Heavy metal music

"We don't allow any prick teasing bimbos on our program. If they don't put out they're thrown out of the van at sixty miles an hour. And they can turn some tricks at the truck stop. That's the best place to find wimmen and that's the best place to leave wimmen."

"Interviewer: Everybody's always wondering about the anal retentiveness of the lyrics. Are you guys really into anal sex? Is that really a large part of your life? Dr. Heathen Scum: Only heterosexual anal sex."

"As you know I have been preaching along with El Duce and Sickie Wifebeater for many years against homosexuality in rock and it's time to take revenge on people that try to stop rock. The real rock, hetero rock. There for Bowie is going on trial within Rock Kourt."

"Once upon a midnight, the metal flag was raised Long ago a sabbath black cut through the purple haze Upon a silver mountain a message loud and clear Screaming with a vengeance that we will forever hear."

"Why do you think some metalheads are so afraid of you?"

"Live don't preach it If you can't don't teach it Accidental God loves heavy metal So I know he must want me."

"Nothing evil, nothing sacred Just a power that's been created There to take you and possess you Shout it out with a voice from hell [...] I am metal and I'll never die We are metal and we'll never die"

"Heavy Metal is the law that keeps us all united free A law that shatters earth and hell Heavy Metal can't be beaten by any dynasty We're all wizards fightin' with our spell."

"Call me insane, call me hard wired But it's the only noise I like Believe in loud and fast and higher I can tell the sound of wrong or right [...] What I hear I adhere Have no fear, say sincere Are you metal?"

"Rising from darkness where Hell hath no mercy and the screams for vengeance echo on forever. Only those who keep the faith shall escape the wrath of the Metallian... Master of all metal."

"Death, doom and destruction rain down upon the forsaken ne being stands alone to save humanity A soldier born from the past on sad wings of destiny Powerful, unflinching and hearing the eternal force that will proclaim and assert metal's deliverance - The Redeemer of Souls!"

"'Cause I need metal in my life, Just like an eagle need to fly [...] Hold your head up high! Raise your fist up in the air! Play metal louder than hell! They can't stop us, let 'em try, for heavy metal we will die!"

"Back in the Day Metal's king back then And still is to this day Others imitate or challenge But it never goes away"

"The leathered armies have prevailed The Phantom Lord has never failed Smoke is lifting from the ground The riding volume Metal sound."

"Joining together to take on the world with our heavy metal Spreading the message to everyone here, Come let yourself go."

"All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?"

"Here's the thing. I always hear that whole 'metal is dead' crap. The truth of the matter is that when we started the Ozzfest, media-wise, yes, metal was dead. But as far as the kids went, it was still huge. It was just that radio and MTV decided it wasn't in vogue with what they wanted to do at the time, so the average person didn't hear too much about it. That's why when it comes to picking the new acts each summer, we have people out there on the internet and in the clubs looking for good music and finding bands that people are excited about. I want to know what the kids are into, because I don't trust the industry."

"I kept hearing that metal is dead and Ozzy's dead and people that like Ozzy are dead. I have never had an empty seat. I've always sold out, so who's saying it's all over?"

"Pull your head back Hold your hands high Shake your body If it's too loud And you're burning hot Fill your heads With heavy metal thunder"

"Bartholomew was a sommelier of heavy metal. “Yeah. Not bad for a two-umlaut band. First album was so-so. Then they ran out of material—they write maybe two songs a year. Got into a black magic thing for their videos. Already passé.” “Isn’t that the whole point of heavy metal?” “Yeah. I’m the one who told you that,” he reminded me. “Heavy metal will never leave you behind.”"

"Metal! It comes from hell!"

"Under the blanket of rock 'n' roll music lies heavy metal."

"I went vegetarian when I was about… 8 years old. One day I cut this piece of meat open and blood came out of it, and I realized, I asked my mother, “Where did this come from?,” and she said, “From animals,” and that was it."

"I’ve grown up with animals in the house, I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and all of us had cats, dogs, mice, chickens, frogs, tortoises, so they’ve always been a big part of my life. My dog, Scamp, was my best friend when I was growing up, and he was just as much a brother to me as my human brothers. Someone threw acid on him, and he almost died, but my parents spent their life savings having him treated. It appalled me that people could be so cruel, and ever since I have stuck up for animals. It is something I can be active in, unlike trying to figure out the appalling things humans do to each other."

"Ronnie was so enthusiastic, and he could play instruments which Ozzy couldn't play, so it was easy to communicate with him, and for him to communicate musically with us. That enthusiasm gives us all a kick up the bum."

