Heavy metal (music)
Heavy metal is a musical genre, often referred to as the progenitor of various metal subgenres (eg. Black metal, death metal, etc.). Metal derives directly from blues and rock, even if in some sub-genres there is an evident influence of classical music. Heavy metal is mainly blues-based, using pentatonic scales and a blues-like song structure whilst displaying aggressive, driving rhythms and highly amplified distorted guitars, generally with grandiose lyrics and virtuosic instrumentation. These lyrics sometimes include dark thematic elements, or are based on fantasy themes and Celtic mysticism.
Heavy metal is a development of blues, blues rock, and psychedelic rock. Its origins lie in the hard rock bands that between 1966 and 1975 took blues and rock and created a hybrid with a heavy, guitar-and-drums-centred sound. Heavy metal had its peak popularity in the mid-1980s, during which many of the now existing subgenres first evolved. Although not as commercially successful as it was then, heavy metal still has a large world-wide following of fans known by terms like "head-bangers" and metal-heads.
Etymology
The very phrase 'heavy metal' can be traced back in literature for almost 200 years but the word was first popularised in 1964, with William Burroughs' novel Nova Express:
"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 term here "heavy metal" as a metaphor for addictive drugs. Another aspect of these novels is the use of recorded sound to free oneself from a programmed life and the alienation caused by an increasingly mechanical world. This was not, however, the only place around the same time the term is used.
In 1968 three American bands made reference to it: The most obvious reference is Steppenwolf's classic hit "Born to be Wild" where the lyrics goes: "I like smokin' lightnin', heavy metal thunder", and this catchphrase was apparently meant to describe the sound of a motorcycle's accelerating engine. The term was not applied to the musical style at all. The same situation was seemingly maintained by the music of Blue Cheer whose manager declared that the musicians played their music "so heavy, they could churn the air into cottage cheese". However, Iron Butterfly dubbed an album Heavy, and this referred to the intensity of the pummelling organ in the music. The stylistic identity of heavy metal was perhaps defined in the latter years of the 1960s but the basal elements were conceived several years before this, thus taking us back to the early 1960s and the so-called British Invasion of rhythm & blues.
History
Heavy metal developed out of sixties rock and blues when musicians started to exploit the opportunities of the electrically amplified guitar to produce a louder, more discordant sound. The first strains of music which were nearly heavy metal in their aggressiveness were emitted by bands the likes of The Kinks, The Rolling Stones. The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" (August 1964) or The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" (June 1965) was controversial and abrasive enough for their time, making these two tracks the first proto-metal songs. The Rolling Stones were stigmatised as 'the bad boys of rock'n'roll' and this caused negative feedback from adults everywhere. Front man in the band, Mick Jagger, presented an explicit, sexually provocative and distinctly narcissistic stage manner, which had never been seen before, and this attitude was deemed offensive by most adults – but the youth loved him as well as the music of the band. The Rolling Stones broke the charts worldwide with the commercial single "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction", which became a huge hit among the youth due to its rebellious and sexual undertones. Like the Rolling Stones with "Satisfaction", The Kinks achieved massive airplay with the commercial single hit "You Really Got Me". The guitarist in the band, Dave Davies, lacerated the speaker of his amplifier with razor blades, and the distorted signal was channelled through a larger, more powerful amplifier, which resulted in a dense and raucous feel in the basic riff. This hard, rough and aggressive style predated heavy metal by a couple of years. This effect is now readily available using a fuzz-box; a foot-controlled device that allows the guitarist to alternate between distorted fuzz-tone and the normal clear sound. No longer was music only about sound and arrangements but now included awareness about appearance, appeal, image and gimmicks.
