Metal
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Metal
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| Development phase: | Early 1970s |
| Place of origin: | United Kingdom |
| Stylistic precursors | |
| Hard rock | |
| Pioneers | |
| Black Sabbath • Led Zeppelin • Deep Purple • Iron Maiden • Judas Priest • Motörhead | |
| Instruments typical of the genre | |
| Guitar • bass • drums • vocals • keyboard | |
| Subgenres | |
| Heavy Metal • Black Metal • Death Metal • Sleaze Metal • Glam Metal • Power Metal • Groove Metal • NWoBHM • Thrash Metal • Speed Metal • Doom Metal • Progressive Metal • Gothic Metal • Industrial Metal • Nu Metal • Folk Metal • Grindcore • Metalcore • Deathcore • Pagan Metal • Symphonic Metal • Viking Metal • Alternative Metal • White Metal • Sludge Metal | |
Metal ( English for 'metal') is a genre of music and a scene of the same name . The name is the short form of the term Heavy Metal , which today only describes the original form of this music. Their origins lie in blues rock and hard rock in the early 1970s; it is characterized above all by a guitar and drum centered timbre .
Numerous sub-styles have been established since the 1980s, with black metal , death metal and power metal being particularly widespread . With the increasing variety of styles, the spectrum of musical techniques broadened, the spectrum ranges from extremely simple, mostly rhythmically very driving song structures to complex compositions with parallels to classical music, from guttural singing to operatic singing techniques, from extremely slow to rapid fast rhythms . The texts are equally diverse, ranging from pure fantasy to orgies of hate, religion , melancholy to political criticism of society .
For a long time, the English- speaking area was dominant , later on, German bands, but especially Scandinavian bands in the 1990s, could become style-defining. Nowadays metal is an international form of music, in addition to North American and European bands, bands from Brazil, Japan, Israel, China, Egypt and Australia have achieved international success.
history
Late 1960s - early 1980s
The forerunners of metal are mainly in blues rock and psychedelic rock , bands like Blue Cheer , Iron Butterfly , MC5 or Steppenwolf are often mentioned here . Out of these currents, Deep Purple , Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were named as the first real metal bands , which acted from the end of the sixties.
Led Zeppelin stayed close to blues rock and were particularly characterized by the massive use of volume and the amalgamation of a strong drums, the virtuoso guitar Jimmy Pages and the high and powerful voice of Robert Plant . Black Sabbath, on the other hand, tried to displace classic blues elements in their style. From influences of blues rock and jazz, they designed a more riff- oriented type of music, as it became characteristic of metal, at the same time they consistently dealt with negative and occult topics in their lyrics (common in pop and rock music of that time) . On November 19, 2013 Coventry University awarded Tony Iommi , the band leader of Black Sabbath, an honorary doctorate in the arts for the invention of heavy metal.
Especially young British bands like Iron Maiden , Judas Priest , Saxon or Samson shaped a generation of bands around 1980 who wanted to stand out from the punk bands that were dominant at the time . To do this, they used a style that included the high tempo of punk on the one hand, but also took up the hardness, dynamism and filigree of hard rock from bands like Deep Purple in the 1970s on the other . Individual hard rock bands adapted to the new style and developed into metal bands (referred to in the music press as New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWoBHM)), hence the potential for confusion between styles. During this time one can speak of an independent genre called "Heavy Metal".
1980s
From around the mid- 1980s , heavy metal was divided into individual sub-styles, all of which were summarized under the term metal . Since then, heavy metal has only been used to describe the original form of this music.
The band Motörhead around the only constant member Lemmy Kilmister , who draws on punk, hard rock, blues rock and rock 'n' roll influences, and the band Venom with the high aggressiveness of the time punk-influenced music and its striking satanic image caught the scene's attention and became pioneers of stylistically extreme metal currents; While Venom's debut album Welcome to Hell "really got the search for more brutality rolling" and their second album Black Metal gave its name to a trend of the same name, the band's music was also perceived in parts of the scene as the noise of untalented musicians.
In 1982 the Danish band Mercyful Fate released their first EP of the same name ; the band processed influences from progressive rock , epic hard rock of the 1970s and traditional heavy metal and provided with their “high tempo, an aggressive lead guitar, gripping harmonies, rhythmically variable songwriting and this gloomy atmosphere that pale Demon and Witchfinder General look ", with their EP" after only one year of joint semi-professional demo recordings for a sensation ". While Diamond was later to "bring his satanic texts to a much higher linguistic level", Nuns Have No Fun was "no less explicit than the early Venom material". Mercyful Fates singer King Diamond was also known for singing in falsetto and using an early form of corpse paint . The band used stage effects such as the "exploding nun " at the end of performances or the burning cross at a performance in Amsterdam around 1983; at one performance, the band held a black mass on stage , for which they used the blood of their manager Ole Bang.
Exceeding original heavy metal in speed and aggressiveness , thrash metal, influenced by hardcore punk and bands like Venom and Motörhead, and speed metal with bands like Megadeth , Slayer , Metallica , Testament , Exodus or Anthrax , developed in the USA . The first speed and thrash metal album is Kill 'Em All by Metallica. With their following albums, their popularity and reputation increased, but at the same time the band moved away from Thrash Metal from the third album Master of Puppets . Their fifth album Metallica and especially the ballad Nothing Else Matters contained on it gave the band enormous popularity outside the scene . Metallica, with its extremely great success, is often seen as the epitome of metal itself in the public eye, although in the mid-1990s they lost many previous fans from the metal scene with the release of two albums belonging to the alternative genre. Slayer created another classic of aggressive Thrash Metal with Reign in Blood , which is considered one of the highlights of the genre. By flirting with occultism and sometimes Nazi symbols , they also significantly raised the bar for provocation.
