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Traditional | Thrash | Doom
| Death | Black | Stoner
| Progressive | NWOBHM | Christian
While many bands belong to one subgenre or another, a place for bands that play good old fashioned heavy metal is needed as well, and that's what we're calling traditional metal. Sometimes called power metal, and sometimes called "true" metal, these bands range from legends such as judas priest to 80's greats such as metal church and savatage to the multitude of helloween / hammerfall - influenced bands currently making the rounds in Europe.
Thrash metal is generally characterized by a fast pace, a staccato, chunky guitar riffing style, and aggressive vocals. metallica's Kill 'Em All, released in 1983, is arguably the first true thrash album, with healthy thrash scenes sprouting in the USA, Germany, and elsewhere by the late eighties. By the early nineties the genre was a bit oversaturated, and in later years fewer bands played the style, but it's still a viable style today, with veteran bands such as overkill, testament, and destruction, among others, still producing quality thrash albums.
While thrash metal concentrates on speed, doom metal can be described with a single word - slow. Ponderous, ultra-heavy riffing and (usually) melodic vocals dominate this form of metal. black sabbath are, of course, the fathers of metal in general, but their early work concentrated on slow riffing and thus is the primary influence on doom metal bands. candelmass deserves mention for rejuvenating the genre in the eighties, and their first four albums are regarded as classics in the field. A subgenre of doom metal is doomdeath, which combines the slow pace of doom with the low, growly vocal style of death metal. Three British bands, paradise lost, my dying bride, and anathema, are generally regarded as innovators here.
One of the more extreme forms of metal, death metal is basically an offshoot of thrash, with less melodic riffs and a low, growly, often almost unintelligible vocal style that at its best (or worst, depending on one's point of view) has been described as "cookie monster vocals". The early nineties saw the initial rise of death metal in places such as Florida ( death, morbid angel, deicide, obituary, and others) and Sweden ( at the gates, entombed, and others), and is still quite popular today. A second form of death metal is the so-called Gothenburg style, named for the Swedish city where innovators such as dark tranquillity and in flames reside. Here, the vocal style is similar but the musical style is much more melodic, occasionally bringing to mind an iron maiden.
Black metal finds its roots in bands such as vanom and bathory, and is often characterized by an inherently evil tone and a raspy vocal style. The earlier bands focused on minimal instrumentation, as represented by darkthrone, early mayhem, and older immortal, while another group of bands explored a more symphonic, keyboard-driven style (emperor, cradle of filth, dimmu borgir) and still others have migrated towards an eclectic, avant-garde direction (arcturus, new mayhem). Norway continues to be the primary exporter of black metal bands, though other countries have contributed some quality bands as well.
Initially, progressive metal bands fell into two camps, the first being bands who incorporated quirky time signatures and atypical riffing into metal, and the (related) second being metal bands strongly influenced by 70's progressive rock bands such as Yes, Genesis, and ELP. watchtower and thought industry are two excellent examples of the first group, while dream theater remains the most well-known of the latter group, as well as the single band most fans point to first when referring to progressive metal. In later years, melodic progressive metal bands have blossomed, many of them not quite as technically oriented as the genre originally defined. Indeed, a lot of these bands can be best described as some mixture of dream theater, queensriche, and fates warning, which indeed places these three bands as major innovators in the field. On the extreme end of progressive metal is technical metal, where the musicianship and songwriting variance is placed at an even higher premium.
Also occasionally referred to as desert rock/metal, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the name "stoner rock" refers to, whether or not it's an appropriate term or not is another matter. Bands in the genre focus on 70's rock/metal influences and a psychedelic edge. The single band most often noted as an influence or soundalike to others in this field is unquestionably kyuss, who in their relatively short career basically invented the genre (though bands such as monster magnet and fu manchu deserve a mention here too).
The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) signalled a rebirth in metal popularity in England, roughly around the years of 1980 to 1984 or so. Of the hundreds of British bands who sprouted at this time (many who never got past a demo or a 7" record), iron maiden and def leppard are probably the two most well-known, with others such as saxon and diamond head also making a major impact on the scene. Though the time frame and nationality are the main defining components of NWOBHM, the majority of these bands also had a similar style, mixing prime 70's Brit metal (judas priest, deep purple) with the roughness of punk rock. Though it's difficult at best to point to a single album as a representation of the entire genre, a good place to start might be iron maiden's debut album.
Whereas the other genres presented here are defined by the music itself, Christian metal bands are listed as a genre based on their lyrical stance. Thus, we have Christian thrash (tourniquet, living sacrifice), Christian doom (paramaecium), Christian progressive (veni domine), and so on. Some Christian bands are preachy to the point of being obnoxious, while others are far more subtle in their approach. Stryper was the first band to gain acceptance in the secular world (though just how "metal" they were is subject to debate), and then bands such as barren cross, bloodgood and others that real metal and spiritual lyrics could indeed coexist.
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Copyright © 2003 Valy Iliu
Last Updated In December 2003