Heavy metal music
Encyclopedia
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music
that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands
of 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. Heavy metal lyrics and performance styles are generally associated with masculinity
and machismo
.
The first heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin
, Black Sabbath
and Deep Purple
attracted large audiences, though they were often critically reviled, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s Judas Priest
helped spur the genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues
influence; Motörhead introduced a punk rock
sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal
such as Iron Maiden
followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal had attracted a worldwide following of fans known as "metalheads" or "headbangers
".
In the 1980s, glam metal
became a major commercial force with groups like Mötley Crüe
and Poison
. Underground scenes
produced an array of more extreme, aggressive styles: thrash metal
broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica
, Megadeth
, Slayer
, and Anthrax
, while other styles like death metal
and black metal
remain subcultural
phenomena. Since the mid-1990s, popular styles such as nu metal
, which often incorporates elements of grunge
and hip hop
; and metalcore
, which blends extreme metal
with hardcore punk
, have further expanded the definition of the genre.
writes, "In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force." The typical band lineup includes a drummer
, a bassist
, a rhythm guitar
ist, a lead guitar
ist, and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist. Keyboard instruments are sometimes used to enhance the fullness of the sound.
The electric guitar
and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has historically been the key element in heavy metal. The lead role of the guitar in heavy metal often collides with the traditional "frontman" or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension as the two "contend for dominance" in a spirit of "affectionate rivalry". Heavy metal "demands the subordination of the voice" to the overall sound of the band. Reflecting metal's roots in the 1960s counterculture, an "explicit display of emotion" is required from the vocals as a sign of authenticity. Critic Simon Frith
claims that the metal singer's "tone of voice" is more important than the lyrics. Metal vocals vary widely in style, from the multioctave, theatrical approach of Judas Priest's Rob Halford
and Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson
, to the gruff style of Motörhead's Lemmy and Metallica
's James Hetfield
, to the growling
of many death metal
performers, and to the harsh screams of black metal
.
The prominent role of the bass is also key to the metal sound, and the interplay of bass and guitar is a central element. The bass guitar provides the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy". Metal basslines vary widely in complexity, from holding down a low pedal point
as a foundation to doubling complex riffs and licks
along with the lead and/or rhythm guitars. Some bands feature the bass as a lead instrument, an approach popularized by Metallica's Cliff Burton
in the early 1980s.
The essence of metal drumming is creating a loud, constant beat for the band using the "trifecta of speed, power, and precision". Metal drumming "requires an exceptional amount of endurance", and drummers have to develop "considerable speed, coordination, and dexterity...to play the intricate patterns" used in metal. A characteristic metal drumming technique is the cymbal choke
, which consists of striking a cymbal and then immediately silencing it by grabbing it with the other hand (or, in some cases, the same striking hand), producing a burst of sound. The metal drum setup is generally much larger than those employed in other forms of rock music.
In live performance, loudness
—an "onslaught of sound," in sociologist Deena Weinstein's description—is considered vital. In his book Metalheads, psychologist Jeffrey Arnett refers to heavy metal concerts as "the sensory equivalent of war." Following the lead set by Jimi Hendrix
, Cream
and The Who
, early heavy metal acts such as Blue Cheer
set new benchmarks for volume. As Blue Cheer's Dick Peterson put it, "All we knew was we wanted more power." A 1977 review of a Motörhead concert noted how "excessive volume in particular figured into the band’s impact." Weinstein makes the case that in the same way that melody
is the main element of pop
and rhythm is the main focus of house music, powerful sound, timbre, and volume are the key elements of metal. She argues that the loudness is designed to "sweep the listener into the sound" and to provide a "shot of youthful vitality."
or 16th notes
. These rhythmic figures are usually performed with a staccato
attack created by using a palm-muted
technique on the rhythm guitar.
Brief, abrupt, and detached rhythmic cells are joined into rhythmic phrases with a distinctive, often jerky texture. These phrases are used to create rhythmic accompaniment and melodic figures called riff
s, which help to establish thematic hooks
. Heavy metal songs also use longer rhythmic figures such as whole note
- or dotted quarter note-length chords in slow-tempo power ballads. The tempos in early heavy metal music tended to be "slow, even ponderous." By the late 1970s, however, metal bands were employing a wide variety of tempos. In the 2000s decade, metal tempos range from slow ballad tempos (quarter note = 60 beats per minute) to extremely fast blast beat
tempos (quarter note = 350 beats per minute).
. In technical terms, the power chord is relatively simple: it involves just one main interval
, generally the perfect fifth
, though an octave
may be added as a doubling of the root
. Although the perfect fifth interval is the most common basis for the power chord, power chords are also based on different intervals such as the minor third
, major third
, perfect fourth
, diminished fifth, or minor sixth
. Most power chords are also played with a consistent finger arrangement that can be slid easily up and down the fretboard
.
s created with three main harmonic traits: modal scale progressions, tritone and chromatic progressions, and the use of pedal point
s. Traditional heavy metal tends to employ modal scales, in particular the Aeolian
and Phrygian mode
s. Harmonically speaking, this means the genre typically incorporates modal chord progressions such as the Aeolian progressions I-VI-VII, I-VII-(VI), or I-VI-IV-VII and Phrygian progressions implying the relation between I and ♭II (I-♭II-I, I-♭II-III, or I-♭II-VII for example). Tense-sounding chromatic or tritone
relationships are used in a number of metal chord progressions. The tritone, an interval spanning three whole tones—such as C and F#—was a forbidden dissonance in medieval ecclesiastical singing, which led monks to call it diabolus in musica—"the devil in music." Because of that original symbolic association, it came to be heard in Western cultural convention as "evil". Heavy metal has made extensive use of the tritone in guitar solos and riffs, such as in the beginning of "Black Sabbath
".
Heavy metal songs often make extensive use of pedal point
as a harmonic basis. A pedal point is a sustained tone, typically in the bass range, during which at least one foreign (i.e., dissonant) harmony is sounded in the other parts.
argues that, alongside blues and R&B, the "assemblage of disparate musical styles known...as 'classical music'" has been a major influence on heavy metal since the genre's earliest days. He claims that metal's "most influential musicians have been guitar players who have also studied classical music. Their appropriation and adaptation of classical models sparked the development of a new kind of guitar virtuosity [and] changes in the harmonic and melodic language of heavy metal." The Grove Music Online states that the "1980s brought on ...the widespread adaptation of chord progressions and virtuosic practices from 18th-century European models, especially Bach, Wilhelm Richard Wagner and Vivaldi, by influential guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen
, Randy Rhoads
and Yngwie Malmsteen". Kurt Bachmann of Believer has stated that "If done correctly, metal and classical fit quite well together. Classical and metal are probably the two genres that have the most in common when it comes to feel, texture, creativity."
Although a number of metal musicians cite classical composers as inspiration, classical and metal are rooted in different cultural traditions and practices—classical in the art music
tradition, metal in the popular music
tradition. As musicologists Nicolas Cook and Nicola Dibben note, "Analyses of popular music also sometimes reveal the influence of 'art traditions.' An example is Walser’s linkage of heavy metal music with the ideologies and even some of the performance practices of nineteenth-century Romanticism. However, it would be clearly wrong to claim that traditions such as blues, rock, heavy metal, rap or dance music derive primarily from 'art music.'"
(1970), which "included songs dealing with personal trauma—'Paranoid
' and 'Fairies Wear Boots
' (which described the unsavoury side effects of drug-taking) —as well as those confronting wider issues, such as the self-explanatory 'War Pigs
' and 'Hand of Doom.'" Nuclear annihilation was addressed in later metal songs such as Black Sabbath
's "Electric Funeral
", Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight
", Ozzy Osbourne
's "Killer of Giants", Megadeth's "Rust In Peace... Polaris", and Metallica
's "Fight Fire With Fire". Death is a predominant theme in heavy metal, routinely featuring in the lyrics of bands as otherwise widely different as Slayer
and W.A.S.P. The more extreme forms of death metal and grindcore tend to have aggressive and gory lyrics.
Deriving from the genre's roots in blues music, sex is another important topic—a thread running from Led Zeppelin's suggestive lyrics to the more explicit references of glam and nu metal bands. Romantic tragedy is a standard theme of gothic and doom metal, as well as of nu metal, where teenage angst is another central topic. Heavy metal songs often feature outlandish, fantasy-inspired lyrics, lending them an escapist quality. Iron Maiden's songs, for instance, were frequently inspired by mythology, fiction, and poetry, such as Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", based on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge
poem. Led Zeppelin lyrics often reference Lord of the Rings as well as other mythology and folklore, such as in the songs "The Battle of Evermore
", "Immigrant Song
", "Ramble On
", "No Quarter
", and "Achilles Last Stand
". Other examples include Black Sabbath's "The Wizard
", Megadeth
's "The Conjuring" and "Five Magics", and Judas Priest's "Dreamer Deceiver". Since the 1980s, with the rise of thrash metal and songs such as Metallica's "...And Justice for All
" and Megadeth's "Peace Sells
", more metal lyrics have included sociopolitical commentary. Genres such as melodic death metal, progressive metal, and black metal often explore philosophical themes.
The thematic content of heavy metal has long been a target of criticism. According to Jon Pareles, "Heavy metal's main subject matter is simple and virtually universal. With grunts, moans and subliterary lyrics, it celebrates...a party without limits.... [T]he bulk of the music is stylized and formulaic." Music critics have often deemed metal lyrics juvenile and banal, and others have objected to what they see as advocacy of misogyny
and the occult. During the 1980s, the Parents Music Resource Center
petitioned the U.S. Congress to regulate the popular music industry due to what the group asserted were objectionable lyrics, particularly those in heavy metal songs. In 1990, Judas Priest was sued in American court by the parents of two young men who had shot themselves five years earlier, allegedly after hearing the subliminal statement "do it" in a Priest song. While the case attracted a great deal of media attention, it was ultimately dismissed. In some predominantly Muslim countries, heavy metal has been officially denounced as a threat to traditional values. In countries including Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Malaysia, there have been incidents of heavy metal musicians and fans being arrested and incarcerated.
As with much popular music, visual imagery plays a large role in heavy metal. In addition to its sound and lyrics, a heavy metal band's "image" is expressed in album sleeve art, logos, stage sets, clothing, and music video
s. Some heavy metal acts such as Alice Cooper
, Kiss
, Lordi
, Slipknot
, and Gwar
have become known as much for their outrageous performance personas and stage shows as for their music.
Down-the-back long hair, according to Weinstein, is the "most crucial distinguishing feature of metal fashion." Originally adopted from the hippie subculture, by the 1980s and 1990s heavy metal hair "symbolised the hate, angst and disenchantment of a generation that seemingly never felt at home," according to journalist Nader Rahman. Long hair gave members of the metal community "the power they needed to rebel against nothing in general."
The classic uniform of heavy metal fans consists of "blue jeans, black T-shirts, boots and black leather or jeans jackets.... T-shirts are generally emblazoned with the logos or other visual representations of favorite metal bands." Metal fans also "appropriated elements from the S&M community (chains, metal studs, skulls, leather and crosses)." In the 1980s, a range of sources, from punk and goth music to horror films, influenced metal fashion. Many metal performers of the 1970s and 1980s used radically shaped and brightly colored instruments to enhance their stage appearance. Fashion and personal style was especially important for glam metal bands of the era. Performers typically wore long, dyed, hairspray-teased hair (hence the nickname, "hair metal"); makeup such as lipstick and eyeliner; gaudy clothing, including leopard-skin-printed shirts or vests and tight denim, leather, or spandex pants; and accessories such as headbands and jewelry. Pioneered by the heavy metal act X Japan
in the late 1980s, bands in the Japanese movement known as visual kei
—which includes many nonmetal groups—emphasize elaborate costumes, hair, and makeup.
, which involves rhythmically beating time with the head, often emphasized by long hair. The corna
, or devil horns, hand gesture, also widespread, was popularized by vocalist Ronnie James Dio
while with Black Sabbath and Dio
. Although Gene Simmons
of Kiss
claims to have been the first to make the gesture on the 1977 Love Gun album cover There is speculation as to who started the phenomenon.
Attendees of metal concerts do not dance in the usual sense; Deena Weinstein has argued that this is due to the music's largely male audience and "extreme heterosexualist ideology." She identifies two primary body movements that substitute for dancing: headbanging and an arm thrust that is both a sign of appreciation and a rhythmic gesture. The performance of air guitar
is popular among metal fans both at concerts and listening to records at home. Other concert audience activities include stage diving
, crowd surfing
, pushing and shoving in a chaotic mêlée called moshing
, and displaying the corna hand symbol.
The metal scene has been characterized as a "subculture of alienation", with its own code of authenticity. This code puts several demands on performers: they must appear both completely devoted to their music and loyal to the subculture that supports it; they must appear uninterested in mainstream appeal and radio hits; and they must never "sell out
". For the fans themselves, the code promotes "opposition to established authority, and separateness from the rest of society." Musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie
observes, "Most of the kids who come to my shows seem like really imaginative kids with a lot of creative energy they don't know what to do with" and that metal is "outsider music for outsiders. Nobody wants to be the weird kid; you just somehow end up being the weird kid. It's kind of like that, but with metal you have all the weird kids in one place." Scholars of metal have noted the tendency of fans to classify and reject some performers (and some other fans) as "posers
" "who pretended to be part of the subculture, but who were deemed to lack authenticity and sincerity."
writer William S. Burroughs
. His 1962 novel The Soft Machine
includes a character known as "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid." Burroughs's next novel, Nova Express
(1964), develops the theme, using heavy metal as a metaphor for addictive drugs: "With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music."
Metal historian Ian Christe
describes what the components of the term mean in "hippiespeak": "heavy" is roughly synonymous with "potent" or "profound," and "metal" designates a certain type of mood, grinding and weighted as with metal. The word "heavy" in this sense was a basic element of beatnik
and later countercultural slang
, and references to "heavy music"—typically slower, more amplified variations of standard pop fare—were already common by the mid-1960s. British psychedelic art experimenters Hapshash and the Coloured Coat
released a record in 1967 titled Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids. Iron Butterfly
's debut album, released in early 1968, was titled Heavy. The first recorded use of "heavy metal" is a reference to a motorcycle in the Steppenwolf
song "Born to Be Wild
", also released that year: "I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder/Racin' with the wind/And the feelin' that I'm under." A late, and disputed, claim about the source of the term was made by "Chas" Chandler
, former manager of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In a 1995 interview on the PBS
program Rock and Roll, he asserted that heavy metal "was a term originated in a New York Times article reviewing a Jimi Hendrix
performance," in which the author likened the event to "listening to heavy metal falling from the sky." A source for Chandler's claim has never been found.
The first documented use of the phrase to describe a type of rock music identified to date appears in a review by Barry Gifford
. In the May 11, 1968, issue of Rolling Stone
, he wrote about the album A Long Time Comin'
by U.S. band Electric Flag
: "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." In January 1970 Lucian K. Truscott IV reviewing Led Zeppelin II
for the Village Voice described the sound as "heavy" and made comparisons with Blue Cheer
and Vanilla Fudge
. Other early documented uses of the phrase are from reviews by critic Mike Saunders
. In the November 12, 1970, issue of Rolling Stone
, he commented on an album put out the previous year by the British band Humble Pie
: "Safe as Yesterday Is
, their first American release, proved that Humble Pie could be boring in lots of different ways. Here they were a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal-leaden shit-rock band with the loud and noisy parts beyond doubt. There were a couple of nice songs...and one monumental pile of refuse." He described the band's latest, self-titled release
as "more of the same 27th-rate heavy metal crap." In a review of Sir Lord Baltimore
's Kingdom Come
in the May 1971 Creem
, Saunders wrote, "Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book." Creem critic Lester Bangs
is credited with popularizing the term via his early 1970s essays on bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Through the decade, heavy metal was used by certain critics as a virtually automatic putdown. In 1979, lead New York Times popular music critic John Rockwell
described what he called "heavy-metal rock" as "brutally aggressive music played mostly for minds clouded by drugs," and, in a different article, as "a crude exaggeration of rock basics that appeals to white teenagers."
Coined by Black Sabbath
drummer, Bill Ward, "downer rock" was one of the earliest terms used to describe this style of music and was applied to acts such as Sabbath and Bloodrock
. Classic Rock
magazine described the downer rock culture revolving around the use of Quaaludes and the drinking of wine. Later the term would be replaced by "heavy metal."
The terms "heavy metal" and "hard rock
" have often been used interchangeably, particularly in discussing bands of the 1970s, a period when the terms were largely synonymous. For example, the 1983 Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll includes this passage: "known for its aggressive blues-based hard-rock style, Aerosmith
was the top American heavy-metal band of the mid-Seventies."
, and the Kingsmen's version of "Louie, Louie" (1963), which made it a garage rock
standard, the genre's direct lineage begins in the mid-1960s. American blues music was a major influence on the early British rockers of the era. Bands like The Rolling Stones
and The Yardbirds
developed blues-rock
by recording covers of many classic blues songs, often speeding up the tempo
s. As they experimented with the music, the UK blues-based bands—and the U.S. acts they influenced in turn—developed what would become the hallmarks of heavy metal, in particular, the loud, distorted guitar sound. The Kinks
played a major role in popularizing this sound with their 1964 hit "You Really Got Me
". "Ticket to Ride
" (1965) written by John Lennon
(credited to Lennon/McCartney
) of The Beatles
has been suggested as the first ever heavy metal song, given the droning bassline, repeating drums, and loaded guitar lines.
In addition to The Kinks' Dave Davies
, other guitarists such as The Who
's Pete Townshend
and The Yardbirds' Jeff Beck
were experimenting with feedback. Where the blues-rock drumming style started out largely as simple shuffle beats on small kits, drummers began using a more muscular, complex, and amplified approach to match and be heard against the increasingly loud guitar. Vocalists similarly modified their technique and increased their reliance on amplification, often becoming more stylized and dramatic. In terms of sheer volume, especially in live performance, The Who's "bigger-louder-wall-of-Marshalls" approach was seminal.
The combination of blues-rock with psychedelic rock formed much of the original basis for heavy metal. One of the most influential bands in forging the merger of genres was the British power trio Cream
, who derived a massive, heavy sound from unison
riffing between guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce
, as well as Ginger Baker
's double bass drumming. Their first two LPs, Fresh Cream
(1966) and Disraeli Gears
(1967), are regarded as essential prototypes for the future style. The Jimi Hendrix Experience
's debut album, Are You Experienced
(1967), was also highly influential. Hendrix
's virtuosic technique would be emulated by many metal guitarists and the album's most successful single, "Purple Haze
", is identified by some as the first heavy metal hit. During the late sixties, many psychedelic singers such as Arthur Brown
, began to create outlandish, theatrical and often macabre performances; which in itself became incredibly influential to many metal acts. Vanilla Fudge
, whose first album
also came out in 1967, have been called "one of the few American links between psychedelia and what soon became heavy metal."
released a cover of Eddie Cochran
's classic "Summertime Blues
", from their debut album Vincebus Eruptum
, that many consider the first true heavy metal recording. The same month, Steppenwolf
released its self-titled debut album, including "Born to Be Wild
", which refers to "heavy metal thunder" in the lyrics. In July, another two epochal records came out: The Yardbirds' "Think About It"—B-side of the band's last single—with a performance by guitarist Jimmy Page
anticipating the metal sound he would soon make famous; and Iron Butterfly
's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, with its 17-minute-long title track, a prime candidate for first-ever heavy metal album. In August, The Beatles
' single version of "Revolution
", with its redlined guitar and drum sound, set new standards for distortion in a top-selling context.
The Jeff Beck Group, whose leader had preceded Page as The Yardbirds' guitarist, released its debut record that same month: Truth featured some of the "most molten, barbed, downright funny noises of all time," breaking ground for generations of metal ax-slingers. In October, Page's new band, Led Zeppelin
, made its live debut. The Beatles' so-called White Album
, which also came out that month, included "Birthday" and "Helter Skelter", then one of the heaviest-sounding songs ever released by a major band, and has been noted for its "proto-metal roar". The Pretty Things
' rock opera
S.F. Sorrow
, released in December, featured "proto heavy metal" songs such as "Old Man Going". In this period MC5
, who began as part of the Detroit garage rock scene, developed a raw distorted style that has been seen as a major influence on the future sound of both heavy metal and later punk music. The Stooges
also began to establish and influence a heavy metal and later punk sound, with songs such as I Wanna Be Your Dog
, featuring pounding and distorted heavy guitar power chord riffs. Pink Floyd
released two of their heaviest and loudest songs to date; "Ibiza Bar
" and "The Nile Song
", which was regarded as "one of the heaviest songs the band recorded".