In Europe , a relatively extensive scene developed in the 1980s, especially in Germany , with Hamburg and the Ruhr area being able to establish themselves as cultural centers. Kreator , Destruction and Sodom are, for example, the best-known representatives of German Thrash Metal , which was initially developed independently of the US and was characterized by its greater roughness compared to the mostly smoothly produced Metal from America. On the other hand, Helloween , Blind Guardian and Gamma Ray founded European Power Metal . Progressive Metal , influenced by British progressive rock and founded by the American bands WatchTower , Fates Warning and Queensrÿche, also sounds more melodic . Due to their groundbreaking albums To mega therion (1985) and Into the Pandemonium (1987), the Swiss Celtic Frost - whose stylistic development was based on a Thrash Metal basis - in retrospect sometimes regarded as the first “avant-garde metal” band, inspired with their experiments, however - alongside many other bands - in particular the Swedish symphonic metal pioneer Therion .
Parallel to aggressive Thrash Metal and Speed Metal, Glam Metal (also called derogatory Hair Metal , Poser Metal or Cock Rock ) established itself in the USA in the 1980s . He took over musical elements of metal and linked them with the appearance and image of glam rock . The best-known representatives of this direction are Alice Cooper , Poison , Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi . The genre of music dominated the mainstream charts until the advent of grunge in the early 1990s , from whose popularity that of metal in general also suffered.
A little later, Thrash Metal developed into Death Metal with bands such as Paul Speckmann's bands Master and Death Strike , Possessed , the band Death of Chuck Schuldiner , who is known as the “Godfather of Death Metal” , Morbid Angel , Deicide and Autopsy , whose music is even more aggressive Trains carried. Florida soon became known worldwide as the "Mecca" of Death Metal. From the late 1980s onwards, bands such as Morbid Angel, Deicide, Death and Obituary released their style-defining albums. Deicide and Morbid Angel in particular built an image for themselves as satanic bands. Cannibal Corpse formed in New York and emigrated to Florida a few years later and, like Autopsy, came up with brutal artwork and splatter lyrics and suffocation , which placed a strong emphasis on technical death metal. European death metal was best known from Sweden and England.
At the end of the 1980s, the scene that displaced Thrash Metal with the exception of a few bands like Slayer, mixed with the Grindcore scene that had emerged from punk , when musicians from metal bands became members of Grindcore bands or founded Grindcore bands themselves so brought their musical influences from this genre, and existing Grindcore bands brought elements from other styles into their music and vice versa, the society-related topics they dealt with in Death Metal, which dealt with originally death-related topics.
In Latin America bands like Sepultura , Sarcófago , Vulcano or Krisiun from Brazil became important representatives of extreme metal. In Eastern Europe , a metal scene with the emphasis on Thrash Metal ( Kat , Kruiz , Shah ), Death / Thrash Metal ( Vader , Krabathor ) and Black Metal ( Root , Törr , Master's Hammer , formerly Behemoth ) emerged in Eastern Europe during the Iron Curtain era. .
Since 1990
When the era of Hairspray Metal ended quickly in the course of the grunge wave at the beginning of the 1990s , the other metal styles had also passed the zenith of their success. Given the retreat of metal into the underground , the rock-hard magazine even ran the headline : "Is metal dead?" The mainstream was from now on dominated by pop , techno , contemporary R&B and hip-hop . In the underground, however, a style explosion set in at the same time, with the Scandinavian metal scene proving to be dominant.
As a countermovement to the increasingly popular Death Metal and based on older bands such as Celtic Frost and Bathory , an international underground scene formed from the late 1980s. The Norwegian black metal scene, which was formed in 1991 after the suicide of Mayhem singer Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin , around Mayhem's guitarist Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth and his record store Helvete, attracted particular attention . The theistic Satanist Euronymous shaped the ideas of Black Metal decisively and is therefore considered the "father" of the movement, with bands such as Darkthrone , Immortal , Emperor and Burzum , and the initiator of the so-called "second wave of Black Metal". In the early to mid-1990s, this scene gained public attention mainly due to church arson, which Varg Vikernes von Burzum bragged about to the newspaper Bergens Tidende , and extreme interview statements. The murder of Euronymous by Vikernes, who turned away from Satanism and turned to a right-wing extremist interpretation of neo-paganism , is seen as the end of the scene at that time . In the mainstream, despite the commercialization of their best-known representatives, only Dimmu Borgir achieved a certain level of awareness of the Norwegian black metal bands from the mid-1990s - but like Cradle of Filth from England she is viewed by the underground as "untrue" because she herself distanced stylistically and ideologically from traditional Black Metal. These bands are therefore assigned to Dark Metal .
