Heavy Metal Thunder

I've been tracing back the origins of heavy metal radio shows for years now. Back in 2010 I wrote about early metal radio shows and traced all the "oldest" active shows back to the early 1980s. [LINK] I hypothesized that the earliest metal radio shows would date to the mid-1970s. [LINK] I found that program in Vinyl Edge, on WGTB, and even a few digitized recordings that confirm it's place in the history of metal.

To my surprise, I recently discovered that there was at least one predecessor in the DC metro. There was a radio program on 1500 WINX-AM named "Heavy Metal Thunder". I didn't learn that from any book or any trade magazine or even my own research. It was an anonymous commenter on this very blog. [thanks!] This ties right into the etymology of the words "heavy metal" and might be the big daddy of them all. It's so early that it makes Lester Bangs look late to the party.

So let's review the origin of that phrase. It appears in the lyrics of the classic 1968 Steppenwolf song "Born to be Wild." The songs initial popularity was driven both by airplay and it's appearance in the film "Easy Rider" in 1969. The phrase refers to the roaring sound of a motorcycle engine. This isn't conjecture, that was the explanation from Mr. Mars Bonfire, the songwriter himself. The phrase instantly hooked into some kind of cultural gestalt. This etymology exists in parallel to the Burroughs etymology; beside it, not replacing it.  The phrase appears in the book Goldstein's Greatest Hits: A Book Mostly about Rock 'n' Roll in 1970 (above). By 1978 those three words were appearing in advertisements for Burman amplifiers. I doubt Bonfire got paid.

"Hey, let's make a Peter Fonda movie. It'll have bikes— big steel mothers, with the heavy-metal-thunder understood. And grass— because no one looks as good-looking stoned as Peter Fonda."

By 1973 the phrase was being invoked to describe hard rock and psychedelic blues music. Even that phrase "Heavy Metal Thunder" reads like its the antecedent of Heavy Metal. Richard Goldstein was a writer for the New York times from 1980 to 2007. He was one of the original rock n' roll journalists. That passage (above) also ran in the New York Times, and re-running a collection of their film reviews. Goldstein had a column in the Village Voice starting in 1966 "Pop Eye." He's notable and rarely credited in the etymology and almost certainly one of the earliest musical applications of the phrase. [SOURCE] 

But Goldstein wasn't alone. In February of 1973, in a review by Mark Astolfi in MIT's The Tech [SOURCE] we find a similar metaphorical use of "Heavy Metal Thunder." (He later ran Cozmik Debris.) It does not reference Steppenwolf, but makes the leap to re-use the phrase to describe another band credited as a heavy metal progenitor:

"Deep Purple, progenitors of Third Generation Heavy Metal Thunder long before there was even a Second Generation, are up against that murderous moment which has decimated more than a few of the Big Names in rock — can they follow up the great, the near-perfect record with something close to being as good, if not better?"

Just a few months later in April 1973, The Tech ran a review by Neal Vitale for the somewhat less deserving album "Mothers Pride" by the band Fanny. He was right though, "I Need you to Need Me" was by far the hardest riffing tune on the LP.

"Mothers Pride has a wide variety of different types of songs, from the wistful, acoustic "Long Road Home," to the bitterly sarcastic, autobiographical "Solid Gold" (drummer Alice de Buhr's lead vocals reminds one of a drunk Ray Davies), to the biting, heavy metal thunder of "I Need You Need Me."

That was  a lot of background but lets get back to WINX. Some sources date the start of the show Heavy Metal Thunder to 1969, but that strikes me as dubious. I credit the Washington City Paper [SOURCE] and their 1972 date as more plausible. [SOURCE] It also agrees with Skips later interview material. Skip has had some comments over the years that help us understand the start of the program like this interview with Signaland [LINK]. 

Skip caught the front of a cultural wave. Free form FM was on the airand "progressive" rock playlists were popping up everywhere slowly transmuting into AOR. Later in the 1970s there was not only WHFS and WGTB, but also there was WHMC-AM and WAYE-AM. But nobody was doing what Skip was doing.