In January 1969, Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut album
was released and reached number 10 on the Billboard album chart. In July, Zeppelin and a power trio with a Cream-inspired, but cruder sound, Grand Funk Railroad
, played the Atlanta Pop Festival
. That same month, another Cream-rooted trio led by Leslie West
released Mountain, an album filled with heavy blues-rock guitar and roaring vocals. In August, the group—now itself dubbed Mountain
—played an hour-long set at the Woodstock Festival
. Grand Funk's debut album, On Time
, also came out that month. In the fall, Led Zeppelin II
went to number 1 and the album's single "Whole Lotta Love
" hit number 4 on the Billboard pop chart. The metal revolution was under way.
Led Zeppelin defined central aspects of the emerging genre, with Page's highly distorted guitar style and singer Robert Plant
's dramatic, wailing vocals. Other bands, with a more consistently heavy, "purely" metal sound, would prove equally important in codifying the genre. The 1970 releases by Black Sabbath
(Black Sabbath
and Paranoid
) and Deep Purple
(In Rock) were crucial in this regard. Black Sabbath had developed a particularly heavy sound in part due to an industrial accident guitarist Tony Iommi
suffered before cofounding the band. Unable to play normally, Iommi had to tune his guitar down for easier fretting and rely on power chords with their relatively simple fingering. Deep Purple had fluctuated between styles in its early years, but by 1969 vocalist Ian Gillan
and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore
had led the band toward the developing heavy metal style. In 1970, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple scored major UK chart hits with "Paranoid
" and "Black Night
", respectively. That same year, two other British bands released debut albums in a heavy metal mode: Uriah Heep
with Very 'eavy... Very 'umble
and UFO
with UFO 1
. Budgie
brought the new metal sound into a power trio context. The occult lyrics and imagery employed by Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep would prove particularly influential; Led Zeppelin also began foregrounding such elements with its fourth album
, released in 1971.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the trend-setting group was Grand Funk Railroad, "the most commercially successful American heavy-metal band from 1970 until they disbanded in 1976, [they] established the Seventies success formula: continuous touring." Other bands identified with metal emerged in the U.S., such as Blue Öyster Cult
(1972
) and Kiss
(1974). In Germany, Scorpions
debuted with Lonesome Crow
in 1972. Blackmore, who had emerged as a virtuoso soloist with Deep Purple's Machine Head
(1972), quit the group in 1975 to form Rainbow
. These bands also built audiences via constant touring and increasingly elaborate stage shows. As described above, there are arguments about whether these and other early bands truly qualify as "heavy metal" or simply as "hard rock". Those closer to the music's blues roots or placing greater emphasis on melody are now commonly ascribed the latter label. AC/DC
, which debuted with High Voltage in 1975, is a prime example. The 1983 Rolling Stone encyclopedia entry begins, "Australian heavy-metal band AC/DC..." Rock historian Clinton Walker writes, "Calling AC/DC a heavy metal band in the seventies was as inaccurate as it is today.... [They] were a rock 'n' roll band that just happened to be heavy enough for metal." The issue is not only one of shifting definitions, but also a persistent distinction between musical style and audience identification: Ian Christe describes how the band "became the stepping-stone that led huge numbers of hard rock fans into heavy metal perdition."
In certain cases, there is little debate. After Black Sabbath, the next major example is Britain's Judas Priest
, which debuted with Rocka Rolla
in 1974. In Christe's description,
Though Judas Priest did not have a top 40 album in the U.S. until 1980, for many it was the definitive post-Sabbath heavy metal band; its twin-guitar attack, featuring rapid tempos and a nonbluesy, more cleanly metallic sound, was a major influence on later acts. While heavy metal was growing in popularity, most critics were not enamored of the music. Objections were raised to metal's adoption of visual spectacle and other trappings of commercial artifice, but the main offense was its perceived musical and lyrical vacuity: reviewing a Black Sabbath album in the early 1970s, leading critic Robert Christgau
described it as "dull and decadent...dim-witted, amoral exploitation."
Punk rock
emerged in the mid-1970s as a reaction against contemporary social conditions as well as what was perceived as the overindulgent, overproduced rock music of the time, including heavy metal. Sales of heavy metal records declined sharply in the late 1970s in the face of punk, disco
, and more mainstream rock. With the major labels fixated on punk, many newer British heavy metal bands were inspired by the movement's aggressive, high-energy sound and "lo-fi
", do it yourself
ethos. Underground metal bands began putting out cheaply recorded releases independently to small, devoted audiences. Motörhead, founded in 1975, was the first important band to straddle the punk/metal divide. With the explosion of punk in 1977, others followed. British music papers such as the NME
and Sounds
took notice, with Sounds writer Geoff Barton christening the movement the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal
". NWOBHM bands including Iron Maiden
, Saxon
, and Def Leppard
reenergized the heavy metal genre. Following the lead set by Judas Priest and Motörhead, they toughened up the sound, reduced its blues elements, and emphasized increasingly fast tempos. In 1980, the NWOBHM broke into the mainstream, as albums by Iron Maiden and Saxon, as well as Motörhead, reached the British top 10. Though less commercially successful, other NWOBHM bands such as Venom
and Diamond Head
would have a significant influence on metal's development. In 1981, Motörhead became the first of this new breed of metal bands to top the UK charts with No Sleep 'til Hammersmith
.
The first generation of metal bands was ceding the limelight. Deep Purple had broken up soon after Blackmore's departure in 1975, and Led Zeppelin broke up following drummer John Bonham
's death in 1980. Black Sabbath was routinely upstaged in concert by its opening act, the Los Angeles
band Van Halen
. Eddie Van Halen
established himself as one of the leading metal guitar virtuosos of the era—his solo on "Eruption", from the band's self-titled 1978 album
, is considered a milestone. Randy Rhoads
and Yngwie Malmsteen also became famed virtuosos, associated with what would be known as the neoclassical metal style. The adoption of classical elements had been spearheaded by Blackmore and the Scorpions' Uli Jon Roth; this next generation progressed to occasionally using classical nylon-stringed guitars, as Rhoads does on "Dee" from former Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne
's first solo album, Blizzard of Ozz
(1980).
Inspired by Van Halen's success, a metal scene began to develop in Southern California during the late 1970s. Based on the clubs of L.A.'s Sunset Strip
, bands such as Quiet Riot
, Ratt
, Mötley Crüe
, and W.A.S.P. were influenced by traditional heavy metal of the earlier 1970s and incorporated the theatrics (and sometimes makeup) of glam rock
acts such as Alice Cooper
and Kiss. The lyrics of these glam metal
bands characteristically emphasized hedonism
and wild behavior. Musically, the style was distinguished by rapid-fire shred guitar
solos, anthemic choruses, and a relatively pop-oriented melodic approach. The glam metal movement—along with similarly styled acts such as New York's Twisted Sister
—became a major force in metal and the wider spectrum of rock music.
In the wake of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Judas Priest's breakthrough British Steel
(1980), heavy metal became increasingly popular in the early 1980s. Many metal artists benefited from the exposure they received on MTV
, which began airing in 1981—sales often soared if a band's videos screened on the channel. Def Leppard's videos for Pyromania
(1983) made them superstars in America and Quiet Riot became the first domestic heavy metal band to top the Billboard chart with Metal Health
(1983). One of the seminal events in metal's growing popularity was the 1983 US Festival
in California, where the "heavy metal day" featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen, Scorpions, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, and others drew the largest audiences of the three-day event. Between 1983 and 1984, heavy metal went from an 8 percent to a 20 percent share of all recordings sold in the U.S. Several major professional magazines devoted to the genre were launched, including Kerrang!
(in 1981) and Metal Hammer
(in 1984), as well as a host of fan journals. In 1985, Billboard declared, "Metal has broadened its audience base. Metal music is no longer the exclusive domain of male teenagers. The metal audience has become older (college-aged), younger (pre-teen), and more female."
By the mid-1980s, glam metal was a dominant presence on the U.S. charts, music television
, and the arena concert circuit. New bands such as L.A.'s Warrant
and acts from the East Coast like Poison
and Cinderella
became major draws, while Mötley Crüe and Ratt remained very popular. Bridging the stylistic gap between hard rock and glam metal, New Jersey
's Bon Jovi
became enormously successful with its third album, Slippery When Wet
(1986). The similarly styled Swedish band Europe
became international stars with The Final Countdown
(1986). Its title track
hit number 1 in 25 countries. In 1987, MTV launched a show, Headbanger's Ball, devoted exclusively to heavy metal videos. However, the metal audience had begun to factionalize, with those in many underground metal scenes favoring more extreme sounds and disparaging the popular style as "light metal" or "hair metal."
One band that reached diverse audiences was Guns N' Roses
. In contrast to their glam metal contemporaries in L.A., they were seen as much more raw and dangerous. With the release of their chart-topping Appetite for Destruction
(1987), they "recharged and almost single-handedly sustained the Sunset Strip sleaze system for several years." The following year, Jane's Addiction
emerged from the same L.A. hard-rock club scene with its major label debut, Nothing's Shocking
. Reviewing the album, Rolling Stone declared, "as much as any band in existence, Jane's Addiction is the true heir to Led Zeppelin." The group was one of the first to be identified with the "alternative metal
" trend that would come to the fore in the next decade. Meanwhile, new bands such as New York's Winger and New Jersey's Skid Row sustained the popularity of the glam metal style.
, death metal
, black metal
, power metal
, and the related subgenres of doom
and gothic metal
.
Thrash metal emerged in the early 1980s under the influence of hardcore punk
and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, particularly songs in the revved-up style known as speed metal
. The movement began in the United States, with Bay Area thrash metal
being the leading scene. The sound developed by thrash groups was faster and more aggressive than that of the original metal bands and their glam metal successors. Low-register guitar riffs are typically overlaid with shredding
leads. Lyrics often express nihilistic
views or deal with social issues
using visceral, gory language. Thrash has been described as a form of "urban blight music" and "a palefaced cousin of rap."
The subgenre was popularized by the "Big Four of Thrash": Metallica
, Anthrax
, Megadeth
, and Slayer
. Three German bands, Kreator
, Sodom
, and Destruction
, played a central role in bringing the style to Europe. Others, including San Francisco Bay Area's Testament
and Exodus
, New Jersey's Overkill
, and Brazil's Sepultura
, also had a significant impact. While thrash began as an underground scene, and remained largely that for almost a decade, the leading bands in the movement began to reach a wider audience. Metallica brought the sound into the top 40 of the Billboard album chart in 1986 with Master of Puppets
; two years later, the band's ...And Justice for All
hit number 6, while Megadeth and Anthrax had top 40 records.
Though less commercially successful than the rest of the Big Four, Slayer released one of the genre's definitive records: Reign in Blood
(1986) was described by Kerrang! as the "heaviest album of all time." Two decades later, Metal Hammer
named it the best album of the preceding twenty years. Slayer attracted a following among far-right skinheads, and accusations of promoting violence and Nazi
themes have dogged the band. In the early 1990s, thrash achieved breakout success, challenging and redefining the metal mainstream. Metallica's self-titled 1991 album
topped the Billboard chart, Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction
(1992) hit number 2, Anthrax and Slayer cracked the top 10, and albums by regional bands such as Testament and Sepultura entered the top 100.
Thrash soon began to evolve and split into more extreme metal genres. "Slayer's music was directly responsible for the rise of death metal," according to MTV News. The NWOBHM band Venom was also an important progenitor. The death metal movement in both North America and Europe adopted and emphasized the elements of blasphemy
and diabolism employed by such acts. Florida's Death and the Bay Area's Possessed
are recognized as seminal bands in the style. Both groups have been credited with inspiring the subgenre's name, the latter via its 1984 demo Death Metal and the song "Death Metal", from its 1985 debut album Seven Churches
(1985).
Death metal utilizes the speed and aggression of both thrash and hardcore, fused with lyrics preoccupied with Z-grade
slasher movie
violence and Satanism
. Death metal vocals are typically bleak, involving guttural "death growl
s," high-pitched screaming
, the "death rasp," and other uncommon techniques. Complementing the deep, aggressive vocal style are downtuned, highly distorted
guitars and extremely fast percussion, often with rapid double bass
drumming and "wall of sound
"–style blast beats. Frequent tempo and time signature
changes and syncopation
are also typical.
Death metal, like thrash metal, generally rejects the theatrics of earlier metal styles, opting instead for an everyday look of ripped jeans and plain leather jackets. One major exception to this rule was Deicide
's Glen Benton
, who branded an inverted cross on his forehead and wore armor on stage. Morbid Angel
adopted neo-fascist imagery. These two bands, along with Death and Obituary
, were leaders of the major death metal scene that emerged in Florida in the mid-1980s. In the UK, the related style of grindcore
, led by bands such as Napalm Death
and Extreme Noise Terror
, emerged out of the anarcho-punk
movement.
The first wave of black metal emerged in Europe in the early and mid-1980s, led by Britain's Venom
, Denmark's Mercyful Fate
, Switzerland's Hellhammer
and Celtic Frost
, and Sweden's Bathory
. By the late 1980s, Norwegian bands such as Mayhem
and Burzum
were heading a second wave. Black metal varies considerably in style and production quality, although most bands emphasize shrieked and growled vocals, highly distorted guitars frequently played with rapid tremolo picking
, a "dark" atmosphere and intentionally lo-fi production, with ambient noise and background hiss. Satanic themes are common in black metal, though many bands take inspiration from ancient paganism
, promoting a return to pre-Christian values. Numerous black metal bands also "experiment with sounds from all possible forms of metal, folk, classical music, electronica and avant-garde." Darkthrone
drummer Fenriz
explains, "It had something to do with production, lyrics, the way they dressed and a commitment to making ugly, raw, grim stuff. There wasn't a generic sound."
By 1990, Mayhem was regularly wearing corpsepaint; many other black metal acts also adopted the look. Bathory inspired the Viking metal
and folk metal
movements and Immortal
brought blast beats to the fore. Some bands in the Scandinavian black metal scene became associated with considerable violence in the early 1990s, with Mayhem and Burzum linked to church burnings. Growing commercial hype around death metal generated a backlash; beginning in Norway, much of the Scandinavian metal underground shifted to support a black metal scene that resisted being co-opted by the commercial metal industry. According to former Gorgoroth
vocalist Gaahl
, "Black Metal was never meant to reach an audience.... [We] had a common enemy which was, of course, Christianity, socialism and everything that democracy stands for."
By 1992, black metal scenes had begun to emerge in areas outside Scandinavia, including Germany, France, and Poland. The 1993 murder of Mayhem's Euronymous
by Burzum's Varg Vikernes
provoked intensive media coverage. Around 1996, when many in the scene felt the genre was stagnating, several key bands, including Burzum and Finland's Beherit
, moved toward an ambient
style, while symphonic black metal
was explored by Sweden's Tiamat
and Switzerland's Samael
. In the late 1990s and early 2000s decade, Norway's Dimmu Borgir
brought black metal closer to the mainstream, as did Cradle of Filth
, which Metal Hammer
calls England's most successful metal band since Iron Maiden.
, which combined the power riffs, melodic approach, and high-pitched, "clean" singing style of bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden with thrash's speed and energy, "crystalliz[ing] the sonic ingredients of what is now known as power metal."
Traditional power metal bands like Sweden's HammerFall
, England's DragonForce
, and Florida's Iced Earth
have a sound clearly indebted to the classic NWOBHM style. Many power metal bands such as Florida's Kamelot
, Finland's Nightwish
, Italy's Rhapsody of Fire
, and Russia's Catharsis
feature a keyboard-based "symphonic" sound, sometimes employing orchestras and opera singers. Power metal has built a strong fanbase in Japan and South America, where bands like Brazil's Angra
and Argentina's Rata Blanca
are popular.
Closely related to power metal is progressive metal
, which adopts the complex compositional approach of bands like Rush
and King Crimson
. This style emerged in the United States in the early and mid-1980s, with innovators such as Queensrÿche
, Fates Warning
, and Dream Theater
. The mix of the progressive and power metal sounds is typified by New Jersey's Symphony X
, whose guitarist Michael Romeo
is among the most recognized of latter-day shredders.
, Maryland's The Obsessed
, Chicago's Trouble
, and Sweden's Candlemass
, the doom metal movement rejected other metal styles' emphasis on speed, slowing its music to a crawl. Doom metal traces its roots to the lyrical themes and musical approach of early Black Sabbath. The Melvins have also been a significant influence on doom metal and a number of its subgenres. Doom emphasizes melody, melancholy tempos, and a sepulchral mood relative to many other varieties of metal.
The 1991 release of Forest of Equilibrium
, the debut album by UK band Cathedral
, helped spark a new wave of doom metal. During the same period, the doom-death fusion style of British bands Paradise Lost
, My Dying Bride
, and Anathema
gave rise to European gothic metal, with its signature dual-vocalist arrangements, exemplified by Norway's Theatre of Tragedy
and Tristania
. New York's Type O Negative
introduced an American take on the style.
In the United States, sludge metal
, mixing doom and hardcore, emerged in the late 1980s—Eyehategod
and Crowbar were leaders in a major Louisiana sludge scene. Early in the next decade, California's Kyuss
and Sleep
, inspired by the earlier doom metal bands, spearheaded the rise of stoner metal, while Seattle's Earth
helped develop the drone metal
subgenre. The late 1990s saw new bands form such as the Los Angeles–based Goatsnake
, with a classic stoner/doom sound, and Sunn O)))
, which crosses lines between doom, drone, and dark ambient
metal—the New York Times has compared their sound to an "Indian raga in the middle of an earthquake".
and other grunge
bands, signaling the popular breakthrough of alternative rock
. Grunge acts were influenced by the heavy metal sound, but rejected the excesses of the more popular metal bands, such as their "flashy and virtuosic solos" and "appearance-driven" MTV
orientation.
Glam metal fell out of favor due not only to the success of grunge, but also because of the growing popularity of the more aggressive sound typified by Metallica and the post-thrash groove metal
of Pantera
and White Zombie
. A few new, unambiguously metal bands had commercial success during the first half of the decade—Pantera's Far Beyond Driven
topped the Billboard chart in 1994—but, "In the dull eyes of the mainstream, metal was dead." Some bands tried to adapt to the new musical landscape. Metallica revamped its image: the band members cut their hair and, in 1996, headlined the alternative musical festival Lollapalooza
founded by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell
. While this prompted a backlash among some long-time fans, Metallica remained one of the most successful bands in the world into the new century.
Like Jane's Addiction, many of the most popular early 1990s groups with roots in heavy metal fall under the umbrella term "alternative metal." Bands in Seattle's grunge scene such as Soundgarden
, credited as making a "place for heavy metal in alternative rock", and Alice in Chains
were at the center of the alternative metal movement. The label was applied to a wide spectrum of other acts that fused metal with different styles: Faith No More
combined their alternative rock sound with punk, funk
, metal, and hip hop
; Primus
joined elements of funk, punk, thrash metal
, and experimental music
; Tool
mixed metal and progressive rock
; bands such as Fear Factory
and Ministry
and Nine Inch Nails
began incorporating metal into their industrial sound
, and vice versa, respectively; and Marilyn Manson
went down a similar route, while also employing shock effects of the sort popularized by Alice Cooper. Alternative metal artists, though they did not represent a cohesive scene, were united by their willingness to experiment with the metal genre and their rejection of glam metal aesthetics (with the stagecraft of Marilyn Manson and White Zombie—also identified with alt-metal—significant, if partial, exceptions). Alternative metal's mix of styles and sounds represented "the colorful results of metal opening up to face the outside world."
In the mid- and late 1990s came a new wave of U.S. metal groups inspired by the alternative metal bands and their mix of genres. Dubbed "nu metal", bands such as Slipknot
, Linkin Park
, Limp Bizkit
, Papa Roach
, P.O.D.
, Korn
and Disturbed incorporated elements ranging from death metal to hip hop, often including DJs and rap
-style vocals. The mix demonstrated that "pancultural metal could pay off." Nu metal gained mainstream success through heavy MTV rotation and Ozzy Osbourne's 1996 introduction of Ozzfest
, which led the media to talk of a resurgence of heavy metal. In 1999, Billboard noted that there were more than 500 specialty metal radio shows in the U.S., nearly three times as many as ten years before. While nu metal was widely popular, traditional metal fans did not fully embrace the style. By early 2003, the movement's popularity was on the wane, though several nu metal acts such as System Of A Down
retained substantial followings.