Other currents that emerged from the Black Metal movement are Pagan Metal and Viking Metal . The Swedish band Bathory laid the foundation stone for this with their albums Blood Fire Death , Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods , on which they integrated elements of classical music and Scandinavian folklore into their music. Especially the early works of the more important bands of these currents are often “rougher, more primitive and unadorned” than their later recordings and thus closer to the Black Metal roots, whereas another part is more oriented towards Folk Metal . The first pagan / viking and folk metal albums were created independently, which is why Fenriz von Darkthrone Bathory's albums explicitly differentiated from folk metal. The first folk metal album was The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth , the 1991 debut album by Skyclad from Newcastle, which combined thrash metal with influences from bands like New Model Army or Thin Lizzy and used the fiddle as the lead instrument for the first time in metal . Both styles - together with medieval rock , which is difficult to distinguish from folk metal - have been gaining in popularity since the mid- 1990s . Probably the best-known representatives are, besides the aforementioned bands, Cruachan , Finntroll , Korpiklaani , Elvenking , Eluveitie , In Extremo and Subway to Sally .
The New Wave of Swedish Death Metal began in Sweden in the early 1990s . While Dismember or Entombed popularized a markedly rough variant of Death Metal, Hypocrisy increasingly used more melodic passages. In Gothenburg , triggered by At the Gates, the so-called Gothenburg School , Melodic Death Metal , was born, which combined the brutality of Death Metal with the melodic elements of the NWoBHM . Bands like In Flames and Dark Tranquility helped this style to breakthrough across Europe.
By mixing thrash metal, industrial metal and hardcore punk with the electronic music genres noise , gabber and drum and bass , Atari Teenage Riot developed the music genre digital hardcore in the mid-1990s , which caused a sensation (not only) in the metal scene with radical left-wing texts.
The Gothic culture had developed a great relevance for this entire subculture in the 1990s. Some bands such as Paradise Lost took over characteristics of Gothic Rock in Metal and thus reintroduced Gothic Metal into the scene.
From the 1990s onwards, the record label Nuclear Blast was important for the German metal scene , which despite "sell-out" allegations signed many already successful bands from the European scene and sponsored new bands such as Children of Bodom .
In 1993 the band Earth initiated the emergence of Drone Doom with their album Earth 2: Special Low-Frequency Version . The best-known representatives of this style today are the American Sunn O))) founded in 1998 .
In the second half of the 1990s symphonic metal , which uses orchestral elements, emerged with bands such as Nightwish , whose former singer Tarja Turunen is a trained soprano and helped this style of singing to success in the metal scene, and Within Temptation .
While metal in Europe - Germany is the scene's most important festival with the Wacken Open Air - remained lively, the North American scene was confronted with stagnation, even if bands like Manowar , Megadeth or Slayer continued to enjoy great worldwide popularity.
This should be the cornerstone for Nu Metal alongside various bands called crossovers such as the very successful Faith No More . That kind of music, based on the USA, became a defining trend in the late 1990s. Mainly kicked off by bands such as Korn , Deftones and Limp Bizkit and later continued by Slipknot and Linkin Park , they could even hold their own in the charts against the dominant black music . In the - by now "classic" or "traditional" perceived - existing metal scene eyeing to the success of this music, however, tend to be skeptical because they had little references to the old metal scene, their influences more from hardcore and hip-hop originated and it had significant commercial potential.
From 2002 onwards, sales of most nu-metal bands fell sharply, while metalcore , starting from the hardcore scene, gained importance in a process reminiscent of the cock-rock / grunge turnaround ten years earlier . This New Wave of American Heavy Metal , led by bands such as Killswitch Engage or Chimaira , mixed influences of hardcore with classic metal, especially the aggressive Thrash Metal of the Slayer brand or the Swedish Melodic Death Metal .
Around the band Meshuggah came the term Djent , which described the typical guitar sound of the band with one word . Stylistic forerunners were Progressive Metal and Groove Metal , with which the Djent shares the complex rhythms and the playfully demanding guitar riffs. Other representatives of this direction are TesseracT or Periphery .
Individual Black Metal bands, e.g. B. Ved Buens Ende , included progressive elements in their music from the mid-1990s and renounced typical genre appearances such as corpsepaint and satanic aesthetics. From the second half of the 2000s, this music was subsumed under the umbrella term Post-Black-Metal . Well-known representatives of this trend are u. a. Nachtmystium or Negura Bunget . With the EP Ruines Humaines (2006) by the band Amesoeurs and the subsequent album Souvenirs d'un autre monde (2007) by the band Alcest , a synthesis of the genres Black Metal and Shoegaze , known as Blackgaze or Metalgaze , was created.
Musical characteristics
Metal can be defined as driving the blues out of rock. Musically, the metal influences both shows from the classical and the popular music , and their proportions vary in the different sub-genres of metal and except for a brief successful period around the year 1987 can not be defined as a popular music. In addition to the music, many artists also pay attention to their album covers and their shows, so that metal also has a visual component.
instrumentation
Metal is seldom performed by individual artists, but primarily by bands with often three to five members. The standard line-up consists of drums (often with a double bass drum ), electric bass , rhythm guitar (some of which are omitted), lead guitar and vocals , which are sometimes taken over by one of the instrumentalists . In some subgenres, keyboards or synthesizers and samplers , and occasionally turntables , are also used, but rarely as a lead instrument. Other instruments are also frequently used, for example the flute or violin or fiddle are often the lead instruments in folk metal . The individual line-ups in the band are seldom multiplied, for example several singers with different vocal styles or two drummers or additional percussionists.
