Metal Music Guide

This is intended as an initial draft of a general overview of many of the genres discussed on this site. It is intended to be a more reliable account of the origins and styles within the genres reviewed as well as serving as an introduction, written by resident experts here at Lifer. At its current stage it is a work in progress and subject to change.


Black Metal: An extreme metal genre with roots in thrash, it first came into prominence during the early 80s with the British band Venom coining the term with their 1982 release of the same name. Often employing high pitched shrieked or growled vocals, heavily distorted, high treble, tremolo picked guitar lines and high tempo blast beats, their focus on Satanic imagery and desire for a demonic atmosphere were large contributing factors in setting them apart. Black Metal has since gained a lot of media attention as a result of the controversial lyrics and is (often erroneously) associated with Satanism and Nihilism.* Of particular note is the trial of ‘Gaahl’ (Gorgoroth), imprisoned for performing “Satanic Rituals,” and the incarceration of ‘Varg Vikernes’ (Burzum) for the murder of fellow musician ‘Euronymous (Mayhem) and the multiple arson of Catholic churches within Norway.

*Using ‘Metal Archives’ as a guide, approximately 15.4% of artists currently utilise Satanic themes, and 1.1% Nihilistic themes. - AL, TB

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Ambient Black:

Black/Thrash:

First/Second Wave: With the thrash roots still strongly demonstrated and often influenced by the other recently forming genre of Death Metal, it is the First Wave of Black Metal led by artists such as Bathory, Hellhammer and Mercyful Fate that first saw the genre move away from their origins. With the Second Wave of Black Metal emerging primarily from Norway in the 90s, the genre finally fully took shape, severing much of their musical ties to Thrash Metal and forming the framework for the genre diversity we see employed today. Led by such artists as Immortal, Darkthrone and Emperor, the genre saw an increase in the level of aggression and a more chaotic, evil and icy tone. - AL, TB

Melodic Black:

National Socialist Black Metal: (abbrev. NSBM) Whilst not a genre of Black Metal, it is a descriptor often used in correlation with a small Black Metal scene. With a strong presence in Ukraine, NSBM is gaining in popularity and is categorised by its strong lyrics and imagery heavily influenced by Nazi & Aryan ideals and beliefs. It has as a result been at the centre of a great deal of controversy for this reason, though the sincerity of many of the artists may be called into question, asking whether or not they are simply utilising these themes as a shock tactic to gain publicity. Well known artists include Nokturnal Mortum, M8L8TH and Hate Forest. - AL

Symphonic Black:

Death Metal: Evolving out of the more extreme variants of Thrash Metal in the mid to late 80's, Death Metal took the intensity of its father genre to new levels while experimenting and twisting its structures and compositions to greater levels. Quite possibly the most extreme form of metal currently, Death Metal usually features the infamous growling vocals, amorphous song structures and compositions, wild drumming, and highly dissonant, downtuned guitar work that have made it both a feared and respected genre. Notable pioneers include Death, Possessed and Morbid Angel. - JC

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Brutal Death:

Death/Doom: Combining the slow tempo, foreboding atmosphere and lyrical themes often dealing with death, loss and depression from Doom Metal with the aggressive vocals and occasionally the fast paced drumming style of Death Metal gave rise to this prominent cross-breed between styles. Notably pioneered by early Anathema, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride (who were amongst the first to utilise a symphonic element through violins, keyboards and female vocals), the genre has since gained in popularity, with artists such as Katatonia and early Amorphis emerging with a far greater atmospheric focus, and later artists such as Visceral Evisceration, Mars De Grises and October Tide manipulating the genre into a more melodic format, often utilising twin guitars to produce their atmosphere.

The genre has since gone on to greatly influence the development and formation of a number of others, most notably My Dying Bride and Draconian who together laid much of the framework for Gothic Metal, and combining with Dark Ambient it would go on to help create Funeral Doom which sees a further reduction in pace, with often more aggressive vocals and extensive track lengths. Whilst popular during much of the 90s, currently the genre lives on largely through the genre progeny it has helped create. - MA, TB

Death/Grind:

Death/Thrash:

Melodic Death:

OSDM:

Prog/Tech Death:

Doom Metal: This will be the Doom Metal discussion.

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Death/Doom: Combining the slow tempo, foreboding atmosphere and lyrical themes often dealing with death, loss and depression from Doom Metal with the aggressive vocals and occasionally the fast paced drumming style of Death Metal gave rise to this prominent cross-breed between styles. Notably pioneered by early Anathema, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride (who were amongst the first to utilise a symphonic element through violins, keyboards and female vocals), the genre has since gained in popularity, with artists such as Katatonia and early Amorphis emerging with a far greater atmospheric focus, and later artists such as Visceral Evisceration, Mars De Grises and October Tide manipulating the genre into a more melodic format, often utilising twin guitars to produce their atmosphere.

