According to Carmine Appice, Metallica is metal while Black Sabbath is heavy hard rock.
The drummer recently spoke to The Adventures of Pipeman on W4CY Radio and when the interviewer said bands like Quiet Riot weren’t heavy metal, Appice replied:
“Even Slayer. They weren’t that buzzsaw guitar back in the day. All those bands. Biohazard. I mean, 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.”
Appice’s Black Sabbath Memories
He recalled their gigs with Black Sabbath:
“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…”
Carmine doesn’t believe Black Sabbath was metal despite their heavy sound:
“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.”
Carmine’s Previous Comments On Metallica
Previously, in an interview with Pete Pardo of Sea of Tranquility, the musician made similar comments on Metallica’s pioneer role in the metal scene. He reflected on their impact on the genre:
“Metallica was not like all these other bands. Metallica I consider the band that really created what you’d call heavy metal. All these other bands — Mötley Crüe, Blue Murder… It’s hard rock — that’s not heavy metal. That Metallica sound, that sounds like scratching guitars, that, to me, is what heavy metal is, which turned into death metal and speed metal and every other metal.”
Appice went on to talk about other bands:
“But Ozzy’s first album was hard rock. Mötley Crüe was hard rock. Whitesnake — it’s hard rock. King Kobra was hard rock. It was all hard rock. Blue Murder, they detuned a little bit and it was heavy, but it wasn’t what I consider heavy metal. Heavy metal was that really scratchy guitar sound.”
The drummer revealed last year that Black Sabbath wanted to have him in the band back in the day but he was playing with Rod Stewart. So he turned them down because he thought Sabbath was a smaller gig than Stewart.