The electric guitars play a key role in metal. High gain , distortion , an equalizer that emphasizes the highs as well as the deeper bass, and also some other electronic effects are considered mandatory, and create an overall powerful timbre . The guitars usually have humbuckers for a powerful sound . Occasionally bands use seven-string guitars , including Morbid Angel , Dream Theater, and Korn . But there are also bands that do without guitars and instead use distorted basses like a guitar, one band is the Greek black metal band Necromantia , which uses an eight-string bass among other things. Guitar solos are also a matter of course in most branches of metal. Often used techniques here are sweep picking and tapping , and in general, virtuosity in the form of fast playing speed plays an important role.
The singing ranges in the individual metal styles from clear singing in the more traditional metal styles to spoken singing (mostly in Nu Metal ) to distorted croaking and guttural singing (growling, shouting and screaming) in Black or Death Metal. Especially with the latter styles it is often difficult to understand the lyrics. The clean , i.e. clean, vocals are often very high (especially in Power Metal) and sometimes even falsetto .
Melody and harmony
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A characteristic of traditional metal that distinguishes the genre from other styles of music derived from rock music are modal scales, also known as church scales - for example, Metallica very often use the Phrygian mode . In particular, the Aeolian mode and other minor keys dominate many songs. Specifically, this shows in chord progression such as I-VI -VII, I VII- (VI) or I-VI -IV- VII or sometimes I-minor VI, e.g. B. Judas Priest - Breaking the Law (main riff: I- VI-VII), Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name (main rhythm pattern: I- VI-VII), Accept - Princess of the Dawn (main riff: I- VI-VII)
In addition to modal scales, other scales often flow into the solos and melodies. Many classically inspired guitarists play in harmonic minor ( e.g. Yngwie Malmsteen or Uli Jon Roth ). The pentatonic scale and the blue scale are also very popular . Some guitarists use the scales in melodic licks over modal chords, e.g. B. Tony Iommi , Ritchie Blackmore , KK Downing , Glenn Tipton and Wolf Hoffmann . Although a very simple system, guitarists like Zakk Wylde and Angus Young use the pentatonic scale in a variety of ways. It is worth noting that metal is distinguished from hard rock in particular by using the aforementioned other scales instead of the blues scale.
A harmonious trademark of many metal styles is the use of tense tone relationships, such as B. the chromatics or - as many musicians and experts have pointed out - the tritone . The latter dissonant interval was strictly avoided in medieval music. It was referred to by monks as Diabolus in musica (Latin for 'devil in music'), as it generally suggests a “depressing”, “terrifying” or “evil” sound to the listener, which is why artists use it extensively in riffs and solos .
Metal extensively uses the organ point as a harmonic basis. An organ point is a sustained or rhythmically repeated note, typically in the lower pitch range, above which one or more free harmonies are played in another pitch range. Metal riffs are often based on a persistently repeated note played on the lower strings of the guitar or bass (mostly E, A, or D strings). In other words, a particular bass note is repeated over and over while playing several different chords that would normally not contain that bass note. E.g. the opening riff of Judas Priests You've Got Another Thing Comin ' - here one guitar plays the organ point in F # while the other plays the chords. In Black Metal, the organ point is preferably played by the bass, less often by the guitar itself.
Power chords form a harmonious genre feature . They consist of a base note and a perfect fifth, plus the base note an octave higher. Sometimes other power chords with a different interval are used instead of the traditional perfect fifth, e.g. B. with the perfect fourth, the minor or major third, the diminished fifth or the minor sixth.
Rhythm and tempo
In the metal which is mainly 4 / 4 -Stroke used other signatures but are by no means excluded. The beat in Metallica's song One (see notes and * 
) changes several times. Metal Ballads are sometimes in 6 / 8 -Stroke, not least because this clock is good for chord decomposition ( arpeggios ) is (see Nothing Else Matters by Metallica).
Depending on the genre, unconventional rhythms are seen as an important style element. Especially in Progressive Metal and in parts of Death Metal , the tempo and time signature are often changed. In this way, the songs sometimes seem (intentionally) imperceptible. In some genres such as mathcore , complex timing schemes, along with dissonance, are style-defining.
A defining characteristic of Metal are staccator rhythms , often realized by palm muting (the partial muffling of the strings with the beating hand). The rhythmic figures of metal are typically relatively long.
The length and structure of a metal track can vary greatly and depends on the genre; Bands influenced by Grindcore tend to write shorter tracks that are sometimes shorter than a minute , while Napalm Death holds the record for the shortest song in the world with their song You Suffer, which is just over a second long . In the range of Progressive Metal , Doom Metal , Post-Metal , Black Metal and Pagan Metal , songs can be found that last more than half an hour and consist of slowly building up passages. An example of this is the album Viides Luku - Hävitetty by the band Moonsorrow , which contains two pieces of about half an hour. The albums of the Japanese doom band Corrupted regularly contain over 30 minutes, and occasionally only a single track over 70 minutes. Other bands with songs over 20 minutes long are the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the one-man band Paysage D'Hiver , which combines extreme metal with long ambient passages.
Lyrical and creative themes
As lyrical and creative themes of the metal scene , some content-related complexes are named in scene representations , which can be found in many sub-currents. These are propagated by artists in the metal scene , picked up and received by fans and serve as further points of connection within the scene . Most of these core topoi can be found in the designs of sound carriers , advertisements, stage productions, music videos and song texts by various actors in the scene as well as in the textiles and patches that often refer to such elements.
The thematic focal points that co-determine the community practice of the scene are confrontations with the figure of the devil , including various forms of occultism , literary genres such as fantasy and horror , the premodern or negatively perceived emotions such as hatred and anger or fear , horror and sadness . The negatively perceived emotions are contrasted with the Dionysian themes of sexuality , drug and alcohol consumption and party descriptions. Such a listing can neither be regarded as exclusive nor as absolute. Further topics can be of immanent importance for individual performers, styles, peers or sub-currents of the scene, while hardly any current or style is devoted to all topics.
