After discovering Captain Beyond my love for this period of rock has grown uncontrollably. i was up till nearly 6am last night downloading and sampling some great bands of early metal experimentation. I must also thank thee BattleMazz for his suggestions of High Tide's "Sea Shanties" album. Its a very dense, heady and heavy trip, i cant get enough!

So my personal pick at the moment, for anybody interested in what i am talking about, would be:

Captain Beyond - Captain Beyond (s/t)
Lucifers Friend - Lucifers Friend (s/t)
High Tide - Sea Shanties
Samurai - Kappa (one of the heaviest production sounds i have ever heard, as good as Morbid Saint's Spectrum of death production!!)

A good modern purveyor of this sound is the Swedish band Qoph. sounding like Captain Beyond after listening to a couple too many Caravan Lps and brought forward to the modern day. Great live!!

Anybody know any Gems i am missing out on? Where can found Proto Metal greatness?

Flower Travellin' Band. A few of their albums have been reissued on LP and there apparently has been a reunion. Some have compared them to Black Sabbath. Also look at Atomic Rooster and T2 who are seen as prog but nevertheless craft some heavy riffs. Rush also are amazing if you want to see where Manilla Road got some of their influence and they're just an amazing band, even if again, they're prog. I suppose Hawkwind are worth mentioning. Not proto metal but an influence on some bands. Also listen to Blue Cheer who influenced Pentagram (along with Black Sabbath of course)

Cheers for that Nekro. I love the album "In Hearing Of..." by Atomic Rooster, Pete French's vocals make that album so perfect. Breakthrough is a fucking heavy beast of a song. Also i have "It all work out in boomland" but haven't given it much of a spin really. i saw it came recommended by Lee Dorian in a terrorizer article so its must be pretty good!

Just downloaded Banquet (a later album by Lucifer's Friend) its fucking amazing too! less heavy more proggy but in a really good way. still way far out there psychedelic wildness but with a lot of melody and variation!

Jerusalem (UK)
Sir Lord Baltimore
Toad
Pentagram Demos
Bedemon

I just bought:
SHINKI CHEN - Shinki Chen And His Friends
NECRONOMICON - Tips Zum Selbstmord

They are supposed to be amazing proto metal. I shall report back later.

I'm also assuming you know Deep Purple - In Rock

Triple Post:

Flower Traveling Band RULES

More recos:
Pan
Black Widow (more proggy)

cheers for those swizzleeeynuts. i'll certainly check out some of those as soon as i can. Deep who?

Believe me I have a MASSIVE list of late 60s/early 70s bands that I could post but it could be a little excessive... Its over a page long and there must be hundreds there...

Anyway one band I heard recently were a band called Eloy. Really good I thought. Yes Flower Travellin' Band rule! I love them. Rise Above Relics reissued an obscure band called Possessed (no, not the Bay Area band!) who were very good and all only did one album before dying in a plane crash. Rainbow rock, but I'm sure you know that and really are acknowledged as metal anyway... Necromandus will be of interest to you because Tony Iommi produced their only album but only heard very little. Also not too well known to me personally but of interest are Sir Lord Baltimore.

What I want to know is why the sudden interest in this stuff? I think its great but I see it on forums everywhere so I'm quite curious!

Jamie, have you heard the 2nd and 3rd Captain Beyond albums?

a couple of really good albums haven't been mentioned:

Asterix - 1970 - s/t
Night Sun - 1972 - Mournin'

Check out

Iron Claw - Dismorphophobia
Buffalo - Volcanic Rock
Pinnacle - Cyborg Assassin.

..and any of the first three Bloodrock albums....Downer rock man.

I have got Cyborg Assassin somewhere actually, but its one that never really got a decent listen. i shall dig it and rock it out again soon!

you guys rule, there is a lot of stuff to get through now, great!!

so, anymores for anymores?

Black Widow, Sir Lord Baltimore, Hurdy Gurdy are Indian Summer are some noice ones

Black Widow? I know they're evil, dark, excellent band and all but what they do, is that really metal?

Sorry proto-metal!