"In the hard rock and heavy metal world, Butler is a downright god. Known for his early use of the wah-wah pedal and down-tuning his instrument (which would become a favorite technique among grunge guitarists and bass players), Butler is one of the most celebrated bassists within the genre. Butler, who was also the primary lyricist in Black Sabbath, has been claimed by such greats as Steve Harris, Billy Sheehan, and Jason Newstead when it comes to posing as an influential figure. Butler’s performance on the Sabbath classic "Paranoid" holds the whole song together."

"Around the time I was first getting into hardcore/metal/punk and going to shows, I had a lot of friends who were vegan and vegetarian and after having a few conversations with them regarding the subject I realised I'd never really thought about things the way they did. I was never pressured into anything and I found myself doing my own research on the subject matter and after finding some cold hard facts about the meat and dairy industry which disturbed me deeply, I made the decision to go veg and then a year later vegan and I've now been vegan for eleven years with no problems whatsoever."

"I found for me personally the easiest way to think about things [in the transition to veganism] was to not actually think about the products I was boycotting as food, but for what they actually were—for instance, the flesh of an animal or the embryo of a chicken."

"So many people don’t know about what happens behind closed doors in slaughterhouses and with animal testing. We’re a small minority of people up against large corporations with billions of dollars, but if we can sort of chip away and slowly spread awareness through whatever medium it is, whether it be music or television or anything, it’s going to help toward positive change. … According to PETA, some of the biggest animal-testing companies are Colgate and Gillette … and so whether it’s just having a shave in the morning or brushing their teeth with toothpaste, it’s not just women who are funding animal testing …. Changes in government legislation won’t come without social change. … [We activists] are trying to get information out to people so they know what they’re getting involved in on a daily basis."

"is a really , , . So, it's a weird place to begin with, and then you have these kids with no place to go. So maybe death metal happened as a reaction to that or maybe it's just some energetic physics thing—a spirit that's in the air and kids tune into it if they have an artistic bone in their bodies."

"Tampa never really got the shows coming through town that New York or the West Coast got, and that created a real hunger for good music. We kind of had to create our own scene."

"Back then, we were all trying to define our own sounds and images. I don’t wanna say there was unfriendly competition, but I don’t wanna say there was friendly competition either. We were all competing for the front seat. It all started with and . You had the thing going on with and we wanted to outdo that. My goal was to be heavier, vocally especially."

"I was jamming with a few other guys in in the late 80’s, when we collectively decided to move to Florida. […] It was who actually told us about the scene in Florida before we came down. […] So we moved down in December of 1989. […] But when we first moved to South Florida, the scene was just killer for metal. That was a big reason why we moved down."

"To be honest, the early Tampa scene was very divisive, and a lot of the bands didn’t like each other or talk to each other because it was extremely competitive. No one knew that literally every single one of their bands was going to get signed."

"Back then, I really wanted to destroy everybody. I wanted people to have to work a lot harder after the fans witnessed what we had going on. I wanted to smoke people. I really believed that bands were challenging each other, trying to outdo each other and make each other quit - almost like the rivalries with East Coast and West Coast rappers. I really kind of thought people wanted to write parts that would engulf the whole world. I wanted to get onstage and have people go, "Holy shit - what the fuck is going on?" I wanted to write stuff that would make other bands run and hide. It's not really very nice, but that's what drove me."

"I didn't really see [Morbid Angel] as competition. I just saw it as someone who was shit-talking who was gonna get pounded. But after a confrontation at an airport, that came to an end. We got on a plane with them and I went, "Hey man, what the fuck is this shit about?" And there was an about-face. "Oh, we didn't say that, man." But we have some mutual friends and shit, so we know what was said. And it was like, "OK, you know what, if you want to take it to the next level, we're ready." We made peace after that and realized we were all on the same team."

"To make it fun and exciting, we kind of looked at it like wrestling. You know how in wrestling you've got these big guys and it's all competition and they've got something to say about this or that guy, but it's all in fun? The idea was to write songs that blew everybody else away and pull off the most wicked, fucking beats. But it was only in fun, and it was a motivational tool."

"It was more competitive in Florida than in Buffalo, which is where we were originally from. But I don't know if it was a completely negative thing because sometimes that competitive spirit helps bands better themselves. Everyone wants to be the fastest and the heaviest, and that kept the scene moving forward in a faster, heavier direction."