Styles
The distinction between different sub-styles is an important aspect of scene life today. While on the one hand many fans work out a complex scheme of genre, other fans criticize such attempts at categorization as pointless and restrictive.
The original Heavy Metal - especially that of the NWoBHM - is today the closest to Power Metal . Especially older metal fans still count hard rock itself as heavy metal, as the latter developed from it, which initially made it difficult to distinguish between the two genres. Glam Metal , which is more likely to be assigned to hard rock than metal , achieved mass compatibility in this area .
The speed metal and thrash metal flow smoothly from this area in the broad field of extreme metal . Death metal and black metal are important there , occasionally doom metal is also included.
There are numerous other sub-styles - e.g. B. Progressive Metal , Folk Metal - and the transitions between each other are mostly fluid. Examples of transitions to other types of music are Gothic Metal , Industrial Metal , Nu Metal , Folk, Pagan - and Viking Metal , Grind - and Metalcore .
While on the one hand there is a strong sense of community among the metal fans, there is often animosity, especially between the more fanatical followers of individual directions. In many cases, the currents are not only defined purely musically, but often also have their own sub-scenes in metal behind them. In some cases, ideology is even used as the only criterion for differentiation, for example in Christian metal , which is defined exclusively by the Christian background of its lyrics, but in musical terms covers practically the entire spectrum of metal sub-styles. Bands with a typical, Nordic-inspired Black Metal sound but Christian lyrics are seen as incompatible with this term due to the satanic nature of Black Metal and are therefore also referred to as " Unblack Metal ". Similarly, directions like True Metal and Viking Metal are decidedly determined by their ideas. Glam Metal and Nu Metal are particularly controversial within the metal scene , as they are more mainstream oriented than most other styles of metal. True metal bands like Manowar , in particular, are very hostile to these nouns and refer to them disparagingly as false metal and their followers as posers . On the other hand, representatives of true metal, which musically cannot be clearly distinguished from other sub-styles, are repeatedly accused of overestimating themselves, since they claim to be the "true metalheads" and thus, in the opinion of critics, reveal themselves to be ridiculous.
reception
Inner reception
In the eyes of the fans, the music is primarily characterized by its intensity and authenticity . The first characteristic can be explained primarily with their volume , their tight rhythm , the often high speed, their play of dissonance and consonance and possibly other elements such as complexity and virtuosity. The tendency towards the authentic runs through the entire subculture and is expressed, among other things, in the demand on musicians that they write their own music and not allow themselves to be influenced by short-lived trends. Despite clear boundaries, there are close connections between the bands and fans, which is also considered a characteristic of folk music, which is why the existence of a folk ideal in metal or even the classification of metal as folk music (beyond folk metal ) are being discussed . In contrast to short-lived pop, in which the latest songs are given priority over older ones, metal shows a strong sense of musical tradition, both in terms of folk and classical music as well as with regard to the classics of the respective subgenres. If a band is suspected of being “commercial” (for which, especially with more extreme substyles, often even low commercial success is sufficient), quite a few Metal fans often regard this as a “betrayal” of Metal.
Relationship to other subcultures
In the early days of metal, the genre was viewed as inferior, even within the much less differentiated rock culture than it is today. Until the 1990s, the influential “Rock Lexicon” by Barry Graves and Siegfried Schmidt-Joos in Germany characterized (Heavy) Metal as an “extremely amplified, bombastic rock sound that primarily attracted white, young men from lower levels of education with sexual fears "And attested the genre an" already limited musical content. "
An aversion to “not handmade” music is common in the scene. Hip-hoppers in the metal scene, for example, are often viewed as an enemy, their musical preferences are viewed as level or superficial. The partial stereotyping of hip-hoppers into aggressive, not very intelligent proletarians is taken to extremes in a satirical way by many websites, but rejected by many metal fans as intolerant. On the other hand, there are always collaborations with musicians from other areas, such as B. from Hip-Hop, especially in Crossover ( Anthrax ) or Nu Metal ( Korn , Limp Bizkit ).
Due to partially overlapping listening habits, metal fans often come into contact with goths , punks , rockers , fans of harder electronic music , hardcore fans or other representatives of the alternative spectrum of music, for example at festivals and concerts . In principle, there are no particularly colored contacts to music-oriented subcultures outside the alternative spectrum.
Relationship with the public
While some bands from the metal sector and - depending on trends and the respective zeitgeist - also entire genres are heard by the public and their music is consumed by a wide audience, metal is also associated with many prejudices.
Critical looks from outsiders are triggered by a variety of factors. A certain ignorance can be seen, for example, in the fact that some people cannot distinguish a metalhead from a punk or goth . The often long hair was seen as feminine and in men as obscure, as modern men in Europe generally wore short hairstyles. However, tolerance has generally increased since the 1960s.
Similar to films, comics or computer games that deal with violence, metal is sometimes classified as harmful to young people. It is assumed that metal, with its tendency to address conflicted aspects of life, can have negative effects on the psyche of young people. It sometimes goes so far that Metal is made responsible for suicides or rampages by young people. Bands like Marilyn Manson or Slipknot have been pilloried several times .
