Antecedents in jazz and rock Although most commonly associated with hardcore punk and extreme metal, the earliest forms of what would later become the blast beat are noted to have appeared in
jazz music. A commonly cited early example that somewhat resembles the modern technique is a brief section of
Sam Woodyard's drum solo during a 1962 rendition of "Kinda Dukish" with the
Duke Ellington orchestra. A clip of the performance under the title "The first blast beat in the world" garnered almost one million views on
YouTube. Woodyard's example, however, lacks the modern inclusion of kick drum and cymbal work into the beat. Another early instance can be heard in
Sunny Murray's 1966 or '67 performance on a live recording "Holy Ghost" with saxophonist
Albert Ayler, although this did not receive an official release until the 1998 reissue of
Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village. Prior to these two examples resurfacing and receiving the attention in the 2010s,
AllMusic contributor Thom Jurek credited
Tony Williams as the "true inventor of the blastbeat" for his frenetic performance on "Dark Prince" for
Trio of Doom in 1979, officially released only in 2007. Some early antecedents of blast beats have also been identified in rock music. An early example of a proto-blast beat can be found in the
Tielman Brothers' 1959 single, "Rock Little Baby of Mine" during the instrumental break. Drummer Steve Ross of the band
Coven also plays an "attempt" at a blast beat in the track "Dignitaries of Hell" off the group's 1969 album,
Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls. Four early examples of blast beats were performed in 1970:
King Crimson's "The Devil's Triangle" off their sophomore release
In the Wake of Poseidon includes proto-blastbeats in the later half of the song; Mike Fouracre of
Marsupilami performs many blast beats throughout their self-titled album, most notably on "And the Eagle Chased the Dove to Its Ruin";
Emerson, Lake & Palmer's track "The Barbarian" contains a very brief blast beat in the outro;
Bill Ward, drummer of pioneering heavy metal band
Black Sabbath, played a few blast beats on a live performance of their song "War Pigs" (e.g. at timestamps 3:52 and 6:38).
Modern hardcore and metal blast beats The blast beat as it is known today originated in the hardcore punk and grindcore scenes of the 1980s. Contrary to popular belief, blast beats originated from punk and hardcore music, not metal music. In the UK punk and hardcore scene of the early 1980s there were many bands attempting to play as fast as possible. English band
Napalm Death coined the term "blast beat", although this style of drumming had previously been practiced by others. Daniel Ekeroth argues that the [hardcore] blast beat was first performed by the Swedish group Asocial on their 1982 demo.
D.R.I. (1983, "
No Sense"),
Sarcófago (1986, track 10, "
Satanas"), and
Repulsion also included the technique prior to Napalm Death's emergence.
Rockdetector contributor Garry Sharpe-Young credits D.R.I.'s Eric Brecht as the first on their 1983 debut but credits Napalm Death with making it better known. In 1985, Napalm Death, then an emerging grindcore band, replaced their former drummer Miles "Rat" Ratledge with
Mick Harris, who brought to the band a whole new level of speed. Harris is credited with developing the term "blast beat", describing the fast notes played on the kick and snare. Harris started using the blast beat as a fundamental aspect of Napalm Death's early musical compositions. It was finally with Napalm Death's first full-length album
Scum (1987) that blast beat started to evolve into a distinct musical expression of its own. Blast beats became popular in extreme music from the mid to late 1980s . The blast beat evolved into its modern form as it was developed in the American death metal and grindcore scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Pete Sandoval, drummer of
Terrorizer (1986–1989) and later
Morbid Angel (1984–2013), purportedly was the first to use blast beats in metronomic time (and not as arhythmic or non-metric white noise) and thus gave it a more useful musical characteristic for timekeeping. ==Characteristics==