Heavy metal music

Heavy metal (sometimes referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music that developed between 1969 and 1974. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterised by the use of highly-amplified distortion and fast guitar solos. Allmusic declares, "Of all rock & roll's myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality."

Throughout its history heavy metal has had a large world-wide following of fans known by terms such as "metalheads" and "headbangers". Early heavy metal bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were popular but critically reviled at the time, a trend that has been present throughout the history of metal. As the original wave of heavy metal bands began to wane, the late 1970s brought the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which stripped away much of the music's blues influence instead fusing it with punk rock innovations and some of its aesthetic. Heavy metal became extremely popular in the 1980s, at which time many of the now existing subgenres first evolved. Some subgenres, often more aggressive and extreme than metal music of the past, were often restricted to underground audiences, but some like glam metal and to a lesser extent thrash metal were able to gain mainstream commercial success. In recent years subgenres like nu metal have broadened the scope of what is considered heavy metal while much of the metal music of the past is being critically reevaluated.

Read More

Characteristics

Heavy metal is typically characterized by a guitar-and-drum-dominated sound, strong rhythms and classical, bluesy or symphonic styles. However, heavy metal sub-genres have their own stylistic variations on the original form that often omit or alter many of these characteristics. There is a very wide variety of sounds and styles within the genre of Metal.

The most commonly used line-up for a metal band is a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, and a singer (who may or may not be an instrumentalist). Keyboards were popular with early metal bands (especially the organ and occasionally the mellotron), but were gradually used less and less frequently. Today they are used by some styles (prog metal, later black metal) and shunned by others, though as different subgenres develop they have begun to become more popular. The guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification, however, is the key element in heavy metal music. Distortion of the guitar sound is used to create a more powerful, "heavy'" sound. Later, more intricate solos and riffs became a big part of heavy metal music. Guitarists use sweep-picking, tapping and other advanced techniques for rapid playing, and many sub-genres praise virtuosity over simplicity. Also, as technology has developed, new ways of altering the guitar's sound have been adopted.

In the early part of the 1970s, bands with two lead guitarists began to emerge. Wishbone Ash, The Allman Brothers Band, Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, Priormind and Judas Priest all made notable use of dual leads and harmonies. Many bands, such as Iron Maiden, would follow this pattern of having two guitarists share the role of both lead and rhythm guitar.

Metal vocals vary widely in style. Vocalists' abilities and styles range from the multi-octave theatrical vocals of Judas Priest's Rob Halford and Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, to the intentionally gruff vocals of Metallica's James Hetfield and Lemmy from Motörhead .

In terms of the live sound, volume is often considered as important as anything. Following the lead set by Jimi Hendrix and The Who (who once held the distinction of "The World's Loudest Band" in the Guinness Book Of World Records), early heavy metal bands set new benchmarks for sound volume during shows. Tony Iommi, guitarist in heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath, is just one of the early Heavy Metal musicians to suffer considerable hearing loss due to their live volume. Detroit rocker Ted Nugent and guitarist Pete Townshend of The Who are nearly deaf. (Some guitar stores even sell earplugs.) Heavy metal's volume fixation was mocked in the rockumentary spoof This Is Spinal Tap by guitarist "Nigel Tufnel", who revealed that his Marshall amplifiers had been modified to "go up to eleven."

Read More

Themes

Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, pioneering heavy metal bands often included outlandish and fantasy-inspired lyrics, giving them an escapist quality. Iron Maiden frequently based songs on mythology, fiction and poetry, like in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (based on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem of the same name), or the majority of their 1982 release Piece of Mind. Other examples include Black Sabbath's "Fairies Wear Boots" and "The Wizard," Megadeth's "The Conjuring" and "Five Magics," and Judas Priest's "Dreamer Deceiver."

As the genre developed, thematic content was among the things that helped define various subgenres of heavy metal. Popular Glam metal bands of the 1980s like Motley Crue or Twisted Sister had lyrical content revolving around themes of teenage life and social issues. At the same time, other artists were revolving their themes around war, nuclear annihilation, environmental issues, and political or religious propaganda, like Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", Ozzy Osbourne's "Killer of Giants", Metallica's ...And Justice for All, Iron Maiden's" 2 Minutes to Midnight", Accept's "Balls to the Wall" and Rage Against the Machine's entire catalog. Death is also a predominant theme in heavy metal, featuring in the lyrical content of artists such as Black Sabbath, Metallica, W.A.S.P.

The themes of darkness, evil, power and apocalypse are language components for addressing the reality of life's problems. In reaction to the "peace and love" hippie culture of the 1960s, heavy metal developed as a counterculture, where light is supplanted by darkness and the happy ending of pop is replaced by the naked reality that things do not always work out in this world. This dark thematic content is a target of critics, whom accuse the genre of glorifying negative aspects of reality.

As with much popular music, visuals and images are part of heavy metal. Album covers and stage shows are as much a part of the presentation of the material as the music itself, though seldom exceeding the music in priority. A heavy metal band's "image" is associated with the thematic content of their lyrics, and is expressed in the artwork on the album, the set of the stage, the tone of the lyrics, and the clothes of the band, in addition to the sound of the music.

Heavy metal musicians have often tried to associate lyrics and themes that match with the connotative and suggestive atmospheres conveyed by music. Progressive rock bands such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes had already explored this dynamic before heavy metal evolved. As heavy metal uses apocalyptic themes and images of power and darkness, the ability to successfully translate verbal ideas into music is often seen as critical to its authenticity and credibility. An example of this is the album Powerslave by Iron Maiden. The cover is of a dramatic Egyptian scene and many of the songs on the album have subject matter requiring a sound suggestive of life and death, including a song entitled "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," based on the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris has cited progressive rock bands[17] such as Rush and Yes as influences, and it should be noted that the 1977 Rush album A Farewell to Kings features the eleven-minute "Xanadu," also inspired by Coleridge and pre-dating the Iron Maiden composition by several years.

Read More