Finding commonalities between all of the different threads of heavy metal is not as difficult as one would think. You just have to be willing to realize that not everything called heavy metal really is. You have to face the fact that some of the music you love the most really isn't heavy metal.
Heavy metal is sonically extreme. This does not necessarily mean blast beats and screaming vocals, but it does mean that it is not going to be palatable to your average person on the street. The sounds representing heavy metal's sonic extremity can vary.
Vocals tend to be the first indication that heavy metal is present. An unnatural vocal style is usual. Whether it is Antti Boman, Danny Davey, or Gerritt Mutz, standard methods of singing are not standard in heavy metal.
Instrumentation shares in the obnoxiousness as well. Speed is a frequent guest at the heavy metal dinner table. Complexity finds its way into the fold as well. It's not easy to listen to unless you want to listen to heavy metal.
In addition to extreme sounds, heavy metal songs often have an extreme form. Verse-chorus-verse is quite common but by no means a standard. Song lengths rarely restrict themselves to the standard radio/video-friendly three and a half minutes, and will often hit over five, ten, twenty minutes. Heavy metal listeners take this for granted but it does make heavy metal separate from the popular music world.
Heavy metal does not have a monopoly on this sonic extremity. There are some orchestral performances which were so bold they sparked riots less than a century ago. There are techno beats that go faster than any human drummer can, there are rock singers with tremendous ranges, and there are songs from many genres lasting longer than half an hour. It is important when judging extremity to compare heavy metal music to popular music, not other heavy metal or other fringe genres. You won't be able to define much music as heavy metal if you're only comparing it to the extreme elements of other genres.
Heavy metal is reactionary, not only in the political sense already discussed, but musically as well. You don't ever create heavy metal in musical seclusion. Some musicians work to catch on to the latest hot trend, and I think that makes their commitment to heavy metal suspicious. If heavy metal is about the individual, then following the trend is against that principle. The need to belong and the success that brings are against the heavy metal spirit. Success comes from appealing to a larger and larger mass of people, and one can argue that anyone achieving that has not followed the philosophy of heavy metal. (The calls of outrage and accusations of elitism this statement is going to bring do not faze me at all I know in my mind that the claim of "success equals not metal" is on the surface counterproductive and illogical, but after seeing my thoughts on heavy metal media and record companies, you may understand how I have come to this conclusion.) A musician who makes decisions based on what other people want instead of what he wants is also not following the philosophy of heavy metal. Creating true heavy metal when a goal of financial success is adopted is next to impossible.
Other musicians go in the opposite direction and create music which intentionally bucks the current musical environment. Whether that takes the form of unearthing a currently unfashionable sound of the past (remember that Glory to the Brave was intended to be a garish and unfashionable album when it was recorded) or an avant-garde approach is going to depend on the individual. But as long as the motivations are honest (and making music that fits into a current hot trend is never honest), heavy metal can indeed occur.
Heavy metal is based on composition. There are those who claim that heavy metal is based on live performance, but history has shown that to not be the case. Many musicians simply do not play live, and many that do are performing solely for economic and publicity reasons.
Those that enjoy performing (or even just watching) live shows follow a completely separate drive and motivation than the genre of music they are performing. Listening to heavy metal and being a fan of heavy metal fan is an individual experience. It is when one can choose exactly what songs are playing and when one can listen without any distraction that the true intensity of heavy metal reveals itself. Concerts are a group experience. They are a social experience. The musicians feed off of the crowd which in turn responds to how the musicians perform. The potential of the live experience depends on this togetherness of performers and audience. That is not heavy metal.
It is pretty easy to figure out when a band starts heavy touring in their career. Their songwriting changes to accommodate live rather than studio performance. They want to create material that relates more to a live audience than an individual listener giving the material all his concentration in a pair of headphones. If heavy metal is based on the individual, it has to be based on the individual listener as well, not a mass of listeners.
It used to be that heavy metal bands would play live for years before getting their record deal and thus have the decision of what compositions appear on the debut album determined by the reactions of a bunch of random drunk people who were watching some unsigned band with god knows what quality of sound on the club circuit. That is heavy metal? Forget heavy metal is that even logical?
More: In heavy metal live performances, there is no improvisation. Bands often don't even change which songs will be played, or the order they will be played, night to night. Even the big sing-alongs are planned ahead of time, all that guitar swinging is choreographed, and between-song banter is often rehearsed as well. Musicians strive to perform, and audiences expect them to perform, the material exactly as it was recorded, which itself is the result of multiple attempts by each individual to recreate music exactly as it was conceived. The live experience is simply a simulation of the process of creating heavy metal, complete with funny faces and a van parked outside that reeks of feces. But the pains that heavy metal musicians go through to recreate the compositions on stage do highlight another truth:
Heavy metal is precise and exact. That is not to say that heavy metal must be musically advanced, but the disproportionate (in relation to record sales) respect technical heavy metal musicians receive highlights how important precision is. But whether the demands of the individual song are few or immense, great importance is placed on the ability of the musician to perform it perfectly. The importance of precision is everywhere in heavy metal: The rigid form of heavy metal songs in the first place, the importance of guitar solos and drum fills being spot on Sloppiness is not tolerated in the heavy metal world.