"I’ll never forget a party I went to in an old barn in central Florida. [...] Amon were playing and then Xecutioner (which became Obituary). I went to the party with Chuck [Schuldiner] and I remember David Vincent saying to Chuck, ‘Man, I love your vocals on ', which he had the advance cassette of. It seemed like every band that became influential from that Florida scene was there that night. It was just a room of artists interacting and there was a lot of camaraderie and respect. And you could feel it. It was like, ‘Whoa, this is a scene.’"

"I’d met Chuck in ’89 [...] We got in contact with him and hung out for a while, he introduced me to [producer and engineer] Scott [Burns] who was doing sound for a show at an airplane hangar. It was Morbid Angel, Obituary, Atheist, Amon and Nocturnus. That’s where I met every key member of every band. That was the first sign that something really cool was happening."

"The Florida technical death metal scene was huge for me. The mind-bending songs of Atheist were just so out of this world and even if I didn’t understand the songs back then they still resonated with me. I couldn’t love this more if I tried."

"Down in Florida, people were listening to Nasty Savage and Savatage as well as shredders like Randy Rhoads before the really heavy stuff started with bands like Celtic Frost, Slayer, Hellhammer and Venom."

"and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to record . For , you gotta have a drum kit that can cut through a . So it was important to have good and solid . For a while there, we were doing death-metal sessions."

"Scott knew what to do with fast and brutal bands, and not a lot of guys did at the time [...] It really drew people from the death metal scene down here. That was a big factor in Tampa becoming a haven here. They wanted to be close to the studio."

"With high-quality production that differentiated one band from another, artists in Tampa could carve and cultivate their own identities. Sure, there were similarities. The drummers often played blast beats — which used double-bass drumming and were considerably faster than thrash beats – and guitarists played rapid up and down strokes with few pauses (called tremolo picking). The rhythms flip-flopped from a high-octane burn to doomy, palm-muted chugs and often relied on irregular time signatures, and the leads were more cacophonous than Slayer’s. To the untrained ear, it was a mess, but that just made it a more exclusive form of music for those who could separate one cacophonic tone from another."

"In ‘05, was crazy popular. We were like OK, metalcore is cool, but what if you cut off all the singing shit and you just play the heavy shit and ? What if your drummer is a ? And what if your vocalist is more influenced by than he is by ? That’s kinda how it came to be."

"I think kids got tired of this fuckin' emo-metal bullshit. They wanted something a lot heavier, so they've made hybrids that incorporate death metal. They've learned their lessons from what we did 15 years ago from their uncles or parents and they want to capture that brutality."

"Bands like and came out saying, "Yeah, we like Cynic," and that spoke volumes to numerous kids who started researching the older bands like us."

"People are realizing that the heaviest music was definitely when death metal started. And today there are kids picking up instruments who really want to be good musicians, and death metal requires good musicianship. Kids are finally learning how to play goddamn fucking solos again."

"As it evolved and mutated, metalcore and deathcore bands including , , , , and applied elements of death metal to their own -heavy rhythms, while other purists played old-school sounds for new audiences."

"There was such a long period of time where [the genre] was so saturated [...] A large percentage of those bands sounded the same, regurgitating the same sounds and ideas. I think that's a big chunk of the negative connotations the deathcore tag had back then."

"People are in their garage making a demo, and once they get into a studio they're going to want to use the [recording equipment]. It offers all sorts of temptations. Even without trying, you start to become good at your instrument, you're gonna want to do things with it."

"Though death metal songwriters weren't moving away from the grim subject material, there was a growing desire for clarity, with bands tightening up to better communicate weird or abstract ideas of death, and to court some of the more lucrative commercial possibilities. This more professional approach, forged from recording engineers and musicians working to refine the sound, would be the spark that finally ignited the interest of larger organizations."

"Within the confines of a genre there's always a tension: Where do you go with extreme music? What limits are left to explore? One of the reasons I think that extreme metal artists end up producing more technical or listenable work is ultimately it becomes less artistically satisfying to produce [traditional death metal]."

"Beyond the blood, guts, screams and pick squeals, death metal has also become a platform for virtuosic musicians to display advanced musical techniques and challenging lyrics."

"There's only so fast you can play and there's only so heavy you can be without it all sounding the same, or without it all just being a blur, so you know, maybe we've opened up a whole new branch of direction [...] with the music. [...] As long as it keeps expanding and bands keep experimenting and doing different things, it's not going to die out."

"[Learning music theory] can spur your creativity. I’ve found that the guys who don’t know as much theory tend to write things in 4/4 most of the time. The guys who know theory are the ones who end up experimenting more and having music that sounds a little more out there, which I like. The more you know, the more you can mess around."