The genre has since gone on to greatly influence the development and formation of a number of others, most notably My Dying Bride and Draconian who together laid much of the framework for Gothic Metal, and combining with Dark Ambient it would go on to help create Funeral Doom which sees a further reduction in pace, with often more aggressive vocals and extensive track lengths. Whilst popular during much of the 90s, currently the genre lives on largely through the genre progeny it has helped create. - MA, TB

Drone:

Sludge:

Stoner:

Folk Metal: One of, if not the most rapidly expanding sub-genre in Metal today, its origins are firmly rooted in the traditional Folk Music of the country in question, inevitably taking influence from Folk Rock and often utilizing traditional folk instrumentation. Skyclad are often associated with being the first Folk Metal band to popularise the style. Vocals vary greatly, ranging from the traditional folk chants to the more modern growled vocals of today and it is also versatile in the manner it is performed, artists such as Korpiklaani utilising traditional instrumentation for an up-tempo jolly atmosphere with lyrical themes ranging from drinking to ancient mythology, to the darker toned artists taking strong Black Metal influence to produce their overall tone. It was only in the late 90s that the genre saw a massive rise in popularity led by artists such as Ulver, Windir, Cruachan and Orphaned Land. - AM, TB.

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Celtic Folk:

Oriental Folk: One of many distinct variations to sprout of folk metal, Oriental Folk Metal origins are often attributed to Orphaned Land, taking strong influences from the styles of music prevalent in the middle east to develop their unique sound (including most notably, use of the 'Phyrgian Dominant Scale'). Oriental Folk Metal often utilises instruments typically associated with the orient such as the Oud, Sitar, Tabla, and Er-hu, occasionally in addition to other western acoustic instruments and piano work, and the lyrical content often has a spiritual, religious, or historical (often mythological, e.g. Melechesh) focus. The genre frequently finds itself aligning with Black Metal, taking the strong independent philosophy associated with the genre and producing artists such as the highly politically motivated Chthonic and the anti-religious Al-Namrood. - MA, TB

Russian Folk:

Heavy/Trad Metal: This will be the Heavy/Trad Metal discussion.

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Heavy/Thrash:

Heavy/Power:

NWOBHM:

Power Metal: With roots in Thrash/Speed and Traditional Metal, Power Metal combines fast, melodic riffs with an epic/progressive song structure and clean, soaring and often falsetto vocals. The originators of Power Metal as is known today can be attributed to bands such as Helloween, Stratovarius, Manilla Road and Blind Guardian (later on), though it's true form wasn't fully realised until the late 80s/early 90s, often taking strong influences from the likes of Metal Church and Iron Maiden. Like other sub-genres, it has many different strains; Symphonic artists such as Luca Turilli often characterised by their heavy keyboard use; Iced Earth demonstrating a stronger commonality to Thrash Metal; the often derogatorily named "Flower Power" such as Fairyland (extremely fluid, melodic and with catchy pop-like sensibilities), and Folk/Power such as Elvenking. - CB, TB

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Heavy/Power:

Neo-Classical/Power:

Symphonic/Power:

Thrash/Power:

Progressive Metal: This will be the Progressive Metal discussion.

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I don't know how many Ricard will demand:

This many?:

This many?:

Thrash Metal: With its origins in the early 80's, it reached an early peak, losing much of its popularity by the end of that decade. Thrash Metal was mainly influenced by NWOBHM and Hardcore Punk. It is characterized by its rapidly-played percussive guitar riffs and solos and it is also famous for its use of high tempo drumming. The vocals tend to be aggressively performed and "harsh", but in most cases the words are coherent, unlike much of its progeny. The most popular thrash metal scene is Bay Area Thrash, with bands such as Metallica and Megadeth first popularizing the genre. Thrash Metal also had a significant influence on later metal genres (mainly death and black metal), sometimes utilising technical and progressive elements to make its tone sound more complex. The lyrical content usually deals with war, politics, death, darkness, religion and metal. - AD

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Black/Thrash:

Death/Thrash:

Power/Thrash:

Groove Metal:

Other Metal: Probably the most self-explanatory heading, either through a large variety of influences going into the formation of their style, or for their status as a descriptor applicable to a wide variety of music, this is where many of the various hard to define genres will find themselves.

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Avant-Garde: Taking a broad variety of influences that feature prominently in their resultant sound, this often creates an entirely unique piece of music that fits entirely under no pre-existing category. By virtue of this definition, Avant-Garde music cannot be considered entirely a ‘metal’ genre, nor can it be considered entirely a part of any other larger genre heading. Despite this, many artists can often be considered primarily a part of one specific genre which is utilised as a platform from which to experiment (e.g. Carnival in Coal have a strong Death Metal base sound, Motohiro Nakashima an Ambient base sound and Alamaailman Vasarat a Jazz base sound. In such cases the last word is often dropped in favour of this genre name: Avant-Metal, Avant-Ambient, Avant-Jazz, etc).

