Genre story · Metal
Metal
A wide family of amplified guitar music, from early heavy riffs to underground styles whose goals barely resemble one another.
Metal grew from hard rock around the turn of the 1970s, with Black Sabbath and other bands helping define a new emphasis on distortion, rhythmic weight and heavy guitar composition. Judas Priest and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal developed a sharper and faster vocabulary, while underground musicians transformed that language into thrash, doom, death, Black Metal and many later combinations. These styles have their own histories, audiences and scenes.
The many ways to be heavy
A slow repeated guitar chord can be as central to metal as rapid picking and double-kick drumming. Some groups use clean, dramatic vocals; others rely on screaming, growling or instruments alone. Production may be raw or exacting. No single tempo, subject or dress code covers the range, and the same band can move between styles on different recordings.
Metal and Heavy Metal
The distinction matters for article counts and honest descriptions of Doom Metal, Sludge or Stoner Metal.
Listening landmarks from separate metal branches
- 1970Black SabbathParanoidEarly riff-centered heaviness.
- 1984MetallicaRide the LightningThrash's expanded instrumental vocabulary.
- 1988DeathLeprosyA death-metal branch with different rhythm, sound and vocal technique.