A form of rock music developed from electrified blues music, with heavily amplified guitars, bass guitars, and drums, and often strident vocals. Early pioneers were Jimi Hendrix and the band Cream with Eric Clapton; classic exponents of the genre included US bands Grand Funk (Railroad), Vanilla Fudge, and Mountain, and the British Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath. These were succeeded by new generations of bands, including AC/DC, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, and Guns n' Roses, whose popularity depended as much on their live appearances at concerts and festival as on recordings.
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that emerged as a defined musical style in the 1970s, having its roots in hard rock bands which, between 1969 and 1974, mixed blues and rock to create a hybrid with a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterised by the use of highly-amplified distortion. Out of heavy metal various subgenres later evolved, many of which are referred to simply as "metal". As a result, "heavy metal" now has two distinct meanings: either the genre and all of its subgenres, or the original heavy metal bands of the 1970s style sometimes dubbed "traditional metal", as exemplified by Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Blue Öyster Cult and Black Sabbath.
Heavy metal began gaining popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, at which time many of the now existing subgenres first evolved. Heavy metal has a large world-wide following of fans known by terms such as "metalheads" and "headbangers".
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 many of these characteristics. roll's myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality."
Instrumentation
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. The guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification, however, is the key element in heavy metal music. Later, more intricate solos and riffs became a big part of heavy metal music.
Metal vocals vary widely in style. 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. 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."
Themes
As with much popular music, visuals and images are part of heavy metal. Thus, through heavy metal, many artists collaborate to produce a menu of experiences in each piece—offering a wider range of experiences to the audience. In this respect, heavy metal becomes perhaps more of a diverse art form than any single form dominated by one method of expression. Whereas a painting is experienced visually, a symphony experienced audibly, a heavy metal band's "image" and the common theme that binds all their music 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.
Rock historians tend to find that the influence of Western pop music gives heavy metal its escape-from-reality fantasy side, as an escape from reality through outlandish and fantastic lyrics. At the same time, heavy metal's deep roots in blues rock contributes a more realistic, cathartic quality, focusing on loss, depression and loneliness.
If the aural and thematic components of heavy metal are predominantly blues-influenced reality, then the visual component is predominantly pop-influenced fantasy. 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.
Heavy metal themes are typically more grave than the generally airy pop from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s—focusing on war, nuclear annihilation, environmental issues, and political or religious propaganda.
Classical influence
The appropriation of "classical" music by heavy metal typically includes the influence of Baroque, Romantic, and Modernist composers such as Bach, Paganini, Wagner, and Beethoven.
Several music experts and metal musicians have noted of the role of the tritone in heavy metal, a dissonant interval consisting of a root note and an augmented fourth/diminished fifth, e.g., C and F sharp, which ostensibly results in a "heavy," "evil" sound, so much so that its use was supposedly banned in medieval composition as "Diabolus in Musica" ("the devil in music"). 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.
History
The term "heavy metal"
The origin of the term heavy metal in relation to a form of music is uncertain. In the 1962 novel, The Soft Machine, he introduces the character "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid".
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
The first recorded use of heavy metal in a song lyric is the phrase "heavy metal thunder" in the 1968 Steppenwolf song "Born To Be Wild":
I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
The book The History of Heavy Metal states the name as a take from "hippiespeak," heavy meaning anything with a potent mood, and metal, specifically designating what the mood would be, grinding and weighted as with metal. The fact that Led Zeppelin (whose moniker came partly in reference to Keith Moon's jest that they would "go down like a lead balloon") incorporated a heavy metal into its name may have sealed the usage of the term.
In the late 1960s, Birmingham, England was still a centre for manufacturing and (given the many rock bands that evolved in and around the city, such as Led Zeppelin, The Move, and Black Sabbath), some people suggest that the term Heavy Metal may have some relation to such activity.
Sandy Pearlman, original producer, manager and songwriter for Blue Öyster Cult, claims to have been the first person to apply the term "heavy metal" to rock music in 1970. In creating much of the band's image, which included tongue-in-cheek references to the occult, Pearlman came up with a symbol for the group (similar to the use of a symbol Iron Maiden later included on their album cover artwork), the Alchemical symbol for lead - one of the heaviest of metals. He states that "...it [heavy metal] was a term originated in a New York Times article reviewing a Jimi Hendrix performance," and claims the author described the Jimi Hendrix Experience "...like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky."
The first well-documented usage of the term "heavy metal" referring to a style of music, appears to be the May 1971 issue of Creem, in a review of Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come. In this review we are told that "Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book". Other, already-established bands, such as Deep Purple, who had origins in pop or progressive rock, immediately took on the heavy metal mantle, adding distortion and additional amplification in a more aggressive approach.
The earliest music commonly identified as heavy metal came out of the Birmingham area of the United Kingdom in the late 1960s when bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath applied an overtly non-traditional approach to blues standards and created new music often based on blues scales and arrangements.
