Your way in
Proto-punk 1967
Garage rock turned hostile and repetitive, with noise and nihilism. Nobody called it punk yet, but everyone at CBGB copied from it.
- Heaviness
- 5
- Speed
- 7
- Melody
- 5
- Where from
- Detroit / New York, USA
- Tempo
- 140-180 bpm
- Song length
- 2.5-6 min
- Written about
- Boredom, The body, Nihilism, Drugs, unromantically
- Vocals
- Sung
Why this one
| You said | Proto-punk | Match | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singing When someone is singing, what should come out? | clean | 100% | ×3 |
| Heavy. I want to feel it. How much weight do you want behind it? | 5 out of 10 | 70% | ×2 |
| Quick and driving What pace? | 7 out of 10 | 100% | ×2 |
| The beginnings Does it matter when it was made? | 1967 | 100% | ×1 |
| Weighted mean | 93% | ||
Ranked over all 150 genres in the encyclopedia, on the 4 answers you gave, weighted vocals 3, heaviness 2, pace 2, era 1 out of 8. Proto-punk ties with the next, and won on being the broader of the two. Where two genres score the same the broader one wins, because a genre with subgenres under it is somewhere to carry on from and a leaf is a full stop.
Five records, in this order
- 1Start one step outside
The Sonics, Here Are The Sonics!!! 1965
The Sonics - Psycho. Gerry Roslie's voice is a decade ahead of punk.
The pick names a track. This is the record the encyclopedia holds by them.
- 2The one to put on first
The Stooges, The Stooges 1969
The Stooges - Fun House. The sound of a band self-destructing in real time.
- 3Then
- 4Then
- 5Then
The first is the entry point for Garage rock, one step outside, so the second record has something to be heard against. After it come Proto-punk's essential records in the order the encyclopedia lists them. Every one of these has a page here with links out to somewhere it can be played.
If that is not it
-
Hard rock 93%
Louder volume, thicker riffs, vocals pushed to the edge. Heavy metal splits off from it, but hard rock stays closer to the blues and to the chorus.
5 steps from Proto-punk, meeting it only at Rock.
The way into Hard rock -
Traditional heavy metal 91%
The classic form: high vocals, twin lead guitars, choruses to raise a fist to. Leather and studs.
On the other branch of the tree entirely, and 6 steps from Proto-punk.
The way into Traditional heavy metal
Not simply the second and third of the ranking: those are almost always near neighbours of the first, which is three names for one suggestion. An alternate has to sit at least 4 steps through the tree from the headline and from the other alternate, which is the same floor the "sounds like this, but isn't" panel uses.
What your answers ruled out
- Singing put 54 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Black metal, Death metal, Post-hardcore. Worth 3 of 8.
- The beginnings put 67 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Folk metal, Metalcore, Nu metal. Worth 1 of 8.
Counted as genres scoring 20% or less on that answer alone. A recommendation that only shows what it chose is hiding half of what it did.