Metal Underground.com

Personally I think Maiden's new album, The Final Frontier, will likely follow in the vein of A Matter Of Life And Death. I certainly hope I'm wrong though, I'd really like to hear them play a little more up-tempo songs, AMOLAD was a pretty slow paced record and kind of failed to attain my interest. But hey its Maiden you know it'll be a great album. And Yeah I also don't see why Tim "Ripper" Owens got so much hate when he joined Priest, I mean who else would they've gotten to replace Halford? I think he stood up fairly well. Jugulator had some cool tunes on it and a pretty heavy album all around but Demolition blew chunks into space, hated that album.

^Uhhhhhhhh dude, Halford was never in Sabbath - strike one.
"Often considered the first metal bands and contains several doom metal influences"

ummmm okay you seem to be implying that Sabbath drew influence from doom metal, except that Sabbath were the first and there were no doom metal bands before Sabbath. But Sabbath influenced many doom metal bands, in fact many would say they created the sub-genre.

"Judas Priest - Another british band, sometimes considered metal pioneers instead of Sabbath"
instead of Sabbath? uhhhhhhhh

Do you know what it means to pioneer a genre, both bands are pioneers, that is fact and is undebatable. Also, Sabbath never changed their name to Heaven and Hell, Sabbath seem to be on a hiatus of some sort or they're just done. Heaven and Hell is a different band featuring two original members of Sabbath, Iomi and Butler, and they play Dio era Sabbath songs as Dio is their singer. Mind you Heaven and Hell aren't exactly active at the moment either.

Not trying to be an asshole bud, just felt I needed to correct you.

(This post was last edited on March 5, 2010 at 6:47 PM ET.)

Im gonna have to agree with Oz on this one, arguing over whether Priest or Sabbath were the first heavy metal band is a bit stupid but I'm gonna say this. Musically I think it was Sabbath, Black Sabbath - Vol. 4 were pretty heavy for their time, Priest in their early days weren't. Has anyone here heard Rocka Rolla, not heavy at all, in fact it's quite soft in my opinion. I think Priest started out as a rock band and kinda grew into a metal band as their sound progressed over their next few albums, Sad Wings Of Destiny, Sin After Sin, and Stained Glass. Priest were also probably the first band to really establish the metal look, the black leather and copious amounts of studs definitely helped solidify that. Their image and the fact that they embraced the term "metal" while many refuted it in my opinion is why many would believe Priest to be the first metal band. But to me, looks don't make metal riffs do, Sabbath always had the heavier riffs (in the early days anyway) so in my book Sabbath were the first.

"Priest singlehandedly defined the style of metal for the next decade and beyond"
Mmmmm....... what about when extreme metal surfaced in the mid-late 80's, I wouldn't call Priest's sound definitive of any decade although they became huge in the 80's.

"Maiden
took the reigns of metal and brought it to the world easily the most "popular" band to not wholly suck"
More popular than Metallica? Maiden doesn't partially suck btw. And the Blaze album aren't that bad, I think they're better than anything Sabbath ever did after Mob Rules, cept Dehumanizer, also better than a few Priest albums (Turbo, Demolition).

(This post was last edited on March 24, 2010 at 12:08 AM ET.)