"There are blurry lines that separate death metal, grindcore, and thrash metal and even black metal; some bands certainly overlap these genres. What sets grindcore apart mostly is how bands push the limits known to extreme music with more intensity, speed, intensity and lyrics. Short, buzzing riffs fast enough to snap necks; guttural vocals, and blast beats underneath it all define some of grindcore's key characteristics."

"Grindcore is the bridge between and mixed with brutally fast . You take it and throw it all in a blender, hit and stand back."

"In , there’s one band that rules supreme, and that’s . Everyone from Gothenburg loves Iron Maiden for some reason, so naturally their version of death metal would be melodic and with a twin guitar attack."

"In Sweden, death metal started in Stockholm. [...] Grotesque were together in 1987 and so were Nihilist. And the Stockholm bands were more based around Judas Priest and Motorhead – a fast, but rock and roll kind of approach — more dirty than what came out of Gothenburg."

"In Stockholm bands were very heavily influenced by and noisy kind of stuff. They were all about getting and being unpolished."

"The difference between Stockholm bands and Gothenburg bands is in Stockholm you join a band to walk through the VIP door of the nightclub and in Gothenburg you join a band because you want to play and you stay home practicing Friday and Saturday night. There were a few places to play, but people were so focused on being nerdy with their instruments and their bands and rehearsed all the time. The Haunted shared a rehearsal space with In Flames for a year or two and everyone just hung out together playing and drinking beer."

"' remains one of the most gruesomely perfect pieces of Swedish death metal ever committed to tape. [...] Most importantly, the Swedish sluggers’ stellar debut showed the Yanks didn’t have the monopoly on white-hot death metal. Bands are still ripping it off 30 years on."

"When I compare other countries’ scenes, there is no healthier scene than Sweden’s when it comes to musicians. There are kick-ass bands in practically every town in this country, and there always have been. I remember going to concerts back in the day and you just had to look around and you saw all these guys from different bands. [...] In the black metal, thrash and death metal scenes, there was never this gap between the band and the fans. Everybody played. Some were on a bigger level but they always mingled with the audience, always. Everybody starts really early up here. Everybody wants to be as good as all the guys they looked up to in school, and with the way our community is built up, you get a chance early on. [...] You can borrow and rent equipment fairly cheaply, so it is a good opportunity if you are a young kid to jump on that bandwagon and have fun with it. I think the whole underground movement settled down here in Stockholm as a scene itself with bands like Nihilist, Unleashed, Dismember, Grave. There were tonnes of them. Then you finally knew you were into something that was going to last."

"I think there was always a big divide between the Stockholm and Gothenburg scenes. The Gothenburg scene seemed to be way more into the melodic aspect; I don’t think they ever went for the brutality in death metal. [...] If you overdo the melodic aspect within death metal you’re definitely going to chop off an important element. [...] Of course, there were bands who were mixing it up pretty good. You had bands like Grotesque, which led to At The Gates, but in some ways they kept the tradition of [heavy metal] - I don’t want to say the cheesy element but the hyper-melodic element of it all. [...] And, for me, if you overdo the melodic aspect within death metal you’re definitely going to chop off an important element, an essential element of death metal, and that is the darkness. The whole eerie, dark element of death metal is to not go too melodic. [...] Yeah, I’m really proud to be from the Stockholm scene when I talk about that because I think the Stockholm underground death metal scene really did good in keeping justice to the whole true promise of death metal."

"Remember when death metal was about big ugly riffs and spine-chilling leads rather than an attempt to cram as many notes and beats into a song as possible with the aid of Pro Tools? When albums were filled with memorable tunes and atmosphere instead of monotonous blastfests, one barely distinguishable from another? In Sweden they never forgot. Indeed, during the 20 years since that distinctly dirty, punishing sound first crawled from the depths of Stockholm, the beast has remained alive, kept in fighting fitness by the pioneers who first brought it to life."

"In contrast to the melodic and technical flourishes found [in the Gothenburg sound], the original Swedish sound – made famous by the likes of Dismember, Entombed, Grave and Unleashed – is characterised by big, dirty and generally downtuned guitars, pounding drum beats, a taste for morbid groove and relatively straightforward song structures. The fact that most of the bands central to its creation stuck to their guns enabled it to forge a clear identity, one which stands in welcome contrast to the cold, technical direction US bands – and those inspired by US bands – have tended to follow."