In 1966, a similar evolution occurred with Iron Butterfly and their début album Heavy. The music was characterised by densely sustained and powerful bass keyboards that substituted the rhythm guitar. Later that year, the band released its sophomore album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, which immediately became the biggest commercial success for Atlantic Records at that time. The Jimi Hendrix Experience became notorious for their extremely personal interpretations of standards from blues, R&B and soul but it was not least their cover "Hey Joe" which they virtually made their own. Armed with a Fender Stratocaster, Jimi Hendrix not only broke the standards of common guitar instrumentation but also displayed his skills on an advanced system of twisted sounds from tremolo, vibrato, the fuzz-box and wah-wah pedal that developed into vigorous, improvised music while producing a dazzling display of guitar pyrotechnics and regular stage antics; playing with his tongue and teeth, playing behind his head, and grinding the neck of the guitar against the mike stand and amplifier. Likewise, drummer Mitch Mitchell developed his skills, using a two-piece bass drum pedal, which enabled him to keep his heel on the bass plate and achieve quick-fire and repeated impacts by merely flexing the ankle. At the same time, three remarkable and outstanding personalities from the British R&B scene met in a power trio dubbed Cream. This act was immediately referred to as a super group by the press. Eric Clapton was a former musician in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and The Yardbirds; the jazz-trained bass player Jack Bruce had displayed his skills with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers before joining Manfred Mann while Ginger Baker had been a percussionist with the Graham Bond Organisation. These three musicians strove for technical excellence and a mastery over their instrument. In 1967, Cream achieved huge success with their evolutionary development of R&B; the threesome experimented at a fusion of jazz and R&B on the record Fresh Cream. Clapton was also one of the first white musicians who performed technical and lengthy, improvised solos and thematic riffs that lasted several minutes.
At the ultimate peak of the British Blues Invasion, acts such as The Move, The Pink Floyd and The Yardbirds coined a musical and colourful alternative to R&B, which was dubbed psychedelic rock or psychedelia. First and foremost, this new style originated as a result of a general desire of expressing the impact of mind-expanding substances through music but also due to the fact that the musicians felt the urge to push the envelope of contemporary music thus turning to inspiration from Eastern music and improvised, freeform jazz with electronically altered instruments and voices within the recording studio. Traditional blues with its short chorus and verse patterns developed into blurred, sonic structures with swirling layers of fuzz-toned guitars and chanting vocals. Likewise, this development affected the lyrics that now focused on deeper social and psychological experiences in everyday life, religious themes, spirituality or even surreal euphoria caused from the use of drugs; the psychedelic experience. The audience now sat quietly analysing the music instead of dancing on their seats; bands and audiences became more critical of each other, and the music was now widely accepted as an art form. The message of the lyrics and musical dexterity of the band obtained paramount importance. For a short time, The Yardbirds seemed to become the most important exponent of psychedelic rock and achieved worldwide accolades but internal disputes and revolving doors in the line-up hampered this event. For an annotation it is worth mentioning that The Yardbirds worked with two lead guitarists in the form of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck for a short while. This twin lead impact was never seen before as a band normally only used one lead and one rhythm guitarist. This experiment would be taken further with heavy metal bands during the 1970s.
American developments
American garage bands were being greatly influenced by the success of British psychedelic bands during this period. San Francisco’s Blue Cheer prominently announced their arrival with Vincebus Eruptum that found its roots in blues and rock but the musical flow was driven by a high-fl own, over-amplified volume, feedback from the instruments and a total lack of subtlety. Hailing from Chicago, the Amboy Dukes, whose ace was main composer and lead-guitarist Ted Nugent, gained immediate attention on behalf of an eponymous début. The music was focused on pseudo-psychedelic hard rock but emphasised advanced and flamboyant guitar solos with due references to Jimi Hendrix. New York's Vanilla Fudge began combining elements from rock 'n' roll, motown, soul, R&B, classical and pop of the 1960s but the most important trademark was however that the four musicians presented bombastic, high-speed arrangements of other artists' compositions with a great deal of success. Vanilla Fudge's drummer, Carmine Appice, soon gained recognition as a dynamic musician who was keen on developing his skills on his instrument with due references to Cream's Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Appice actually increased the energy on the double bass drums, his battery of snares, hi-hats and toms. Likewise, amplifiers were becoming larger and more powerful with an ever-increasing number of effects; this facilitated the controlled distortion of the instrument sound.
Hard rock evolves
Within short notice, some of the guitarists started to drill their dexterity and thus turned more dynamic in their backdraft of their riffs, which evolved into pulsating hard rock with an equal lack of swing priority in the beats while the technical guitar solos were prioritised. Taking the groundbreaking experiments of Vanilla Fudge as a cue, British act Deep Purple debuted with the album Shades of Deep Purple. Front man Rod Evans relied on inspiration from the crooner Tom Jones whereas guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, former The Artwoods organist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice formed the instrumental/compositional core of the band. Blackmore was immensely inspired by classical music as he used the traditional toolbox of metal songwriting albeit with a twist as all of it takes place in a structure that was heavily influenced by baroque music. The chord progressions, arpeggios, broken chords and speedy scale runs of neo-classical metal were borrowed for the most part from Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Antonio Vivaldi and Niccolo Paganini.