"Nobody else was playing heavy metal at the time. There was no DC101 in those days. HFS was playing Grateful Dead, Little Feat, and things of that nature—Bonnie Raitt. So Pentagram were fans of my show and I went over and produced a six song demo by them, and then a year later I put out a 45 by them, and a year after that I put out another 45 by them." 

Groff was born in Waltham, MA but mostly grew up in Washington D.C. Like many of his generation became interested in music when the Beatles hit hard in 1964. He became a DJ at WMUC at the University of Maryland. WMUC was a carrier current station prior to getting an FM license in 1979 for 88.1. He would have been 31 in 1979 so Skip sadly missed that boat. He was first hired at 92.3 WSID (later became WLPL) to work weekends in 1968. In 1977 he opened his own record store Yesterday and Today Records, then in 1978 he was already running his own indie record label: Limp Records. It was the start of something very punk rock.

That timing with WSID is interesting because in 1969 it changed formats. WSID did not flip directly from Soul to Top 40. In early 1969, the station went to AOR, a format it aired for almost a full year before the flip. Skip had a 6:00 PM to midnight show on Saturdays and Sundays. He was a still a U. Maryland student at the time. We don't have playlists, we don't have tapes; but in that Signaland interview he names some sides he was playing then: Vanilla Fudge, Wind, Blue Cheer, Gun, Circus Maximus, and The Seeds... this is a mix of garage rock, kraut rock, and hard psychedelic rock, the precursors of metal. 

Because his show was a success on WSID he was able to cross the street to WINX, though interrupted by a stint in the army. He was there 1969 -1974, then returned in 1976 and stayed to 1977 when he was also working for RCA. In 1981 he started working at WPGC which lasted barely over a year, moving to WAVA in 1982. There he hosted 'Rock of the Nineties.' Skip was interviewed by  DSI records in 2010 creating probably the best source material on him and his various music endeavors:

• Part 1 [LINK]
• Part 2 [LINK]
• Part 3 [LINK]
• Part 4 [LINK]
• Part 5 [LINK]
• Part 6 [LINK]

In part 2 of the interviews he described his "Heavy Metal Thunder" program's playlist: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Sir Lord Baltimore. It ran 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM at night. This is more metal than his program at WSID. That's how he met the band Pentagram, and got their career started. [LINK] If you make it all the way to part 5 he talks about his current radio show he specifically names the Foo Fighters as a band he'd play today. I never heard his WPGC program but I can imagine it now. More here.

Skip died in 2019, and the storefront closed in 2001. But his wife continues to operate the business online. More here. They donated his papers to his alma mater [LINK]. One can imagine that in that archive might be actual playlists and maybe, just maybe... tapes.

Before Metal was Metal

I had a chance discovery in the book Another Life: And, The House on the Embankment by Yuri Trifonov. It's actually two books, urban novellas in the Russian povest genre. It's translated from Russian of course, but there was an adjective use of the word metal which reminded me of some things I've written about the history of metal (and metal radio shows) in the past [LINK] and [LINK].  The reference starts on page 243:

"Among the guests were some musicians, a chess champion, and a poet who had been deafening people at student parties with his crashingly metallic verses— in those days, for some reason, they were regarded as highly musical— and there was he usual gaggle of colorless, loud, shy or indolent students."

There was the verbage "metallic verses." The poet goes on to be described as loud, disruptive and non-conventional. It reminded me of Burroughs original usage of "metal music" in 1962. The book House on the Embankment was written in 1976, when proto-metal was in full swing in the West. But it certainly was not in full swing in Moscow. Trifonov was following another, earlier usage of the term. Metallic was used for a century to to describe the dissonance and abrasiveness of modern art, music, poetry and prose.  That exact same phrase metallic verses, even appears in multiple other works by other authors. Pondering that, I decided that music critics (myself included) have been very complacent, in giving William Burroughs the full credit for coining the term.

