Guide to Metal

Metal has a wide and geographically diverse following. Dedicated metal enthusiasts can be found sipping date shakes in Los Angeles, reliving the 80’s in underground grottos in Prague and sharpening their swords and pick axes in the white mountains of Norway. Metal can sound like cars crashing, a deranged opera singer or the shortest and most poignant temper tantrum ever thrown by a three year old.

In the beginning…

Metal effectively joined the ranks of popular music with Ozzy Osbourne and his seminal band, Black Sabbath’s eponymous LP release in 1970. Named after a Boris Karloff, “Dracula” movie of the 1930’s, Black Sabbath penned songs and created stage shows with horror movies as inspiration. Their second LP, Paranoid, shot them to international success and brought them the requisite batch of scandal (i.e. Ozzy biting the head off a chicken and/or bat) and wacko fans (the Church of Satan bolstered up the fan base in California). After the release of Never Say Die in 1978, Ozzy left the band to begin a successful career as a solo artist. Thirty years after they first came together, Black Sabbath reformed to release a Grammy award winning album, Reunion, and play a world tour.

Speed Metal

Speed metal sounds exactly like it is written. More melodic and played at an almost frightening pace, speed metal sprung from the metal loins and gave to the world what is considered the archetype speed metal band, Judas Priest. Creating the two-man rhythm guitar section where both musicians play the same arrangement and putting melodic solos within fast and brutal riffs guaranteed them a founders credit in the heavy metal music genre. Other bands to get your head around are Motorhead, Helloween, and Venom.

Thrash Metal

The angsty teenager of the lot, thrash metal is the harbinger of speed and death metal so combines many elements of the other metal genres. Borrowing hardcore’s brash attitude and combining it with the riffs and melody of traditional metal and the quick tempo that would come to define speed metal, thrash metal is an all in one headbanger’s ball. The renowned Big Four of Thrash, Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeath, and Metallica made thrash one of the more commercially successful metal genres.

Death Metal

Death metal is the most physically demanding of the metal genre. Characterised by rough sounding vocals or grunts, fast and distorted guitar riffs and quick kicks on the double bass drum, this subgenre evolved from thrash metal and speed metal in the 1980s. In fact stylistically there is not many musical differences between death metal and any of the other three; the main difference is in the mood and lyrics of the songs. Death metal songs tend to draw their inspiration from morbid subjects, like death (doh!) and combined with the growling vocals and heavy guitar create sounds scary enough to keep Jehovah’s Witnesses from ever knocking on your door again. Major bands in the genre are Death, Cannibal Corpse, Mortician and Entombed.

Black Metal

Making their homes in the arctic wilderness of Norway and Sweden, Black metal bands can be spotted by their striking resemblance to Viking warriors and preference for doing battles in the snow. In fact Norwegian bands like Øystein Aarseth, are credited with founding the genre or at least laying its framework. Black metal is typically blasphemous and contains violent imagery in its lyrics, not unlike death metal. Songs are highly repetitive and feature screaching vocals. When the genre first broke out in the 1980s bands would wear black and white corpse paint, furthering the anti-Christian or Satanic message of the scene. A lot of the violence associated with the genre has now gone with bands in former Soviet countries taking up where the Norse flag was droppped. Bands to look up (if you dare): Immortal, Cradle of Filth and Mort