Even looking at album sleeves, we see that every technical helper on the album gets a line of credit. The guitar players responsible for individual leads often have those individual lead credits popped right into the lyric sheets. Credit given where credit is due.
Heavy metal is sonically extreme. This does not necessarily mean blast beats and screaming vocals, but it does mean that it is not going to be palatable to your average person on the street. The sounds representing heavy metal's sonic extremity can vary.
Vocals tend to be the first indication that heavy metal is present. An unnatural vocal style is usual. Whether it is Antti Boman, Danny Davey, or Gerritt Mutz, standard methods of singing are not standard in heavy metal.
Instrumentation shares in the obnoxiousness as well. Speed is a frequent guest at the heavy metal dinner table. Complexity finds its way into the fold as well. It's not easy to listen to unless you want to listen to heavy metal.
In addition to extreme sounds, heavy metal songs often have an extreme form. Verse-chorus-verse is quite common but by no means a standard. Song lengths rarely restrict themselves to the standard radio/video-friendly three and a half minutes, and will often hit over five, ten, twenty minutes. Heavy metal listeners take this for granted but it does make heavy metal separate from the popular music world.
Heavy metal does not have a monopoly on this sonic extremity. There are some orchestral performances which were so bold they sparked riots less than a century ago. There are techno beats that go faster than any human drummer can, there are rock singers with tremendous ranges, and there are songs from many genres lasting longer than half an hour. It is important when judging extremity to compare heavy metal music to popular music, not other heavy metal or other fringe genres. You won't be able to define much music as heavy metal if you're only comparing it to the extreme elements of other genres.
Heavy metal is reactionary, not only in the political sense already discussed, but musically as well. You don't ever create heavy metal in musical seclusion. Some musicians work to catch on to the latest hot trend, and I think that makes their commitment to heavy metal suspicious. If heavy metal is about the individual, then following the trend is against that principle. The need to belong and the success that brings are against the heavy metal spirit. Success comes from appealing to a larger and larger mass of people, and one can argue that anyone achieving that has not followed the philosophy of heavy metal. (The calls of outrage and accusations of elitism this statement is going to bring do not faze me at all I know in my mind that the claim of "success equals not metal" is on the surface counterproductive and illogical, but after seeing my thoughts on heavy metal media and record companies, you may understand how I have come to this conclusion.) A musician who makes decisions based on what other people want instead of what he wants is also not following the philosophy of heavy metal. Creating true heavy metal when a goal of financial success is adopted is next to impossible.
Other musicians go in the opposite direction and create music which intentionally bucks the current musical environment. Whether that takes the form of unearthing a currently unfashionable sound of the past (remember that Glory to the Brave was intended to be a garish and unfashionable album when it was recorded) or an avant-garde approach is going to depend on the individual. But as long as the motivations are honest (and making music that fits into a current hot trend is never honest), heavy metal can indeed occur.
Heavy metal is based on composition. There are those who claim that heavy metal is based on live performance, but history has shown that to not be the case. Many musicians simply do not play live, and many that do are performing solely for economic and publicity reasons.
Those that enjoy performing (or even just watching) live shows follow a completely separate drive and motivation than the genre of music they are performing. Listening to heavy metal and being a fan of heavy metal fan is an individual experience. It is when one can choose exactly what songs are playing and when one can listen without any distraction that the true intensity of heavy metal reveals itself. Concerts are a group experience. They are a social experience. The musicians feed off of the crowd which in turn responds to how the musicians perform. The potential of the live experience depends on this togetherness of performers and audience. That is not heavy metal.
It is pretty easy to figure out when a band starts heavy touring in their career. Their songwriting changes to accommodate live rather than studio performance. They want to create material that relates more to a live audience than an individual listener giving the material all his concentration in a pair of headphones. If heavy metal is based on the individual, it has to be based on the individual listener as well, not a mass of listeners.
It used to be that heavy metal bands would play live for years before getting their record deal and thus have the decision of what compositions appear on the debut album determined by the reactions of a bunch of random drunk people who were watching some unsigned band with god knows what quality of sound on the club circuit. That is heavy metal? Forget heavy metal is that even logical?
More: In heavy metal live performances, there is no improvisation. Bands often don't even change which songs will be played, or the order they will be played, night to night. Even the big sing-alongs are planned ahead of time, all that guitar swinging is choreographed, and between-song banter is often rehearsed as well. Musicians strive to perform, and audiences expect them to perform, the material exactly as it was recorded, which itself is the result of multiple attempts by each individual to recreate music exactly as it was conceived. The live experience is simply a simulation of the process of creating heavy metal, complete with funny faces and a van parked outside that reeks of feces. But the pains that heavy metal musicians go through to recreate the compositions on stage do highlight another truth:
Heavy metal is precise and exact. That is not to say that heavy metal must be musically advanced, but the disproportionate (in relation to record sales) respect technical heavy metal musicians receive highlights how important precision is. But whether the demands of the individual song are few or immense, great importance is placed on the ability of the musician to perform it perfectly. The importance of precision is everywhere in heavy metal: The rigid form of heavy metal songs in the first place, the importance of guitar solos and drum fills being spot on Sloppiness is not tolerated in the heavy metal world.
Even looking at album sleeves, we see that every technical helper on the album gets a line of credit. The guitar players responsible for individual leads often have those individual lead credits popped right into the lyric sheets. Credit given where credit is due.
