For over five decades, no matter where you went in America, you could find heavy metal. The style of music is credited to various artists, from Blue Oyster Cult to Led Zeppelin and of course Black Sabbath, who truly established the blueprint, though even Ozzy Osbourne, Sabbath’s late and iconic singer, has credited “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks as a prime inspiration for the sound and attitude. The term “heavy metal” possibly comes from a lyric out of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” (“I like smoke and lightnin’ / Heavy metal thunder”).
Whatever the source and influences, the style clearly manifested in Colorado. Kip Winger formed the band that took his surname before he moved from Denver to New York and got famous. But he did not put the Mile High City on the map for metal. That distinction belongs to the genre loosely called “extreme metal” and its associated artists.
Extreme metal has come from the amalgamation of death metal, grindcore, black metal…
