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    See Also:

    Sites:
  • The BNR Metal Pages: Extensive database of information and opinions on metal bands, ranging from the 1970s to the 1990s.
  • About Heavy Metal: MP3s, concert schedules, band links, and live radio from About.com.
  • Absolute Metalmaniacs: Metal reviews, audio and video samples, lyrics, and a discussion board.
  • Albums of Purgatory: Features reviews and interviews in all types of metal.
  • Always-Rock: Biographies, lyrics, video and audio clips, and tablatures for several bands including Metallica, Static-X, Papa Roach, and Drowning Pool.
  • Beherit Metal: Lyrics, graphics, MP3s, and reviews.
  • Bella Online: Heavy Metal: Biographies, discographies, news, features, links and message board.
  • Bootleg Trading Post: Offers trades.
  • Dark Elucidation: A collection of discographies sorted by band, country of origin, and genre.
  • Dark Legions Archive: Reviews of bands in all metal genres, a metal radio show, MP3 samples and historical and cultural analysis of the metal movement.
  • Darkest Plague: Features news updates, album reviews, latest releases, tours, and merchandising information on popular metal bands.
  • Darksoul7.com: Interviews, reviews, MP3 downloads, news, free email, message board and chat. Covers North America.
  • Decibel Obsessed Metal Cult: Underground black, death, thrash, doom and speed metal news, reviews, interviews, message board, pictures and links.
  • Degradation Trip: Fansite with news, biographies, pictures, and reviews for bands on the Roadrunner record label.
  • Encyclopaedia Metallum: Extensive database of information about bands such as discography, lyrics, and album reviews submitted by users.
  • German Metal: Featuring a list of bands, news, mailing list, forums, chat, and an online store.
  • Gravemusic: Includes original photos from live performances, news, vintage flyers, wallpaper, album reviews and audio samples.
  • HardVideo: Streaming music video site.
  • Headliners Team: Headliners is a metal portal with news, reviews, interviews, MP3, new releases, and a forum with an emphasis on Turkish, Bulgarian, and German metal.
  • Japsounds: Interviews with Japanese heavy metal, hard rock and noise artists.
  • Kickin It in Kent: Dedicated to metal bands in Kent, Ohio, featuring news, profiles, and MP3s.
  • M2k: News, lyrics, pictures, videos and MP3s for bands such as Korn and Slipknot.
  • Mega Hard Rock Site: Features various information on selected bands such as Slipknot, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, and The Deftones.
  • Mega Metal Music: Descriptions of over 100 metal bands from the 1970s to the present. Includes biographies, discographies, pictures and album covers. Also features For Sale/Wanted lists, and metal trivia.
  • Mega's Metal Asylum: Includes links, webrings and awards.
  • Melodic Rock: Offers news, reviews, interviews, playlists, tourdates, and concert reviews about German metal.
  • Metal Exiles: Reviews, interviews, news, radio, message board, and links.
  • Metal Flakes: News, reviews, interviews, chat, message board, photos, newsletter, and surveys.
  • Metal Headquarters: News, audio, video, pictures and chat.
  • Metal Injection TV: Weekly streaming TV show, wallpapers, news and links.
  • Metal Lives Here: News, videos, MP3s, reviews, tour dates, release dates, lyrics, pictures and links.
  • Metal Madness: Offers news, merchandise, and biographical information for an extensive list of bands.
  • Metal Mayhem: Offers a detailed description of several metal sub-genres, complete with suggested albums, MP3s, reviews, and news updates.
  • Metal Planet: Features heavy metal news updates.
  • Metal Roots: An aural history of heavy metal featuring more than 200 songs that indicate the most influential bands of the genre. Site also features biographies and discographies for each band described.
  • Metal Station: Lyrics, pictures, biographies, news and album reviews.
  • Metal Underground: Community for underground metal bands, featuring news, reviews, and biographies of new underground bands.
  • Metal Underworld: Biography, discography and links to underground metal bands worldwide.
  • Metalheads Against Racism: Promotes tolerance within the metal community, and includes a list of sites supporting their ideas.
  • Metalprovider.com: Free webspace provider for heavy metal pages.
  • MetalYou - The Definitive Metal Guide: Reviews, discography, biography, pictures and links.
  • Midnight Metal: News, reviews, contests, videos, and streaming audio.
  • Nightfall: News, reviews, radio show, interviews, guestbook, and links.
  • Northern California Metal Underground: Dedicated to the underground metal artists and enthusiasts of Northern California. News, reviews, event calendar, band profiles and MP3s.
  • Rising Horizons: Adrian's favourite heavy metal bands. Photographs and information on Stratovarius, Rhapsody, Edguy, Hammerfall and Iron Savior.
  • Slay The Masses - Metal Horde: Covering all genres of extreme/avantgarde/alternative metal such as black, death, grindcore, doom, goth and industrial. Featuring reviews, news, interviews, lyrics and forum.
  • Speed Metal Mutant: MSN group dedicated to speed metal and thrash. Chat, forum, photo albums, reviews and interviews.
  • The Crazy Web Site: Provides up-to-date metal news, and offers information and sound clips from new bands in need of exposure.
  • The Dead of the Night: A listing of females in extreme music, information about "Ruffage," the author's radio program, and a description of the metal scene in Delaware.
  • The Gauntlet: News, biographies, MP3s, videos, lyrics, tablatures, buddy icons, message boards, and merchandise.
  • The Great Heavy Metal Poll: Poll page featuring categories such as Best Band, Best Album, Best Musicians, and Best Genre. Votes are sent through e-mail, requiring browser support.
  • The Metal Guide: Extensive database of Australian metal bands including contact details and links to official sites.
  • The Scrobiculus Of Heavy Metal: Heavy metal soundfiles, information, tours, discussion, and reviews.
  • Thizly's Metal Mansion: Features photo galleries, charts, and album and concert reviews.
  • Unchained Metal: News, interviews, chats, polls, and tablatures.
  • Wicked Land: Featuring Pantera, KoRn, Marilyn Manson, Far, Deftones, Soulfly, Pulkas, Pro-Pain, and Vision of Disorder.
  • Wolvie's Metal News: News, CD and DVD reviews, interviews, and a special section on Ozzfest.
  • World Metal Alliance: Features news, polls, MP3s, message boards, chat, and downloadable media such as desktop themes and wallpaper.


