Which band is more influential on Iron Maiden: Sabbath or Purple?

Which band is more influential on Iron Maiden: Sabbath or Purple?

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Diesel 11 said:
When I played Empire of the Clouds for my dad, he said he felt like he was listening to a Rush song in that long instrumental part. And don't forget Isle of Avalon. I'd say there's a fair bit of influence, yes.
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I was thinking the same things when I was hearing "Empire of the Clouds," "Isle of Avalon," and to an extent, "Starblind." :D
I also thought I heard a hint of Yes influence in "Empire of the Clouds" too.
 
Of the two, I think Sabbath may have been more influential on Steve specifically (he said the first song he learned to play on the bass was Paranoid, for example). But I think Purple have probably influenced more different members of Maiden since all three guitarists as well as Bruce are (? or used to be) fans, although Janick said his main interest in Purple was Ian Gillan rather than Ritchie Blackmore (also he has nicked one of his catchphrases from Jon Lord :bigsmile:). Also Dave once listed among his favourite albums Rainbow's Rising (so Ritchie Blackmore again).
 
Deep Purple, as they had a far more diverse palette of sounds and songs than Sabbath did.

Sabbath with Ozzy is quite overrated to these ears.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
Out of those two, Purple, definitely. If not Uriah Heep.



Ah, nevermind.

However - and I think I never heard of those being ever mentioned, possibly because they're not as "hip" as Yes, Genesis, Lizzy or whomever - after hearing Allman Brother's Band's At Fillmore East I don't see how those could have not been an influence. The two lead guitars and the specific Jaimoe/Trucks drumwork that reminds me of the "busy" McBrain feel... yeah, that's probably it.
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Allman Brothers are a fantastic band.
 
yeah good point - I meant to write that (within the genre of metal) Maiden is one of the most diverse acts. Deep Purple's diversity
was likely a large influence on the songs that Maiden wrote.
 
Pibroch_Whistler said:
yeah good point - I meant to write that (within the genre of metal) Maiden is one of the most diverse acts.
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I hear/see things totally opposite than you. Black Sabbath on first 6 albums are much more musically diverse than Iron Maiden ever were and I say it as a big Maiden fan. Black Sabbath weren't a typical heavy metal band, the album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is the best proof for that. Iron Maiden don't have one album that can touch SBS when it comes to diversity of album material.

BTW many metal fans criticize Iron Maiden output for being formulaic and samey, esp. in the 21st century.
 
Metal Warrior 330 said:
Honestly, that was a difficult question because Black Sabbath is the first real metal band, and Rob Halford from Judas Priest also said so several times including an interview I heard on the radio with him around the time Halford Resurection came out in August of 2000. However, Deep Purple is a hard rock band but they hugely influenced metal. Its all rock and roll and I still regard them as metal though Roger Glover described them as a hard rock band in an interview I heard with him in the summer of 2004. They were definitely influenced by UFO and progressive rock bands early Genesis. Steve Harris also described early Genesis as an influence and you can hear some of it in the guitar solos in "Dancing With the Moonlight Knight," "Supper's Ready," "The Musical Box," and "Return of the Giant Hogweed." There is also a lot of Led Zeppelin and Yes influences. Getting back to the Black Sabbath and Deep Purple influence, it's almost a tossup but in the end, the call goes to Black Sabbath in my humble opinion.
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I'd say that they were also a bit influenced by Rush.
 
Zare said:
You're right, though, that the influence is not straight forward, however the Sabbath influence is even less obvious. For me.

Maiden in that sense doesn't sound like anyone, they're their own thing.
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Maiden's style of heavy metal sounds quite different than Sabbath's. Early Black Sabbath music is mostly based on very heavy guitar riffs, while heavy riffs are not a very prominent feature of Maiden's general metal sound. So riff-wise Black Sabbath are significantly heavier than Maiden. Maiden's music style is quite fast and very harmonic unlike Sabbath's. And IM don't have the bluesy (and psychedelic) guitar solos, while nearly all Iommi's solos in early Sabbath were very bluesy and psychedelic.

I think Judas Priest on "Stained Class" discarded the bluesy guitar solos from heavy metal.
 
WildRanger said:
Maiden's style of heavy metal sounds quite different than Sabbath's. Early Black Sabbath music is mostly based on very heavy guitar riffs, while heavy riffs are not a very prominent feature of Maiden's general metal sound. So riff-wise Black Sabbath are significantly heavier than Maiden. Maiden's music style is quite fast and very harmonic unlike Sabbath's. And IM don't have the bluesy (and psychedelic) guitar solos, while nearly all Iommi's solos in early Sabbath were very bluesy and psychedelic.

I think Judas Priest on "Stained Class" discarded the bluesy guitar solos from heavy metal.
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The importance of blues gets underestimated in metal analysis IMO. Most people acknowledge that the british bands, Rolling Stones, Cream, Zeppelin came from imitations of American blues. But Maiden write their melodies in minor pentatonics too, which is like at the root of the blues, and they bend notes, even Bruce, in a classic blue-note way. IMO, Black Sabbath sound more "metal" than Maiden because of their use of the tritone, which, ironically, is THE blue note! And take the main riff from Sad But True, which people say is "so heavy" : it's all in the blues scale, it's basically a blues lick that could be played on a western guitar in drop D or a dobro or whatever.
The more you get into more recent forms of metal like extreme metal, power metal, nu metal or djent, the less you get an obvious blues reference. In the case of extreme metal, I'd say it comes from the search of an extension of the effect of the tritone, starting with Black Sabbath, quite pronounced in Slayer, which results in a more and more atonal effect. Power metal tends to be organized in a more European classical harmonical system, and nu metal and djent are "on the grid" with its pitches and have probably no blues anymore.
In terms of rhythm... would be interesting to think about it as well.
 
Among these two, Purple, but, the two most influential bands, on Maiden, are, undoubtely, Thin Lizzy and Jethro Tull.
 
Jeffmetal said:
Among these two, Purple, but, the two most influential bands, on Maiden, are, undoubtely, Thin Lizzy and Jethro Tull.
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Wishbone Ash and UFO too.

Black Sabbath was more influential to bands like Judas Priest, Metallica, Slayer, Saint Vitus, Candlemass, Witchfinder General, Body Count, Anthrax and Pantera.
 
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