As a result, Avant-Garde music is often very innovative in the manner it creates unusual atmospheres utilising an array of uncommon instruments and techniques, but is not necessarily made inaccessibly unusual as a result, many artists retaining simplistic compositions (e.g. Momus, David Sylvian). Whilst not fool-proof, a band can generally be considered Avant-Garde if there are three or more notable genre influences (e.g. Metal, Ambient, Electronica, Jazz – NOT subgenres) within their general sound. Due to its unique nature, artists that are currently considered Avant-Garde will cease to be true if their style gains enough momentum to warrant its own genre classification (e.g. early Nu-Metal found influences from Avant-Rock artists such as Faith No More and Mr. Bungle, as well as Groove Metal, Post-Grunge, Hip-Hop and Funk, but since gaining momentum has become an entity unto itself). Avant-Garde music is often erroneously associated with Progressive and Technical music, both of which are mutually exclusive terms. - TB

Dark Metal:Although the term dark metal had been sporadically used previously, the term essentially entered the metal lexicon in 1994 with the release of Bethlehem's debut full-length black/doom metal album entitled Dark Metal. The band coined the term two years earlier (prior to the recording of their first demo) when their vocalist stated "the music is not evil, but it is dark", whereupon the band noted the suitabililty of the term to their music. The term has since found a niche classifying metal that sounds 'dark but not evil' and which is difficult to assign to another genre.

Dark Metal likely contains elements of Depressive Black Metal (but lacking the 'evil-sounding' nature of the most caustic Black Metal), modern Doom Metal (but lacking the crushing heaviness of traditional Doom Metal) and perhaps Dark Neofolk, Dark Minimalist Neo-Classical music or Dark Ambient music. There may also be some Death Metal elements although the energetic and aggressive nature of Death Metal is likely to be absent. Dark Metal is incompatible with invigorating, energetic or uplifting atmospheres; it is likely to be melancholic, gloomy, introspective or perhaps somewhat unsettling. Lyrical themes tend to be similarly gloomy.

A significant part of a Dark Metal band's output (as individual album tracks or entire releases) may be Dark Neo-folk, Dark Ambient or Dark Neo-Classical music with no metal elements. Dark Metal could always be described using better-known metal genre assignations with the use of traditional adjectives, however the term Dark Metal has been used as a more practical alternative to cumbersome descriptions such as "Progressive Black/Doom metal with neo-folk and post-rock characteristics" or "Dark Avant-Garde Symphonic Folk metal with Ambient and Black Metal elements." There is some crossover between Dark Metal and Gothic Metal; some bands could be described as either. - SM

A diagram outlining the variety within the young genre of Dark Metal can be found here.

Gothic Metal: Mostly formed as a further development from Death/Doom, it is artists such as My Dying Bride and Anathema who laid much of the musical foundations with Type O Negative’s debut release perhaps the first significant change to this new style. With experimental artists such as Therion paving the way for rapid progression, it was this track ‘Symphony for the Dead’ in particular that foreshadowed the genres development, demonstrating both a symphonic tendency and one of the first known examples of ‘beauty and the beast’ vocals later to be popularised and refined by artists such as Theatre of Tragedy. With this strong atmospheric focus, it quickly began to dominate the continuing development of the genre and it was perhaps The Gathering who were the first to start treading into the most widely perceived variation of the genre, dabbling in both a thick symphonic prominence and employing a female lead vocalist resulting artists such as Imperia, or retaining much of their Doom influence, Sins of thy Beloved.

This would later be combined with a strong Power Metal element (notably European Symphonic Power Metal) to create what is now the most popular form of the genre, dominated by (early) Nightwish, After Forever and most recently, Pythia. In addition, it feels prudent to address the frequent mischaracterisation of female fronted artists, many of which are erroneously labelled as Gothic Metal. Some drop the Gothic focus entirely, the likes of Edenbridge and Operatika performing Symphonic/Power; others such as Lacuna Coil, Evanescence and Lullacry combining this popular combination of Symphonic, Gothic and Power Metal with Rock and in some cases, Nu-Metal, shifting focus to catchy rhythms over the previously held atmospheric values, resulting in a tone more akin to a new wave of Gothic Rock. Whilst less common, male led artists such as HIM, Poisonblack and 69 Eyes often suffer the same mischaracterisation issues. - TB/MA

Metalcore: With Crossover roots in the mid 80’s with bands like Corrosion of Conformity and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles who started to blend the ferocity and chaotic sounds of Hardcore with the technicality and speed of Thrash, as both underground genres started to gain notoriety and mixing crowds, this entwinement furthered. During the late 80’s and early 90’s, bands started to move further towards Metal; but keeping the socio-political ideals of Hardcore (as with the band Earth Crisis, who were vegans and advocated animal rights). It was also in the early 90’s another fork of Metalcore came to be; focussing on technical songwriting but keeping the chaotic atmosphere of Hardcore, often called Mathcore (a term derived partially from Math Rock), this side is exemplified by artists such as Botch and Converge.

