early rock 'n' roll hit "Summertime Blues," Blue Cheer made some of the first recordings that recognizably belong to the heavy metal genre.

According to the bizarre history of heavy metal music, the style involves blues-based rock played extremely loud and at an interesting tempo, with lots of hammering sludge and feedback layered on, befitting the lyrical themes and general aura of darkness and menace. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath both contributed to that formula, but the sheer ear-splitting heaviness was perhaps best expressed by Blue Cheer, a group that came up in the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene.

Since "heavy metal" didn't really exist before Blue Cheer came around, the band was lumped in with the acid rock and psychedelic bands that were also part of the San Francisco hippie scene of the late 1960s, and as such got their name from a kind of LSD, aka acid. Blue Cheer was at first a six-member blues act until the band's most serious musicians — bassist and lead singer Dickie Peterson, guitarist Leigh Stephens, and drummer Paul Whaley — found ambition after seeing Jimi Hendrix perform. They got rid of the other half of the band to focus on wailing guitars, thundering drums, and getting heavy, guttural sound from the bass. 

Blue Cheer's debut LP, "Vincebus Eruptum," was barely recognizable blues rock with added layers of fuzz, feedback, and a quaking low-end, along with plenty of riffs and showboating — hallmarks of heavy metal. The quaking bass brought out a sinister vibe, predating the occult themes later found in the works of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The album was so novel and exciting that it was a smash, hitting No. 11 on the album chart. Blue Cheer's wild version of "Summertime Blues" was a No. 14 pop hit. 

But then Blue Cheer's lineup and direction changed, and they explored less abrasive kinds of rock on their next five albums made by 1971, before packing it in. The band existed in various forms and released several more albums from 1989 to 2025. Nevertheless, in the early days, they laid the foundation for adding loud, dissonant, and even unpleasant sounds to rock.