Heavy Metal

Heavy metal is a controversial music genre. It has become a well known and a popular genre. It is hard to segregate into different sub-genres, for the simple fact that not all of the music follows simple forms. Some critics believe the genre is satanic oriented and is not musically talented. The listeners have very different thoughts about the genre and believe it has changed their lives for the better. This genre is a good example of misunderstood and false descriptions.

Heavy metal, “Hard rock”, originates from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. It gained popularity, mainstream, in the 1980’s. The beginning roots of the genre are from within blues influence. Led Zeppelin used blues in one of their songs, “Whole Lotta Love”, which has heavy riffs, but using lyrical blues influence. Some of the original band where, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. The bands that helped it become the way it is today are Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, and Megadeath. There are over 30 subgenres and they keep growing. Some of the major subgenres are Nu-metal, Death metal, Thrash metal, Power metal and Metal-core.

Lyrically the heavy metal genre was defined as both political and social. Such references can be found in the song, “War Pigs”, by Black Sabbath. The song talks about those who make war without considering the powerless people who are sent to die. It is an anti-war song and has become known as a, “Protest Song.” The lyrics, “Politicians hide themselves away, they only started the war, why should they go out to fight, they leave that all to the poor”, explain that the government doesn’t care about the people they sent into the war they created. The lyrics changed over the years and now sound different but, kept the original core meaning. Modern day metal lyrics reference sex, violence and fantasy but, still have political and social references.

Heavy metal is very instrumentally complex and continues to evolve. The normal line up would be heavy and fast electric guitar riffs, deep bass riffs with distortion and many power chords. The drums are fast and usually contain a heavy bass into the mix. Vocals are usually deep and contain many screaming parts but, many bands have light vocals and heavy instrumental sound. Many feel that the heavy metal scene contains people beating on drums and screaming. That is not the case, heavy metal is fast, has complex polyrhythm and some bands even use orchestral music.

The most misunderstood thing about heavy metal is that it is seen as devil music. Many people feel that heavy metal has bad lyrics. Critics say that the music portrays anger and aggression. They also say that they use satanic references in their music so; they must be portraying the devil into their music. Therefore this creates a bad image for heavy metal. While some bands use, “Satanic”, imagery many don’t. The bands that use that method are only using it to reflect a world view, which can be a very harsh place at times. They do not use it to worship Satan which many have perceived. Some have even tried to blame the music for making people do evil and satanic things. One such