, Norwegian act Dimmu Borgir, Germany's Blind Guardian
and Sweden's HammerFall.
Metalcore
, an originally American hybrid of thrash metal and hardcore punk
, emerged as a commercial force in the mid-2000s decade. It is rooted in the crossover thrash
style developed two decades earlier by bands such as Suicidal Tendencies
, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles
, and Stormtroopers of Death
. Through the 1990s, metalcore was mostly an underground phenomenon. By 2004, melodic metalcore—influenced as well by melodic death metal
—was popular enough that Killswitch Engage
's The End of Heartache
and Shadows Fall
's The War Within
debuted at numbers 21 and 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart.
Bullet for My Valentine
of Wales' 3rd studio album Fever
debuted at position number 3 on The Billboard 200 and number 1 on Billboard
's Rock
and Alternative
charts, making it the band's most successful record to date. In recent years, metalcore bands have received prominent slots at Ozzfest and the Download Festival
. Lamb Of God
, a groove metal band, hit the Billboard top 10 in 2006 with Sacrament
. The success of these bands and others such as Trivium
, which has released both metalcore and straight-ahead thrash albums, and Mastodon
, which plays in a progressive/sludge style, has inspired claims of a metal revival in the United States, dubbed by some critics the "New Wave of American Heavy Metal
".
The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as Australia's Wolfmother
and Airbourne
. Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut album
had "Deep Purple-ish organs," "Jimmy Page-worthy chordal riffing," and lead singer Andrew Stockdale
howling "notes that Robert Plant can't reach anymore." "Woman
", a track from the album, won for Best Hard Rock Performance
at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Slayer's "Eyes of the Insane
" won for Best Metal Performance
in 2007; their "Final Six" won the same award in 2008. Metallica took the honor in 2009 for "My Apocalypse
". Other recent developments in the world of metal have been the resurgence of the thrash metal scene, and the recent emergence of the 'djent' scene.
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands
West Midlands (region)
The West Midlands is an official region of England, covering the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley,...
of the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues rock and psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. Heavy metal lyrics and performance styles are generally associated with masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
and machismo
Machismo
Machismo, or machoism, is a word of Spanish and Portuguese origin that describes prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity. As an attitude, machismo ranges from a personal sense of virility to a more extreme male chauvinism...
.
The first heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
, Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
and Deep Purple
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
attracted large audiences, though they were often critically reviled, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s Judas Priest
Judas Priest
Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band from Birmingham, England, formed in 1969. The current line-up consists of lead vocalist Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and Richie Faulkner, bassist Ian Hill, and drummer Scott Travis. The band has gone through several drummers over the years,...
helped spur the genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
influence; Motörhead introduced a punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal
New Wave of British Heavy Metal
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal was a heavy metal movement that started in the late 1970s, in Britain, and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. The movement developed as a reaction in part to the decline of early heavy metal bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black...
such as Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the band's discography has grown to include a total of thirty-six albums: fifteen studio albums; eleven live albums; four EPs; and six...
followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal had attracted a worldwide following of fans known as "metalheads" or "headbangers
Headbanging
Headbanging is a type of dance which involves violently shaking the head in time with the music, most commonly in the rock and heavy metal music genres.-Origin:The term "headbanger" was coined during Led Zeppelin's first US tour in 1969...
".
In the 1980s, glam metal
Glam metal
Glam metal is a subgenre of hard rock and heavy metal that arose in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, particularly on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip music scene...
became a major commercial force with groups like Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...
and Poison
Poison (band)
Poison is an American glam metal band that achieved great success in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. To date, Poison has sold over 30 million records worldwide and have sold 15 million records in the United States alone. The band has also charted ten singles to the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100,...
. Underground scenes
Underground music
Underground music comprises a range of different musical genres that operate outside of mainstream culture. Such music can typically share common values, such as the valuing of sincerity and intimacy; an emphasis on freedom of creative expression; an appreciation of artistic creativity...
produced an array of more extreme, aggressive styles: thrash metal
Thrash metal
Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is characterized usually by its fast tempo and aggression. Songs of the genre typically use fast percussive and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead work...
broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
, Megadeth
Megadeth
Megadeth is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California which was formed in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine, bassist Dave Ellefson and guitarist Greg Handevidt, following Mustaine's expulsion from Metallica. The band has since released 13 studio albums, three live albums, two...
, Slayer
Slayer
Slayer is an American thrash metal band formed in Huntington Park, California, in 1981 by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King. Slayer rose to fame with their 1986 release, Reign in Blood, and is credited as one of the "Big Four" thrash metal acts, along with Metallica, Megadeth and...
, and Anthrax
Anthrax (band)
Anthrax is an American heavy metal band from New York City, formed in 1981. Founded by guitarists Scott Ian and Danny Lilker, the band has since released ten studio albums and 20 singles, and an EP featuring Public Enemy. The band was one of the most popular of the 1980s thrash metal scene...
, while other styles like death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
and black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
remain subcultural
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
phenomena. Since the mid-1990s, popular styles such as nu metal
Nu metal
Nu metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It is a fusion genre which combines elements of heavy metal with other genres, including grunge and hip hop...
, which often incorporates elements of grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
; and metalcore
Metalcore
Metalcore is a subgenre of heavy metal combining various elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk. The name is a portmanteau of the names of the two genres. The term took on its current meaning in the mid-1990s, describing bands such as Earth Crisis, Deadguy and Integrity...
, which blends extreme metal
Extreme metal
Extreme metal is a loosely defined umbrella term for a number of related heavy metal music subgenres that have developed since the early 1980s. The term usually refers to a more abrasive, harsher, underground, non-commercialized style or sound nearly always associated with genres like black metal,...
with hardcore punk
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
, have further expanded the definition of the genre.
Characteristics
Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals. Metal subgenres variously emphasize, alter, or omit one or more of these attributes. New York Times critic Jon ParelesJon Pareles
Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of the New York Times. He played jazz flute and piano, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in music. In the 1970s he was an associate editor of Crawdaddy!, and in the 1980s an associate...
writes, "In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force." The typical band lineup includes a drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
, a bassist
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, a rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
ist, a lead guitar
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
ist, and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist. Keyboard instruments are sometimes used to enhance the fullness of the sound.
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has historically been the key element in heavy metal. The lead role of the guitar in heavy metal often collides with the traditional "frontman" or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension as the two "contend for dominance" in a spirit of "affectionate rivalry". Heavy metal "demands the subordination of the voice" to the overall sound of the band. Reflecting metal's roots in the 1960s counterculture, an "explicit display of emotion" is required from the vocals as a sign of authenticity. Critic Simon Frith
Simon Frith
Simon Frith is a British sociologist, and former rock critic, who specializes in popular music culture. He is currently Tovey Chair of Music at University of Edinburgh.-Background:...
claims that the metal singer's "tone of voice" is more important than the lyrics. Metal vocals vary widely in style, from the multioctave, theatrical approach of Judas Priest's Rob Halford
Rob Halford
Robert John Arthur "Rob" Halford is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead vocalist for the Grammy Award-winning heavy metal band Judas Priest. He is nicknamed the "Metal God" as a tribute to his influence on metal, and after the Judas Priest song of the same name from 1980's...
and Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson
Bruce Dickinson
Paul Bruce Dickinson is an English singer, songwriter, airline pilot, fencer, broadcaster, author, screenwriter, actor and marketing director, best known as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden....
, to the gruff style of Motörhead's Lemmy and Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
's James Hetfield
James Hetfield
James Alan Hetfield is the rhythm guitarist, co-founder, main songwriter, and lead vocalist for the American heavy metal band Metallica. Hetfield co-founded Metallica in October 1981 after answering a classified advertisement by drummer Lars Ulrich in the Los Angeles newspaper The Recycler,...
, to the growling
Death growl
A death growl, also known as death metal vocals, guttural vocals, death grunts, and harsh vocals among other names, is a vocalisation style usually employed by vocalists of the death metal and black metal music genre, but also used in a variety of heavy metal and hardcore punk subgenres.Death...
of many death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
performers, and to the harsh screams of black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
.
The prominent role of the bass is also key to the metal sound, and the interplay of bass and guitar is a central element. The bass guitar provides the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy". Metal basslines vary widely in complexity, from holding down a low pedal point
Pedal point
In tonal music, a pedal point is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign, i.e., dissonant harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes functions as a "non-chord tone", placing it in the categories alongside suspensions, retardations, and passing...
as a foundation to doubling complex riffs and licks
Lick (music)
In popular music genres such as rock or jazz music, a lick is "a stock pattern or phrase" consisting of a short series of notes that is used in solos and melodic lines...
along with the lead and/or rhythm guitars. Some bands feature the bass as a lead instrument, an approach popularized by Metallica's Cliff Burton
Cliff Burton
Clifford Lee "Cliff" Burton was an American musician, best known as the bass guitarist for the American heavy metal band Metallica....
in the early 1980s.
The essence of metal drumming is creating a loud, constant beat for the band using the "trifecta of speed, power, and precision". Metal drumming "requires an exceptional amount of endurance", and drummers have to develop "considerable speed, coordination, and dexterity...to play the intricate patterns" used in metal. A characteristic metal drumming technique is the cymbal choke
Cymbal choke
A cymbal choke is a percussion technique which consists of striking a cymbal with a drumstick held in one hand and then immediately grabbing the cymbal with another hand, or more rarely, with the same hand. The cymbal choke produces a burst of sound which is abruptly silenced, which can be used for...
, which consists of striking a cymbal and then immediately silencing it by grabbing it with the other hand (or, in some cases, the same striking hand), producing a burst of sound. The metal drum setup is generally much larger than those employed in other forms of rock music.
In live performance, loudness
Loudness
Loudness is the quality of a sound that is primarily a psychological correlate of physical strength . More formally, it is defined as "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud."Loudness, a subjective measure, is often...
—an "onslaught of sound," in sociologist Deena Weinstein's description—is considered vital. In his book Metalheads, psychologist Jeffrey Arnett refers to heavy metal concerts as "the sensory equivalent of war." Following the lead set by Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, Cream
Cream (band)
Cream were a 1960s British rock supergroup consisting of bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker...
and The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
, early heavy metal acts such as Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer was an American psychedelic blues-rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009...
set new benchmarks for volume. As Blue Cheer's Dick Peterson put it, "All we knew was we wanted more power." A 1977 review of a Motörhead concert noted how "excessive volume in particular figured into the band’s impact." Weinstein makes the case that in the same way that melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
is the main element of pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
and rhythm is the main focus of house music, powerful sound, timbre, and volume are the key elements of metal. She argues that the loudness is designed to "sweep the listener into the sound" and to provide a "shot of youthful vitality."
Rhythm and tempo
The rhythm in metal songs is emphatic, with deliberate stresses. Weinstein observes that the wide array of sonic effects available to metal drummers enables the "rhythmic pattern to take on a complexity within its elemental drive and insistency." In many heavy metal songs, the main groove is characterized by short, two-note or three-note rhythmic figures—generally made up of 8thEighth note
thumb|180px|right|Figure 1. An eighth note with stem facing up, an eighth note with stem facing down, and an eighth rest.thumb|right|180px|Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together....
or 16th notes
Sixteenth note
thumb|right|Figure 1. A sixteenth note with stem facing up, a sixteenth note with stem facing down, and a sixteenth rest.thumb|right|Figure 2. Four sixteenth notes beamed together....
. These rhythmic figures are usually performed with a staccato
Staccato
Staccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration and separated from the note that may follow by silence...
attack created by using a palm-muted
Palm mute
The palm mute is a playing technique for guitar and bass guitar executed by placing the side of the picking hand below the little finger across all of the strings very close to the bridge and then plucking the strings with the fingers while the damping is in effect. This produces a muted sound...
technique on the rhythm guitar.
Brief, abrupt, and detached rhythmic cells are joined into rhythmic phrases with a distinctive, often jerky texture. These phrases are used to create rhythmic accompaniment and melodic figures called riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
s, which help to establish thematic hooks
Hook (music)
A hook is a musical idea, often a short riff, passage, or phrase, that is used in popular music to make a song appealing and to "catch the ear of the listener". The term generally applies to popular music, especially rock music, hip hop, dance music, and pop. In these genres, the hook is often...
. Heavy metal songs also use longer rhythmic figures such as whole note
Whole note
thumb|right|250px|Figure 1. A whole note and a whole rest.In music, a whole note or semibreve is a note represented by a hollow oval note head, like a half note , and no note stem . Its length is equal to four beats in 4/4 time...
- or dotted quarter note-length chords in slow-tempo power ballads. The tempos in early heavy metal music tended to be "slow, even ponderous." By the late 1970s, however, metal bands were employing a wide variety of tempos. In the 2000s decade, metal tempos range from slow ballad tempos (quarter note = 60 beats per minute) to extremely fast blast beat
Blast beat
A blast beat is a drum beat often associated with extreme metal and grindcore, although its usage predates the genres, and is utilised by many different styles of metal...
tempos (quarter note = 350 beats per minute).
Harmony
One of the signatures of the genre is the guitar power chordPower chord
In music, a power chord is a chord consisting of only the root note of the chord and the fifth interval, usually played on electric guitar, and typically through an amplification process that imparts distortion...
. In technical terms, the power chord is relatively simple: it involves just one main interval
Interval (music)
In music theory, an interval is a combination of two notes, or the ratio between their frequencies. Two-note combinations are also called dyads...
, generally the perfect fifth
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...
, though an octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
may be added as a doubling of the root
Root (chord)
In music theory, the root of a chord is the note or pitch upon which a triadic chord is built. For example, the root of the major triad C-E-G is C....
. Although the perfect fifth interval is the most common basis for the power chord, power chords are also based on different intervals such as the minor third
Minor third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the minor third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. The minor quality specification identifies it as being the smallest of the two: the minor third spans three semitones, the major...
, major third
Major third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the largest of the two: the major third spans four semitones, the minor third three...
, perfect fourth
Perfect fourth
In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions , and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the ascending interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C, and there...
, diminished fifth, or minor sixth
Minor sixth
-Subminor sixth:In music, a subminor sixth or septimal sixth is an interval that is noticeably narrower than a minor sixth but noticeably wider than a diminished sixth.The sub-minor sixth is an interval of a 14:9 ratio or alternately 11:7....
. Most power chords are also played with a consistent finger arrangement that can be slid easily up and down the fretboard
Fingerboard
The fingerboard is a part of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument and above which the strings run...
.
Typical harmonic structures
Heavy metal is usually based on riffRIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
s created with three main harmonic traits: modal scale progressions, tritone and chromatic progressions, and the use of pedal point
Pedal point
In tonal music, a pedal point is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign, i.e., dissonant harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes functions as a "non-chord tone", placing it in the categories alongside suspensions, retardations, and passing...
s. Traditional heavy metal tends to employ modal scales, in particular the Aeolian
Aeolian mode
The Aeolian mode is a musical mode or, in modern usage, a diatonic scale called the natural minor scale.The word "Aeolian" in the music theory of ancient Greece was an alternative name for what Aristoxenus called the Low Lydian tonos , nine semitones...
and Phrygian mode
Phrygian mode
The Phrygian mode can refer to three different musical modes: the ancient Greek tonos or harmonia sometimes called Phrygian, formed on a particular set octave species or scales; the Medieval Phrygian mode, and the modern conception of the Phrygian mode as a diatonic scale, based on the latter...
s. Harmonically speaking, this means the genre typically incorporates modal chord progressions such as the Aeolian progressions I-VI-VII, I-VII-(VI), or I-VI-IV-VII and Phrygian progressions implying the relation between I and ♭II (I-♭II-I, I-♭II-III, or I-♭II-VII for example). Tense-sounding chromatic or tritone
Tritone
In classical music from Western culture, the tritone |tone]]) is traditionally defined as a musical interval composed of three whole tones. In a chromatic scale, each whole tone can be further divided into two semitones...
relationships are used in a number of metal chord progressions. The tritone, an interval spanning three whole tones—such as C and F#—was a forbidden dissonance in medieval ecclesiastical singing, which led monks to call it diabolus in musica—"the devil in music." Because of that original symbolic association, it came to be heard in Western cultural convention as "evil". Heavy metal has made extensive use of the tritone in guitar solos and riffs, such as in the beginning of "Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath (song)
"Black Sabbath" is a song by British heavy metal band of the same name, written in 1969 and released on the band's debut album, Black Sabbath...
".
Heavy metal songs often make extensive use of pedal point
Pedal point
In tonal music, a pedal point is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign, i.e., dissonant harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes functions as a "non-chord tone", placing it in the categories alongside suspensions, retardations, and passing...
as a harmonic basis. A pedal point is a sustained tone, typically in the bass range, during which at least one foreign (i.e., dissonant) harmony is sounded in the other parts.
Relationship with classical music
Robert WalserRobert Walser (musicologist)
Robert Walser is an American musicologist associated with the "new musicology". He is author of the book Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, concerning heavy metal music...
argues that, alongside blues and R&B, the "assemblage of disparate musical styles known...as 'classical music'" has been a major influence on heavy metal since the genre's earliest days. He claims that metal's "most influential musicians have been guitar players who have also studied classical music. Their appropriation and adaptation of classical models sparked the development of a new kind of guitar virtuosity [and] changes in the harmonic and melodic language of heavy metal." The Grove Music Online states that the "1980s brought on ...the widespread adaptation of chord progressions and virtuosic practices from 18th-century European models, especially Bach, Wilhelm Richard Wagner and Vivaldi, by influential guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen
Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halen is a Dutch-American guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...
, Randy Rhoads
Randy Rhoads
Randall William "Randy" Rhoads was an American heavy metal guitarist who played with Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot. A devoted student of classical guitar, Rhoads often combined his classical music influences with his own heavy metal style. While on tour with Ozzy Osbourne, he would seek out...
and Yngwie Malmsteen". Kurt Bachmann of Believer has stated that "If done correctly, metal and classical fit quite well together. Classical and metal are probably the two genres that have the most in common when it comes to feel, texture, creativity."
Although a number of metal musicians cite classical composers as inspiration, classical and metal are rooted in different cultural traditions and practices—classical in the art music
Art music
Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
tradition, metal in the popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
tradition. As musicologists Nicolas Cook and Nicola Dibben note, "Analyses of popular music also sometimes reveal the influence of 'art traditions.' An example is Walser’s linkage of heavy metal music with the ideologies and even some of the performance practices of nineteenth-century Romanticism. However, it would be clearly wrong to claim that traditions such as blues, rock, heavy metal, rap or dance music derive primarily from 'art music.'"
Lyrical themes
Black Sabbath and the many metal bands they inspired have concentrated lyrically "on dark and depressing subject matter to an extent hitherto unprecedented in any form of pop music," according to scholars David Hatch and Stephen Millward. They take as an example Sabbath's second album ParanoidParanoid (album)
Paranoid is the second studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Released in September 1970, the album was the only one by the band to top the UK Albums Chart, and as a result is commonly identified as the band's magnum opus...
(1970), which "included songs dealing with personal trauma—'Paranoid
Paranoid (song)
"Paranoid" is a song by the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, featured on their second album Paranoid . It is the first single from the album, while the B-side is the song "The Wizard". It reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and number 61 on the Billboard Hot 100...
' and 'Fairies Wear Boots
Fairies Wear Boots
"Fairies Wear Boots" is a Black Sabbath song from their 1970 album Paranoid.In the liner notes to Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath , Tony Iommi states that the song title comes from when "Geezer and Ozzy were smoking outside and witnessed fairies in the park, running around wearing...
' (which described the unsavoury side effects of drug-taking) —as well as those confronting wider issues, such as the self-explanatory 'War Pigs
War Pigs
"War Pigs" is a song by British heavy metal band Black Sabbath from their 1970 album Paranoid. It is generally believed that the band wrote the song as a protest against the Vietnam War; however, when Sabbath played "War Pigs" in the mid-'70s, they projected scenes from World War II.As explained in...
' and 'Hand of Doom.'" Nuclear annihilation was addressed in later metal songs such as Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
's "Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
"Electric Funeral" is the fifth song from Black Sabbath's second album Paranoid, released in 1970. The song deals with nuclear war and its aftermath...
", Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight
2 Minutes to Midnight
"2 Minutes to Midnight" is the second track from British heavy metal band Iron Maiden's fifth album Powerslave. It was released as the band's tenth single on 6 August 1984 and rose to number 11 in the UK Singles Chart and number 25 on Billboard Top Album Tracks.The song was written by Adrian Smith...
", Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne
John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne is an English vocalist, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, whose radically different, intentionally dark, harder sound helped spawn the heavy metal...
's "Killer of Giants", Megadeth's "Rust In Peace... Polaris", and Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
's "Fight Fire With Fire". Death is a predominant theme in heavy metal, routinely featuring in the lyrics of bands as otherwise widely different as Slayer
Slayer
Slayer is an American thrash metal band formed in Huntington Park, California, in 1981 by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King. Slayer rose to fame with their 1986 release, Reign in Blood, and is credited as one of the "Big Four" thrash metal acts, along with Metallica, Megadeth and...
and W.A.S.P. The more extreme forms of death metal and grindcore tend to have aggressive and gory lyrics.
Deriving from the genre's roots in blues music, sex is another important topic—a thread running from Led Zeppelin's suggestive lyrics to the more explicit references of glam and nu metal bands. Romantic tragedy is a standard theme of gothic and doom metal, as well as of nu metal, where teenage angst is another central topic. Heavy metal songs often feature outlandish, fantasy-inspired lyrics, lending them an escapist quality. Iron Maiden's songs, for instance, were frequently inspired by mythology, fiction, and poetry, such as Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", based on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
poem. Led Zeppelin lyrics often reference Lord of the Rings as well as other mythology and folklore, such as in the songs "The Battle of Evermore
The Battle of Evermore
"The Battle of Evermore" is a folk rock duet sung by Robert Plant and Sandy Denny, by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, featured on their untitled fourth album , released in 1971...
", "Immigrant Song
Immigrant Song
"Immigrant Song" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was released as a single from their third album, Led Zeppelin III, in 1970.-Overview:...
", "Ramble On
Ramble On
-Cover versions:Train did a cover of the song in early 2001 and released it as a single. Producer Brendan O'Brien heard Train's version and agreed to produce their second album, Drops of Jupiter...
", "No Quarter
No Quarter (song)
"No Quarter" is a song by Led Zeppelin that appears on their album, Houses of the Holy, released in 1973. It was written by bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant.- Overview :...
", and "Achilles Last Stand
Achilles Last Stand
"Achilles Last Stand" is a song by the English rock group Led Zeppelin, featured as the opening track on their 1976 album Presence. It was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at Page's house in Malibu, California where they stayed for a month while Plant recovered from a serious car accident he...
". Other examples include Black Sabbath's "The Wizard
The Wizard (Black Sabbath song)
"The Wizard" is a song by the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, taken from their 1970 album Black Sabbath. It is the second track on the record...
", Megadeth
Megadeth
Megadeth is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California which was formed in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine, bassist Dave Ellefson and guitarist Greg Handevidt, following Mustaine's expulsion from Metallica. The band has since released 13 studio albums, three live albums, two...
's "The Conjuring" and "Five Magics", and Judas Priest's "Dreamer Deceiver". Since the 1980s, with the rise of thrash metal and songs such as Metallica's "...And Justice for All
...And Justice for All (song)
"...And Justice for All" is a song by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released as a promo single from their album of the same name.-Song information:...
" and Megadeth's "Peace Sells
Peace Sells
"Peace Sells" is a song by the American thrash metal band Megadeth from the 1986 album Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?, written by Dave Mustaine. It, along with Wake Up Dead from the same album, has been a staple at Megadeth concerts. Lyrically, it deals with negative stereotypes about...
", more metal lyrics have included sociopolitical commentary. Genres such as melodic death metal, progressive metal, and black metal often explore philosophical themes.
The thematic content of heavy metal has long been a target of criticism. According to Jon Pareles, "Heavy metal's main subject matter is simple and virtually universal. With grunts, moans and subliterary lyrics, it celebrates...a party without limits.... [T]he bulk of the music is stylized and formulaic." Music critics have often deemed metal lyrics juvenile and banal, and others have objected to what they see as advocacy of misogyny
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
and the occult. During the 1980s, the Parents Music Resource Center
Parents Music Resource Center
The Parents Music Resource Center was an American committee formed in 1985 with the goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to be violent, have drug use or be sexual.The committee was founded by four women: Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice...
petitioned the U.S. Congress to regulate the popular music industry due to what the group asserted were objectionable lyrics, particularly those in heavy metal songs. In 1990, Judas Priest was sued in American court by the parents of two young men who had shot themselves five years earlier, allegedly after hearing the subliminal statement "do it" in a Priest song. While the case attracted a great deal of media attention, it was ultimately dismissed. In some predominantly Muslim countries, heavy metal has been officially denounced as a threat to traditional values. In countries including Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Malaysia, there have been incidents of heavy metal musicians and fans being arrested and incarcerated.
Image and fashion
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
s. Some heavy metal acts such as Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
, Kiss
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
, Lordi
Lordi
Lordi is a Finnish hard rock/heavy metal band, formed in 1996 by the band's lead singer, songwriter and costume-designer, Mr. Lordi. The band is known for wearing monster masks and using pyrotechnics during concerts...
, Slipknot
Slipknot (band)
Slipknot is an American heavy metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. Formed in 1995, the group was founded by percussionist Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray...
, and Gwar
Gwar
Gwar is a satirical heavy metal band formed in Richmond, Virginia, United States, in 1984. The band is best known for its elaborate science fiction/horror film inspired costumes, obscene lyrics and graphic stage performances, which feature humorous enactments of politically and morally taboo...
have become known as much for their outrageous performance personas and stage shows as for their music.
Down-the-back long hair, according to Weinstein, is the "most crucial distinguishing feature of metal fashion." Originally adopted from the hippie subculture, by the 1980s and 1990s heavy metal hair "symbolised the hate, angst and disenchantment of a generation that seemingly never felt at home," according to journalist Nader Rahman. Long hair gave members of the metal community "the power they needed to rebel against nothing in general."
The classic uniform of heavy metal fans consists of "blue jeans, black T-shirts, boots and black leather or jeans jackets.... T-shirts are generally emblazoned with the logos or other visual representations of favorite metal bands." Metal fans also "appropriated elements from the S&M community (chains, metal studs, skulls, leather and crosses)." In the 1980s, a range of sources, from punk and goth music to horror films, influenced metal fashion. Many metal performers of the 1970s and 1980s used radically shaped and brightly colored instruments to enhance their stage appearance. Fashion and personal style was especially important for glam metal bands of the era. Performers typically wore long, dyed, hairspray-teased hair (hence the nickname, "hair metal"); makeup such as lipstick and eyeliner; gaudy clothing, including leopard-skin-printed shirts or vests and tight denim, leather, or spandex pants; and accessories such as headbands and jewelry. Pioneered by the heavy metal act X Japan
X Japan
is a Japanese heavy metal band founded in 1982 by Yoshiki and Toshi. Originally named X , the group achieved their breakthrough success in 1989 with the release of their second album Blue Blood...
in the late 1980s, bands in the Japanese movement known as visual kei
Visual Kei
is a movement among Japanese musicians, that is characterized by the use of make-up, elaborate hair styles and flamboyant costumes, often, but not always, coupled with androgynous aesthetics. Some sources state that visual kei refers to a music genre, or to a sub-genre of Japanese rock, with its...
—which includes many nonmetal groups—emphasize elaborate costumes, hair, and makeup.
Physical gestures
Many metal musicians when performing live engage in headbangingHeadbanging
Headbanging is a type of dance which involves violently shaking the head in time with the music, most commonly in the rock and heavy metal music genres.-Origin:The term "headbanger" was coined during Led Zeppelin's first US tour in 1969...
, which involves rhythmically beating time with the head, often emphasized by long hair. The corna
Corna
The sign of the horns is a hand gesture with a variety of meanings and uses in various cultures. It is formed by extending the index and little fingers while holding the middle and ring fingers down with the thumb.-Superstition:...
, or devil horns, hand gesture, also widespread, was popularized by vocalist Ronnie James Dio
Ronnie James Dio
Ronald James Padavona , better known as Ronnie James Dio, was an American heavy metal vocalist and songwriter. He performed with, amongst others, Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell, and his own band Dio, which means God in Italian. Other musical projects include the collective fundraiser...
while with Black Sabbath and Dio
Dio (band)
Dio was an American heavy metal band from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Formed in 1982 and led by vocalist Ronnie James Dio, after he left Black Sabbath with intentions to form a new band with fellow former Black Sabbath member, drummer Vinny Appice. Naming the band Dio made sense from a commercial...
. Although Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, singer-songwriter, actor, and rock bassist. Known as "The Demon", he is the bassist/vocalist of Kiss, a hard rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s.-Early life:...
of Kiss
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
claims to have been the first to make the gesture on the 1977 Love Gun album cover There is speculation as to who started the phenomenon.
Attendees of metal concerts do not dance in the usual sense; Deena Weinstein has argued that this is due to the music's largely male audience and "extreme heterosexualist ideology." She identifies two primary body movements that substitute for dancing: headbanging and an arm thrust that is both a sign of appreciation and a rhythmic gesture. The performance of air guitar
Air guitar
Playing air guitar is a form of dance and movement in which the performer pretends to play rock or heavy metal-style electric guitar, including riffs, solos, etc. Playing an air guitar usually consists of exaggerated strumming and picking motions and is often coupled with loud singing or lip-synching...
is popular among metal fans both at concerts and listening to records at home. Other concert audience activities include stage diving
Stage diving
Stage diving is the act of leaping from a concert stage onto the crowd below. It is often the precursor to crowd surfing.Initially seen as confrontational and extreme, stage diving has become common at hardcore punk and thrash metal performances. Many musicians have made stage diving a part of...
, crowd surfing
Crowd surfing
Crowd surfing is the process in which a person is passed overhead from person to person during a concert, transferring the person from one part of the venue to another...
, pushing and shoving in a chaotic mêlée called moshing
Moshing
Moshing is a dance in which participants push or slam into each other. They also flail their limbs to breakdowns of hardcore punk and its sub-genres. It is most associated with aggressive music genres, such as hardcore punk and heavy metal...
, and displaying the corna hand symbol.
Fan subculture
Deena Weinstein argues that heavy metal has outlasted many other rock genres largely due to the emergence of an intense, exclusionary, strongly masculine subculture. While the metal fanbase is largely young, white, male, and blue-collar, the group is "tolerant of those outside its core demographic base who follow its codes of dress, appearance, and behavior." Identification with the subculture is strengthened not only by the shared experience of concert-going and shared elements of fashion, but also by contributing to metal magazines and, more recently, websites.The metal scene has been characterized as a "subculture of alienation", with its own code of authenticity. This code puts several demands on performers: they must appear both completely devoted to their music and loyal to the subculture that supports it; they must appear uninterested in mainstream appeal and radio hits; and they must never "sell out
Selling out
"Selling out" is the compromising of integrity, morality, or principles in exchange for money or "success" . It is commonly associated with attempts to tailor material to a mainstream audience...
". For the fans themselves, the code promotes "opposition to established authority, and separateness from the rest of society." Musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the...
observes, "Most of the kids who come to my shows seem like really imaginative kids with a lot of creative energy they don't know what to do with" and that metal is "outsider music for outsiders. Nobody wants to be the weird kid; you just somehow end up being the weird kid. It's kind of like that, but with metal you have all the weird kids in one place." Scholars of metal have noted the tendency of fans to classify and reject some performers (and some other fans) as "posers
Poseur (music)
Poseur is a pejorative term, often used in the punk, heavy metal, hip hop and goth subcultures to describe a person who copies the dress, speech, and/or mannerisms of a group or subculture, generally for attaining acceptability within the group or for popularity among various other groups, yet who...
" "who pretended to be part of the subculture, but who were deemed to lack authenticity and sincerity."
Etymology
The origin of the term "heavy metal" in a musical context is uncertain. The phrase has been used for centuries in chemistry and metallurgy. An early use of the term in modern popular culture was by counterculturalCounterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
writer William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
. His 1962 novel The Soft Machine
The Soft Machine
The Soft Machine is a novel by William S. Burroughs, first published in 1961, two years after his groundbreaking Naked Lunch. It was originally composed using the cut-up and fold-in techniques from manuscripts belonging to The Word Hoard...
includes a character known as "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid." Burroughs's next novel, Nova Express
Nova Express
Nova Express is a 1964 novel by William S. Burroughs. It was written using the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the novel. It is the third book in The Nova Trilogy, preceded by The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded...
(1964), develops the theme, using heavy metal as a metaphor for addictive drugs: "With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music."
Metal historian Ian Christe
Ian Christe
Ian Christe is an author, disc jockey and publisher. He attended The Clarkson School's Bridging Year and Indiana University....
describes what the components of the term mean in "hippiespeak": "heavy" is roughly synonymous with "potent" or "profound," and "metal" designates a certain type of mood, grinding and weighted as with metal. The word "heavy" in this sense was a basic element of beatnik
Beatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
and later countercultural slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
, and references to "heavy music"—typically slower, more amplified variations of standard pop fare—were already common by the mid-1960s. British psychedelic art experimenters Hapshash and the Coloured Coat
Hapshash and the Coloured Coat
Hapshash and the Coloured Coat is the name of an influential British graphic design and avant-garde musical partnership between Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, producing psychedelic posters and two albums of underground music...
released a record in 1967 titled Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids. Iron Butterfly
Iron Butterfly
Iron Butterfly is a US psychedelic rock band best known for the 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".Their heyday was the late 1960s, but the band has been reincarnated with various members. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is the 31st best-selling album in the world, selling more than 25 million copies.-History:The...
's debut album, released in early 1968, was titled Heavy. The first recorded use of "heavy metal" is a reference to a motorcycle in the Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf (band)
Steppenwolf are a Canadian-American rock group that was prominent in the late 1960s. The group was formed in 1967 in Los Angeles by vocalist John Kay, guitarist Michael Monarch, bassist Rushton Moreve, keyboardist Goldy McJohn and drummer Jerry Edmonton after the dissolution of Toronto group The...
song "Born to Be Wild
Born to Be Wild
"Born to Be Wild" is a rock song written by Mars Bonfire and made famous by the Canadian-American rock band Steppenwolf. It is often used in popular culture to denote a biker appearance or attitude...
", also released that year: "I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder/Racin' with the wind/And the feelin' that I'm under." A late, and disputed, claim about the source of the term was made by "Chas" Chandler
Chas Chandler
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler was an English musician, record producer and manager of several successful music acts....
, former manager of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In a 1995 interview on the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
program Rock and Roll, he asserted that heavy metal "was a term originated in a New York Times article reviewing a Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
performance," in which the author likened the event to "listening to heavy metal falling from the sky." A source for Chandler's claim has never been found.
The first documented use of the phrase to describe a type of rock music identified to date appears in a review by Barry Gifford
Barry Gifford
Barry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness....
. In the May 11, 1968, issue of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, he wrote about the album A Long Time Comin'
A Long Time Comin'
A Long Time Comin' is the first album by American rock band The Electric Flag, released in 1968. The meat of the album is Soul along with Blues and Rock with a horn section...
by U.S. band Electric Flag
Electric Flag
The Electric Flag was a blues rock soul group, led by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, keyboardist Barry Goldberg and drummer Buddy Miles, and featuring other well-known musicians such as vocalist Nick Gravenites and bassist Harvey Brooks. Bloomfield formed the Electric Flag in 1967, following his stint...
: "Nobody who's been listening to Mike Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
—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." In January 1970 Lucian K. Truscott IV reviewing Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin II
The finished tracks reflect the raw, evolving sound of the band and their ability as live performers. The album has been noted for featuring a further development of the lyrical themes established by Robert Plant on Led Zeppelin's debut album, creating a work which would become more widely...
for the Village Voice described the sound as "heavy" and made comparisons with Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer was an American psychedelic blues-rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009...
and Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Fudge is an American rock band. The band's original lineup – vocalist/organist Mark Stein, bassist/vocalist Tim Bogert, lead guitarist/vocalist Vince Martell, and drummer/vocalist Carmine Appice – recorded five albums during the years 1966–69, before disbanding in 1970...
. Other early documented uses of the phrase are from reviews by critic Mike Saunders
Mike Saunders
Mike Saunders , better known as "Metal Mike" Saunders, is a rock critic and the singer of the Californian punk band Angry Samoans...
. In the November 12, 1970, issue of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, he commented on an album put out the previous year by the British band Humble Pie
Humble Pie (band)
Humble Pie was a rock band from England, finding success both in the UK and the US. They are remembered for songs such as "Black Coffee" "30 Days in the Hole", "I Don't Need No Doctor", and "Natural Born Bugie"...
: "Safe as Yesterday Is
As Safe As Yesterday Is
As Safe As Yesterday Is is the debut album for rock band Humble Pie, released in the UK in August 1969. The album peaked at number 16 in the UK album chart.Featuring former frontmen Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton...
, their first American release, proved that Humble Pie could be boring in lots of different ways. Here they were a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal-leaden shit-rock band with the loud and noisy parts beyond doubt. There were a couple of nice songs...and one monumental pile of refuse." He described the band's latest, self-titled release
Humble Pie (album)
Humble Pie was the third studio album released by English rock group Humble Pie in 1970, and their first with A&M Records.-Album profile:Humble Pie was a transitional album and a harbinger of the band's new, heavier direction...
as "more of the same 27th-rate heavy metal crap." In a review of Sir Lord Baltimore
Sir Lord Baltimore
Sir Lord Baltimore is a pioneering American heavy metal band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 1968 by lead vocalist/drummer John Garner, guitarist Louis Dambra, and bass player Gary Justin. They are notable for the fact that a 1971 review of their debut record, Kingdom Come, contained the first...
's Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come (Sir Lord Baltimore album)
Kingdom Come is the first studio album by American heavy metal band Sir Lord Baltimore, released on Mercury Records in 1970. It was reissued on PolyGram in 1994, on Red Fox in 2003, and on Anthology Recordings in 2007...
in the May 1971 Creem
Creem
Creem , "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine," was a monthly rock 'n' roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but received a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid...
, Saunders wrote, "Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book." Creem critic Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
is credited with popularizing the term via his early 1970s essays on bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Through the decade, heavy metal was used by certain critics as a virtually automatic putdown. In 1979, lead New York Times popular music critic John Rockwell
John Rockwell
John Rockwell is a music critic, editor, and dance critic. He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard, the University of Munich, and the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in German culture....
described what he called "heavy-metal rock" as "brutally aggressive music played mostly for minds clouded by drugs," and, in a different article, as "a crude exaggeration of rock basics that appeals to white teenagers."
Coined by Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
drummer, Bill Ward, "downer rock" was one of the earliest terms used to describe this style of music and was applied to acts such as Sabbath and Bloodrock
Bloodrock
Bloodrock was an American hard rock band, based in Fort Worth, Texas, that had considerable success in the 1970s, and was one of the earliest of a number of significant bands to emerge from the Fort Worth club and music scene during the early to mid 1970s and on into the new century.-Early...
. Classic Rock
Classic Rock (magazine)
Classic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing, who are also responsible for its "sister" publication Metal Hammer. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s, it also includes articles and reviews of...
magazine described the downer rock culture revolving around the use of Quaaludes and the drinking of wine. Later the term would be replaced by "heavy metal."
The terms "heavy metal" and "hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
" have often been used interchangeably, particularly in discussing bands of the 1970s, a period when the terms were largely synonymous. For example, the 1983 Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll includes this passage: "known for its aggressive blues-based hard-rock style, Aerosmith
Aerosmith
Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...
was the top American heavy-metal band of the mid-Seventies."
Antecedents: mid-1960s
While heavy metal's quintessential guitar style, built around distortion-heavy riffs and power chords, traces its roots to the late 1950s instrumentals of American Link WrayLink Wray
Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer....
, and the Kingsmen's version of "Louie, Louie" (1963), which made it a garage rock
Garage rock
Garage rock is a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967. During the 1960s, it was not recognized as a separate music genre and had no specific name...
standard, the genre's direct lineage begins in the mid-1960s. American blues music was a major influence on the early British rockers of the era. Bands like The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
and The Yardbirds
The Yardbirds
- Current :* Chris Dreja - rhythm guitar, backing vocals * Jim McCarty - drums, backing vocals * Ben King - lead guitar * David Smale - bass, backing vocals...
developed blues-rock
Blues-rock
Blues rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, piano, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a...
by recording covers of many classic blues songs, often speeding up the tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
s. As they experimented with the music, the UK blues-based bands—and the U.S. acts they influenced in turn—developed what would become the hallmarks of heavy metal, in particular, the loud, distorted guitar sound. The Kinks
The Kinks
The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray and Dave Davies in 1964. Categorised in the United States as a British Invasion band, The Kinks are recognised as one of the most important and influential rock acts of the era. Their music was influenced by a...
played a major role in popularizing this sound with their 1964 hit "You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
"You Really Got Me" is a rock song written by Ray Davies and performed by his band, The Kinks. It was released on 4th August 1964 as the group's third single, and reached Number 1 on the UK singles chart the next month, remaining for two weeks...