"I was very fortunate to not get involved in any of [the church burnings] in that respect, but I think we were all very consumed with the whole thing. The attention it got. [...] All the negative attention and our local community’s reaction to it, it became fuel to the fire. It exaggerated this feeling of ‘us and them’. So I felt involved like that and in my band there were of course consequences. [...] And you can’t really deny that it kind of validated the seriousness of what we were doing. I heard someone talking about young rap artists these days who start doing criminal activity to give credibility and validity to the things they’re singing about. [...] It’s a very strange teenage thing, some kind of rebellious wish to have power and be taken seriously. To be dangerous. Because when you’re a teenager you’re also so vulnerable. We don’t have to psychoanalyse it all but as a grown-up I think it’s much easier to see how this happened."

"I don’t think [the church burnings] had a political agenda. I know that some of them are very extreme in their political agenda today, but they were young boys. I think they stopped thinking as individuals and started thinking more as a group, to impress each other, and to shock. They were in this bubble where, finally, you get immune: you take one step further, and then another, and before you know it, it’s not a big deal to kill a man."

"These Norwegian kids were doing things that mainstream folk may have assumed metal musicians did all the time. To say the least, this was not a good look for rock music."

"Christianity never suited Norway. It never belonged here. The black metal scene reacted to that. We needed to have something to be opposite to."

"Our purpose is to spread fear and evil."

"That’s why we started to wear our hair all black. We were singing about Satan and sadism, and everything that was wrong like torture and stuff like that — the opposite of hanging around at the beach [...] We were looking for perversity and craziness."

"The cops came to my parents’ place late at night, just to go through my room. I was 17. They were trying to find something that connected me to something. They left empty-handed, but they’d found some strange imagery on CDs and were nodding to each other like: ‘Jackpot.’"

"The starkness and coldness of Norway itself is embedded in the bones of"

"Today, we all find it kind of funny and sad at the same time. [...] Take Ivar from Enslaved: back then, we were writing stuff to each other that was so ugly, we had to look over our shoulders all the time. But today we’re the best of friends and we’re really embarrassed about all that stuff. A couple of years ago Kampfar won a Norwegian Grammy, and we were sitting there at the same table with Enslaved. We’re the same guys that back then sent death threats to each other. And we’re sitting there now in suits, drinking wine, eating fancy dinners. It was like: ‘How crazy is this?’” Pretty crazy."

"[The killing of Euronymous] is an old traditional fight, slandering and death threats start to fly between two people, and in the end one of them says, ‘You know what, I’m going to ... kill you' [...] That’s very traditional and mixed with power, money."

"[Euronymous] had the belief, the more extreme the better, the more unbelievable the better. [...] Then you have someone like Vikernes who comes in and starts taking it at face value, saying, ‘We can’t just talk about this stuff. We’ve got to do it.’ It was the combination of the two of them meeting that pushed things over the edge."

"[Black metal] sounds like evil, ranting demons laying waste to a snowy Scandinavian forest."

"[Black metal] was atmospheric, with a deeper approach than what the death metal scene was doing. You could travel within it."

"[Black metal is] a harsh, dark form of heavy metal with a focus on extremity and a satanic bent – although if you asked five fans you’d get seven different answers."

"Bands such as Metallica, Slayer and Sodom, inspired by the new wave of British heavy metal, added aggressive staccato guitar riffs and a pronounced punk influence to forge thrash metal."

""Thrash" wasn’t used that much as a term in 1982. I think it was more in 1984, with speedsters like Exodus, Slayer, Possessed, and Suicidal Tendencies, that we called them thrash and not just metal or punk."

"[Punk rock and heavy metal] were pretty segregated [before 1982]. I’m sure there were people from both those scenes that went to different shows but we didn’t book any shows with, like, Black Flag or TSOL. We never booked shows with those guys, which I regret, because I think it would have opened people’s eyes. That’s where the thrash thing came from, it crossed over from the punk element. Consider the circle mosh and stage diving and stuff like that – that came directly from the punk scene."

"Thrash and grind shared a common love of speed and aggression, and a number of bands fell comfortably into the middle ground between the two genres. Bands such as Autopsy (band), Entombed and combined grindcore's extreme pace and growled vocals with more complex song structures. This amalgamation of styles gave birth to death metal."

"This kind of music helps people get through negative things. I mean, you're taking something negative and turning it into something positive by making it into music -- instead of actually going out and doing something violent. There's plenty of ways to turn things around, and that is what death metal did for me. [...] It got me through alot of negative things in my life -- it was always there for me."

