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In ‘Is it Metal?’, I take an old rock song and ask the question, can it be considered metal or not?

This week, from 1972, the song “Hocus Pocus” by Focus:

Wikipedia says: It might be metal.

My take: This is a tough one. The song is just so completely off-the-wall bizarre and strange. I mean, what kind of metal song features an organ, an accordion, a flute, yodeling, whistling, and jazz-style scat singing? But you could ask the same thing of a rock song, could you not? It’s a harder question to answer because there’s a significant difference in the way the song was played live, as I’ve linked above, and the album version, which was considerably slower and more structured, if still just as eccentric.

If I had only the album version to judge, I would say it’s hard rock. But the sheer speed of the live version makes it feel a little bit more like metal. I mean, it’s just so brutally, unrelentingly fast.

Again, I’m torn here, but I think I’m going to give it a hard rock nod, purely based on the studio version of the song. However, there is no doubt that “Hocus Pocus” had a huge influence on heavy metal, based on the number of heavy metal covers of the song that can be found. My personal favorite is Helloween’s version, which, while not as fast as Focus’s own live version, gives it a heaviness and guitar-centric focus lacking in the original.

So, what are your thoughts? Is “Hocus Pocus” metal, hard rock, or just plain bizarre? While you consider it, enjoy Helloween’s cover below.

Image credits: Featured image by AVRO (Beeld En Geluid Wiki – Gallerie: Toppop 1974) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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