Carmine Appice Says Heavy Metal Started With Metallica and Everything Earlier is “Hard Rock”

Drummer Carmine Appice is one of the most important figures in proto-metal, having been a member of important bands like Cactus and Vanilla Fudge that bridged the gap between blues-rock and what would eventually become heavy metal. But, if you ask him, the genre we now know as heavy metal started a little later than most people think.

In a recent interview with W4CY Radio, Appice gave his opinion on who really started heavy metal: Metallica. This is what he had to say, as transcribed by Blabbermouth:

“Even SLAYER. They weren’t that buzzsaw guitar back in the day. All those bands…they were hard rock. And then as the, per se, metal movement moved on and everybody started having that buzzsaw, METALLICA kind of buzzsaw guitars and fast bass drums like Lars [Ulrich]. And I think that’s where it all started. All that stuff that’s going on today started with METALLICA — in my eyes.

“I mean, I [could] be wrong. But for me, and all the stuff before that, including BLACK SABBATH, was hard rock. I mean, BLACK SABBATH was just, to me, like another LED ZEPPELIN coming out of Birmingham. I mean, we played gigs with BLACK SABBATH back in the day when they first came out with CACTUS… We were rock blues and so was BLACK SABBATH. I mean, ‘Paranoid’, to me, back in the day was like a ‘Communication Breakdown’ [LED ZEPPELIN] kind of thing. And then as it went along and went along, I mean, their sound got thicker, but it still didn’t have that buzzsaw sound. That’s my own opinion. Everybody says SABBATH is heavy — they’re heavy hard rock.”

That’s certainly…an opinion that someone can have. It’s not a particularly correct opinion, but I guess it’s an opinion he’s entitled to. Ironically, if his opinion were correct, it would mean that Appice himself would be farther removed from the heavy metal movement than previously thought. Just nobody tell Metallica about this opinion, because it would make their fans insufferably smug.