"The metal comes just from a resentment of crap being called metal. That's what drove the metal to be as heavy as it was and the lyrical content just had to step up to the music. It had to fit that angry disposition. There's no shortage of things to be pissed at in the world and people can pick their poison."

"What makes death metal so powerful to many fans is its versatility. It can blend itself well into any other genre of metal seamlessly; it has had a part in the formation and inspiration of many black metal grindcore, doom metal and experimental bands across the globe."

"Death metal exists in a void somewhere between high and low art. On one hand, the musicians playing this style are often world class, studying their instruments to an extreme level of virtuosity. It’s not unusual for extreme metal musicians to have extensively studied classical music (see Gorguts, Fleshgod Apocalypse) or jazz (see Atheist, Cynic), nor is it odd to find acts with an interest in philosophy, history and mythology, or politics and social criticism. However, more often than not, those skills and interests are translated into songs that typically deal with tearing flesh and destroying Christians. It’s music for people that appreciate artistic craft, but also like B-horror movies. Since it falls under the massive umbrella of “popular music,” many would argue that death metal can’t qualify as high art, but with its frequent use of advanced compositional techniques and experimental songwriting, it might be the closest thing the non-classical, non-jazz world has to high-culture music."

"Heavy metal slammed into the 1980s at full force, with clean lines and no hesitation. While hard-rock forebears like Aerosmith and Kiss struggled during the tail of the 1970s against disco headwinds and the mockery of three-chord punk, fledgling heavy-metal bands cut their teeth in the shadows and prepared for a big takeover. Then, boom: 1980 exploded with debuts from Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Diamond Head and Angel Witch — pillars of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal, or NWOBHM — as well as career-high shock treatments by elders Judas Priest, Saxon and Motörhead."

"They won’t hire somebody unless they’re into metal. They take pride in what they do and genuinely love metal."

"This may come as a surprise to young music fans, but there once was a time when there was no such thing as record labels specializing in heavy metal -- not until the early 1980s, anyway, at which point a handful of enterprising independents started rearing their iron fists into the air, including Los Angeles’ proudly named Metal Blade. But one of the things that set Metal Blade apart, even then, is that it was one of the first labels launched for metalheads, BY metalheads -- a young man named Brian Slagel, to be more specific, after taking it upon himself to promote some of his favorite bands on the first of many Metal Massacre compilation albums."

"The common consensus is that Black Sabbath were the first heavy metal band. And maybe they were. But that doesn’t mean they wrote the first heavy song. Because while Ozzy and co. certainly took the concept of intense, sinister music played by evil-looking dudes to new sonic and visual heights, there were plenty of unnerving sounds designed to scare the bejesus out of listeners being created well before Tony Iommi’s deathly Black Sabbath tritone riff signaled the end (or the beginning?) of the musical world as we know it."

"Given that heavy metal didn’t completely take off until the 1970s – and the early part of the prior decade was dominated by pop, blues, R&B, surf music and rock ‘n’ roll – you’d be forgiven for thinking that the 1960s were lacking in significantly aggressive music. You’d be wrong, of course, but you’d be forgiven. In fact, it was around this time that artists such as Link Wray, Willie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and The Kinks started pioneering and popularizing guitar distortion, power chords and/or unconventional means of modifying amplifiers to get gruffer sounds. During the second half of the 1960s, even rock artists who’re known for their lighter, brighter and poppier techniques ventured into some surprisingly hectic territories. As the songs discussed below demonstrate, many of the era’s top-tier acts released tracks that could’ve rivaled the riotousness of the burgeoning metal forefathers."

"Although many bands from The British Invasion could have fallen under the banner of punk had they been born a few years later, the seeds were already being planted from something heavier on the horizon. Artists like The Stooges had already been exposing people to heavier flavours of rock, and looking at the more raucous songs by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones like ‘Helter Skelter’, it wasn’t like there was no room for something more aggressive on the charts."

"As the late 1960s bled into the early 1970s, the Age of Aquarius was under attack from cantankerous and extremely loud sonic forces. The bubbly psychedelia and sweet-tempered music that had fueled hippie hearts and minds were being assailed by steelier and more squalid rock, and many of those rough-necked, hairy harbingers of menace would inspire heavy metal’s ascendence. The debate about who was the first proto-metal artist is an endless circle of arguments and counter-arguments. You can reach back to the 1950s and find heavy metal’s origins in Willie Johnson’s blues, and Link Wray’s guitar rumbles. [...] Ultimately, you can throw everyone who was amplifying their sound and vision in the late 1960s and early 1970s into the gene pool that evolved into heavy metal."