In other words, this use of the word metal has roots.  My theory is that the use of the word metal and metallic to mean abrasive, discordant, dissonant or powerful is an artifact of the industrial age. It was a time when enormous machines first stamped out metal parts in dark smoky factories. In the 1800s the word metal, was going thru a radical change in connotation; and we can see it art criticism over the last century. 

I'll start about a hundred years ago in a 1924 issue of the American Mercury. There writer Lewis Mumford used the term criticizing the works of Edgar Allen Poe, which dovetails nicely with the gothic trappings of early heavy metal:

"In the abstract universe of Pure Art, Edgar Poe might be a very great figure indeed: his cold metallic verses are like the notes of some thin brass instrument which admirably echoes the plutonian tears he drops over the graves of his impalpable maidens." 

Similarly in an 1872 edition of Watsons Art Journal, a review of a live performance of Miss Kellogg's Paulina visited a similar use of the word metallic:

"Her voice was in superb order; it was full, melodious, and sympathetic; and came out in passages of force, with ringing metallic power which surprised while it delighted everyone present."

 In 1865 Madame de Gasparin wrote in The Near and the Heavenly Horizons of metallic music describing that particular repetitive, percussive marching music.

"I shall  never forget those beautiful evenings—melancholy nevertheless, for civil war muttered on the horizon— when, under the acacias in blossom, we listened to the military music,— that admirable metallic music, so correct so disciplined, under which throbs a spirit all the more ardent, because it is well restrained. "

This one is kind of on the nose, but Henry John Whiting, published Portraits of Public Men in 1858, using the word metaphorically in two different contexts, in one paragraph.

"Some roomy old premises were taken, the merry rat-tat of the rivetters ' hammer gave out its metallic music, indicative of other metallic music at the pay table on Saturday night, and passengers who went that way saw a large building labelled Martin Samuelson and Co;. engineers and iron shipbuilders."

There is no shortage of examples, I only gave a small sample here to make a point. I found dozens of references rather quickly. The literal word metallic became a metaphor, and today that metaphor has become a literal meaning or the word, and can in turn be used metaphorically again. Art is an iterative process, but it took a decade for that connection to dawn on me.

The First Heavy Metal Radio Program

In April of 2010 I wrote the following:

"...The modern usage of "metal" in the musicological sense date back to 1968... This leads me to believe that no radio show can claim to have begun before the mid-1970s and truly have any metal music to air. So it is no surprise that few programs can be authoritatively dated to even the early 1980s."

So even having made a list [LINK] of very early and long-running metal radio programs, I supposed there could hypothetically have been a metal show that pre-dated the 1980s metal boom. But that the program could be no early than the mid 1970s. I have now found that radio program. But first a little etymology.

We can thank our favorite heroin addict William S. Burroughs for the origin of "metal" terminology. He used the words "heavy metal" in two books.  Published in 1962, The Soft Machine has a character known as "Uranium Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid". In 1964 he revisits the term in Nova Express with Insect People of Minraud with "metal music." Inspired by these books in 1967, the band Hapshash and the Coloured Coat  put out the album Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids.

In this etymology "heavy" means profound and/or potent, a 1960s slang use of the word. In 1968 both Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly prophetically used the word heavy in that context. The first confirmed use of 'metal' as an adjective to describe music appears in a review by Barry Gifford in an issue of Rolling Stone published in 1968. It described the band Electric Flag. But Lester Bangs writing for Creem Magazine in May 1971 used "heavy metal" to describe Sir Lord Baltimore which aligns more with the modern use of the term.

So in April of 1978 comes the program "The Vinyl Underground" hosted by Jeff Bender on WGTB. The program description in the Program guide reads as follows:

"Heavy-metal with a chrome edge-and buffed to a diamond-like shine by Jeff Benders eclecticism and tasteful choice of the very best (and some of the most obscure) hard rock produced. A real rock & roll alternative."