Towards the mid and late 90’s Metalcore took another turn, taking influence from Gothenburg Melodic Death Metal and mixing in Hardcore elements (notably breakdowns). Predominantly coming from America it has since been called the New Wave of American Heavy Metal (abbrev. NWOAHM), though despite the nickname most bands play Metalcore music. After the 90’s there was yet another divergence of musical styles; one taking influence from Technical Death Metal and one another from Post-Hardcore. Whilst the former has since become a large enough movement to garner its own subgenre, Deathcore, the latter quickly found a corporate niche, combining catchy and melodic choruses with an edgier more aggressive overall sound that appealed to rebellious teens. Because of how large Metalcore has become it is one of the hardest genres to define with anything that takes any influence from any combination of Metal, Hardcore, or Post-hardcore being called Metalcore. - MAn

Progressive Metal: Whilst debatable as to whether it constitutes a descriptor or a genre in its own right, Progressive Metal features tracks that consistently vary throughout the course of the song. Often more involved in exploring a thematic concept, a particular range of emotions or in telling a story; because of this nature the track will only come to an end when the subject matter has been covered in sufficient detail, sometimes including additional unconventional instrumentation where required to accentuate the point being made, the result is often longer tracks are performed.

A common misconception is that the style of music being formed pushes conventional boundaries, and whilst this may once have been true to an extent from a technical standpoint with the frequent inclusion of time signatures and unusual beat patterns over the more conventional Rock and Metal format, it is not this that defines Progressive Metal. It is perfectly possible to have simplistic and catchy music that remains progressive (e.g. Janne da Arc, Walrus), if perhaps uncommon. Whilst any sub-genre of Metal can display progressive tendencies, much of the genre is either strongly influenced by Power Metal (e.g. Symphony X, Manticora, Redemption) or Death Metal (e.g. Atheist, Cynic, [later] Death). Other well known examples include Dream Theater, Zero Hour and Nevermore. - TB

Technical/Math Metal: Often associated with Progressive music, the genre utilises irregular song structures, dissonant chords, abrupt changes in tempo and unusual beat patterns. The result is often very complex and chaotic in tone, reserved largely for use in Technical Death Metal (e.g. Anata, Gorguts, Cryptopsy) and Mathcore (e.g. Sikth, Rolo Tomassi, Protest the Hero). Both genres terms emerged from alternate places but ultimately mean the same thing; Mathcore emerging influenced primarily from Math Rock and Technical Death Metal taking influences from Technical (Free) Jazz.

John Zorn - particularly with Naked City - soon fused the more metallic Technical Death Metal with the more punk influenced Mathcore, and with a greater reliance on Free Jazz, created a new breed of music called Jazzcore (e.g. Midori, Kusudama, Lye By Mistake). It should be noted that Technical music is not always chaotic in its sound; if something is performed in a 7/13 beat pattern at 120bpm, it remains technical but neither quick nor complex (e.g. Slint, Crydebris). It should also be noted that Technical music and Progressive music are mutually exclusive terms. - TB

Viking Metal: Following the lead of Bathory’s ‘Blood Fire Death,’ (1988) the genre has since evolved to take its own unique form combining elements of Black Metal, Death Metal, Folk Metal and in some cases Doom Metal and Power Metal. Characterised by its comparatively mid-paced tempo, coherent growls usually mid-ranged or higher, and bombastic approach to the manner in which instruments are performed, as with Folk Metal, it is also often common to find unconventional instruments being utilised (or keyboards being used in their place). Many artists deemed the title offensive due to its specific nature, many having little in common with Viking imagery, and instead choose to refer to themselves as ‘Pagan Metal,’ though the terms are synonymous with regards to sound. Though the genre is still young and finding its roots, it has seen a large rise in popularity over the course of the last decade. Well known artists include Moonsorrow, Equilibrium and Forefather.

Note: there is a common misconception that ‘Amon Amarth,’ ‘Tyr’ and ‘Turisas’ can be considered a part of the genre due to their lyrical themes. Amon Amarth are Melodic Death Metal, Tyr Progressive Folk and Turisas Symphonic/Folk Metal; their lyrical content alone does not place them – or any other artist – within this genre. - TB

Credits
Authors: T. Bawden, M. Adel, A. Laurentz, M. Angell, J. Chan, A. Mower, A. Dabbagh, C. Bidwell, S McGrath
Editors: T. Bawden
Coding by T. Bawden