I’m moving on through the years and now I’m picking songs from 1970. As always, this is me picking five of my favorites of a year rather than me picking an absolute top five.

We’re still in years before I was born, it’ll be seven more posts before I “show up.” While I wasn’t around for 1970, this is the year stuff I’m into really got going, as we’re just about to see. Not all of the songs I pick every year are going to revolve around heavy metal, but this year it’s an almost constant theme given the acts and songs involved.

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath

And here we are – heavy metal is in full force now. The Birmingham foursome mucked their way into a record deal and mutated the blues into an assault on the ears. This song is totally down in the dumps, being the herald of a subgenre of metal that would be known as doom years later.

And what a song this is. Just so morose, creepy and excellent. And while Sabbath were often accused of Satanism, here they don’t depict Satan and Hell as some kind of party – rather it’s a horrifying experience to be cast down below. Heavy metal is here, and damn is it wicked.

Mountain – Mississippi Queen

A fun, heavy cut that became the biggest hit for the US group who were also responsible for the rise of heavy metal. This had guitar loaded with purpose and was a curb-stomping song about a riverboat and of course a woman on said boat. This song still gets airtime 54 years later, a pretty wicked accomplishment.

Led Zeppelin – Immigrant Song

Here the titans of rock went about also contributing to heavy metal – this brief blast of music would combine loud, brash music and Viking themes, something that runs amok through metal to this day. Also Robert Plant’s wail on here is just ungodly, good luck finding anyone else on the planet to replicate that. While tales of Viking raids are fantasy in the modern age, the song’s origin is mundane – Zep were booked to play in Iceland and put on a crazy show at a last-minute venue after their original booking got axed by striking workers. And this is what they came up with out of that. Just crazy.

Santana – Oye Cómo Va

Fun fact – decades before Carlos Santana conquered the world with his accomplice Rob Thomas, his band was quite successful already. This was a cover of a cha-cha-chá song by Tito Puente from 1962. Puente was not originally happy that a rock band was doing his song, he changed his mind when the first royalty check came in.

The song is really fun with a nice groove and simple yet crazy organ from Gregg Rolie. It’s easy to see why this one caught on so well, including with me who wouldn’t have heard it until years after it was released.

Black Sabbath – War Pigs

There won’t be very many instances of one act getting two songs on the same year. But this is a rare instance since it marks the first works of heavy metal’s fathers and they happened to put out two albums in 1970.

This was an anti-war song, getting more into the evil nature behind the powers that be sending the poor off to die for a nebulous cause. It’s often discussed as one of Sabbath’s best songs and with good reason, it’s an intense jam and the speed up at the end just slides everything off the rails and into a total frenzy.

That covers it for 1970. Heavy metal is here now and it does inform a large part of my listening. But there is plenty beyond metal to go over as well as these years wind on. Until then.