Bender previously co-hosted the program Hard Implosion with co-host Fred Cresce in 1976. This was probably more of a hard psychedelic rock program, but the sub-genre itself and the emphasis on "hard" in the name makes it a likely precursor to the metal radio programs that followed. By 1978 Cresce was hosting a program called Magic Carpet Ride, which leaned toward the psychedelic. But on Saturday nights at 9:00 PM he hosted another program. The description makes clear he too is using the term "heavy metal " in the Lester Bangs sense. The April program guide reads as follows:

"Some good party music to end the week with the accent on the heavy metal and just plain good old rock & roll. Please have plenty of speaker fuses handy!"

But thanks to Michael Manos, we have recordings of two episodes of Hard Implosion. One from December 29th of 1978, The other undated but due to the February release dates of the Judas Priest, and Alvin Lee albums, I believe it's from about that time. So we can examine these playlists and see that it bears out my original thesis as to the content.

[Note, Part 6 of the 12/29 tape is actually backsold on part 2 of the assumed Feb, 1978 tape so I think it's is incorrectly associated with that tape. I have transplanted it to it's assumed correct sequence.]

UNDATED TAPE (Assumed Feb, 1978)

Artist	Title	Album	Year
April Wine	Gimmie Love	Rocks!	1976
UFO	Lights Out	Lights Out	1977
Blue Oyster Cult	Dominance and Submission	Secret Treaties	1974
David Bowie	Diamond Dogs	Diamond Dogs	1974
Atlanta Rhythm Section	Cold Turkey, Tenn	Back Up Against the Wall	1973
Back Street Crawler	New York, New York	The Band Plays On	1975
Omega 6	Just a Bloom	Nem Tudom A Neved	1975
Moxy	Are You Ready	Riding High	1977
Moxy	Sailors Delight	Under the Lights	1978
Head East	Get up & Enjoy Yourself	Head East	1978
Montrose	Jump On It	Jump On It	1976
Judas Priest	Deep Freeze	Rocka Rolla	1974
Lou Reed	Andy's Chest	Transformer	1972
AC/DC	T.N.T.	High Voltage	1976
AC/DC	Ain't No Fun	Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap	1976
AC/DC	It's a Long Way To The Top	High Voltage	1976
Van Halen	I'm the One	Van Halen	1978
Yesterday & Today	Fast Ladies	Yesterday & Today	1976
UFO	Highway Lady	No Heavy Petting	1976
Budgie	In the Grip of a Tyre Fitters Hand	Never Turn Your Back on a Friend	1973
Rainbow	Sixteenth Century Greensleeves	Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow	1975
N/A	"Taking it Easy"?	N/A	N/A
Judas Priest	Better by You, Better Than Me	Stained Class	1978
Uriah Heap	Devil's Daughter	Return to Fantasy	1975
Black Sabbath	Paranoid	Paranoid	1975
Judas Priest	Saints In Hell	Stained Class	1978
Led Zeppelin	Dazed and Confused	Led Zeppelin	1969
Rush	Before and After	Rush	1974
Montrose	One Thing on my Mind	Montrose	1973
Motors	Whiskey and Wine	Motors	1977
Moxy	Wetsuit	Moxy	1975
Geordie	Can You Do It	Hope you Like it	1973
Steppenwolf	The Night Time's For you	For Ladies Only	1971
Lonestar	A New Day	Lone Star	1976

Notably on the February tape after a particularly metal-leaning set of songs Crese makes the prescient remark "We heard what I felt was a sound-alike set, where these three groups: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Uriah Heap sound the same to me, OK?... What did you think?"  None of these bands knew in 1978 that they were blazing a heavy metal trail that thousands of other bands would follow. In the intervening decades tens of thousands of new metal bands and a litany of new metal subgenres would be born. In that moment, Cresce is so close to realizing what we all now know.

