Heavy Metal

Distortion, power chords and heavy drums pushed to the limit; the riff and volume do the talking.

Related

ContemporaryTimbreElectric guitarDrum Kit

Heavy metal pushed hard rock's distortion and weight further, using riffs, volume and high registers to turn the stage into a pressure field.

Origins and era

In the late 1960s Black Sabbath slowed, detuned and thickened the blues, while Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin brought organ and long solos. Judas Priest stripped out the blues in the mid-1970s and fixed the twin-guitar scream. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal around 1979 pushed speed and melody underground, and thrash, death and black metal branched off.

What you hear

Start with power chords and palm muting. Guitars are often tuned down, and riffs use tritones, semitones and pentatonic shapes. Drums use double kick, hard snare and busy fills, while bass locks to the guitar root. The singer may switch between scream and growl. Songs and solos run long, with dynamics from section contrast.

Key figures

Black Sabbath fixed the dark and slow, Judas Priest fixed twin guitars and high vocals, Iron Maiden brought melody and history into the new wave, and Metallica and Slayer took thrash worldwide. Motörhead linked punk and metal, while Death and Mayhem opened extreme metal.

Lineage

Hard rock, blues rock and classical motives feed in; thrash, death, black, doom, nu-metal and metalcore come out. Guitar colour and drum stamina became markers.

Common misunderstandings

Metal is not one fixed tempo, since doom can crawl and thrash can sprint. Nor only anger, as Black Sabbath's blues skeleton and classical harmony persisted. Hearing it as noise misses the riff design and the layered production.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Heavy Metal（Oxford University Press），用于核对风格与年代
• Robert Walser, Running with the Devil（Wesleyan University Press, 1993），用于核对金属的吉他、音色与亚文化

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.