     from Wikipedia

    Heavy metal music

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Jump to: navigation, search
    Heavy metal
    Stylistic origins
    Cultural origins
    Late 1960s, England and United States
    Typical instruments
    Guitar - Bass - Drums - Vocals - Keyboards (occasional)
    Mainstream popularity Worldwide, peaking in the United States during the 1980s.
    Subgenres
    Avant-garde metal - Black metal - Death metal - Doom metal - Glam metal - Gothic metal - Groove metal - Power metal - Speed metal - Stoner metal - Symphonic metal - Technical metal - Thrash metal - Traditional heavy metal - Unblack metal - Viking metal
    Fusion genres
    Alternative metal - Christian metal - Crust punk - Folk metal - Funk metal - Grindcore - Grunge - Industrial metal - Metalcore - Neo-classical metal - Nu metal - Post-metal - Progressive metal - Rap metal - Sludge metal
    Regional scenes
    Australia - Bay Area - BrazilBritainGermany - Gothenburg - United States - Muslim world
    Other topics
    Fashion - Bands - Umlaut - Blast beat - Subgenres

    Heavy metal (often referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music[1] that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States.[2] With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, and emphatic beats. Allmusic states that "of all rock & roll's myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality."[3]

    Early heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Eric Burdon & The Animals attracted large audiences, though they were often critically reviled, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; Motörhead introduced a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal such as Iron Maiden followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal had attracted a worldwide following of fans known as "metalheads" or "headbangers."

    In the mid-1980s, glam metal became a major commercial force with groups like Mötley Crüe. Underground scenes produced an array of more extreme, aggressive styles: thrash metal broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica, while other styles like death metal and black metal remain subcultural phenomena. Since the mid-1990s, popular styles such as nu metal, which often incorporates elements of funk and hip hop; and metalcore, which blends extreme metal with hardcore punk, have further expanded the definition of the genre.

    Characteristics

    Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals. Metal subgenres variously emphasize, alter, or omit one or more of these attributes. New York Times critic Jon Pareles writes, "In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force."[4] The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist. Keyboard instruments are often used to enhance the fullness of the sound.[5] The loud, distorted Hammond organ and occasionally the magnetic tape-based mellotron were popular with early metal bands; these instruments were displaced in the 1980s by electronic keyboard synthesizers. Today, keyboards are used in styles such as progressive metal, power metal, and symphonic metal. Some nu metal bands incorporate hip hop elements, which may include a DJ scratching and creating various sound effects.

    The electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has historically been the key element in heavy metal.[6] Guitars are often played with distortion pedals through heavily overdriven tube amplifiers to create a thick, powerful, "heavy" sound. In the early 1970s, some popular metal groups began cofeaturing two guitarists. Leading bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden followed this pattern of having two or three guitarists share the roles of both lead and rhythm guitar. A central element of much heavy metal is the guitar solo, a form of cadenza. As the genre developed, more intricate solos and riffs became an integral part of the style. Guitarists use sweep-picking, tapping, and other advanced techniques for rapid playing, and many styles of metal emphasize virtuosic displays.

    The lead role of the guitar in heavy metal often collides with the traditional "frontman" or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension as the two "contend for dominance" in a spirit of "affectionate rivalry."[5] Heavy metal "demands the subordination of the voice" to the overall sound of the band. Reflecting metal's roots in the 1960s counterculture, an "explicit display of emotion" is required from the vocals as a sign of authenticity.[7] Critic Simon Frith claims that the metal singer's "tone of voice" is more important than the lyrics.[8] Metal vocals vary widely in style, from the multioctave, theatrical approach of Judas Priest's Rob Halford and Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, to the gruff style of Motörhead's Lemmy and Metallica's James Hetfield, to the straight-out screaming and growling At the Gates' Tomas Lindberg, to the phlegm-clogged, possessed style of black metal singers such as Mayhem's Dead.