On both tapes Fred Cresce does a nice professional job back-selling the songs so even though the tape starts at one song, he tells us what he aired in the prior 20+ minutes in order. It also helps me identify what are now fairly obscure songs in some cases. Consequently we get a bigger sample playlist.

DECEMBER 19th, 1978 TAPE:

Artist	Title	Album	Year
Journey	Mystery Mountain	Journey	1975
Rush	Hemispheres	Circumstances	1978
Three Man Army	What's My name	A Third of a Lifetime	1971
Blue Oyster Cult	ETI	Agents of Fortune	1976
Stepson	Rule in the Book	Stepson	1974
Montrose	Jump On it	Crazy for you	1976
James Gang	Cruisin' Down the Highway	Miami	1974
Sammy Hagar	Rock 'N' Roll Weekend	Sammy Hagar	1977
Captain Beyond	Midnight Memories	Dawn Explosion	1977
Pat Travers	Runnin' From the Future	Putting It Straight	1977
Henry Gross	Traveling Time	Plug Me Into Something	1975
Bachman Turner Overdrive	It's Over	Head On	1975
Judas Priest	Killing Machine	Killing Machine	1978
Chilliwack	Last Day of December	Rockerbox	1975
Black Sabbath	Never Say Die!	Never Say Die	1978
Joe Walsh	Welcome to the Club	So What	1975
Piper	Can't Wait	Can't Wait	1977
UFO	Lights Out	Too Hot To Handle	1977
Ram Jam	404	Ram Jam	1977
Ace Freely	I'm in Need of Love	Ace Freely	1978
The Real Kids	Do The Boob	The Real Kids	1977
Steppenwolf	The Night Time's For you	For Ladies Only	1971
Diamond Rio	Scratch My Back	Dirty Diamonds	1976
Dirty Tricks	Get Out on The Street	Hit and Run	1977
AC/DC	Soul Stripper	High Voltage	1976
Lynyrd Skynyrd	Baby Don't You Cry	Second Helping	1974
Alvin Lee	Rocket Fuel	Rocket Fuel	1978
Moxy	Cause There's Another	Moxy II	1976
Granmax	Let Me Know	A Ninth Alive	1976
Ted Nugent	Where Have You Been All My Life	Ted Nugent	1975
Detective	Dynamite	It Takes One to Know One	1978
Dirty Tricks	Last Night of Freedom	Hit & Run	1977
Yesterday & Today	Animal Woman	Yesterday & Today	1976
Thunder Mug	Big City	Ta-Daa	1975
Judas Priest	Heroes End	Strained Class	1978
Black Sabbath	The Thrill of it All	Sabotage	1975
Uriah Heap	Shady Lady	Return to Fantasy	1975
Judas Priest	Better by You, Better Than Me	Stained Class	1978

It seems probable that there were other similar programs at about this time, probably even Jeff Bender's Vinyl Underground also on WGTB. But Hard Implosion is the earliest that I've been able to document fully— down the playlists. For that reason I feel confident calling it the first known metal radio program.

Lester Bangs Interview

If you only know of Lester Bangs from the movie Almost Famous you need to know more. He didn't invent the words "Heavy metal" but you can ague he coined it. He wrote for Rolling Stone, Creem and the Village voice and his works stand up even now making modern attempts at Gonzo seem pale.they just don't make them like this anymore. You can read the transcript here.

Metalshop

Metalshop debuted on 102.7 WNEW in January of 1984, at what may have been the peak of commercial metal in America. In that era WNEW was still an AOR station, and they were mixing in what they at least then called 'metal' but it was the popular fodder. On the program Metalshop they played metal and only metal. It was probably the biggest metal radio program in America and it aired on a 6,000 watt FM radio station serving the New York City metro.It was the only syndicated metal show in America for years. This is such an unlikely outcome let me give you a bit of back story.  More here.

