I remember about 20 years ago listening to a track by a blues guitarist from the 60’s or 70’s who was playing something that sounded not far off heavy rock/ metal. I’ve been trying ever since to remember who it was but can’t for the life of me remember though.
Priest continually top my Spotify wrapped list. Can listen to the Rage and Beyond the Realms of death every day. And they keep getting heavier the last album Firepower was top notch. Rising from Ruins and Never the Heroes are vintage Priest.
With Sabbath, much of it was (literally) accidental. Tony Iommi lost the tips of his fingers in an industrial accident and (I think) starting with the Masters album they downtuned all the instruments to slacken the guitar strings and make it easier to play. That resulted in that crushing sound.
The track Black Sabbath came about because Geezer Butler was playing Holst’s Mars on the bass and missed a semitone resulting in a rather demonic sound.
Ozzy just wanted to sound like The Beatles!
Iommi also played in Jethro Tull for a short while, although never recorded with them, but if you listen to their first two albums you can hear plenty of that prototype heavy blues.
Heavy Metal already existed as a style prior to Sabbath, it’s just that they turned it into a genre.
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I genuinely can’t think of anyone who fits that description. I find it funny that I found a few bands who fit that description but who started releasing music in the last two decades!
Growing up in a country where copyright laws don’t exist and being a grown-up in an era where I can subscribe to a streaming platform with nigh-on endless access to all sorts of music (Tidal, in my case) or find new music via obscure blogs that review underground metal bands enabled me to find literally dozens of bands that I’ve grown to love and admire. However, the more of them I find, the more I return to Priest and Sabbath because you always find something from them in those new bands.
Listening to the two of them actually helped me learn to listen to music by whole albums - I genuinely can’t remember the last time I put on a randomised playlist or created one, and I’m talking about years, maybe even a whole decade. And the build-up to Beyond the Realms of Death specifically (well, I don’t need a reason to talk about that album or that particular song but thank you for bringing it up anyway! 
)… That song might be the reason why the human race still exists as far as I’m concerned!
And how can you create riffs that are as heavy as Saints in Hell or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in that age?!
True but the downtuning in particular seemed like an absolute masterstroke to me… I don’t think I would have thought of that had I been in his situation, to be honest! I don’t know if anyone did it in popular music until then, I know that a lot of blues(-inspired) musicians used open tunings or whatnot but I don’t think any famous rock’n’roll band downtuned at the time, especially not by three semitones like Tony did at some point.
As for the existence of heavy metal before them, it’s up for debate. I use what I perceive as “heaviness” as the main criterion as to whether some band from that era is heavy metal or not in my eyes, which is obviously very subjective. For me, Sabbath invented it, Priest defined it. There are some cult bands like Sir Lord Baltimore who came in between them but failed to have a commercial impact on the world of music.
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I’d agree with that. Although, I would say that they defined the genre - they heard heavy tracks that other bands were doing and collated it into a defined genre - even then, there is a lot more subtlety to Sabbath than the pure bludgeon that they were associated with.
As with many music genres it’s the technology that enables it. Once amps were being developed that could fill a stadium rather than puny little AC30s the possibilities for electronic distortion were there.
It’s worth hearing some of the stuff that the Sabbath guys were listening to at the time.
This was the opening track of the album that Jethro Tull recorded a few months after Tony Iommi had been with them (and was apparently on early rehearsals):
Hendrix had taken the Jeff Beck guitar sound a couple of years before and made it his own. This was the technology taking over:
Led Zeppelin’s first album had a couple of songs that were Heavy Metal in all but name. Apparently the riff on Communication Breakdown was the inspiration for Paranoid:
Pink Floyd also tried the amps turned to 11 approach when they were trying to find a post Syd Barratt sound:
Another interesting one is this Beatles track which was released a month or so before Sabbath recorded their first album. Ozzy was a huge fan and there is definitely some Sabbath DNA in there:
I could post a lot more late 60s music which were tracks that are Heavy Metal in all but name but not from what you would define as a Heavy Metal act. The first Sabbath album changed all that.
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Reminds me of some show I watched on BBC 2 many years ago about the various rock bands (Rock Family Trees?) where I think someone from Deep Purple talked through how they came up with the music from one of their most popular songs (may have been Smoke on the water?) - they were in a pub when one of them started riffing on his guitar, everyone else in the band started getting into it and thought it sounded brilliant - but they were so drunk they hadn’t noticed it was a riff from another popular song playing on the TV,
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There wasn’t a desk top in our school that didn’t have Black Sabbath carved into it… Not a group I had any interest in though
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Much as I love listening to Pink Floyd, with Echoes being a particular favourate, too much and I always come away depressed.
p.s.another fav
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I really love the Meddle album. It even has my dog’s favourite track on it.
I know what you mean about getting depressed with Floyd, though. They started out as English whimsy and gradually morphed into some very dark indeed.
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I think even at their lightest they were only grey - but some many great tunes, songs, lyrics and albums.
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Care to name?
San Trapez or Seamus?
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Seamus, of course. I occasionally stick in on in the car and I can see his head popping up like a little veloceraptor.
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Treme is great. Very underrated. Jazz, blues, soul, r&b, everything you’d expect from New Orleans.
Makes you hungry for the food too.
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Helter Skelter for one, I got blisters on me fingers 
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I can not understand this as their compositions are so good I just get immersed. The timing is just so good (then I’m not greatly into following lyrics I listen for the entry and exit and the nuances inbetween). Even their ‘poorer’ albums like The Wall are great!
It makes me happy to know that there’s music so well ‘written and executed’.
John Lydon’s performance of his competing song to win the Irish nomination for Eurovision.
A terrible rendition it has to be said , but fuck me you can feel the man’s pain.
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It is the mood I come away with.
The music - the sound, lyrics, composition as you say, are all fantastic. They are my favorite band in fact, and it is the only band where I have full catalogue, but their outlook and messages are somewhat bleak - even their lightest music is somehow filled with melancholy and sadness.
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