In the 1960s in particular, there was a general tendency to refer to rock music as a dumbing, primitive noise that would be damaging to the morale of the listener. While this attitude has largely disappeared from everyday life, it still lives on as an exaggerated cliché, for example in the cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-Head .
A popular myth are the so-called backward messages . Allegedly, backwards recorded audio messages were hidden in metal tracks, which would subconsciously influence the listener. However, the existence of such hidden messages has not yet been proven, the effect as a method of mental influencing has even been refuted by scientific studies. However, some bands embrace this myth and purposely put backward-spoken messages on their albums.
The idea still exists that there is a tendency towards Satanism in the metal scene . This or other forms of occultism do not play a serious role in most branches, they usually serve at best for conscious provocation and rebellion and to emphasize one's own freedom, although many metal fans tend to be critical of the church or reject religion. A serious preoccupation with philosophical as well as religious Satanism can be found almost exclusively in Black Metal , where a religious background is to be regarded as generally given.
Some metal bands can enjoy a high level of awareness and popularity over the years. Examples are Black Sabbath , Iron Maiden , Metallica , Megadeth , Judas Priest , Slayer and Manowar . In general, however, the importance of metal in the commercial mainstream has fluctuated over time. While the New Wave of British Heavy Metal had commercial success in the 1970s , so-called glam metal was an extremely dominant part of the music charts in the 1980s . Although this was rejected as commercial by parts of the scene , it still shaped the image of metal as a superficial music style focused on sexual eccentrism. After this had lost its mass popularity, metal played only a very minor role in the mainstream. Metal only became commercially successful on a broader basis again in the mid-1990s through the representatives of Nu Metal .
In Norway , Black Metal, with its culture and actors, is even a well-known term and is attracting wide interest in the media. Most of the people there know bands like Darkthrone or Emperor at least by name, the Oslo Inferno Metal Festival Norway was televised.
Visualizations
Typical of many metal genres is the major role that the visual presentation of the musical material plays. The covers and booklets are often designed with complex drawings to underline the topic or the atmosphere on an optical level. On the covers there are usually no pictures of the respective band. In contrast, some groups have their own mascots, which have a central position on the album cover. The best known example is the zombie Eddie from Iron Maiden , but other bands such as Motörhead ( Snaggletooth ), Megadeth ( Vic Rattlehead ) or Running Wild ( Adrian ) always use the same characters for visualization. In contrast to this, for example in the pop area, mostly photos of the artists can be found on the CD covers.
Another aspect that is typical for Metal is the way the band names are displayed on record covers and merchandising articles. Many bands present their names in a way that is easy to distinguish from one another and keep this presentation over the years. Mainly in Death and Black Metal there are also lettering of band names decorated to the point of illegibility, some of which can only be deciphered by “initiated” people.
media
The range of print media in Metal is relatively extensive compared to other scenes. One of the pioneers since 1980 was the Dutch paper Aardschok, which was the first publication to report exclusively on metal (although this was not differentiated from hard rock), and since 1981 Kerrang has appeared in English ! . In addition to the two largest German-language publications, Rock Hard magazine, which originally focused on traditional metal, and Metal Hammer, there are also numerous smaller magazines such as Metal Heart , Heavy , Eternity Magazine , or Legacy magazine , which specializes in more extreme varieties . In addition, some fans are dedicated to selling their own fanzines . In addition to concerts, festivals and tape trading, these are among the most important communication channels among metal workers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were also television programs that dealt with metal, including a. Hard 'n Heavy ( musicbox / Tele 5 , 1983–1991), moderated by Annette Hopfenmüller , MOSH ( RTL Plus , 1988–1989), moderated by Sabina Classen ( Holy Moses ) and Götz Kühnemund , Metalla ( VIVA , 1993–1998) , moderated by Ralph Krieger , Adam Turtle and Markus Kavka , and Virus ( VIVA2 , 1998–1999).
Internationally, the program Headbangers Ball became particularly popular. It was presented in the USA ( MTV , 1987–1995), moderated by Kevin Seal (1987–1988), Adam Curry (1988–1990) and Riki Rachtman (1990–1995), and in parallel in Europe ( MTV Europe , 1990– 1997), moderated by Kristiane Backer (1990) and Vanessa Warwick (1991–1997), broadcast.
Since then, specific heavy metal programs have been very rare on television. As one of the last broadcasts, the unmoderated Hell's Kitchen was put on VIVA, which presented video clips in half an hour. Videos are currently sold on the label's own DVDs , as supplements to the magazines mentioned above or, above all, published via label channels and band profiles on video platforms such as YouTube or MySpace . In this context, online magazines also help to spread the videos. The Internet could with online magazines such Powermetal.de , Vampster or metal.de and communities (forums etc.) as another important medium of communication established. In regions where there are sometimes no live performances, recordings and other communication channels are of central importance.
internationality
Heavy metal originally originated in the UK, which also remained a dominant part of the subculture until the early 1980s. With the advent of Thrash Metal in the first half of the 1980s, which was largely shaped by US and German bands, that changed. With the subsequent style explosion of the 1980s, Scandinavia in particular became important for the further development of the various styles of metal, however Independent metal scenes also began to develop in other regions of the world. With regard to the extreme metal scene, Keith Kahn-Harris summed up the structure of the metal scene: "The scene is global, but it contains quasi-autonomous local scenes in most countries of the world." Today metal has become a phenomenon that is at home in almost every country in the world, the online database Encyclopaedia Metallum lists metal bands in over 130 countries, including countries such as Botswana, Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Myanmar, Madagascar and Pakistan.
literature
- Dietmar Elflein : Heavy Metal Analyzes - The Musical Language of Heavy Metal . transcript, Bielefeld 2010.