    The prominent role of the bass is also key to the metal sound, and the interplay of bass and guitar is a central element.[9] The bass guitar provides the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy."[10] Metal basslines vary widely in complexity, from holding down a low pedal point as a foundation to doubling complex riffs and licks along with the lead and/or rhythm guitars. Some bands feature the bass as a lead instrument,[9] an approach popularized by Metallica's Cliff Burton in the early 1980s.[11] Metal bassists frequently use picks instead of fingerstyle plucking, to get a stronger, clearer articulation. A few use shred guitar–style techniques such as tapping and sweep picking. In some styles, such as thrash and death metal, the bass may be distorted with a bass overdrive pedal for a heavier, thicker sound. Nu metal as well as death metal bassists often use a five- or six-string bass (or a detuned instrument) with an extended lower range.

    The essence of metal drumming is creating a loud, constant beat for the band using the "trifecta of speed, power, and precision."[12] Metal drumming "requires an exceptional amount of endurance", and drummers have to develop "considerable speed, coordination, and dexterity...to play the intricate patterns" used in metal.[13] A characteristic metal drumming technique is the cymbal choke, which consists of striking a cymbal and then immediately silencing it by grabbing it with the other hand (or, in some cases, the same striking hand), producing a burst of sound. The metal drum setup is generally much larger than those employed in other forms of rock music;[10] in some cases, a "huge drum kit envelope[s] the whole of the backline" of the stage.[14] Aside from the standard toms, bass drum, snare, and hi-hat, ride, and crash cymbals used in many rock drumkits, there is often a double bass drum, additional toms, a number of additional cymbals (e.g., splash and extra crash cymbals), and other instruments such as a cowbell.

    In live performance, loudness—an "onslaught of sound," in Deena Weinstein's description—is considered vital.[6] In his book Metalheads, Jeffrey Arnett refers to heavy metal concerts as "the sensory equivalent of war."[15] Following the lead set by Jimi Hendrix, Cream and The Who, early heavy metal acts such as Blue Cheer set new benchmarks for volume. As Blue Cheer's Dick Peterson puts it, "All we knew was we wanted more power."[16] Reviewing a Motörhead concert in 1977, Paul Sutcliffe noted how "excessive volume in particular figured into the band’s impact."[17] Weinstein makes the case that in the same way that melody is the main element of pop and rhythm is the main focus of house music, powerful sound, timbre, and volume are the key elements of metal. She argues that the loudness is designed to "sweep the listener into the sound" and to provide a "shot of youthful vitality."[6] Heavy metal's fixation on loudness was mocked in the rockumentary spoof This Is Spinal Tap, in which a metal guitarist claims to have modified his amplifiers to "go to eleven."

    Musical language

    Rhythm and tempo

    The beat in metal songs is emphatic, with deliberate stresses. Weinstein observes that the wide array of sonic effects available to metal drummers enables the "rhythmic pattern to take on a complexity within its elemental drive and insistency."[10] In many heavy metal songs, the main groove is characterized by short, two-note or three-note rhythmic figures—generally made up of 8th or 16th notes. These rhythmic figures are usually performed with a staccato attack created by using a palm-muted technique on the rhythm guitar.[18]

    An example of a rhythmic pattern used in heavy metal.
    An example of a rhythmic pattern used in heavy metal.

    Brief, abrupt, and detached rhythmic cells are joined into rhythmic phrases with a distinctive, often jerky texture. These phrases are used to create rhythmic accompaniment and melodic figures called riffs, which help to establish thematic hooks. Heavy metal songs also use longer rhythmic figures such as whole note- or dotted quarter note-length chords in slow-tempo power ballads. The tempos in early heavy metal music tended to be "slow, even ponderous."[10] By the late 1970s, however, metal bands were employing a wide variety of tempos. In the 2000s, metal tempos range from slow ballad tempos (quarter note = 60 beats per minute) to extremely fast blast beat tempos (quarter note = 350 beats per minute).[13]

    Harmony

    One of the signatures of the genre is the guitar power chord.[19] In technical terms, the power chord is relatively simple: it involves just one main interval, generally the perfect fifth, though an octave may be added as a doubling of the root. Although the perfect fifth interval is the most common basis for the power chord,[20] power chords are also based on different intervals such as the minor third, major third, perfect fourth, diminished fifth, or minor sixth.[21] Since the power chord is based on a single interval, it enables guitarists to use a high level of distortion without unintended inharmonicity or intermodulation distortion. If a triad— a chord with a root, third, and fifth— is played on a heavily-distorted guitar, intermodulation distortion may produce frequency components at the various sums and differences of the frequency components of the input signal which will be not be harmonically related to the input signal, leading to dissonance[22]. Most power chords are also played with a consistent finger arrangement that can be slid easily up and down the fretboard.[23]

    The main riff from Megadeth's "Addicted to Chaos" is an example of a heavy metal riff incorporating several types of power chords
    The main riff from Megadeth's "Addicted to Chaos" is an example of a heavy metal riff incorporating several types of power chords

    Typical harmonic relationships

    Heavy metal is usually based on riffs created with three main harmonic traits: modal scale progressions, tritone and chromatic progressions, and the use of pedal point