". "Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride
"Ticket to Ride" is a song by The Beatles from their 1965 album, Help!. It was recorded 15 February 1965 and released two months later. -Composition:...
" (1965) written by John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
(credited to Lennon/McCartney
Lennon/McCartney
The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is one of the best-known and most successful musical collaborations in history...
) of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
has been suggested as the first ever heavy metal song, given the droning bassline, repeating drums, and loaded guitar lines.
In addition to The Kinks' Dave Davies
Dave Davies
David Russell Gordon "Dave" Davies is an English rock musician best known for his role as lead guitarist and vocalist for the English rock band The Kinks....
, other guitarists such as The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
's Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...
and The Yardbirds' Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck
Geoffrey Arnold "Jeff" Beck is an English rock guitarist. He is one of three noted guitarists to have played with The Yardbirds...
were experimenting with feedback. Where the blues-rock drumming style started out largely as simple shuffle beats on small kits, drummers began using a more muscular, complex, and amplified approach to match and be heard against the increasingly loud guitar. Vocalists similarly modified their technique and increased their reliance on amplification, often becoming more stylized and dramatic. In terms of sheer volume, especially in live performance, The Who's "bigger-louder-wall-of-Marshalls" approach was seminal.
The combination of blues-rock with psychedelic rock formed much of the original basis for heavy metal. One of the most influential bands in forging the merger of genres was the British power trio Cream
Cream (band)
Cream were a 1960s British rock supergroup consisting of bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker...
, who derived a massive, heavy sound from unison
Unison
In music, the word unison can be applied in more than one way. In general terms, it may refer to two notes sounding the same pitch, often but not always at the same time; or to the same musical voice being sounded by several voices or instruments together, either at the same pitch or at a distance...
riffing between guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles...
, as well as Ginger Baker
Ginger Baker
Peter Edward "Ginger" Baker is an English drummer, best known for his work with Cream and Blind Faith. He is also known for his numerous associations with World music, mainly the use of African influences...
's double bass drumming. Their first two LPs, Fresh Cream
Fresh Cream
Fresh Cream is the debut studio album by British supergroup Cream. It was the first LP release of producer Robert Stigwood's new "Independent" Reaction Records label, released in the United Kingdom as both a mono and stereo version on 9 December 1966, the same time as the single release of "I Feel...
(1966) and Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears is the second album by British supergroup Cream. It was released in November 1967 and went on to reach #5 on the UK Albums Chart. It was also their American breakthrough, becoming a massive seller there in 1968, reaching #4 on the American charts...
(1967), are regarded as essential prototypes for the future style. The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...
's debut album, Are You Experienced
Are You Experienced (album)
Are You Experienced is the debut album by English/American rock band The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released in 1967, it was the first LP for Track Records...
(1967), was also highly influential. Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
's virtuosic technique would be emulated by many metal guitarists and the album's most successful single, "Purple Haze
Purple Haze
"Purple Haze" is a song written in 1966 and recorded in 1967 by The Jimi Hendrix Experience and released as a single in both the United Kingdom and the United States. It appeared on their 1967 album Are You Experienced...
", is identified by some as the first heavy metal hit. During the late sixties, many psychedelic singers such as Arthur Brown
Arthur Brown (musician)
Arthur Brown is an English rock and roll musician best known for his flamboyant, theatrical style and significant influence on Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Marilyn Manson, George Clinton, Kiss, King Diamond, and Bruce Dickinson, among others, and for his number one hit in the UK Singles Chart and...
, began to create outlandish, theatrical and often macabre performances; which in itself became incredibly influential to many metal acts. Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Fudge is an American rock band. The band's original lineup – vocalist/organist Mark Stein, bassist/vocalist Tim Bogert, lead guitarist/vocalist Vince Martell, and drummer/vocalist Carmine Appice – recorded five albums during the years 1966–69, before disbanding in 1970...
, whose first album
Vanilla Fudge (album)
Allmusic's Paul Collins rated Vanilla Fudge four out of five stars. He stated that "nobody could accuse Vanilla Fudge of bad taste in their repertoire" and that most of the tracks "share a common structure of a disjointed warm-up jam, a Hammond-heavy dirge of harmonized vocals at the center, and a...
also came out in 1967, have been called "one of the few American links between psychedelia and what soon became heavy metal."
Origins: late 1960s and early 1970s
In 1968, the sound that would become known as heavy metal began to coalesce. That January, the San Francisco band Blue CheerBlue Cheer
Blue Cheer was an American psychedelic blues-rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009...
released a cover of Eddie Cochran
Eddie Cochran
Eddie Cochran , was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a small but lasting influence on rock music through his guitar playing. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as "C'mon Everybody", "Somethin' Else", and "Summertime Blues", captured teenage frustration and desire in the...
's classic "Summertime Blues
Summertime Blues
"Summertime Blues" is the title of a song co-written and recorded by American rockabilly artist Eddie Cochran. It was written in the late 1950s by Cochran and his manager Jerry Capehart. Originally a single B-side, it was released in August 1958 and peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 on...
", from their debut album Vincebus Eruptum
Vincebus Eruptum
-Personnel:Blue Cheer*Dickie Peterson – vocals, bass*Leigh Stephens – guitar*Paul Whaley – drumsAdditional personnel*Abe "Voco" Kesh – production*John MacQuarrie – engineering*John Van Hamersveld – photography...
, that many consider the first true heavy metal recording. The same month, Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf (band)
Steppenwolf are a Canadian-American rock group that was prominent in the late 1960s. The group was formed in 1967 in Los Angeles by vocalist John Kay, guitarist Michael Monarch, bassist Rushton Moreve, keyboardist Goldy McJohn and drummer Jerry Edmonton after the dissolution of Toronto group The...
released its self-titled debut album, including "Born to Be Wild
Born to Be Wild
"Born to Be Wild" is a rock song written by Mars Bonfire and made famous by the Canadian-American rock band Steppenwolf. It is often used in popular culture to denote a biker appearance or attitude...
", which refers to "heavy metal thunder" in the lyrics. In July, another two epochal records came out: The Yardbirds' "Think About It"—B-side of the band's last single—with a performance by guitarist Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
anticipating the metal sound he would soon make famous; and Iron Butterfly
Iron Butterfly
Iron Butterfly is a US psychedelic rock band best known for the 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".Their heyday was the late 1960s, but the band has been reincarnated with various members. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is the 31st best-selling album in the world, selling more than 25 million copies.-History:The...
's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, with its 17-minute-long title track, a prime candidate for first-ever heavy metal album. In August, The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' single version of "Revolution
Revolution (song)
"Revolution" is a song by The Beatles written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The Beatles released two distinct arrangements of the song in 1968: a hard rock version as the B-side of the single "Hey Jude", and a slower version titled "Revolution 1" on the eponymous album The Beatles...
", with its redlined guitar and drum sound, set new standards for distortion in a top-selling context.
The Jeff Beck Group, whose leader had preceded Page as The Yardbirds' guitarist, released its debut record that same month: Truth featured some of the "most molten, barbed, downright funny noises of all time," breaking ground for generations of metal ax-slingers. In October, Page's new band, Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
, made its live debut. The Beatles' so-called White Album
The Beatles (album)
The Beatles is the ninth official album by the English rock group The Beatles, a double album released in 1968. It is also commonly known as "The White Album" as it has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed on its plain white sleeve.The album was written and recorded during a...
, which also came out that month, included "Birthday" and "Helter Skelter", then one of the heaviest-sounding songs ever released by a major band, and has been noted for its "proto-metal roar". The Pretty Things
The Pretty Things
The Pretty Things are an English rock and roll band from London, who originally formed in 1963. They took their name from Bo Diddley's 1955 song "Pretty Thing" and, in their early days, were dubbed by the British press the "uglier cousins of the Rolling Stones". Their most commercially successful...
' rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
S.F. Sorrow
S.F. Sorrow
S.F. Sorrow is the title of the fourth LP by the British rock group The Pretty Things, released in 1968.One of the first rock concept albums, S.F. Sorrow was based on a short story by singer-guitarist Phil May. The album is structured as a song cycle, telling the story of the main character,...
, released in December, featured "proto heavy metal" songs such as "Old Man Going". In this period MC5
MC5
The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson...
, who began as part of the Detroit garage rock scene, developed a raw distorted style that has been seen as a major influence on the future sound of both heavy metal and later punk music. The Stooges
The Stooges
The Stooges are an American rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan first active from 1967 to 1974, and later reformed in 2003...
also began to establish and influence a heavy metal and later punk sound, with songs such as I Wanna Be Your Dog
I Wanna Be Your Dog
"I Wanna Be Your Dog" is a 1969 song by the American rock band The Stooges. The song is featured on their self-titled debut album. Its memorable riff, composed of only three chords , is played continuously throughout the song...
, featuring pounding and distorted heavy guitar power chord riffs. Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
released two of their heaviest and loudest songs to date; "Ibiza Bar
Ibiza Bar
"Ibiza Bar" is a song written and performed by the English rock band, Pink Floyd, and featured on their third album, Soundtrack from the Film More. It opens with a riff very similar to that of "The Nile Song". However, unlike that track, the song does not cycle through several keys and Gilmour's...
" and "The Nile Song
The Nile Song
"The Nile Song" is the second song from Pink Floyd's 1969 album, Soundtrack from the Film More. Released as a single in 1969, it was written by Roger Waters. The B-side "Ibiza Bar"; also from the album More, reprises a similar theme. Andy Kellman of Allmusic describes "The Nile Song" as "one of the...
", which was regarded as "one of the heaviest songs the band recorded".
In January 1969, Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut album
Led Zeppelin (album)
Led Zeppelin is the debut album of the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was recorded in October 1968 at Olympic Studios in London and released on Atlantic Records on 12 January 1969 in the United States and 31 March 1969 in the United Kingdom. The album featured integral contributions from each...
was released and reached number 10 on the Billboard album chart. In July, Zeppelin and a power trio with a Cream-inspired, but cruder sound, Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk Railroad is an American rock band that was highly popular during the 1970s. Grand Funk Railroad toured constantly to packed arenas worldwide. A popular take on the band during its heyday was that, although the critics hated them, audiences loved them...
, played the Atlanta Pop Festival
Atlanta International Pop Festival (1969)
The first Atlanta International Pop Festival was a music festival held at the Atlanta International Raceway on the July Fourth and weekend, 1969, more than a month before Woodstock. It was organized by Alex Cooley, who later went on to organize the Texas International Pop Festival. The crowd...
. That same month, another Cream-rooted trio led by Leslie West
Leslie West
Leslie West is an American rock guitarist, singer and songwriter.-Biography:Originally named Leslie Weinstein, West was born in New York City, grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey, and in East Meadow, Forest Hills and Lawrence. After his parents divorced, he changed his surname to West...
released Mountain, an album filled with heavy blues-rock guitar and roaring vocals. In August, the group—now itself dubbed Mountain
Mountain (band)
Mountain is an American hard rock band that formed in Long Island, New York in 1969. Originally comprising vocalist and guitarist Leslie West, bassist Felix Pappalardi and drummer N. D. Smart, the band broke up in 1972 before reuniting in 1974 and remaining active until today...
—played an hour-long set at the Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
. Grand Funk's debut album, On Time
On Time
On Time is Grand Funk Railroad's first studio album, and was released in August 1969 by Capitol Records. It was produced by Terry Knight."Time Machine", the band's first single release, barely broke the top 50 in the singles charts...
, also came out that month. In the fall, Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin II
The finished tracks reflect the raw, evolving sound of the band and their ability as live performers. The album has been noted for featuring a further development of the lyrical themes established by Robert Plant on Led Zeppelin's debut album, creating a work which would become more widely...
went to number 1 and the album's single "Whole Lotta Love
Whole Lotta Love
"Whole Lotta Love" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It is featured as the opening track on the band's second album, Led Zeppelin II, and was released in the United States and Japan as a single. The US release became their first hit single, it was certified Gold on 13 April 1970, when it...
" hit number 4 on the Billboard pop chart. The metal revolution was under way.
Led Zeppelin defined central aspects of the emerging genre, with Page's highly distorted guitar style and singer Robert Plant
Robert Plant
Robert Anthony Plant, CBE is an English singer and songwriter best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the iconic rock band Led Zeppelin. He has also had a successful solo career...
's dramatic, wailing vocals. Other bands, with a more consistently heavy, "purely" metal sound, would prove equally important in codifying the genre. The 1970 releases by Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
(Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath (album)
Black Sabbath is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Released on 13 February 1970 in the United Kingdom, and later on 1 June 1970 in the United States, the album reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart and has been recognised as the first main album to be credited...
and Paranoid
Paranoid (album)
Paranoid is the second studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Released in September 1970, the album was the only one by the band to top the UK Albums Chart, and as a result is commonly identified as the band's magnum opus...
) and Deep Purple
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
(In Rock) were crucial in this regard. Black Sabbath had developed a particularly heavy sound in part due to an industrial accident guitarist Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi
Anthony Frank "Tony" Iommi is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as the founding member of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and its sole continual member through multiple personnel changes.Iommi is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential guitarists in...
suffered before cofounding the band. Unable to play normally, Iommi had to tune his guitar down for easier fretting and rely on power chords with their relatively simple fingering. Deep Purple had fluctuated between styles in its early years, but by 1969 vocalist Ian Gillan
Ian Gillan
Ian Gillan is an English rock music vocalist and songwriter, best known as the lead singer and lyricist for Deep Purple. During his career Gillan also fronted his own band, had a year-long stint as the vocalist for Black Sabbath, and sang the role of Jesus in the original recording of Andrew Lloyd...
and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore
Ritchie Blackmore
Richard Hugh "Ritchie" Blackmore is an English guitarist and songwriter, who was known as one of the first guitarists to fuse Classical music elements with rock. He fronted his own band Rainbow after leaving Deep Purple where he was unhappy because his favourite musical style wasn't adequately...
had led the band toward the developing heavy metal style. In 1970, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple scored major UK chart hits with "Paranoid
Paranoid (song)
"Paranoid" is a song by the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, featured on their second album Paranoid . It is the first single from the album, while the B-side is the song "The Wizard". It reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and number 61 on the Billboard Hot 100...
" and "Black Night
Black Night
"Black Night" is a song by British hard rock band Deep Purple, first released as a single in June 1970 and later included on the 25th Year Anniversary version of their 1970 album, In Rock. The song became a hit following its release, peaking at #2 on UK charts, and to this day remains Deep Purple's...
", respectively. That same year, two other British bands released debut albums in a heavy metal mode: Uriah Heep
Uriah Heep (band)
Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969 and regarded as a seminal classic hard rock act of the 1970s. Uriah Heep's progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion's distinctive features have always been massive keyboards sound, strong vocal harmonies and David Byron's operatic vocals...
with Very 'eavy... Very 'umble
Very 'eavy... Very 'umble
Very 'eavy... Very 'umble is the debut album of British hard rock band Uriah Heep.It was released in the United States as Uriah Heep with alternate sleeve artwork, and with "Bird of Prey" in place of "Lucy Blues." The album is notable for being rooted more in raunchy blues rock than the band's...
and UFO
UFO (band)
UFO are an English heavy metal and hard rock band, who were formed in 1969. UFO became a transitional group between early hard rock and heavy metal and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal...
with UFO 1
Unidentified Flying Object (album)
UFO 1 is the debut album by British rock band UFO.The album was reissued under the name "Unidentified Flying Object" with 4 of the 5 tracks from the band's second album. This reissue incorrectly shows a photo of the band from the 1980s on the cover....
. Budgie
Budgie (band)
Budgie is a Welsh Hard Rock/Heavy Metal band from Cardiff. They are widely considered as one of the first heavy metal bands and a seminal influence to many acts of that scene, with fast, heavy rock being played as early as 1971. The band has been noted as "among the heaviest metal of its day"...
brought the new metal sound into a power trio context. The occult lyrics and imagery employed by Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep would prove particularly influential; Led Zeppelin also began foregrounding such elements with its fourth album
Led Zeppelin IV
The fourth album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin was released on 8 November 1971. No title is printed on the album, so it is generally referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, following the naming standard used by the band's first three studio albums...
, released in 1971.
Blue Öyster Cult
Blue Öyster Cult, often abbreviated BÖC, is an American rock band, most of whose members first came together in Long Island, NY in 1967 as the band Soft White Underbelly...
(1972
Blue Öyster Cult (album)
Blue Öyster Cult is the eponymous debut album by hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released in January 1972 . The album featured songs such as "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll," "Stairway to the Stars," and "Then Came the Last Days of May," all of which the band still plays regularly during its...
) and Kiss
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
(1974). In Germany, Scorpions
Scorpions (band)
Scorpions are a heavy metal/hard rock band from Hannover, Germany, formed in 1965 by guitarist Rudolf Schenker, who is the band's only constant member. They are known for their 1980s rock anthem "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and many singles, such as "No One Like You", "Send Me an Angel", "Still...
debuted with Lonesome Crow
Lonesome Crow
-Personnel:Credits for Lonesome Crow adapted from Allmusic.Scorpions*Klaus Meine - vocals*Michael Schenker - lead guitar, backing vocals*Rudolf Schenker - rhythm guitar, backing vocals*Lothar Heimberg - bass guitar, backing vocals...
in 1972. Blackmore, who had emerged as a virtuoso soloist with Deep Purple's Machine Head
Machine Head (album)
Machine Head is the sixth studio album released by the English rock band Deep Purple. It was recorded through December 1971 in Montreux, Switzerland, and released in March 1972....
(1972), quit the group in 1975 to form Rainbow
Rainbow (band)
Rainbow were an English rock band, controlled by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore from 1975 to 1984 and 1994 to 1997. It was originally established with American rock band Elf's members, though over the years Rainbow went through many line-up changes with no two studio albums featuring the same line-up...
. These bands also built audiences via constant touring and increasingly elaborate stage shows. As described above, there are arguments about whether these and other early bands truly qualify as "heavy metal" or simply as "hard rock". Those closer to the music's blues roots or placing greater emphasis on melody are now commonly ascribed the latter label. AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, which debuted with High Voltage in 1975, is a prime example. The 1983 Rolling Stone encyclopedia entry begins, "Australian heavy-metal band AC/DC..." Rock historian Clinton Walker writes, "Calling AC/DC a heavy metal band in the seventies was as inaccurate as it is today.... [They] were a rock 'n' roll band that just happened to be heavy enough for metal." The issue is not only one of shifting definitions, but also a persistent distinction between musical style and audience identification: Ian Christe describes how the band "became the stepping-stone that led huge numbers of hard rock fans into heavy metal perdition."
In certain cases, there is little debate. After Black Sabbath, the next major example is Britain's Judas Priest
Judas Priest
Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band from Birmingham, England, formed in 1969. The current line-up consists of lead vocalist Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and Richie Faulkner, bassist Ian Hill, and drummer Scott Travis. The band has gone through several drummers over the years,...
, which debuted with Rocka Rolla
Rocka Rolla
Rocka Rolla is the debut album by the British heavy metal group Judas Priest, released in 1974. It was produced by Rodger Bain, who had made a name for himself as the producer of Black Sabbath's first three albums....
in 1974. In Christe's description,
"Black Sabbath's audience was...left to scavenge for sounds with similar impact. By the mid-1970s, heavy metal aesthetic could be spotted, like a mythical beast, in the moody bass and complex dual guitars of Thin LizzyThin LizzyThin Lizzy are an Irish hard rock band formed in Dublin in 1969. Two of the founding members, drummer Brian Downey and bass guitarist/vocalist Phil Lynott met while still in school. Lynott assumed the role of frontman and led them throughout their recording career of thirteen studio albums...
, in the stagecraft of Alice CooperAlice CooperAlice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
, in the sizzling guitar and showy vocals of QueenQueen (band)Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
, and in the thundering medieval questions of Rainbow.... Judas Priest arrived to unify and amplify these diverse highlights from hard rock's sonic palette. For the first time, heavy metal became a true genre unto itself."