Free introduced an eponymous début, which took the conventional blues to new dimensions as six-stringer Paul Kossoff cultivated hard riffs rather than moody blues whereas front man Paul Rodgers shone with a spellbinding soul in his voice. Likewise, Jethro Tull began drafting hard rock with a constant eye on R&B on their début This Was but internal disputes led to the departure of guitarist Mick Abrahams, who subsequently purveyed traditional R&B in other acts. This new development was much more evident when former The Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck broke radically with traditional R&B with his Jeff Beck Group to become renowned for his aggressively dynamic high-speed screeching, sustained notes, voluminous feedback and distortion. In Ireland, vocalist Phil Lynott, guitarist Gary Moore and drummer Brian Downey yearned for a record deal for their unit Skid Row, which seemingly nourished the same stylistic ideas. In Britain, Spooky Tooth debuted with It's All about, which showed how traditional R&B and progressive rock could be fused. The London-based Yes began creating an unheard synthesis of blues, jazz and progressive rock on their eponymous debut, which attracted only little attention. Dominating the music were guitarist Peter Banks and drummer Bill Bruford – and not least their preferences for experimental jazz. Lurking in the background was vocalist Jon Anderson, who provided the music with a high-pitched, sophisticated input and incomprehensible lyrics while four stringer Chris Squire allowed his bass guitar to be more than just a generic component of the rhythm section.
However, the most important development happened when former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page resurrected his band – now dubbed The New Yardbirds – for a Scandinavian tour in order to fulfil contractual obligations for the newly defunct The Yardbirds, now consisting of vocalist Robert Plant, bassist/organist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. Page and Jones had previously worked as session musicians in the studio for The Kinks and The Rolling Stones among others although they were not always credited for the effort. Plant and Bonham, on the other hand, were literally unknown. Returning to the UK, the musicians toyed with a name change to indicate their heavy, blues-based musical direction, thus adopting the moniker Led Zeppelin. The four musicians hastily recorded a début album that relied on brooding blues, roughedged rock'n'roll, acoustic ballads and soul but the music was defined hard rock deliberately working on the contrast between traditional blues and dynamic R&B. Most of the tracks, however, were standards played on tour as The New Yardbirds. The album was released the following year, and became a commercial success worldwide – and Atlantic Records' biggest selling album in at that time. The following year, Led Zeppelin II produced immortal classics such as "Whole Lotta Love", "Ramble On" and "Moby Dick". Plant’s high-pitched vocals and Adonis-like stage antics in conjunction with Page’s impassioned guitar-playing and Bonham's explosive drumming became huge trademarks that would last to present day. Indeed, Led Zeppelin opened up for new conditions in music business; a traditional concert normally lasted between 40 and 60 minutes but Led Zeppelin broke with this standard and performed for more than 120 minutes and the four musicians likewise earned tremendous sums for their performance; something quite unseen before in history. On top of this, Led Zeppelin caused quite a stir at their concerts due to the fact that Page used a violin bow while performing "Dazed and Confused" while Bonham used his bare hands for his drum solo. Moreover, the pulsating energy in the riffs seemingly caused the audience to yank their heads up and down concurrently with the beat – this was later dubbed headbanging.
Heavy metal arrives
In the latter years of the 1960s, interest in occult and magic had been revived by the large number of youngsters seeking an alternative to established Christianity and a contemporary distaste for complete nihilism. But rather than turning to Eastern philosophy and spirituality, Buddhism or Hinduism they were drawn by a fascination of the supernatural. Books such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings became big sellers and Aleister Crowley's Thelema sparked by the avant-garde film Scorpio Rising (1963) by director Kenneth Anger, the novel The Devils Rides Out (1968) by Terence Fisher, and the works of playwright Dennis Wheatley.
