...Very 'Eavy ...Very 'Umble signed to that label. The album shows the band trying out various genres a mix of heavy metal and progressive rock rather than the hard rock that they would become known for on later albums. Tracks 3 and 8 were recorded as Spice songs prior to the band's renaming as Uriah Heep, and featured session player Colin Wood on keyboards. When Ken Hensley joined Spice in late 1969, the tracks were not re-recorded. The album was generally panned by the mainstream critical press upon its release, although it has since been acknowledged as an early classic of the heavy metal
Heavy metal music September 1969, the Beatles released the album "Abbey Road" containing the track "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" which has been credited as an early example of or influence on heavy metal or doom metal. In October 1969, British band High Tide debuted with the heavy, proto-metal album "Sea Shanties". Led Zeppelin defined central aspects of the emerging genre, with Page's highly distorted guitar style and singer Robert Plant's dramatic, wailing vocals. Other bands, with a more consistently heavy, "purely" metal sound, would prove equally important in codifying the genre. The 1970 releases by Black Sabbath ("Black Sabbath" and "Paranoid")