Though Judas Priest did not have a top 40 album in the U.S. until 1980, for many it was the definitive post-Sabbath heavy metal band; its twin-guitar attack, featuring rapid tempos and a nonbluesy, more cleanly metallic sound, was a major influence on later acts. While heavy metal was growing in popularity, most critics were not enamored of the music. Objections were raised to metal's adoption of visual spectacle and other trappings of commercial artifice, but the main offense was its perceived musical and lyrical vacuity: reviewing a Black Sabbath album in the early 1970s, leading critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
described it as "dull and decadent...dim-witted, amoral exploitation."
Mainstream: late 1970s and 1980s
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
emerged in the mid-1970s as a reaction against contemporary social conditions as well as what was perceived as the overindulgent, overproduced rock music of the time, including heavy metal. Sales of heavy metal records declined sharply in the late 1970s in the face of punk, disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
, and more mainstream rock. With the major labels fixated on punk, many newer British heavy metal bands were inspired by the movement's aggressive, high-energy sound and "lo-fi
Low fidelity
Low fidelity or lo-fi describes a sound recording which contains technical flaws such as distortion, hum, or background noise, or limited frequency response...
", do it yourself
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
ethos. Underground metal bands began putting out cheaply recorded releases independently to small, devoted audiences. Motörhead, founded in 1975, was the first important band to straddle the punk/metal divide. With the explosion of punk in 1977, others followed. British music papers such as the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
and Sounds
Sounds (magazine)
Sounds was a long-term British music paper, published weekly from 10 October 1970 – 6 April 1991. It was produced by Spotlight Publications , which was set up by Jack Hutton and Peter Wilkinson, who left "Melody Maker" to start their own company...
took notice, with Sounds writer Geoff Barton christening the movement the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal
New Wave of British Heavy Metal
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal was a heavy metal movement that started in the late 1970s, in Britain, and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. The movement developed as a reaction in part to the decline of early heavy metal bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black...
". NWOBHM bands including Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the band's discography has grown to include a total of thirty-six albums: fifteen studio albums; eleven live albums; four EPs; and six...
, Saxon
Saxon (band)
Saxon are an English heavy metal band, formed in 1976 in Barnsley, Yorkshire. As front-runners of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, they had 8 UK Top 40 albums in the 1980s including 4 UK Top 10 albums. Saxon also had numerous singles in the Top 20 singles chart...
, and Def Leppard
Def Leppard
Def Leppard are an English rock band formed in 1977 in Sheffield as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Since 1992, the band have consisted of Joe Elliott , Rick Savage , Rick Allen , Phil Collen , and Vivian Campbell...
reenergized the heavy metal genre. Following the lead set by Judas Priest and Motörhead, they toughened up the sound, reduced its blues elements, and emphasized increasingly fast tempos. In 1980, the NWOBHM broke into the mainstream, as albums by Iron Maiden and Saxon, as well as Motörhead, reached the British top 10. Though less commercially successful, other NWOBHM bands such as Venom
Venom (band)
Venom are an English heavy metal band that formed in 1979 in Newcastle upon Tyne. Coming to prominence towards the end of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Venom's first two albums—Welcome to Hell and Black Metal —are considered a major influence on thrash metal and extreme metal in general...
and Diamond Head
Diamond Head (band)
Diamond Head are an English heavy metal band formed in 1976 in Stourbridge, England. The band is recognised as one of the leading members of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and is acknowledged by later bands like Metallica and Megadeth as an important early influence.-Early history:Formed by...
would have a significant influence on metal's development. In 1981, Motörhead became the first of this new breed of metal bands to top the UK charts with No Sleep 'til Hammersmith
No Sleep 'til Hammersmith
No Sleep ’til Hammersmith is the first live album by Motörhead. Released on 27 June 1981, it peaked at #1 on the UK album charts. It was followed by the release of the single "Motorhead" on 11 July, which peaked in the UK singles chart at #6.-History:With the exception of "Iron Horse / Born To...
.
The first generation of metal bands was ceding the limelight. Deep Purple had broken up soon after Blackmore's departure in 1975, and Led Zeppelin broke up following drummer John Bonham
John Bonham
John Henry Bonham was an English musician and songwriter, best known as the drummer of Led Zeppelin. Bonham was esteemed for his speed, power, fast right foot, distinctive sound, and "feel" for the groove...
's death in 1980. Black Sabbath was routinely upstaged in concert by its opening act, the Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
band Van Halen
Van Halen
Van Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1972. The band has enjoyed success since the release of its debut album, Van Halen, . As of 2007 Van Halen has sold 80 million albums worldwide and has had the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart...
. Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen
Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halen is a Dutch-American guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...
established himself as one of the leading metal guitar virtuosos of the era—his solo on "Eruption", from the band's self-titled 1978 album
Van Halen (album)
Van Halen is the debut studio album by American rock band Van Halen, released in February 1978.- History :Recorded in 1977, Van Halen sold over 10 million copies in the US alone, becoming one of the most successful debuts by a rock band. Along with 1984, it gives Van Halen two original albums with...
, is considered a milestone. Randy Rhoads
Randy Rhoads
Randall William "Randy" Rhoads was an American heavy metal guitarist who played with Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot. A devoted student of classical guitar, Rhoads often combined his classical music influences with his own heavy metal style. While on tour with Ozzy Osbourne, he would seek out...
and Yngwie Malmsteen also became famed virtuosos, associated with what would be known as the neoclassical metal style. The adoption of classical elements had been spearheaded by Blackmore and the Scorpions' Uli Jon Roth; this next generation progressed to occasionally using classical nylon-stringed guitars, as Rhoads does on "Dee" from former Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne
John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne is an English vocalist, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, whose radically different, intentionally dark, harder sound helped spawn the heavy metal...
's first solo album, Blizzard of Ozz
Blizzard of Ozz
Blizzard of Ozz is the first solo studio album by British singer/songwriter Ozzy Osbourne, recorded in Surrey, UK and released on September 20, 1980 in the UK and on March 27, 1981 in the U.S.. It is the comeback album of Osbourne following his firing from Black Sabbath the previous year...
(1980).
Inspired by Van Halen's success, a metal scene began to develop in Southern California during the late 1970s. Based on the clubs of L.A.'s Sunset Strip
Sunset Strip
The Sunset Strip is the name given to the mile-and-a-half stretch of Sunset Boulevard that passes through West Hollywood, California. It extends from West Hollywood's eastern border with Hollywood at Harper Avenue, to its western border with Beverly Hills at Sierra Drive...
, bands such as Quiet Riot
Quiet Riot
Quiet Riot is an American Heavy Metal band. They are best known for their hit singles "Metal Health" and "Cum On Feel the Noize". They were founded in 1973 by guitarist Randy Rhoads and bassist Kelly Garni, under the original name Mach 1, before changing the name to Little Women and finally Quiet...
, Ratt
Ratt
Ratt is an American heavy metal band that had significant commercial success in the 1980s. The band is best known for songs such as "Round and Round," "Wanted Man," "Lay It Down," "You're in Love", "Slip of the Lip", "Back For More", "Dance", "Body Talk", "I Want a Woman", and "Way Cool Jr." Ratt...
, Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...
, and W.A.S.P. were influenced by traditional heavy metal of the earlier 1970s and incorporated the theatrics (and sometimes makeup) of glam rock
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter...
acts such as Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
and Kiss. The lyrics of these glam metal
Glam metal
Glam metal is a subgenre of hard rock and heavy metal that arose in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, particularly on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip music scene...
bands characteristically emphasized hedonism
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
and wild behavior. Musically, the style was distinguished by rapid-fire shred guitar
Shred guitar
Shred guitar or shredding is lead electric guitar playing that relies heavily on fast guitar solos. While some critics argue that shred guitar is associated with "... sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic minor scales, finger-tapping and ... whammy-bar abuse", several guitar...
solos, anthemic choruses, and a relatively pop-oriented melodic approach. The glam metal movement—along with similarly styled acts such as New York's Twisted Sister
Twisted Sister
Twisted Sister is an American heavy metal band from Long Island. Musically, the band implements elements of traditional heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, along with a style that is similar to early glam metal bands...
—became a major force in metal and the wider spectrum of rock music.
In the wake of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Judas Priest's breakthrough British Steel
British Steel (album)
British Steel is the sixth album by the British heavy metal band Judas Priest, released on 14 April 1980. It saw the band reprise the commercial sound they had established on Killing Machine however; this time, they abandoned many of the dark lyrical themes which had been prominent on their...
(1980), heavy metal became increasingly popular in the early 1980s. Many metal artists benefited from the exposure they received on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, which began airing in 1981—sales often soared if a band's videos screened on the channel. Def Leppard's videos for Pyromania
Pyromania (album)
Pyromania is the third studio album by British rock band Def Leppard, released on 20 January 1983. It featured new guitarist Phil Collen and was produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange. The album charted at #2 on the Billboard 200 and #18 on the UK Albums Chart.The album was partially recorded with...
(1983) made them superstars in America and Quiet Riot became the first domestic heavy metal band to top the Billboard chart with Metal Health
Metal Health
Metal Health is the third studio album by American heavy metal band Quiet Riot. It was released on March 11, 1983, bolstered by the #5 hit "Cum on Feel the Noize" and the #31 hit "Metal Health". It knocked The Police's Synchronicity out of #1 in the US. The album went on to sell over six million...
(1983). One of the seminal events in metal's growing popularity was the 1983 US Festival
US Festival
The US Festivals were two early 1980s music and culture festivals sponsored by Steve Wozniak, formerly of Apple Computer. The first was held Labor Day weekend in September 1982 and the second was Memorial Day weekend in May 1983...
in California, where the "heavy metal day" featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen, Scorpions, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, and others drew the largest audiences of the three-day event. Between 1983 and 1984, heavy metal went from an 8 percent to a 20 percent share of all recordings sold in the U.S. Several major professional magazines devoted to the genre were launched, including Kerrang!
Kerrang!
Kerrang! is a UK-based magazine devoted to rock music published by Bauer Media Group. It was first published on June 6, 1981 as a one-off supplement in the Sounds newspaper...
(in 1981) and Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer is a monthly heavy metal music magazine published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing, and in several other countries by different publishers. Metal Hammer articles feature both mainstream bands and more unusual acts from the whole spectrum of heavy metal music...
(in 1984), as well as a host of fan journals. In 1985, Billboard declared, "Metal has broadened its audience base. Metal music is no longer the exclusive domain of male teenagers. The metal audience has become older (college-aged), younger (pre-teen), and more female."
By the mid-1980s, glam metal was a dominant presence on the U.S. charts, music television
Music television
Music television is a type of television programming which focuses predominantly on playing music videos from bands, usually on dedicated television channels broadcasting on satellite or cable. Music TVs may host their own shows charts, award prizes. Examples are VIVA, Scuzz, MTV, JBTV, MuchMusic,...
, and the arena concert circuit. New bands such as L.A.'s Warrant
Warrant (American band)
Warrant is an American heavy metal band from Hollywood, California, that experienced success from 1989-1996 with five albums reaching international sales of over 10 million. The band first came into the national spotlight with their debut album Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich, and one of its...
and acts from the East Coast like Poison
Poison (band)
Poison is an American glam metal band that achieved great success in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. To date, Poison has sold over 30 million records worldwide and have sold 15 million records in the United States alone. The band has also charted ten singles to the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100,...
and Cinderella
Cinderella (band)
Cinderella is an American heavy metal band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They emerged in the mid-1980s with a series of multi-platinum albums and hit singles whose music videos received heavy MTV rotation. They were famous for being a glam metal band, but then shifted over towards a more hard...
became major draws, while Mötley Crüe and Ratt remained very popular. Bridging the stylistic gap between hard rock and glam metal, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
's Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi is an American rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Formed in 1983, Bon Jovi consists of lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi , guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, as well as current bassist Hugh McDonald...
became enormously successful with its third album, Slippery When Wet
Slippery When Wet
Slippery When Wet is the third studio album by Bon Jovi, released in August 1986 by Vertigo Records. Slippery When Wet was an instant commercial success. The album features songs that are today considered as Bon Jovi's most well-known tracks such as "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Livin' on a Prayer"...
(1986). The similarly styled Swedish band Europe
Europe (band)
Europe is a Swedish rock band formed in Upplands Väsby in 1979 under the name Force by vocalist Joey Tempest, guitarist John Norum and drummer Tony Reno. Although widely associated with glam metal, the band's sound incorporates heavy metal and hard rock elements...
became international stars with The Final Countdown
The Final Countdown (album)
The Final Countdown is the third studio album by the Swedish rock band Europe. Released on 26 May 1986 through Epic Records, the album was a huge commercial success selling over 3 million units in the United States alone, peaking at number 8 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and reaching high...
(1986). Its title track
The Final Countdown (song)
"The Final Countdown" is a rock song by the Swedish band Europe released in 1986. Written by Joey Tempest, it was the first single from the band's third studio album which was also named The Final Countdown. It is considered by some to be the band's most recognizable and popular song. The song...
hit number 1 in 25 countries. In 1987, MTV launched a show, Headbanger's Ball, devoted exclusively to heavy metal videos. However, the metal audience had begun to factionalize, with those in many underground metal scenes favoring more extreme sounds and disparaging the popular style as "light metal" or "hair metal."
One band that reached diverse audiences was Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album...
. In contrast to their glam metal contemporaries in L.A., they were seen as much more raw and dangerous. With the release of their chart-topping Appetite for Destruction
Appetite for Destruction
Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American rock band Guns N' Roses, released in July 1987 on Geffen Records. It was well-received by critics and topped the American Billboard 200 chart...
(1987), they "recharged and almost single-handedly sustained the Sunset Strip sleaze system for several years." The following year, Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction is an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985. The band's original line-up featured Perry Farrell , Dave Navarro , Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins . After breaking up in 1991, Jane's Addiction briefly reunited in 1997 and again in 2001, both times...
emerged from the same L.A. hard-rock club scene with its major label debut, Nothing's Shocking
Nothing's Shocking
Nothing's Shocking is the first studio album by the American alternative rock band Jane's Addiction, released on August 23, 1988 through Warner Bros. Records. Nothing's Shocking was well received by critics upon release and is often cited as the band's best album. Despite this, it peaked at number...
. Reviewing the album, Rolling Stone declared, "as much as any band in existence, Jane's Addiction is the true heir to Led Zeppelin." The group was one of the first to be identified with the "alternative metal
Alternative metal
Alternative metal is a genre of alternative rock and heavy metal that gained popularity in the early 1990s. Most notably, alternative metal bands are characterized by heavy guitar riffs and experimental approaches to heavy music.-Origins:...
" trend that would come to the fore in the next decade. Meanwhile, new bands such as New York's Winger and New Jersey's Skid Row sustained the popularity of the glam metal style.
Other metal genres: 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s
Many subgenres of heavy metal developed outside of the commercial mainstream during the 1980s. Several attempts have been made to map the complex world of underground metal, most notably by the editors of Allmusic, as well as critic Garry Sharpe-Young. Sharpe-Young's multivolume metal encyclopedia separates the underground into five major categories: thrash metalThrash metal
Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is characterized usually by its fast tempo and aggression. Songs of the genre typically use fast percussive and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead work...
, death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
, black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
, power metal
Power metal
Power metal is a style of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a...
, and the related subgenres of doom
Doom metal
Doom metal is an extreme form of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other metal genres...
and gothic metal
Gothic metal
Gothic metal or goth metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that combines the aggression of doom metal with the dark melancholy of gothic rock. The music of gothic metal is diverse with bands known to adopt the gothic approach to different styles of heavy metal music...
.
Thrash metal
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, particularly songs in the revved-up style known as speed metal
Speed metal
Speed metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal music that originated in the late 1970s from NWOBHM and hardcore punk roots. It is described by Allmusic as "extremely fast, abrasive, and technically demanding" music....
. The movement began in the United States, with Bay Area thrash metal
Bay Area thrash metal
Bay Area thrash metal, or "Bay Area thrash", referred to a steady following of heavy metal bands in the 1980s who formed and gained international status in the San Francisco Bay Area, California...
being the leading scene. The sound developed by thrash groups was faster and more aggressive than that of the original metal bands and their glam metal successors. Low-register guitar riffs are typically overlaid with shredding
Shred guitar
Shred guitar or shredding is lead electric guitar playing that relies heavily on fast guitar solos. While some critics argue that shred guitar is associated with "... sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic minor scales, finger-tapping and ... whammy-bar abuse", several guitar...
leads. Lyrics often express nihilistic
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
views or deal with social issues
Social issues
Social issues are controversial issues which relate to people's personal lives and interactions. Social issues are distinguished from economic issues...
using visceral, gory language. Thrash has been described as a form of "urban blight music" and "a palefaced cousin of rap."
The subgenre was popularized by the "Big Four of Thrash": Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
, Anthrax
Anthrax (band)
Anthrax is an American heavy metal band from New York City, formed in 1981. Founded by guitarists Scott Ian and Danny Lilker, the band has since released ten studio albums and 20 singles, and an EP featuring Public Enemy. The band was one of the most popular of the 1980s thrash metal scene...
, Megadeth
Megadeth
Megadeth is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California which was formed in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine, bassist Dave Ellefson and guitarist Greg Handevidt, following Mustaine's expulsion from Metallica. The band has since released 13 studio albums, three live albums, two...
, and Slayer
Slayer
Slayer is an American thrash metal band formed in Huntington Park, California, in 1981 by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King. Slayer rose to fame with their 1986 release, Reign in Blood, and is credited as one of the "Big Four" thrash metal acts, along with Metallica, Megadeth and...
. Three German bands, Kreator
Kreator
Kreator is a thrash metal band from Essen, Germany, formed in 1978, but formalized in 1982 under the name Tormentor. They originally performed a speed metal style with Venom influences. Their style of music is similar to their compatriots Destruction and Sodom, the other two big German thrash metal...
, Sodom
Sodom (band)
Sodom is a German Thrash metal trio from Gelsenkirchen, formed in 1981.Along with the bands Kreator and Destruction, Sodom is considered one of the "big three" of Teutonic thrash metal...
, and Destruction
Destruction (band)
Destruction is a German thrash metal band. They are considered one of the "three kings" of the Teutonic thrash metal scene, the others being Kreator and Sodom...
, played a central role in bringing the style to Europe. Others, including San Francisco Bay Area's Testament
Testament (band)
Testament is an American metal band from Berkeley, California, formed in 1983. They are often credited as one of the most popular bands of the 1980s thrash metal scene...
and Exodus
Exodus (band)
Exodus is an American thrash metal band formed in 1980 in Richmond, California. Spanning a career of over 30 years, Exodus has gone through numerous lineup changes, two extended hiatuses, and the deaths of two former band members. Guitarist Gary Holt remains the only constant member of the band,...
, New Jersey's Overkill
Overkill (band)
Overkill is an American thrash metal band, formed in 1980 in New Jersey. They have gone through many line-up changes, with singer Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth and bassist D.D. Verni remaining from the original lineup. Along with Anthrax , the band is one of the most successful East Coast thrash metal...
, and Brazil's Sepultura
Sepultura
Sepultura is a Brazilian heavy metal band from Belo Horizonte, formed in 1984. The band was a major force in the death metal, thrash metal and ultimately groove metal realms during the late 1980s and early 1990s, with their later experiments melding nu metal, hardcore punk and industrial.Sepultura...
, also had a significant impact. While thrash began as an underground scene, and remained largely that for almost a decade, the leading bands in the movement began to reach a wider audience. Metallica brought the sound into the top 40 of the Billboard album chart in 1986 with Master of Puppets
Master of Puppets
-Personnel:Metallica* James Hetfield – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar on track 1, first solo on tracks 2 and 7* Cliff Burton – bass, backing vocals* Lars Ulrich – drums* Kirk Hammett – lead guitarProduction...
; two years later, the band's ...And Justice for All
...And Justice for All (album)
...And Justice for All is the fourth studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on August 25, 1988 through Elektra Records. It is the first full-length Metallica album to feature bassist Jason Newsted following the death of Cliff Burton in 1986...
hit number 6, while Megadeth and Anthrax had top 40 records.
Though less commercially successful than the rest of the Big Four, Slayer released one of the genre's definitive records: Reign in Blood
Reign in Blood
Reign in Blood is the third studio album and the major label debut by the American thrash metal band Slayer. It was released on October 7, 1986 through Def Jam Recordings. The album was the band's first collaboration with record producer Rick Rubin, whose input helped the band's sound evolve...