Four musicians from the industrial town of Birmingham founded Black Sabbath that had earlier rendered a repertoire consisting of jazz and R&B, performing under names such as Polka Tulk Blues Band, Earth Blues Company and Earth. Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler had become increasingly interested in the famous playwright Dennis Wheatley and his novels on black magic, which inspired him to write lyrics drenched in occult symbolism, witchcraft and Satanism and hence the image of the band turned to the same concept. In 1970, Black Sabbath produced the first notes from their eponymous début, which provided an unheard experience of aggressive soundscapes. Following an accident, the outmost tip of Tony Iommi's finger had been cut off and replaced with a piece of metal, which created a strident, steel hard sound upon friction with the strings on his instrument. Geezer Butler's bass guitar emanated a heavy, deep expression, Ozzy Osbourne introduced a monotonous, drawling wail and Ward pounded feverishly on his double bass drums. Though taking the cue from both rhythm & blues as well as hard rock, their modal and compact music opened up for a clash with the conventions as it lingered on an atmosphere devoid of joy or happiness. This effort gained immediate success in Great Britain though the established radio stations refused to give airplay to the music. Later that year, Black Sabbath introduced the sophomore effort Paranoid that was the archetypal heavy metal release providing the audience with such classics as "Iron Man", "Paranoid", "War Pigs", "Hand of Doom" and "Planet Caravan".
London's Uriah Heep débuted with Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble, which was characterised by David Byron's high-pitched falsetto whine, Ken Henley's organ harmonies, Mick Box's heavy riffs on the guitar and the high-flown choirs unified in brash, non-sophisticated hard rock. The band gained immediate success despite immense negative response from the press, and this was not least due to the single "Gyps" that has become a classic since then. Humble Pie was the newest supergroup to emerge from Great Britain consisting of former Small Faces singer/guitarist Steve Marriott, former Herd singer/ guitarist Peter Frampton, ex-Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and ex-Little Women drummer Jerry Shirley. This unit gained immediate success with their debut As Safe as Yesterday, but internal disputes among the members had already begun to appear. Frampton wanted to focus on acoustic, listener-adapted rockstyled ballads while Marriott clearly preferred hard rock, and these opposites were apparently difficult to unite.
1970 was an important year as it saw the boundaries between rhythm & blues, psychedelic rock, hard rock, and progressive rock become increasingly blurred while total musical freedom with heavy metal was turning into reality. Wishbone Ash displayed uncomplicated and basic boogie rock on their eponymous début but reactivated the use of twin lead guitars courtesy of Andy Powell and Ted Turner, and this effort became a long-time favourite among the audience. Finally, Status Quo caused some attention with their third album, Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon that had left the influences from psychedelic pop in favour of blues and rock with a twist of boogie rock. Likewise, the Savoy Brown Blues Band dropped the appendix 'Blues Band' and began focusing on a combination of hard rock and boogie rock on the album Blue Matter. These three acts soon garnered huge success in the US where this style was truly relished. Deep Purple introduced a re-organised line-up that truly gave Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord and Ian Paice musical opposition, which became evident on the organist's own composition Concerto for Group and Orchestra that was recorded with the assistance of conductor Malcolm Arnold and The Royal Symphony Orchestra. In conjunction with this effort, the band achieved a worldwide breakthrough with the album In Rock, which spawned classics such as "Child in Time" and "Speed King". This development was not least due to their new vocalist Ian Gillan, whose vocals possessed a remarkable and outstanding range that crowned the omnipotent quintet, who by now offered a confident identity and nature.
In 1971, it was possible to outline the contours of the overall genre heavy metal much better than ever before; and it was Black Sabbath who set the agenda for the style. Their third album, Masters of Reality, yielded instant international success both commercially and musically. The distinct genre was less visible on Led Zeppelin IV that balanced on the border between musical roots in dynamic R&B and the newly defi ned hard rock. The album was on top of this characterised by the fact that neither band name nor title was written on the cover. One of the highlights was the epic "Stairway to Heaven", and this release would later become one of the world’s best-selling hard rock albums. Deep Purple won commercial success with their sixth album Fireball, which described a principled and purposive hard rock band that was not afraid to brave the limits of the genre. On the other hand, the band quartet UFO consisting of vocalist Phil Mogg, guitarist Mick Bolton, bassist Pete Way and drummer Andy Parker completely defied these confines. The band debuted with UFO I, which was animated by the combination of hard rock, progressive rock and boogie rock, and the record earned a considerable amount of success in Germany and Japan. Furthermore, the grey area of the genre was opened up for other breaks with the regular norms. Jeff Beck and Cozy Powell formed a new version of Jeff Beck Group with singer Bobby Trench, bassist Clive Chaman and pianist Max Middleton resulting in Rough and Ready, which experimented moderately with elements from jazz.