"From the "scary music" idea Sabbath had in 1970, through to bands who took that idea and really ran with it, to funereal dirges and explorations of doom where it feels like you're on a different planet to Sabbath altogether, doom is a genre as wide as it is long. Often a truly underground thing full of lost relics and hidden gems, the influence of doom metal stretches far further than its small success stories suggest."

"The line between doom and death metal can seem to some as simply a matter of tempo. But what needs remembering is the intent. As titles go, Rotting Misery from Paradise Lost’s Lost Paradise debut set out the distinction clearly. It also defined a new subgenre: doom-death."

"In the early ‘80s, San Francisco’s Bay Area was the epicentre of the fastest, loudest, heaviest music in the world. Young, riff-hungry bands like Metallica, Exodus, Lääz Rockit, Possessed and Death Angel were pushing the genre’s boundaries, playing with more speed and dexterity than their metal contemporaries. They set the standard for American thrash."

"Regardless of what it was called in its infancy, the sound produced by these early San Francisco bands was like nothing ever heard before. Young, fleet-fingered savages like Metallica, Death Angel, Exodus, Lääz Rockit, Possessed, Blind Illusion and a handful of others were pushing musical boundaries, playing faster and with more intricacy then seemed humanly possible."

"Exodus, arguably the most musically violent band in the Bay Area thrash movement, were also the most vocal in their hatred of fishnet-wearing glam-rockers, often calling for their fans to “Kill the poseurs”, wherever they may be found. As such, SF thrash shows often devolved into mayhem."

"In high school, if you were playing any kind of music that wasn't dance, or just something that was really different—you know, rock, metal or hard rock, anything like that—then you needed to look like it. You needed to look like a bad dude, and we just looked like normal dudes....It wasn't about trying to impress everybody, because we looked at those types of people as weenies trying to do that stuff ... We just wore our normal stuff and we didn't really think about it. It just kind of happened that way and I think because we were searching for an extreme style, coupled with this no image, who-cares-what-we-look-like thing, then I think we fit in to that new movement that we discovered a little ways later, the whole Bay Area thrash scene."

"In the mid-'90s, metal and punk started to grow closer than ever before, and metallic hardcore (later shortened to metalcore) was born. This wasn't the first time these worlds collided, of course, with bands like Motörhead and Misfits bridging the gap between metal and punk in decades prior. However, by the end of the century it was the first time that this fusion was widespread enough to birth an entire genre, which still reigns supreme today as heavy music's most popular form. The genre started to take shape and become more popular by the early '00s, with bands like Killswitch Engage pulling it towards metal influences, while acts like Botch and Cave In kept the hardcore punk sound closer to the heart."

"Despite what Atreyu may think, the roots of metalcore go back to the late ’80s and it was a fully formed genre by the early-to-mid ’90s, way before the mainstream metalcore boom of the early 2000s that put a lot of the genre’s overly-polished bands on MTV. Like a lot of underground genres of music that suddenly hit it big, metalcore had some growing pains, but recent years have seen the genre’s influence being reinterpreted by great newer bands who — going by their age — presumably found metalcore from the bands on MTV and then traced its roots back to the underground bands of the ’90s."

"Like most genres, [metalcore is] not an easy term to define; even saying “metal meets hardcore” doesn’t really do it. Hardcore and metal’s relationship long predates metalcore; hardcore bands inspired metal bands to invent thrash, and in turn thrash bands inspired punk bands to start crossover thrash, both genres influenced grunge, and the cross-pollination just kept spiraling from there. I don’t know the exact year that “metalcore” entered the vernacular, but some of the earlier bands [...] probably would have just been called “metallic hardcore.""

"The mainstream boom tarnished the word “metalcore” for a while."

"I’m sure 99% of these bands have no idea that they’re stealing riffs from Unbroken, Deadguy, At The Gates, and Carcass. They’re just copying Norma Jean, As I Lay Dying and Chiodos, who were copying Thursday, The Used and Aiden. Which is all fine, because all art references that which came before it -- the part that I miss is the DIY ethic that was such an integral part of the 90s metalcore/screamo scene. Also, less phony Christians."