WNEW flipped to progressive rock in 1967, abruptly leaving it's MOR format behind. The new station did a lot of things right to cultivate a rock audience. They championed Bruce Springsteen's rise, and the grateful dead and Emerson Lake & Palmer both visited the station often. In the 70s they were quick to play new wave artists like the Police. It kept the format up to date while steering to avoid the disposable disco singles that were popping up every week. Then in 1983 WPLJ transitioned from AOR to CHR and WNEW reaped the benefits. They became the last AOR station in new York and scooped up some of their DJs, notably carol Miller. This entrenched them as the preeminent rock station in NYC in that moment, and that's when Charlie Kendall made his move.

Kendall was formerly a classic rock DJ with a long resume. But if he hadn't also been the PD Metalshop still probably wouldn't have happened. Charlie championed the show personally... and I quote:

"In 1984 I told a couple radio program producers named John McGhan and Denny Somach that metal was about to explode. I laid out the program for them and told them that the first person back with a great pilot would get the show on my station which was WNEW in New York. John McGhan didnt' do a pilot. He took MJI broadcasting owner Josh Feigenbaum to a Judas Preist concert at Madison Square garden. It was a sold out show. Josh was blown away... John came to me and said I was the only person in radio who even knew what metal was and I had to host the show."

At it's peak the Metalshop program ran for a full two hours late Friday nights and was syndicated old-school, with sending LPs by mail. These albums are very collectible. There are even a few on Discogs. Since Metalshop lasted until 1995 it covered a lot of ground in the history of the genre. They began airing a lot of what was very commercially palatable to the AOR audience. A sub-genre of metal often now called glam, or dismissed as "hair bands."  To a modern ear these were still distinctly rock bands albeit with a lot of face-paint and hair care product. The idea of Glam was more about presentation than a clear and distinct genre. The bands included: Ratt, Saxon, Foreigner, Whitesnake, Dokken, Def Leopard, Cinderella, AC/DC, Mötley Crüe, Queensryche, Accept, Judas Priest, Styx, Dio, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Kiss and others. Metalshop played all of them. Later on they played more Metallica, Anthrax, Motorhead, and Megadeth. But by 1990 the landscape had changed. They were now spinning Danzig and Rage Against the Machine. The program kept up with the times and prospered even in times when the rest of WNEW didn't. You can hear some archived shows here.

The show lasted until 1995.  The number of affiliates had dropped to less than 50 from a high of over 250. They changed the name of the program from Metalshop to just "the Shop." Consultants were adding alternative rock and trying to shake the metal out of it. WNEW adopted a new AAA playlist and Metalshop was no more. Charlie Kendall went on to WQMA, a small-market station near greenwood, MS. He stayed there until 1998 and then reappeared on KSLX in Phoenix doing a morning show starting in 2003. He also spent time at WBVX, KDKB, WSHE, WMMR, WBCN, KWST, KZEW, WMMS, and WNAP just to name a few.He is a legend with or without Metalshop.

Longest Running Metal Radio Show

Recently on the CBI list there was a discussion about long running metal radio programs. There are many claimants to long running shows, locally, nationally and internationally. Heavy Metal music as we know it is older than you might think. Judas Priest, for example was formed in 1969. But the modern usage of "metal" in the musicological sense date back to 1968. I consulted with metal aficionado, and music industry guru Eric "Doormouse" Peltier to confirm and correct my assertions.

First a little etymology. We can thank our favorite heroin addict William S. Burroughs for the origin of the term. He used the words "heavy metal" in two books.  Published in 1962, The Soft Machine has a character known as "Uranium Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid". In 1964 he revisits the term in Nova Express with Insect People of Minraud with "metal music." Inspired by these books in 1967, the band Hapshash and the Coloured Coat  put out the album Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids.

In this etymology "heavy" means profound and/or potent, a 1960s slang use of the word. In 1968 both Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly prophetically used the word heavy in that context. The first confirmed use of 'metal' as an adjective to describe music appears in a review by Barry Gifford in an issue of Rolling Stone published in 1968.

