What genre-name would you give this?

[frostballs]

(Just to warn you I often over-complicate things when I try to explain)

I am refering to a certain strain of bands from the 80's that are usually in a similar vein of the the 'power-metal' bands of the 90's-current, only they're eariler from the 80's.

They're usually heavily influenced by 'New wave of British heavy metal(NWOBHM)' sounds but they are from a slightly later period-(NWOBHM is usually more early 80's), and they're not necessarily british, and they don't sound exactly the same

Sometimes they have splashes of other styles of the time(speed, thrash, virtuoso,symphonic,80's hard rock-there was sometimes a thin line between 80's hard rock and 80's metal)depending on who exactly but they don't have enough of that to be classified as that in itself.

There is often(but not necessarily) a 'sword and sorcery' theme to the music.

AN example?-well, "Cirith Ungol" is a band that suddenly pops into my head-since I was recently listening to them(but the question isn't just about them, that's just an example)

When I look on allmusic.com they label these bands and their albums 'heavy metal'(duh) and then don't sub-genre label

 

[carnut]

I think we (well I do anyway) need some more band names here...Cirith Ungol is rather plain Heavy Metal to me. They sound very special yeah, but still metal... I cannot think of any more bands to put in their style direction directly.
Well, I guess it's all Rock 'n' Roll !!

 

[Fangface]

mmm I call Cirith Ungol "raw (epic) Metal" but that's just my own dumb label I guess. Anyway they had a style on their own.

 

[~metal_maiden~]

I haven't heard of that band... but from how you described the music... could it be called "trad" metal?


Don't laugh at me if I'm wrong.

 

[frostballs]

hmmm, maybe Manowar, Manilla Road, Sanctuary, Savatge(a little prog-y), Armoured Saint,Riot, Halloween, Helloween,early Iced Earth(as I suppose current Iced Earth just gets grouped in with current power-metal), Metal Church, Witchkiller(they're really close to NWOBHM, but not quite...and they're Canadian), Bitch(she was sort of gimmicky), Lizzy Borden...

...so those don't really all go together perfectly, but do you sort of see what I mean?
I sort of want to call them "classic metal" but the word classic sounds odd.....

While the subject came....I was wondering how other people pronounce cirith ungol

 

[Fangface]

Most of these bands play Power Metal to me (except for Lizzy Borden & Bitch)
But you know, labels...

 

[Greeno]

But you know, labels...

They are a tricky subject.

Classic Metal sounds good to me. Most of the bands you listed I would kind of consider 80's Underground Metal. Metal Maiden sounds right with Trad Metal also. Just call them whatever helps you keep it all straight in your head.

 

[Unfaithfully Metalhead]

Hey i had the hots for Bitch back in the 80's lol I only had one album of hers and do not remember what it sounded like but i remembered i liked it. I plan to get alot of 80's albums i used to have again including Bitch...

 

[Wyvern]

They are a tricky subject.

Indeed. Ask Fang what happens everytime I start a label (tagging) war on TMG.

And NWOBHM is a tricky one too, it comprises bands that started at a certain period of time in England. Evne if their music was quite different: Venom, Samson, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Angel Witch, Praying Mantis, etc., etc., etc.

If you wanna lost valuable time looking at tags check the bands you want to tag in bnmetal.com and metal-archives.com. Is laughable how people tag the same band depending on their views.

In the end there's only one reality EVERYTHING IS METAL!

 

[SickBoy]

In the end there's only one reality EVERYTHING IS METAL!

Yeah, and I'd stick to a few really basic genres, such as heavy, thrash, death or whatever. These "invented" genres really get on my nerves, such as "power". I can't imagine that someone calls Sonata Arctica power and Jag Panzer heavy metal, that would mean that SA is much more powerful than JP musicwise. To me, they're nothing but (no offense to fans) keyboard infested generic metal with a thin squeaky singer, which I couldn't connect to any aspect of power...

IIRC, in the early 90s Pantera was considered power...
Then speed, gore and other bogus genres, we could list them the whole day...

NWOBHM is really undefined also, many bands under that label are in fact very rockish and only slightly metal, while they've put Satan (the band, silly ) under that label as well, which was heavy for the time as a 16 ton weight from Monty Python! :Spin:

 

[frostballs]

thanks, everyone.
I suppose (trad)itional metal is the closest, and yes it is all just labels, but I'm neurotic that way.

So.....How DO the rest of you pronounce 'Cirith ungol'?

 

[Wyvern]

thanks, everyone.
I suppose (trad)itional metal is the closest, and yes it is all just labels, but I'm neurotic that way.

So.....How DO the rest of you pronounce 'Cirith ungol'?

Carefully...(beware of She-Lob )

In Spanish will be like: see-reet oon-gol. But I bet is like in Celt (English pronunciation, not American): ki-reet oon-gol