"The kids in Alesana, August Burns Red, and possibly even As I Lay Dying have no fucking idea who those pioneering metalcore bands are, much less that screamy vocals were born in the tiny basement shows and vegan bakesales of the 90s DIY hardcore scene. [...] What is “the missing link”? What is the mysterious subgenre connecting the skramz/hardcore scenes of my youth to the strange new world of modern screamo?? How did I get from watching Charles Bronson in a basement with 35 people in 1995 to seeing The Devil Wears Prada nearly crack the Billboard Top 10?! They sure as fuck have no idea who Charles Bronson or Bloodlet were, but if you do a little backtracking, the link is undeniable. [...] Like many other scholars, I believe the “missing link” is the cohort of bands that includes Thursday, Hawthorne Heights, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, and Saves The Day. Much like Nirvana and Pearl Jam before them, the jerks in these bands knew a thing or two about legitimate hardcore/metalcore, but created music that became popular with mainstreamers/new jacks who were in turn inspired to create several generations of soulless, derivative bullshit that resembled real hardcore enough to be annoying, but not enough to actually be good. A second wave of even worse screamo/metalcore bands followed them up, including notorious shit-merchants like Chiodos, From First To Last, and Aiden. At least they weren’t Christian. [...]"

"An essential technique aspiring thrash metal guitarists must master is the ability to perform fast single-note riffs and power-chord figures using only downstrokes. Two classic examples immediately come to mind: Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and Megadeth’s “Hanger 18,” and there are, of course, many more great examples of relentless downpicked fury to be found in the world of metal. [...] To me, a relentless downstroke-driven pick attack is the only way to get certain riffs to jump out of the guitar with the aggressiveness necessary to make them sound as heavy and menacing as possible."

"You know, [whether to play with pick or with fingers] is a choice that bass players in this kind of music have to make. Sometimes it makes sense to try and go as fast as you can, even if it is a little jumbled, maybe in a tremolo picking part. If both guitar players aren’t quite lining up anyway, then I think it’s okay to have things sound a little jumbled. It gives it a frantic sound, and that might be exactly what you’re going for."

"When discussing progressive metal, Dream Theater might be the quintessential band."

"[Dave Murray and Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden] are the OG’s of the twin axe attack (and thus to blame for inadvertently causing melodic death metal)."

"Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and heavy metal. It is usually centered around repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. The style became increasingly commercially successful in the 1990s. Subsequently, it is most well-known in various European permutations."

"To someone unfamiliar with the history of heavy metal, the premise of a metal sub-genre dedicated exclusively to Norse themes would sound positively ludicrous. And yet! In the late ‘80s, Viking metal started gaining traction, thanks, in large part, to the works of Sweden’s Bathory, and, specifically, their seminal trilogy of albums: 1988’s Blood Fire Death, ‘90s Hammerheart, and ‘91’s Twilight of the Gods. Then, as the heavy metal Valkyries descended across all of Scandinavia in the early ‘90s – launching major “scenes” around Norway’s black metal, Sweden’s death metal, and Finland’s folk metal – it was only a matter of time before these new bands began finding inspiration in their heritage. Marrying Norse history and legends, its bloodthirsty gods, and pagan rituals with heavy metal’s violent sounds, gothic tones, and natural aggression was almost too easy!"

"You wanted it heavier, faster, more extreme, and of course, you had the speed and thrash metal scene, along comes the early black metal scene, then the death metal scene, and at that point, when I got into death metal, I was 14-15 years old, and I was just learning a few licks on the guitar, and I thought, 'I could do that. I could do 'You Suffer' by Napalm Death.' You didn't necessarily have to be on the right fret, you know, just make noise, that's how it started. I always wanted to be a really good lead guitar player, like Yngwie Malmsteen style, that's what I wanted, but I never practiced, never got there, and nobody else in the band at the time, when I started with my first band, Eruption, nobody wanted to be the singer. And I was, like, 'Well, I guess I'll be the singer.' And then because I couldn't really sing like Celine Dion, you know, I tried to do the screams instead."

"Metalcore will likely always be most associated with the Aughts, when heavy but melodic sing/scream specialists like Killswitch Engage, Atreyu, All That Remains, Underoath, Bullet for My Valentine and more ruled the mosh pits."

"Metal fans love a gimmick. From Kiss and Gwar to Gloryhammer and Evil Scarecrow – if there’s a costumed band pedalling an outrageous proposition, we jump all over it. The more ridiculous, the better. There’s a good chance this penchant for gimmickry is the cause of metal’s ever-increasing selection of bizarre subgenres, which carve out dedicated musical niches for pirate enthusiasts, gamers, and even Harry Potter fans. In fact, some of these subgenres are so niche, they’re only occupied by one band."

"When used wisely, symphonic components can amplify the emotional intensity of metal to dangerous levels while also allowing the sophistication of the artists involved to shine."