(1986) was described by Kerrang! as the "heaviest album of all time." Two decades later, Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer is a monthly heavy metal music magazine published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing, and in several other countries by different publishers. Metal Hammer articles feature both mainstream bands and more unusual acts from the whole spectrum of heavy metal music...
named it the best album of the preceding twenty years. Slayer attracted a following among far-right skinheads, and accusations of promoting violence and Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
themes have dogged the band. In the early 1990s, thrash achieved breakout success, challenging and redefining the metal mainstream. Metallica's self-titled 1991 album
Metallica (album)
Metallica is the self-titled fifth studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. Mainly produced by Bob Rock, it was released on August 12, 1991 through Elektra Records to critical acclaim...
topped the Billboard chart, Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction
Countdown to Extinction
Countdown to Extinction is the fifth studio album by the American heavy metal band Megadeth. It was released on July 14, 1992 through Capitol Records. Countdown to Extinction is Megadeth's best-selling album, eventually achieving double platinum status...
(1992) hit number 2, Anthrax and Slayer cracked the top 10, and albums by regional bands such as Testament and Sepultura entered the top 100.
Death metal
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
and diabolism employed by such acts. Florida's Death and the Bay Area's Possessed
Possessed (band)
Possessed is an American death metal band, originally formed in 1983. Noted for their fast style of playing and Jeff Becerra's guttural vocals, they are routinely called the first band in the death metal genre...
are recognized as seminal bands in the style. Both groups have been credited with inspiring the subgenre's name, the latter via its 1984 demo Death Metal and the song "Death Metal", from its 1985 debut album Seven Churches
Seven Churches (album)
- Personnel :*Jeff Becerra − Vocals, Bass*Larry LaLonde − Guitar*Mike Torrao − Guitar*Mike Sus − Drums*Randy Burns - Keyboard on Tracks 1 and 9....
(1985).
Death metal utilizes the speed and aggression of both thrash and hardcore, fused with lyrics preoccupied with Z-grade
Z movie
The term Z movie arose in the mid-1960s as an informal description of certain unequivocally non-A films. It was soon adopted to characterize low-budget pictures with quality standards well below those of most B movies and even so-called C movies...
slasher movie
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
violence and Satanism
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
. Death metal vocals are typically bleak, involving guttural "death growl
Death growl
A death growl, also known as death metal vocals, guttural vocals, death grunts, and harsh vocals among other names, is a vocalisation style usually employed by vocalists of the death metal and black metal music genre, but also used in a variety of heavy metal and hardcore punk subgenres.Death...
s," high-pitched screaming
Screaming (music)
Screaming is a vocal technique that is most popular in subgenres of heavy metal, punk and hard rock, including metalcore, deathcore, post-hardcore, groove metal, black metal, and grindcore...
, the "death rasp," and other uncommon techniques. Complementing the deep, aggressive vocal style are downtuned, highly distorted
Distortion (guitar)
Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones. The three principal types of distortion effects are overdrive, distortion and fuzz. Distortion effects are sometimes called “gain” effects, as distorted...
guitars and extremely fast percussion, often with rapid double bass
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
drumming and "wall of sound
Wall of Sound
The Wall of Sound is a music production technique for pop and rock music recordings developed by record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California, during the early 1960s...
"–style blast beats. Frequent tempo and time signature
Time signature
The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
changes and syncopation
Syncopation
In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...
are also typical.
Death metal, like thrash metal, generally rejects the theatrics of earlier metal styles, opting instead for an everyday look of ripped jeans and plain leather jackets. One major exception to this rule was Deicide
Deicide (band)
Deicide is an American death metal band formed in 1987. Their first two albums, Deicide and Legion, are ranked second and third place in best-selling death metal albums of the SoundScan era.-As Amon/Carnage :...
's Glen Benton
Glen Benton
Glen Benton is an American heavy metal musician best known as the vocalist and bassist for the death metal band Deicide, although he prefers not to use the 'death metal' terminology. He is also the studio vocalist for Vital Remains, and has performed live with them on a few occasions...
, who branded an inverted cross on his forehead and wore armor on stage. Morbid Angel
Morbid Angel
Morbid Angel is an American death metal band based in Tampa, Florida. UK music magazine Terrorizer ranked one Morbid Angel album in its “Top 40 greatest death metal albums”, with their 1989 debut Altars of Madness appearing at number 1...
adopted neo-fascist imagery. These two bands, along with Death and Obituary
Obituary (band)
Obituary is an American death metal band formed in 1984 in Tampa, Florida under the name Executioner, then changed the name's spelling to Xecutioner, and later changed their name to Obituary in 1988. The band comprises vocalist John Tardy, drummer Donald Tardy, guitarists Trevor Peres and Ralph...
, were leaders of the major death metal scene that emerged in Florida in the mid-1980s. In the UK, the related style of grindcore
Grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that started in the early- to mid-1980s. It draws inspiration from some of the most abrasive music genres – including death metal, industrial music, noise and the more extreme varieties of hardcore punk....
, led by bands such as Napalm Death
Napalm Death
Napalm Death are a death metal band formed in Birmingham, England in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent for most of the band's ...
and Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror are a British crust punk / grindcore band originally formed in Ipswich, England in 1985. The band are widely considered one of the earliest and most influential European grindcore bands, and particularly the forefathers of the crustgrind subgenre.Notable for one of the...
, emerged out of the anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
movement.
Black metal
Venom (band)
Venom are an English heavy metal band that formed in 1979 in Newcastle upon Tyne. Coming to prominence towards the end of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Venom's first two albums—Welcome to Hell and Black Metal —are considered a major influence on thrash metal and extreme metal in general...
, Denmark's Mercyful Fate
Mercyful Fate
Mercyful Fate was a Danish heavy metal band from Copenhagen. Initially active from 1981 to 1985, they reunited in 1992. The band went on hiatus again in 2000, when frontman King Diamond decided to continue his solo career...
, Switzerland's Hellhammer
Hellhammer
Hellhammer was an influential extreme metal band from Switzerland, active during 1982–1984. They are regarded as being one of the first extreme metal bands and are a key influence on later black metal and death metal bands.-Biography:...
and Celtic Frost
Celtic Frost
Celtic Frost was a metal band from Zürich, Switzerland. They are known for their heavy influence on the extreme metal genres. The group was first active from 1984 to 1993, and re-formed in 2001. Following Tom Gabriel Fischer's departure in 2008, Celtic Frost decided to break up again...
, and Sweden's Bathory
Bathory (band)
Bathory was a Swedish heavy metal band, formed by Quorthon in 1983. They are regarded as pioneers of both black metal and viking metal. Quorthon remained the main songwriter and member of Bathory for more than two decades. Bathory was permanently ended after Quorthon's death in 2004...
. By the late 1980s, Norwegian bands such as Mayhem
Mayhem (band)
Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in 1984 in Oslo, Norway and regarded as one of the pioneers of the influential Norwegian black metal scene...
and Burzum
Burzum
Burzum is a musical project by Varg Vikernes . It began during 1991 in Bergen, Norway and quickly became prominent within the early Norwegian black metal scene...
were heading a second wave. Black metal varies considerably in style and production quality, although most bands emphasize shrieked and growled vocals, highly distorted guitars frequently played with rapid tremolo picking
Tremolo picking
Tremolo picking, also known as alternate picking or double picking, describes the musical technique of picking on a guitar or other string instrument in which a single note is played repeatedly in quick succession. It can be achieved either with the fingers or with a pick...
, a "dark" atmosphere and intentionally lo-fi production, with ambient noise and background hiss. Satanic themes are common in black metal, though many bands take inspiration from ancient paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
, promoting a return to pre-Christian values. Numerous black metal bands also "experiment with sounds from all possible forms of metal, folk, classical music, electronica and avant-garde." Darkthrone
Darkthrone
Darkthrone is a Norwegian black metal band. They formed in 1987 as a death metal band, but after embracing the black metal style in 1991, they became a driving force in the Norwegian black metal scene. For most of this period Darkthrone has consisted of just two musicians, Nocturno Culto and...
drummer Fenriz
Fenriz
Leif Gylve Nagell , better known as Fenriz, is the drummer and lyricist of the Norwegian black metal duo Darkthrone...
explains, "It had something to do with production, lyrics, the way they dressed and a commitment to making ugly, raw, grim stuff. There wasn't a generic sound."
By 1990, Mayhem was regularly wearing corpsepaint; many other black metal acts also adopted the look. Bathory inspired the Viking metal
Viking metal
Viking metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its galloping pace, keyboard-rich anthemic sound, bleakness and dramatic emphasis on lyrical themes of Norse mythology, Norse paganism, and the Viking Age...
and folk metal
Folk metal
Folk metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal music that developed in Europe during the 1990s. As the name suggests, the genre is a fusion of heavy metal with traditional folk music...
movements and Immortal
Immortal (band)
Immortal is a black metal band from Bergen, Norway, founded in 1990 by current frontman/guitarist Abbath Doom Occulta and former guitarist Demonaz Doom Occulta...
brought blast beats to the fore. Some bands in the Scandinavian black metal scene became associated with considerable violence in the early 1990s, with Mayhem and Burzum linked to church burnings. Growing commercial hype around death metal generated a backlash; beginning in Norway, much of the Scandinavian metal underground shifted to support a black metal scene that resisted being co-opted by the commercial metal industry. According to former Gorgoroth
Gorgoroth
Gorgoroth is a Norwegian black metal band based in Bergen. Formed in 1992 by Infernus , the band is named after the dead plateau of evil and darkness in the land of Mordor from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The group is currently signed to Regain Records and have released...
vocalist Gaahl
Gaahl
Kristian Eivind Espedal , better known by his stage name Gaahl, is a Norwegian vocalist, best known as the former frontman of Norwegian black metal band Gorgoroth. He is also the founder and frontman of Trelldom and Gaahlskagg...
, "Black Metal was never meant to reach an audience.... [We] had a common enemy which was, of course, Christianity, socialism and everything that democracy stands for."
By 1992, black metal scenes had begun to emerge in areas outside Scandinavia, including Germany, France, and Poland. The 1993 murder of Mayhem's Euronymous
Euronymous
Øystein Aarseth , who went by the pseudonym Euronymous, was a Norwegian guitarist and co-founder of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem...
by Burzum's Varg Vikernes
Varg Vikernes
Varg Vikernes is a Norwegian black metal musician, writer, philosopher, religious and political activist, arsonist and convicted murderer.Vikernes was born near Bergen, Norway. In 1991, he founded the one-man music project Burzum, which quickly became popular within the early Norwegian black metal...
provoked intensive media coverage. Around 1996, when many in the scene felt the genre was stagnating, several key bands, including Burzum and Finland's Beherit
Beherit (band)
Beherit is a black metal band from Finland. The band was formed in 1989 by Nuclear Holocausto , Black Jesus and Sodomatic Slaughter , with the purpose of performing "the most primitive, savage, hell-obsessed black metal imaginable." "Beherit" is the Syriac word for Satan...
, moved toward an ambient
Dark ambient
Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Although it had its roots in the 1970s, Dark ambient emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable Effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology...
style, while symphonic black metal
Symphonic black metal
Symphonic black metal is a black metal subgenre that emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The genre is known for its symphonic and orchestral elements and is centralized in Europe.-Characteristics:...
was explored by Sweden's Tiamat
Tiamat (band)
-Biography:Initially, the band played straightforward black metal under the name Treblinka. After having recorded the album Sumerian Cry in 1989, vocalist/guitarist Johan Edlund and bassist Jörgen Thullberg parted ways with the other two founding members, and subsequently changed the name to Tiamat...
and Switzerland's Samael
Samael (band)
Samael is a industrial black metal band formed in 1987 in Sion, Switzerland.-Biography:Although much of their music from the mid-1990s onwards has incorporated electronic sounds which would best define their genre as industrial metal, they are an early 2nd Wave black metal band and an innovator for...
. In the late 1990s and early 2000s decade, Norway's Dimmu Borgir
Dimmu Borgir
Dimmu Borgir is a Norwegian black metal band from Oslo, Norway, formed in 1993. Dimmu borgir means "dark cities" or "dark castles/fortresses" in Icelandic, Faroese and Old Norse. The name is derived from a volcanic formation in Iceland, Dimmuborgir...
brought black metal closer to the mainstream, as did Cradle of Filth
Cradle of Filth
Cradle of Filth are an English extreme metal band, formed in Suffolk in 1991. The band's musical style evolved from black metal to a cleaner and more "produced" amalgam of gothic metal, symphonic black metal, and other extreme metal styles, while their lyrical themes and imagery are heavily...
, which Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer is a monthly heavy metal music magazine published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing, and in several other countries by different publishers. Metal Hammer articles feature both mainstream bands and more unusual acts from the whole spectrum of heavy metal music...
calls England's most successful metal band since Iron Maiden.
Power metal
During the late 1980s, the power metal scene came together largely in reaction to the harshness of death and black metal. Though a relatively underground style in North America, it enjoys wide popularity in Europe, Japan, and South America. Power metal focuses on upbeat, epic melodies and themes that "appeal to the listener's sense of valor and loveliness." The prototype for the sound was established in the mid-to-late 1980s by Germany's HelloweenHelloween
Helloween is a German power metal band founded in the mid 1980s by members of Iron Fist and Powerfool. The band was a pioneering force in the European Power Metal movement and their second and third studio albums, Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt...
, which combined the power riffs, melodic approach, and high-pitched, "clean" singing style of bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden with thrash's speed and energy, "crystalliz[ing] the sonic ingredients of what is now known as power metal."
Traditional power metal bands like Sweden's HammerFall
HammerFall
HammerFall is a power metal band from Gothenburg, Sweden. The band was formed in 1993 by ex-Ceremonial Oath guitarist Oscar Dronjak.- Early days :...
, England's DragonForce
DragonForce
DragonForce are an English power metal band from London. Formed in 1999, the group is known for its long and fast guitar solos, fantasy-based lyrics, and electronic sounds in their music to add to their retro video game-influenced sound. Guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman are the only two...
, and Florida's Iced Earth
Iced Earth
Iced Earth is an American heavy metal band from Tampa, Florida. Originally formed under the name "Purgatory" in 1984, Iced Earth has released a total of ten studio albums, one live album, three EP's, two compilations and boxsets...
have a sound clearly indebted to the classic NWOBHM style. Many power metal bands such as Florida's Kamelot
Kamelot
Kamelot is an American symphonic power metal band from Tampa, Florida. The band was formed by Thomas Youngblood and Richard Warner in 1991. Norwegian vocalist Roy Khan joined for the album Siége Perilous, and shared song-writing duties with Youngblood until his departure in April 2011.As of 2010,...
, Finland's Nightwish
Nightwish
Nightwish is a Finnish symphonic metal band from Kitee, Finland. Formed in 1996 by songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen, and former vocalist Tarja Turunen, Nightwish's current line-up has five members, although Tarja has been replaced by Anette Olzon and the...
, Italy's Rhapsody of Fire
Rhapsody of Fire
Rhapsody of Fire is an Italian symphonic power metal band led by Alex Staropoli. Since forming in 1993, the band has released eight studio albums, one live album, two EPs, and a live DVD...
, and Russia's Catharsis
Catharsis (Russian band)
Catharsis is a Russian symphonic power metal band founded in 1996.-Biography:The band was founded in Moscow in 1996 by guitarist Igor Polakov and vocalist Sergey Bendrikov. In its demo albums the band played a kind of death doom metal, but since their second album, "Febris Erotica", they turned to...
feature a keyboard-based "symphonic" sound, sometimes employing orchestras and opera singers. Power metal has built a strong fanbase in Japan and South America, where bands like Brazil's Angra
Angra (band)
Angra is a Brazilian metal band from São Paulo, Brazil known for its symphonic interludes, highly technical instrumental playing and Brazilian regional elements.- Biography :...
and Argentina's Rata Blanca
Rata Blanca
Rata Blanca is a heavy metal band from Argentina formed in the 1980s.-Biography:The band was founded by Walter Giardino after he left V8. Rata Blanca played together for about two years before their debut on August 15, 1987 in the theater "Luz y Fuerza" in Buenos Aires...
are popular.
Closely related to power metal is progressive metal
Progressive metal
Progressive metal is a subgenre of heavy metal originating in the United Kingdom and North America in the late 1980s...
, which adopts the complex compositional approach of bands like Rush
Rush (band)
Rush is a Canadian rock band formed in August 1968, in the Willowdale neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario. The band is composed of bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart...
and King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
. This style emerged in the United States in the early and mid-1980s, with innovators such as Queensrÿche
Queensrÿche
thumb|250px|right|Queensrÿche's classic line-up performing at the [[Sauna Open Air Metal Festival]] 2011 in [[Tampere]], [[Finland]]. Left to right: bass Eddie Jackson, lead vocals Geoff Tate, drums Scott Rockenfield and guitars Michael Wilton....
, Fates Warning
Fates Warning
Fates Warning is an American progressive metal band, formed in 1982 by vocalist John Arch, guitarists Jim Matheos and Victor Arduini, bassist Joe DiBiase, and drummer Steve Zimmerman in Hartford, Connecticut. Fates Warning has experienced numerous line-up changes...
, and Dream Theater
Dream Theater
Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to further concentrate on the band that would...
. The mix of the progressive and power metal sounds is typified by New Jersey's Symphony X
Symphony X
Symphony X is an American progressive metal band from Middletown, New Jersey.Founded in 1994 by guitarist Michael Romeo, their albums The Divine Wings of Tragedy and V: The New Mythology Suite have given the band considerable attention within the progressive metal community...
, whose guitarist Michael Romeo
Michael Romeo
Since 2005, Romeo has taken advantage of a new custom model, Caparison Dellinger II - Michael Romeo Custom, which he used to record the Symphony X album Paradise Lost...
is among the most recognized of latter-day shredders.
Doom and gothic metal
Emerging in the mid-1980s with such bands as California's Saint VitusSaint Vitus (band)
Saint Vitus is an American doom metal band from Los Angeles, formed in 1978. They consist of founding members Dave Chandler and Mark Adams , alongside sporadic singer Scott Weinrich and recently added drummer Henry Vasquez...
, Maryland's The Obsessed
The Obsessed
The Obsessed is a doom metal band from Maryland led by Scott "Wino" Weinrich, who also fronted Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan, Place of Skulls, The Hidden Hand and W.I.N.O.. Formed in 1976, they first split up in 1986 when Wino Saint Vitus, but reformed four years later...
, Chicago's Trouble
Trouble (band)
Trouble is an American doom metal band noted as one of the pioneers of their genre, alongside bands such as Candlemass and Saint Vitus. The band created a distinct style taking influences of the British heavy metal bands Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and psychedelic rock of the 1970s...
, and Sweden's Candlemass
Candlemass
Candlemass are an influential Swedish doom metal band established in 1984 by Leif Edling , their leader and songwriter. The band is originally from Stockholm. After releasing five full-length albums and touring extensively throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Candlemass disbanded in 1994, but...
, the doom metal movement rejected other metal styles' emphasis on speed, slowing its music to a crawl. Doom metal traces its roots to the lyrical themes and musical approach of early Black Sabbath. The Melvins have also been a significant influence on doom metal and a number of its subgenres. Doom emphasizes melody, melancholy tempos, and a sepulchral mood relative to many other varieties of metal.
The 1991 release of Forest of Equilibrium
Forest of Equilibrium
Forest of Equilibrium is the debut album of the British doom metal band Cathedral. It was released in 1991 on Earache Records. It is considered a classic of its genre...
, the debut album by UK band Cathedral
Cathedral (band)
Cathedral are a doom metal band from Coventry, England. The group forged a link between early doom metal and a 1990s extreme metal aesthetic, making doom slower and heavier. Their debut album, Forest of Equilibrium, is considered a classic of the genre. They later on changed their doom style,...
, helped spark a new wave of doom metal. During the same period, the doom-death fusion style of British bands Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost (band)
Paradise Lost are a heavy metal band that formed in 1988 in Halifax, England.-History:Their first three full-length albums are examples of the death/doom style, although the latter two incorporated some melodic and gothic elements...
, My Dying Bride
My Dying Bride
My Dying Bride are an English doom metal band formed in 1990. To date, My Dying Bride have released eleven full-length studio albums, three EPs, one demo, one box set, four compilation albums, one live album, and one live CD/DVD release. The band released their tenth studio album, For Lies I Sire,...