"Nobody who's been listening to Mike Bloomfield—either talking or playing—in the last few years could have expected this. This is the new soul music, the synthesis of white blues and heavy metal rock."

It described the band Electric Flag. But the popular use of the term in the 1970s by writer Lester Bangs in Creem Magazine to describe Sir Lord Baltimore and groups was it's genesis in the contemporary sense. This leads me to believe that no radio show can claim to have begun before the mid 1970s and truly have any metal music to air. So it is no surprise that few programs can be authoritatively dated to even the early 1980s. What follows is an incomplete list of the earliest and longest running known metal programs in radio.

WERS "Nasty Habits " started in about 1980. The program released a Live CD in 2002 on their 21st anniversary. Reports indicate the program was canceled in early 2004. Matty O'Dette put together the comp. Charlie Andrews was host from 1988 to 1989. I think the first host was Travis Squier. I don't know who closed it out.


WVUA "The Metal Zone" debuted in 1981. It was hosted by Dave the Metal Guy for 27 years. It was canceled in 2008 by a 19-year-old freshman. Ouch.

KUSF "Radio Rampage" first aired in 1982. It's claims to continuing uninterrupted are somewhat disputed but it's still on air today. It's on 2-8AM Sunday morning in San Francisco.

WREK "Wreckage" has been on since 1984 in one form or another. The show airs every Friday evening at Midnight. More here.

WSUP "Heavy Metal Meltdown" began in 1983. it's run through a number of slots and hosts over the last 27 years but it's still going today.

WEOS "Metallic Onslaught" has been on since 1984 but airs irregularly. The old host was Joe Wyatt, I dont knwo who's there today. More here.WNYU "Hellhole" first aired in 1984. Hosts over the years included Jen Meola, Jackie Vendetti, and Eric Peletier. It seems to have ended around 2004 after more than a 10-year run. Jackie Vendetti reports that new host Dylan has kept the program alive today 16 years later.

WHJY "The Metal Zone" debuted in 1986. It was hosted by For 17 years by Mike Gonsalves Previous to that he had a metal show on college station WXIN. I know that's not exactly the same show but it's the same format in the same city and worth noting. He died in 2003.

KFAI "Root Of All Evil" started in 1985 (or maybe 1987) and continued even after the original host Earl Root died May 24, 2008 of cancer. More here.

WITR "Sudden Death Overtime" in Rochester had a long running show canceled in Dec 2009. It's start date is uncertain but current host Ron confirms that it's been running in one form or another since the early 90s.

CIDR "Powercord" Founded in 1985, Powerchord is Vancouver’s longest running metal show, and a probable candidate for the longest running metal radio show in Canada. The two-hour program airs every Saturday from 1:00 to 3:00 PM.

WOXY "Massive Metal For The Masses" Pre-1984? This program ran on Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 1:00 AM. It was hosted by Mr. K. It ran through at least 1986 but assumed to be much longer. I could use more concrete details here.

WNEW "Metalshop" A program in New York city hosted by Charlie Kendall. It began in January of 1984 and ran for 11 years. It was syndicated to other stations and only died when the station flipped to AAA in 1995. More here.

Others:
KJHK in Lawrence KS, has had a metal program at least for 10 years named "Malicious Intent". WTSR "chainsaw symphony" has run over a decade. KLSU has had a program for approximately 20 years but it seems to have taken a few breaks. WCLH used to run "Metal Monday's that went on for years sometimes with full days dedicated to the genre.Razor ray was on WRBC in Lewiston, Maine for over 10 years but seems to be gone now. KPOO had a brutal metal program in the 1980s.. no corroboration on that yet. But I know that's not everyone. WVFS, WVBR, WKNH, WRHU, and WRAS, all had long running metal programs. There were surely metal programs before 1980. As is often the case... we're one aircheck away from victory. Feel free to contribute if you know more.