
Carmine Appice was recently interviewed on “The Adventures Of Pipeman” show broadcasted on W4CY Radio. During the conversation, host The Pipeman mentioned how bands such as QUIET RIOT were not initially classified as authentic heavy metal during the early 1980s when thrash metal, spearheaded by bands like METALLICA and SLAYER, emerged.
Carmine Appice agreed with this observation, saying: “Even SLAYER. They weren’t that buzzsaw guitar back in the day. All those bands. BIOHAZARD. I mean, all those bands — they were hard rock. And then as the, per se, metal movement moved on and everybody started having that buzzsaw, METALLICA kind of buzzsaw guitars and fast bass drums like Lars [Ulrich]. And I think that’s where it all started. All that stuff that’s going on today started with METALLICA — in my eyes. I mean, I [could] be wrong.
“But for me, and all the stuff before that, including BLACK SABBATH, was hard rock. I mean, BLACK SABBATH was just, to me, like another LED ZEPPELIN coming out of Birmingham. I mean, we played gigs with BLACK SABBATH back in the day when they first came out with CACTUS… We were rock blues and so was BLACK SABBATH. I mean, ‘Paranoid’, to me, back in the day was like a ‘Communication Breakdown’ [LED ZEPPELIN] kind of thing. And then as it went along and went along, I mean, their sound got thicker, but it still didn’t have that buzzsaw sound. That’s my own opinion. Everybody says SABBATH is heavy — they’re heavy hard rock.”
Carmine previously said to Ultimate Guitar that BLACK SABBATH offered him the drummer position in the band before his brother Vinny landed the gig.
“They wanted me, but at the time, I was playing with Rod [Stewart], and we were playing 20,000-seat gigs,” he said. “So, my publicist who worked for Warner Brothers, which was the label SABBATH was on, said to me, ‘Carmine, SABBATH is looking for a drummer. Would you consider it?’ But at the time, SABBATH was not doing well, and they couldn’t even sell out one night at the same places Rod was selling out six nights at. So, for me, BLACK SABBATH was a much smaller gig. And with Rod, I had a percentage of the take, so that was good for me, too.
“So, at that point, I felt like SABBATH wasn’t a good gig for me, and I told my publicist I wasn’t interested. Now, from there, they listened to my brother’s album he did with Rick Derringer, and they loved his sound. So, connections were made, and when Tony Iommi met with Vinny, he said he was listening to that album constantly. In the end, it was good that Vinny got the gig because that started his career. Even though he had played with Rick Derringer, for Vinny, that was an important gig, and it gave him a huge leg up.”
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.