Other oft-cited influences include Vanilla Fudge, who had slowed down and psychedelicised pop tunes, as well as earlier British rockers such as The Who and The Kinks, who had created an opening for heavy metal styles by introducing power chords and more aggressive percussion to the rock genre. Another key influence was Cream, who exemplified the power trio format that would become a staple of heavy metal.
By 1968, heavy blues sounds were becoming commonplace—many fans and scholars point to Blue Cheer's Jan. 1968 cover of Eddie Cochran's hit "Summertime Blues" as the first true heavy metal song. released just before Led Zeppelin's first album (Jan. 1969), leading some (especially British blues fans) to argue that Truth was the first heavy metal album.
Also, progressive rock band King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" from their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), featured most of the thematic, compositional, and musical characteristics of heavy metal—a very heavily distorted guitar tone and discordant soloing by Robert Fripp with lyrics that focused on what is wrong about what the 21st century human would be, a dark mood and Greg Lake's vocals were passed through a distortion box.
The 1970 releases by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple defined and codified the genre that would be known as heavy metal. The first heavy metal bands—Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, UFO, and Black Sabbath, among a few—are often now called hard rock bands by the modern metal community rather than heavy metal, especially those bands whose sound was more similar to traditional rock music. Indeed, many such bands are not considered "heavy metal bands" per se, but rather as having contributed individual songs or works that contributed to the genre. Few would consider Jethro Tull a heavy metal band in any real sense, for example, but few would dispute that their song Aqualung was an early Heavy Metal song. Another group that early on crossed the murky lines between Psychedelic and Heavy Metal was Hawkwind, with songs like "Master of the Universe" (1971) that enjoyed a cult following.
Classic heavy metal (Late 1970s and early 1980s)
The late 1970s and early 1980s history of heavy metal music is highly debated among music historians. Bands like Blue Öyster Cult achieved moderate mainstream success and the Los Angeles glam metal scene began finding pop audiences—especially in the 1980s. Others still highlight the late-70s cross-fertilization of heavy metal with fast-paced, youthful punk rock (e.g. Sex Pistols), culminating in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal around the year 1980, led by bands like Motörhead and Iron Maiden.
Some followers, including Heavy Metal musicians of prominent groups, believe that the foundations of the definitive style and sound of pure heavy metal were laid down by Judas Priest with three of their early albums: Sad Wings Of Destiny (1976), Sin After Sin (1977), and Stained Class (1978).
Rainbow are also sometimes cited as pioneering a sort of pure heavy metal and one could also make this claim about the later albums of Deep Purple such as Burn and Stormbringer, but these bands are generally considered to be "hard rock" bands. Beginning with Judas Priest, metal bands quickly began to look beyond the almost exclusive use of the blues scale to incorporate diatonic modes into their solos. This more complex approach has since spread throughout many sub-genres of metal and along with an overall strong sense of musicianship are the main contributions classical music and jazz music (via progressive rock) have made to the metal genre. in some cases, classical nylon-stringed guitars were played at heavy metal concerts and on heavy metal albums, e.g., Rhoades' "Dee" on Blizzard of Ozz. Classical icons such as Liona Boyd also became associated with the heavy metal stars in a newly diverse guitar fraternity where conservative and aggressive guitarists could come together to "trade licks."
This explosion would cool down in the music of Ronnie James Dio (who himself had a tenure at lead vocals with Black Sabbath) and continue to settle towards Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, who may be the final and complete consummation of "pure" heavy metal in the lineage of the "grandfathers"—Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep.
Mainstream dominance (1980s)
The most popular subgenre of heavy metal emerged in the United States, coming from glam metal bands of the 1980s the epicentre for this explosion was mostly in the Sunset Strip from Los Angeles, California. Early glam metal groups were influenced by heavy metal acts such as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and, incorporating guitar solos into the majority of their songs.
The genre caused a divide in the evolving metal community of the 1980s, largely due to the glam metal bands' image, especially that of the more feminine-looking bands such as Poison and Bon Jovi.
Underground metal (1980s, 1990s, and 2000s)
Many subgenres of heavy metal developed during the 1980s. In a move away from metal's hard rock roots, a genre that took influences from hardcore punk emerged—thrash metal. The genre's sound was more aggressive, louder and faster than the original metal bands or their glam metal contemporaries.
In the early and mid 1980s, thrash began to split further into death metal (a term probably originating from Possessed's song "Death Metal", off their Seven Churches album), led by Possessed and Death, and black metal (a term coined by Venom, from an album titled Black Metal) and Denmark's Mercyful Fate who are often considered the originators of the corpse paint coupled with Satanic and Pagan themes, in which Bathory (generally considered one of the first black metal acts although they later involved more Viking themes), Celtic Frost and Mayhem were key bands early on.