, and Anathema
Anathema (band)
Anathema are an English band from Liverpool primarily known for their ever evolving sound. Beginning as pioneers of the death/doom metal sub-genre, their later albums have been associated with genres such as alternative rock, progressive rock, art rock, new prog, and post-rock.-History:Anathema...
gave rise to European gothic metal, with its signature dual-vocalist arrangements, exemplified by Norway's Theatre of Tragedy
Theatre of Tragedy
Theatre of Tragedy was a Norwegian band from Stavanger, active between 1993 and 2010. They are best known for their earlier albums, which provided a great deal of influence to the gothic metal genre.-Biography:...
and Tristania
Tristania (band)
Tristania is a band from Norway, formed in 1996 by Morten Veland, Einar Moen and Kenneth Olsson. Tristania's music is usually classified as symphonic gothic metal with doom/death metal influences , due to its strong ties with the goth metal's history...
. New York's Type O Negative
Type O Negative
Type O Negative was a gothic metal band from Brooklyn, New York City. The band also incorporated elements of doom metal and thrash metal. Their dramatic lyrical emphasis on themes of romance, depression, and death resulted in the nickname "The Drab Four"...
introduced an American take on the style.
In the United States, sludge metal
Sludge metal
Sludge metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that melds elements of doom metal and hardcore punk, and sometimes incorporates influences from southern rock, stoner rock and grunge. Sludge metal is typically abrasive; often featuring shouted vocals, heavily distorted instruments and sharply contrasting...
, mixing doom and hardcore, emerged in the late 1980s—Eyehategod
Eyehategod
Eyehategod is an American sludge metal band from New Orleans who formed in 1988. They have become one of the most well known bands to emerge from the NOLA metal scene...
and Crowbar were leaders in a major Louisiana sludge scene. Early in the next decade, California's Kyuss
Kyuss
Kyuss is a rock band, originally from Palm Desert, California. After forming in the late 1980s and releasing an EP under the name Sons of Kyuss in 1990, the band shortened its name to Kyuss. Over the next five years the band released four full-length albums, and one last split EP in 1997 with...
and Sleep
Sleep (band)
Sleep is a stoner doom metal band from San Jose, California. Active during the 1990s, Sleep earned critical and record label attention early in their career. Critic Eduardo Rivadavia describes them as "perhaps the ultimate stoner rock band" and notes they exerted a strong influence on heavy metal...
, inspired by the earlier doom metal bands, spearheaded the rise of stoner metal, while Seattle's Earth
Earth (band)
Earth is an American musical group based in Seattle, Washington, formed in 1989 and led by guitarist Dylan Carlson.Earth's music is nearly all instrumental, and can be divided into two distinct stages...
helped develop the drone metal
Drone metal
Drone metal is a style of heavy metal that melds the slow tempos and heaviness of doom metal with the long-duration tones of drone music...
subgenre. The late 1990s saw new bands form such as the Los Angeles–based Goatsnake
Goatsnake
-Biography:Goatsnake was formed in 1996 after the disbanding of The Obsessed. After The Obsessed's disbanding, the rhythm section consisting of Guy Pinhas on bass and Greg Rogers on drums began jamming with guitarist Greg Anderson )))...
, with a classic stoner/doom sound, and Sunn O)))
Sunn O)))
Sunn O))) is an American doom metal band known for its synthesis of diverse genres including drone, ambient, noise, and black metal. Supported by a varying cast of collaborators, the band has two core members: Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson .-History:Sunn O))) is named after the Sunn...
, which crosses lines between doom, drone, and dark ambient
Dark ambient
Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Although it had its roots in the 1970s, Dark ambient emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable Effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology...
metal—the New York Times has compared their sound to an "Indian raga in the middle of an earthquake".
New fusions: 1990s and early 2000s
The era of metal's mainstream dominance in North America came to an end in the early 1990s with the emergence of NirvanaNirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
and other grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
bands, signaling the popular breakthrough of alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
. Grunge acts were influenced by the heavy metal sound, but rejected the excesses of the more popular metal bands, such as their "flashy and virtuosic solos" and "appearance-driven" MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
orientation.
Glam metal fell out of favor due not only to the success of grunge, but also because of the growing popularity of the more aggressive sound typified by Metallica and the post-thrash groove metal
Groove metal
Groove metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It was often used to describe Pantera and Exhorder.- Characteristics and origins :Pantera's Cowboys from Hell album from 1990 was described as "groundbreaking" and "blueprint-defining" for the groove metal genre...
of Pantera
Pantera
Pantera was an American heavy metal band from Arlington, Texas. Formed by the Abbott brothers, Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell in 1981, bassist Rex Brown would join in late 1981 with vocalist Terry Glaze. Looking for a new and heavier sound, Pantera had Terry replaced in 1987 with Phil Anselmo as...
and White Zombie
White Zombie
White Zombie was a Grammy Award-nominated American heavy metal band. Based in New York City, White Zombie was originally a noise rock band. White Zombie are better-known for their later heavy metal-oriented sound...
. A few new, unambiguously metal bands had commercial success during the first half of the decade—Pantera's Far Beyond Driven
Far Beyond Driven
Far Beyond Driven is the seventh album by American groove metal band Pantera. It was released on March 22, 1994 through East West Records. Upon its release, it debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200...
topped the Billboard chart in 1994—but, "In the dull eyes of the mainstream, metal was dead." Some bands tried to adapt to the new musical landscape. Metallica revamped its image: the band members cut their hair and, in 1996, headlined the alternative musical festival Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza is an annual music festival featuring popular alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock and hip hop bands, dance and comedy performances, and craft booths. It has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups. The music festival hosts more than 160,000 people over a...
founded by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell
Perry Farrell
Perry Farrell is the frontman for the alternative rock band Jane's Addiction. Farrell created the touring festival Lollapalooza as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction in 1991; it has since evolved into an annual destination festival. Farrell continues to produce Lollapalooza with partners William...
. While this prompted a backlash among some long-time fans, Metallica remained one of the most successful bands in the world into the new century.
Like Jane's Addiction, many of the most popular early 1990s groups with roots in heavy metal fall under the umbrella term "alternative metal." Bands in Seattle's grunge scene such as Soundgarden
Soundgarden
Soundgarden is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington in 1984 by singer Chris Cornell, lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto...
, credited as making a "place for heavy metal in alternative rock", and Alice in Chains
Alice in Chains
Alice in Chains is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1987 by guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell and original lead vocalist Layne Staley. The initial lineup was rounded out by drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Starr...
were at the center of the alternative metal movement. The label was applied to a wide spectrum of other acts that fused metal with different styles: Faith No More
Faith No More
Faith No More is an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed originally as Faith No Man in 1981 by bassist Billy Gould, keyboardist Wade Worthington, vocalist Michael Morris and drummer Mike Bordin. A year later when Worthington was replaced by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, and Mike...
combined their alternative rock sound with punk, funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, metal, and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
; Primus
Primus (band)
Primus is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, currently composed of bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane. Primus originally formed in 1984 with Claypool and guitarist Todd Huth, later joined by Lane, though the latter two departed...
joined elements of funk, punk, thrash metal
Thrash metal
Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is characterized usually by its fast tempo and aggression. Songs of the genre typically use fast percussive and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead work...
, and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
; Tool
Tool (band)
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...
mixed metal and progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
; bands such as Fear Factory
Fear Factory
Fear Factory is an American industrial metal band. Formed in 1989, they have released seven full-length albums and a number of singles and remixes. Over the course of their career they have evolved from a succession of styles, as well as steadily pioneered a combination of the styles death metal,...
and Ministry
Ministry (band)
Ministry is an American industrial metal band founded by lead singer Al Jourgensen in 1981. Originally a synthpop outfit, Ministry changed its style to industrial metal in the late 1980s. Ministry found mainstream success in the early 1990s with its most successful album Psalm 69: The Way to...
and Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
began incorporating metal into their industrial sound
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, and vice versa, respectively; and Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson (band)
Marilyn Manson is an American metal band from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Formed in 1989 by Brian Warner and Scott Putesky, the group was originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids with their uniquely theatrical performances gathering a local cult following in the early '90s. This attention...
went down a similar route, while also employing shock effects of the sort popularized by Alice Cooper. Alternative metal artists, though they did not represent a cohesive scene, were united by their willingness to experiment with the metal genre and their rejection of glam metal aesthetics (with the stagecraft of Marilyn Manson and White Zombie—also identified with alt-metal—significant, if partial, exceptions). Alternative metal's mix of styles and sounds represented "the colorful results of metal opening up to face the outside world."
In the mid- and late 1990s came a new wave of U.S. metal groups inspired by the alternative metal bands and their mix of genres. Dubbed "nu metal", bands such as Slipknot
Slipknot (band)
Slipknot is an American heavy metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. Formed in 1995, the group was founded by percussionist Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray...
, Linkin Park
Linkin Park
Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. Formed in 1996, the band rose to international fame with their debut album, Hybrid Theory, which was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005 and multi-platinum in several other countries...
, Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 1995, the group's lineup consists of Fred Durst , Wes Borland , Sam Rivers , John Otto and DJ Lethal . The band achieved mainstream success with their second studio album Significant Other, released in 1999...
, Papa Roach
Papa Roach
Papa Roach is an American rock band from Vacaville, California. Their first major-label release was the triple-platinum album Infest . The group's success continued with their gold album Lovehatetragedy , their platinum album Getting Away with Murder , The Paramour Sessions , and Metamorphosis...
, P.O.D.
P.O.D.
Payable on Death is an American Christian metal band formed in 1992. The band's line-up consists of vocalist Sonny Sandoval, drummer Wuv Bernardo, guitarist Marcos Curiel, and bassist Traa Daniels. Their Christian faith is an important part of their music.They have released seven studio albums and...
, Korn
Korn
Korn is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993. The current band line up includes four members: Jonathan Davis, James "Munky" Shaffer, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, and Ray Luzier. The band was formed as an expansion of L.A.P.D.The band released their first demo album,...
and Disturbed incorporated elements ranging from death metal to hip hop, often including DJs and rap
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
-style vocals. The mix demonstrated that "pancultural metal could pay off." Nu metal gained mainstream success through heavy MTV rotation and Ozzy Osbourne's 1996 introduction of Ozzfest
Ozzfest
Ozzfest is an annual festival tour of the United States featuring performances by many heavy metal and hard rock musical groups. It was founded by Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon Osbourne, both of whom also organize each yearly tour with their son Jack Osbourne...
, which led the media to talk of a resurgence of heavy metal. In 1999, Billboard noted that there were more than 500 specialty metal radio shows in the U.S., nearly three times as many as ten years before. While nu metal was widely popular, traditional metal fans did not fully embrace the style. By early 2003, the movement's popularity was on the wane, though several nu metal acts such as System Of A Down
System of a Down
System of a Down, also known by the acronym SOAD and often shortened to System, is a rock band from Southern California. The band was formed in 1994. It consists of Serj Tankian , Daron Malakian , Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan...
retained substantial followings.
Recent trends: mid–late 2000s
Metal remained popular in the 2000s, particularly in continental Europe. By the new millennium Scandinavia had emerged as one of the areas producing innovative and successful bands, while Belgium, Holland and especially Germany were the most significant markets. Established continental metal bands that placed multiple albums in the top 20 of the German charts between 2003 and 2008, including Finnish band Children of BodomChildren of Bodom
Children of Bodom is a Finnish heavy metal band from Espoo. Formed in 1993, the group currently consists of Alexi Laiho , Roope Latvala , Janne Wirman , Henkka Seppälä , and Jaska Raatikainen...
, Norwegian act Dimmu Borgir, Germany's Blind Guardian
Blind Guardian
Blind Guardian is a German power metal band formed in the mid-1980s in Krefeld, West Germany. They are often credited as one of the seminal and most influential bands in the power metal and speed metal subgenres...
and Sweden's HammerFall.
Metalcore
Metalcore
Metalcore is a subgenre of heavy metal combining various elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk. The name is a portmanteau of the names of the two genres. The term took on its current meaning in the mid-1990s, describing bands such as Earth Crisis, Deadguy and Integrity...
, an originally American hybrid of thrash metal and hardcore punk
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
, emerged as a commercial force in the mid-2000s decade. It is rooted in the crossover thrash
Crossover thrash
__FORCETOC__Crossover thrash, often abbreviated to crossover, is a form of thrash metal that contains more hardcore punk elements than standard thrash. The genre lies on a continuum between heavy metal and punk rock...
style developed two decades earlier by bands such as Suicidal Tendencies
Suicidal Tendencies
Suicidal Tendencies is a U.S. crossover thrash band founded in 1981 in Venice, Los Angeles, California by Mike Muir, its leader and only permanent member. The band is sometimes credited as one of "the fathers of crossover thrash"...
, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles is a thrash metal/crossover thrash band from the United States that formed in Houston, in 1982. The band currently comprises founding members, vocalist Kurt Brecht and guitarist Spike Cassidy, as well as drummer Rob Rampy and bassist Harald Oimoen.D.R.I...
, and Stormtroopers of Death
Stormtroopers of Death
Stormtroopers of Death, better known as S.O.D., was a crossover thrash band formed in New York in 1985. They are commonly credited as being among the first bands to fuse hardcore punk with thrash metal into a style sometimes called "crossover thrash." The song "March of the S.O.D.," from their 1985...
. Through the 1990s, metalcore was mostly an underground phenomenon. By 2004, melodic metalcore—influenced as well by melodic death metal
Melodic death metal
Melodic death metal is a heavy metal music style that combines elements from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with elements of death metal. The style was developed during the early and mid-1990s, primarily in England and Scandinavia...
—was popular enough that Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage is an American metalcore band from Westfield, Massachusetts, formed in 1999 after the disbandment of Overcast and Aftershock. Killswitch Engage's current lineup consists of vocalist Howard Jones, bassist Mike D'Antonio, guitarists Joel Stroetzel and Adam Dutkiewicz, and drummer...
's The End of Heartache
The End of Heartache
The End of Heartache is the third studio album by American metalcore band Killswitch Engage. It was released on May 11, 2004 through Roadrunner Records. It is the first album to feature lead vocalist Howard Jones from the mathcore band Blood Has Been Shed after Jesse Leach's departure from the band...
and Shadows Fall
Shadows Fall
Shadows Fall is an American heavy metal band from Springfield, Massachusetts, formed in 1995. They are one of the few contemporary metal bands who take their lyrical influence from Eastern philosophy and some references to the Rastafari culture...
's The War Within
The War Within (album)
This article is about the album. For other uses, see 'The War Within .-Limited edition bonus DVD:#"Stepping Outside the Circle" #"Of One Blood"...
debuted at numbers 21 and 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart.
Bullet for My Valentine
Bullet for My Valentine
Bullet for My Valentine are a Welsh heavy metal band from Bridgend, formed in 1998. The band is composed of Matt Tuck , Michael Paget , Jason James , and Michael Thomas . They were formed under the name Jeff Killed John and started their music career by covering songs by Metallica and Nirvana...
of Wales' 3rd studio album Fever
Fever (Bullet for My Valentine album)
Fever is the third studio album by Welsh heavy metal band, Bullet for My Valentine. Containing eleven tracks, the album was released on 26 and 27 April 2010 in the UK and in the US, respectively. The album sold 71,000 copies in the US and 21,965 in the UK in its first week of release to debut at...
debuted at position number 3 on The Billboard 200 and number 1 on Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
's Rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
and Alternative
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
charts, making it the band's most successful record to date. In recent years, metalcore bands have received prominent slots at Ozzfest and the Download Festival
Download Festival
The Download Festival is a three day rock music festival held annually at Donington Park, England . It usually takes place in June...
. Lamb Of God
Lamb of God (band)
Lamb of God is an American heavy metal band from Richmond, Virginia. Formed in 1994, the group consists of vocalist Randy Blythe, guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler, bassist John Campbell, and drummer Chris Adler...
, a groove metal band, hit the Billboard top 10 in 2006 with Sacrament
Sacrament (album)
Sacrament is the Grammy Award nominated fifth studio album from the American groove metal band Lamb of God. Released on August 22, 2006, Sacrament debuted at #8 on the Billboard 200 charts with first-week sales of 63,000....
. The success of these bands and others such as Trivium
Trivium (band)
Trivium is an American heavy metal band from Orlando, Florida, formed in 1999. Signed to Roadrunner Records, the band has released five studio albums, eleven singles, and twelve music videos...
, which has released both metalcore and straight-ahead thrash albums, and Mastodon
Mastodon (band)
Mastodon is an American heavy metal band from Atlanta, Georgia, formed in 1999. The band is composed of bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders, guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds, guitarist Bill Kelliher and drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor...
, which plays in a progressive/sludge style, has inspired claims of a metal revival in the United States, dubbed by some critics the "New Wave of American Heavy Metal
New Wave of American Heavy Metal
The New Wave of American Heavy Metal is a movement in that originated in the United States during the early to mid 1990s and has expanded most in the recent 2000s. Some of the bands considered part of the movement had formed as early as the late 1980s, but did not become influential or reach...
".
The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as Australia's Wolfmother
Wolfmother
Wolfmother is an Australian rock band from Erskineville, Sydney. Formed in 2000, the group was originally a trio composed of vocalist and guitarist Andrew Stockdale, bassist and keyboardist Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett. Wolfmother released their self-titled debut album in October 2005,...
and Airbourne
Airbourne (band)
Airbourne are an Australian hard rock band formed in Warrnambool in 2001. Mainstay members are Joel O'Keeffe on lead vocals and lead guitar, his brother, Ryan O'Keeffe on drums, and David Roads on rhythm guitar and backing vocals. They were later joined by Justin Street on bass guitar and backing...
. Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut album
Wolfmother (album)
Wolfmother is the debut studio album by Australian rock band Wolfmother, originally released on 31 October 2005 in Australia. The album was later released internationally at various dates in 2006, with the addition of "Love Train" and a rearranged track listing...
had "Deep Purple-ish organs," "Jimmy Page-worthy chordal riffing," and lead singer Andrew Stockdale
Andrew Stockdale
Andrew James Stockdale is an Australian hard rock musician, he is the lead singer, lead guitarist and the only mainstay member of the rock band, Wolfmother which formed in 2000. In 2007, alongside his Wolfmother band mates, he won 'Songwriter of the Year' at the APRA Awards...
howling "notes that Robert Plant can't reach anymore." "Woman
Woman (Wolfmother song)
"Woman" is a song by Australian hard rock band Wolfmother, featured on their 2005 debut studio album Wolfmother. It was released as the band's fourth single in Australia on 17 June 2006, and later in the United Kingdom on 17 July...
", a track from the album, won for Best Hard Rock Performance
Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance
The Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance was an award presented to recording artists at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, for works containing quality performances in the hard rock music genre...
at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Slayer's "Eyes of the Insane
Eyes of the Insane
"Eyes of the Insane" is a 2006 single by American thrash metal band Slayer, taken from their 2006 album Christ Illusion. The lyrics explore an American soldier's mental anguish following his return home from the second Gulf War, and is based on an article entitled "Casualty of War" which was...
" won for Best Metal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance
The Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance was an award presented at the Grammy Awards to recording artists for works containing quality performances in the heavy metal music genre...
in 2007; their "Final Six" won the same award in 2008. Metallica took the honor in 2009 for "My Apocalypse
My Apocalypse
"My Apocalypse" is the forty-first single by American heavy metal band Metallica, and the second from their ninth studio album, Death Magnetic. On August 26, 2008, it was made available for streaming on the band's official website, as well as a download from the Death Magnetic website Mission:...
". Other recent developments in the world of metal have been the resurgence of the thrash metal scene, and the recent emergence of the 'djent' scene.
See also
- Heavy metal subgenresHeavy metal subgenresA number of heavy metal genres have developed since the emergence of heavy metal during the late 1960s and early 1970s. At times heavy metal genres may overlap or are difficult to distinguish, but they can be identified by a number of traits...
- List of heavy metal bands
- List of heavy metal festivals
- Timeline of heavy metal musicTimeline of heavy metal musicThis is a timeline of heavy metal or hard rock, from its beginnings in the late 1950s to the present time.-Newly formed bands:*Blue Cheer*Cream*The Jimi Hendrix Experience*James Gang*Ten Years After*Vanilla Fudge-Newly formed bands:*Blue Öyster Cult...
- MasculinityMasculinityMasculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
External links
- [ Allmusic] entry for heavy metal