Iron Claw

I may be coming late to the party on this one, but Iron Claw is pretty damn awesome!  I am shocked they sound so heavy for 1970.  Its clear they are Black Sabbath influenced but they really have captured a nice heavy sound.

I am not going to say they are the lost pioneers of Heavy metal but they are something you should listen to once or twice.  Skull crusher is a great heavy song that seems to blow the doors off heavy blues and hit metal squarely in jaw.  There are other hard tracks on the record too but you have to take it with a little bit of salt. There are some slow tracks that are just not metal.

When they slow down they are not like Rainbow that can do Temple of the King and have it be metal.  The slow down and they are back to the blues psych rock thing of the late sixties.  You have to remember many of these bands are just occasionally hitting upon metal by accident.  They are not dedicated to it.

You are going to hear Sabbath in there,it's sort of hard not to at the time.  I am not one to say Black Sabbath were the inventors of metal.  Blue Cheer clearly predate them.  Black sabbath were just the first guys to be metal 24/7.  Iron Claw probably were not going around in cloaks, but the music is good and I hope you give it a listen.

Here is a link to Amazon for the record.