- Ian Christe : Hell noise. The complete, ruthless, unique history of heavy metal. Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2004, ISBN 978-3-85445-402-1
- Reto Wehrli: devil heavy metal. Telos Verlag, Münster / Westf. 2001, ISBN 3-933060-04-4 .
- Holger Schmenk, Christian Krumm: buddies in frocks. Heavy metal in the Ruhr area. Henselowsky & Boschmann, Bottrop 2010, ISBN 978-3-942094-02-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor: The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English . Routledge, New York 2008, ISBN 0-203-96211-7 , p. 328
- ^ Daniel Morsch: The Heavy Metal Movement: Insights into a slightly different scene culture - An inventory , p. 13/14; 2005. Diploma thesis at the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim, University of Social Sciences (humanities)
- ^ A b William Phillips, Brian Cogan: Encyclopedia of heavy metal music . 2009, pp. 3-8, ISBN 978-0-313-34800-6
- ↑ Graham "Gruhamed" Hartmann: Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi Receives Honorary Doctorate. Loudwire, November 22, 2013, accessed May 9, 2014 .
- ↑ a b “Our music was born on the back of the punk explosion in England,” states Abaddon, “if you drew back Venom's influences I guess you'd find bands like Deep Purple and the Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath . ” Thus it was not surprising that an array of their early fans were drawn from areas beyond the standard Metal crowd (many of whom considered Venom pointlessly offensive and untalented noise-makers). " Michael Moynihan , Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . First edition. Feral House 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , pp. 10f
- ^ A b “Besides pioneering a dirtier sound than any other extant Punk or Metal band in Europe, Venom's notoriety was doubly assured with their elaborate endorsement of Satanism to a degree which would have caused wet dreams for medieval inquisitors. Given the level of blasphemy they made their trademark, it is not surprising the band could be embraced as panacea for the soul by kids brought up in stifling Christian environments, and looking for any possible way out. "Michael Moynihan, Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . First edition. Feral House 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , p. 12
- ↑ a b "Venom took the stripped-down, punk-influenced metal of Motörhead, distorted it even further, and added Satanic themes and imagery. Sharing Kiss' love of over-the-top stage shows and irate parents, Venom crafted an image for themselves as leather clad, heavy metal devil worshipers. This image was an inspiration to later black metal insofar as it attempted to become the embodiment of everything frightened parents groups erroneously accused Led Zeppelin and Kiss of being. They rightly assumed that if vague rumors of Satanism could sell records, unapologetic celebration of Satanism could sell even more. Venom's Satanism was largely a promotional technique and, in spite of how they would be interpreted by certain excitable young Norwegians, they never pretended to adhere to any literal type of Satanism. "Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, p. 14
- ↑ a b c d e f g Jan Fleckhaus, Christof Leim: The origin of hardness . In Metal Hammer , No. 3, 2008, pp. 34-41
- ↑ a b Götz Kühnemund: A History of Horror . In Rock Hard , No. 282, November 2010, pp. 20-27
- ↑ a b Björn Thorsten Jaschinski: Dissecting table . In Rock Hard , No. 282, November 2010, p. 28
- ↑ Sympathies
- ↑ Michael Moynihan, Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . First edition. Feral House 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , p. 29
- ↑ "The opening of the record store Helvete happened a few months after [Dead's suicide]. That's the creation of the whole Norwegian Black Metal scene — it's connected with that shop, the influence Euronymous had on the young customers in the shop, and how he convinced them of what was real and not real in this world. A lot of the guys in Immortal and Dark Throne [sic!] Were all into normal Death Metal and Euronymous showed them what Black Metal was really like, how things should be, and they followed him. Looking at the first Dark Throne album compared to the second, you can see Euronymous' influence on the second one, A Blaze in the Northern Sky . That's the first Norwegian Black Metal album after Deathcrush which was really big and an influence on the rest of the scene. [...] The whole Norwegian scene is based on Euronymous and his testimony from his shop. [...] He was always telling what he thought, following his own instincts to the true Black Metal stuff like corpsepaint and spikes, worshiping death and being extreme. "Michael Moynihan, Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . First edition. Feral House, 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , p. 39
- ^ "Euronymous, his band Mayhem and other key figures in the scene would transform Venom's quasi-Satanic stage theatrics into a form of cultural expression unique from other forms of metal or Satanism. The early Nordic scene often suggested that they had no interest in making the world a better place or alleviating suffering; on the contrary, they asserted a desire to increase human suffering. Euronymous was the central figure involved in the formation of the Norwegian black metal scene. He established the look, sound and philosophy of the Norwegian scene and black metal as it exists today would not have existed without Euronymous. "Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, p. 27
- ↑ Michael Moynihan, Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos , First Edition, Feral House 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , pp. 92f
- ↑ Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann: War Black Metal: Die Extremsten der Extremes . What remains is rubble and ashes . In Rock Hard , No. 279, p. 71
