The Different Kinds of Heavy Metal Music
Contents
There are many different types of heavy metal music, each with its own unique sound and style. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most popular types of heavy metal, from thrash metal to black metal.
Introduction
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. The genre’s lyrics and performance styles are sometimes associated with aggression and machismo.
In 1970, several groups who would help shape the genre emerged: Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, and Uriah Heep. In 1971, Judas Priest helped give birth to the twin guitar sound with their album Sad Wings of Destiny. In 1973, Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality and Deep Purple’s Machine Head refined heavy metal’s sound while Prototype’s page-long song “Flight of Icarus” showed that the genre was capable of epic longer pieces. In 1974, Queen released Sheer Heart Attack which made them instant stars in the UK; elsewhere AC/DC released High Voltage; Kiss released Hotter Than Hell; Aerosmith released Get Your Wings; Rush released Fly By Night; UFO released Phenomenon; Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes came back with Call of the Wild; Blue Öyster Cult released Secret Treaties; Scorpions debuted with Lonesome Crow; Rainbow released Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow which featured one of rocks all-time great guitarists in a leading role; Heart debuted with Dreamboat Annie which introduced sisters Ann & Nancy Wilson to rock fans worldwide along with their massive hit “Crazy On You”; Thin Lizzy followed up their successful 1973 debut album Vagabonds Of The Western World with Nightlife which contained their first big hit “The Boys Are Back In Town”; whereas Status Quo followed up their breakthrough 1974 album Quo with Rolling Home which included the massive number one UK hit “Down Down”. These and other hard rock bands solidified the popularity of hard rock throughout the decade.
The Different Kinds of Heavy Metal Music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It typically has a thick, heavy sound, characterized by distorted guitars, pounding drums, and aggressive vocals. There are many different types of heavy metal music, each with its own subgenres and styles.
Death Metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, aggressive, powerful drumming featuring double kick and blast beat techniques, minor keys or atonality, abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes, and chromatic chord progressions. Its themes are often dark and nihilistic, dealing with death and decay.
Death metal arose during the mid-1980s when the heavy metal scenes in the United States and Europe began to diverge. Death metal became its own distinct genre in the early 1990s when bands such as Death, Morbid Angel, Entombed began to pioneer the style.
Black Metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on atmosphere. Artists often appear in corpse paint and adopt pseudonyms.
Black metal developed in Europe in the early 1980s, drawing inspiration from British heavy metal bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and Swedish death metal bands such as Bathory, Mercyful Fate, and Possessed. Influenced by the DIY ethic of punk rock, black metal scenes typically produced fanzines, flyers, and tape-trading networks. It developed a split scene between symphonic black metal (such as Dimmu Borgir) and ruthless guitar-and-drums onslaughts (such as Mayhem). Black metal varies considerably within Europe; Norwegian bands such as Immortal and Burzum are prominent representatives of the “true” Norwegian black metal style.
Black metal has inspired numerous other genres including folk black metal (sometimes known as pagan black metal) and atmospheric black metal; both of which mix influences from black metal with those from folk music or symphonic music respectively. Notable artists include Ulver (folk black metal), Summoning (atmospheric black metal), Negura Bunget ( Romanian neo-classical darkwave), Drudkh(Ukrainian neofolk), Alcest(shoegazing), Deafheaven(post-blackgaze), and Panopticon(atmospheric post-black).
Doom Metal
Doom metal is a genre of heavy metal music that typically features very slow tempos, low-tuned guitars and a deeply melancholy mood. Doom metal songs often use minor keys or modal harmonies and have a “thick” or “heavy” texture created by multiple guitars playing simultaneously.
Thrash Metal
Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its fast tempo and overall aggression. Songs may employ fast percussive beats, heavily distorted guitars, andharmonic percussion. Thrash metal songs typically use low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead guitar work.
The genre developed in the early 1980s in the United States, particularly the Bay Area scene which included Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax; as well as in the United Kingdom with Venom, Diamond Head, Motörhead, and Raven.
By 1984, a number of influential thrash metal bands had emerged: Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All remained an important starting point for the genre; Slayer’s Show No Mercy and Megadeth’s Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! both set new precedents for speed and aggression; Exodus’ Bonded by Blood took thrash in a more hardcore punk direction; While Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal and Testament’s The Legacy both introduced elements of power metal to the thrash formulation.
Heavy Metal
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. The genre’s lyrics and performance styles are sometimes associated with aggression and machismo.
In 1970, four London-based bands—Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Jimi Hendrix’s recently disbanded Axis: Bold as Love—unleashed a torrent of powerful new sounds. The following year, New York Dolls released their self-titled debut album with songs like “Trash” and “Personality Crisis” that foreshadowed the rise of punk rock. These two events—the rebirth of heavy metal and the birth of punk rock—would prove to be of great importance to the course of popular music in general and very soon the world would be thunderstruck by the sound of heavy metal.
Conclusion
Metal as a genre has spawned countless subgenres, each with its own unique sound and style. Whether you like your metal fast and furious or slow and Sabbath-y, there’s a subgenre out there for you. And if you’re new to metal, exploring all the different subgenres is half the fun. So put on your black t-shirt, crank up the volume, and headbang your way through this ultimate guide to heavy metal music.