Heavy metal in America
New genres
In the late 1970s the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) made metal music very popular (especially in Europe) with bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon and Def Leppard. This period greatly influenced new metal sub-genres and can be considered as their common root. Sub-genres of heavy metal are numerous:
- Thrash metal: A very aggressive and rhythm-based style of metal. Examples are Slayer, early Metallica, and Megadeath.
- Power metal: Clean vocals and hymn-like choruses are characteristic for this style. The lyrics are often based on fantasy or sci-fi themes. The most famous bands are all European: Helloween, Blind Guardian and Hammerfall.
- Death metal: Extreme music with low-pitched guitars and growling vocals. There is no common theme in the lyrics, they range from splatter (Cannibal Corpse) and war (Bolt Thrower) to Christian motives (Mortification). Besides the mentioned, Death, Morbid Angel and Entombed are other important bands.
- Black Metal: A precise definition for this style is very hard to give. One approach is strictly based on the lyrics, which are satanic or otherwise occult. Bands: Mayhem, Darkthrone and Venom (early black metal).
- Goth metal fuses the bleak, icy atmospherics of Goth rock with the loud guitars and aggression of heavy metal, finding the middle ground between the two styles in a melodramatic sense of theatre and lyrical obsessions with religion and horror. Bands: Theatre of Tragedy, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride.
- Doom metal: Inspired largely by the lumbering dirges and stoned, paranoid darkness of Black Sabbath, doom metal is one of the very few heavy metal subgenres to prize feel and mood more than flashy technique. Bands: Candlemass, Cathedral and Anathema.
- Neo-classical metal: The most renowned artist is the Swedish guitar virtuoso Yngwie J. Malmsteen. In neo-classical metal, the traditional toolbox of metal song-writing is used, but with a twist: all of it takes place in a structure that is heavily influenced by Baroque music. The chord progressions, arpeggios, broken chords, and speedy scale runs of neo-classical metal are borrowed for the most part from J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and Niccolo Paganini. Although Malmsteen is the most well-known proponent of this evolution of metal, however, classical elements used in heavy metal and hard rock date back to Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple and Eddie Van Halen's innovations in the late 1970s.
Style
The most commonly used line-up for metal is a drummer, bass guitarist, rhythm guitarist, [ead guitarist (in many metal bands a single guitarist handles both guitars, for example Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath); (see also power trio) or both guitarists sharing the lead and rhythm parts, for example Wishbone Ash, Metallica), singer (who is sometimes also one of the instrumentalists), and occasionally a keyboard player. Additional instruments can be a wide range including violin, harpsichord, saxophone, and flute. Guitar playing is central in heavy metal. Distorted amplification of the guitars, with effects and electronic processing, is used to thicken the sound, as well as downtuning guitars strings to strengthen the bass notes. Originally the result is simple and powerful, although some of the music media believed that their simplified sound was more the result of limited ability than of innovation. Later styles developed more complicated and technical approach to metal. Intricate solos and riffs are a big part of heavy metal music. Guitarists use sweep-picking, tapping and similar techniques for rapid playing which have evolved and expanded upon since the 1970s, from the traditional guitar techniques of 1960s guitarists.
There is a great variety of ways that heavy metal singers sing, from clean vocals to a high-pitched wail to a deep growl. The black and death metal scene tend to use distorted and guttural voices (eg. Deicide). Generally it's hard to understand what the singer is "singing". Often, the text is considered to be too crude to be spoken out clearly (eg. Cannibal Corpse), but there are some bands that will have lyrics deliberately obscured by the style of the singing (eg. Bolt Thrower).
Heavy metal's development was influenced by fantasy-fiction literature. As a result, a fantasy rock trend emerged on the music scene. It mainly combines elements of metal and its subcultures, including heavy metal, black metal, pagan metal and others. The power-fantasy metal is peculiar of academic vocal, light guitar tunes and application of "fantasy" instruments as violin, and flute. Lyrics slightly remind medieval poems contending legends about dragons, primeval forests, beautiful maidens and brave knights. Bands, playing genuine fantasy rock were repeatedly referring to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vikings, and Celtic mysticism.
Heavy metal, as an art form, is more than just music; it is as much visual as it is audible. Album covers and stage shows are almost as important to the presentation of the material as the music itself. 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, in addition to the sound of the music.