From the 1980s and into the 1990s power metal, especially in Europe, evolved in an opposite direction from death metal and thrash by keeping the speed, anti-commercial mentality and intensity of heavy metal but focusing on upbeat and epic themes and melodies. Traditional power metal bands such as Manowar and Hammerfall have a sound very close to classic heavy metal whilst more modern power metal bands such as Nightwish and Rhapsody often have a strong keyboard based symphonic influence, sometimes using orchestra and opera singers.
Progressive metal, a fusion of the progressive stylings of bands like Rush, King Crimson and heavy metal began in the '80s, too, behind innovators like Fates Warning and later Queensrÿche and Dream Theater, who enjoyed substantial mainstream acceptance and success in the glam metal era.
Alternative metal/nu metal (1990s and 2000s)
The era of metal dominating the mainstream came to an end with the emergence of Nirvana and other grunge bands that signaled the popular breakthrough of alternative rock. In particular, bands that had fused alternative rock and heavy metal styles began to gain momentum and formed the fusion genre called alternative metal. Red Hot Chili Peppers infused their alternative rock with punk, funk, hip hop and metal, Danzig continued Glenn Danzig's progression from punk, through deathrock (with Samhain) and into metal, Ministry began incorporating metal into their industrial music, and Primus combined elements of funk, punk, thrash metal and experimental music.
As alternative metal achieved wider mainstream success, more notable bands from the genre, including Fear Factory, Helmet, Marilyn Manson, Rage Against the Machine and Tool, influenced a new wave of rock bands. These bands were not the preceding fusion of alternative rock and heavy metal, but a new genre derived from it, and came to be known as nu metal. Nu metal gained mainstream success through heavy MTV rotation and the 1996 formation of Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest metal music festival, which led the media to talk of a resurgence of heavy metal. Much debate has arisen over the nu metal's massive success and whether or not it is metal in the conventional sense, with fans of extreme metal genres (itself the subject of debate by purists) often insisting it is not. Some see this style as nu metal's successor, whilst others believe that it will become popular and fashionable in the same way as nu metal.
Pantera was a key formulator of the groove metal (post-thrash) distant subgenre of heavy metal music. Slower, eerier metal became more prominent as more bands left commonplace influences for the bluesy, deep sound of the original heavy metal groups like Led Zeppelin. This led to a surge in the popularity of doom metal, as well as a resurgence of interest in early heavy metal bands.
Traditional Metal Revival (mid 2000s)
In the mid 2000s a heavy metal revival of sorts has begun to emerge, with bands taking influence and playing music in the style of the original 1970s pioneers of the genre;
In addition, several reunions have helped gain some lost interest in the classic metal style.
Cultural impact
The loud, confrontational aspects of heavy metal have led to friction between fans and mainstream society in many countries. The controversy results from the fact that public perception, especially in conservative societies, thinks of heavy metal subculture as a promoter of hedonism and occasional anti-religious sentiments. —many of whom are attracted to heavy metal's overtly anti-social yet fantastical lyrics and extreme volume and tempos. Heavy metal's bombastic excesses, exemplified by glam metal, have often been parodied, most famously in the film This Is Spinal Tap (see also the phenomenon of the heavy metal umlaut).
Many heavy metal stylings have made their way into everyday use; During the 1970s and 1980s, flirtation with occult themes by artists such as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, KISS, Mercyful Fate, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, and W.A.S.P., led to accusations of "Satanic" influences in heavy metal by fundamentalist Christians. One popular contention, not neccesarily true, during that period was that heavy metal albums featured hidden messages urging listeners to worship the Devil or to commit suicide (see Judas Priest and backward message and Allegations of Satanism in popular culture).
Lesser known, is the impact of heavy metal's complex musical structures on the avant garde classical music style of New Complexity music, pioneered by Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, James Dillon, and later, American composer Jason Eckardt.
On Eurovision 2006 a heavy metal band won the first place, for the first time in the contest's history.
Related styles
Hard rock, mentioned earlier is closely related to heavy metal (and often the terms overlap in usage), but it does not always match the description of what purists consider the definition of heavy metal. While still guitar-driven in nature and usually riff-based, its themes and execution differ from that of the major heavy metal bands listed earlier in this article. This is perhaps best exemplified by The Who in the late-1960s and early-1970s, as well as other 1970s and 1980s bands like Queen who have had a large influence on heavy metal music, AC/DC, Aerosmith, KISS, Thin Lizzy, and Scorpions.
Some cross-influence has occurred between punk rock and heavy metal.
Alternative rock, particularly grunge, sometimes takes influence from heavy metal. Some grunge bands such as Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were marketed as metal before alternative became a viable commercial force.
Heavy metal movements
There are certain body movements that are nearly universal in the metal culture, including headbanging, moshing (also known as 'pitting'), and various hand gestures such as the infamous devil horns (brought to popularity by legendary heavy metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio during his time with Black Sabbath and his solo band Dio). Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music.
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