- ↑ Keith Stevens: Review - MORRIGAN - Welcome To Samhain The Metal Observer
- ↑ BurnYourEars Webzine: Darkthrone - Interview with the metal missionary, drummer and non-musician Fenriz
- ^ Robert Müller, Matthias Weckmann: Extreme Ausschläger . In Metal Hammer , special issue No. 1/2012: History of Metal , p. 37
- ↑ Joe D'Angelo, Heather Parry: Nu Metal Meltdown
- ↑ Patrick Rösing: "Metal is the expulsion of the blues from rock" . Interview with Dietmar Elflein by Patrick Rösing. In: Festival Today . tape 2011 , no. 1 . Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag, Flensburg 4th August 2011, p. 20 ( radio-exodus.de [PDF; accessed on February 6, 2014]). "Metal is the expulsion of the blues from rock" ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ "Manowar's guitarist Karl Logan justified the decision to record Nessun dorma with the close connections between the two genres:" We […] just wanted to show the relationship between [classical music, note by the author]. Ed.] And heavy metal because the music of that song is definitely, undeniably powerful. Again, it's just another side of the band and it's a reminder that heavy metal is about melody and memorable melodic moments, not just percussion […]. "" Michael Custodis : Classical Music Today . A search for clues in rock music . 2009 transcript Verlag, p. 38
- ↑ a b "What metal bands did was draw material from classical music, like Manowar's ' Flight of the Bumblebee ' and ' William Tell ', Ritchie Blackmore / Rainbow's excerptions from Beethoven's Ninth , and Accept's 'Metal Heart / Für Elise ', but as Weinstein asserts, these were not acknowledgments of metal's musical past. Rather they were used as proclamations of virtuosity (Weinstein 1998, 143, also Walser 1993, chapter 3). Interestingly, the compositional authenticity of folk metal has not yet been criticized, though many bands use similar techniques to those of Led Zeppelin, only drawing from older sources. Otyg's Daniel Fredriksson has suggested to me that this is because folk tunes are seen as "the definition of authenticity." He adds that “someone who plays a folk tune isn't seen as ripping off someone else, he or she is granted being a part of a chain of tradition, of the 'soul of nature'” (Fredriksson, pc). “Aaron Patrick Mulvany: “Reawakening Pride Once Lost”: Indigeneity And European Folk Metal . Master thesis. Wesleyan University, Middletown CT 2000, p. 50
- ↑ a b c d e Aaron Patrick Mulvany: “Reawakening Pride Once Lost”: Indigeneity And European Folk Metal . Master thesis. Wesleyan University, Middletown CT 2000, pp. 11-16
- ↑ a b "All Aeolian and classical influence in hard rock and metal can be traced back to Ritchie Blackmore (and to some extent Uli Roth)." HeadDino: Wolf Hoffmann . Dinosaur rock guitar ; Retrieved April 22, 2011
- ^ Dinosaur David B: Uli Jon Roth . Dinosaur rock guitar . Accessed online May 6, 2011
- ↑ Head Dino: Tony Iommi . Dinosaur rock guitar . Accessed online May 6, 2011
- ↑ Head Dino: Ritchie Blackmore . Dinosaur rock guitar . Accessed online May 6, 2011
- ↑ HeadDino: KK Downing ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Dinosaur rock guitar . Accessed online May 6, 2011
- ↑ Head Dino: Glenn Tipton . Dinosaur rock guitar . Accessed online May 6, 2011
- ↑ Wolf Marshall, “Power Lord-Climbing chords, evil tritones, giant callhouses” Guitar Legends , April 1997, p. 29
- ↑ Sam Dunn : Metal: A Headbanger's Journey ( Memento of the original from August 7, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Warner Home Video (2006). Accessed online March 19, 2007
- ^ "Shaping Up and Riffing Out- Using major and minor power chords to add color to your parts" Guitar Legends , April 1997, p. 97
- ↑ Throat kite: THE METAL UTENSIL OF THE MONTH: ´If you don't know what it is, call it Progmetal! ´
- ↑ a b Michael Custodis: Classical Music Today . A search for clues in rock music . 2009 transcript Verlag, p. 39
- ↑ Barry Graves, Siegfried Schmidt-Joos: The new rock lexicon . Vol. 2, ISBN 978-3-499-16321-0 , p. 913
- ↑ "[King] Diamond represents one of the only performers of the '80s Satanic Metal who was more than just a poseur using a devilish image for shock value." Michael Moynihan, Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . First edition. Feral House, 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , pp. 15f
- ^ A b Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, p. 13
- ↑ "Slayer so reveled in Satanic imagery more than any other North American tape of Their time. However, like Venom, Slayer's Satanism was almost exclusively for show and provocation. Singer Tom Araya is, in fact, a professed Catholic and his explanations of his musical forays into Satanism are confusing at best. "Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, p. 17
- ^ A b Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, p. 25
- ^ Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, p. 37f
- ^ Benjamin Hedge Olson: I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture . (PDF) Bowling Green State University, May 2008, pp. 40ff
- ↑ Marc Halupczok: A scene is growing . In Metal Hammer , special issue No. 1/2012: History of Metal , p. 20
- ^ A b c d Aaron Patrick Mulvany: "Reawakening Pride Once Lost": Indigeneity And European Folk Metal . Wesleyan University, Middletown CT May 2000, p. 17 f.
- ↑ him: The Live Concert ( Memento from April 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ him: Das Open Air ( Memento from October 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ "The scene is global, but contains quasi-autonomous local scenes within it in most countries of the world." Keith Kahn-Harris: "I hate this fucking country": Dealing with the global and the local in the Israeli Extreme Metal Scene . In: Richard Young (Ed.): Critical Studies, Music Popular Culture Identities. , 2002, p. 122
- ↑ Browse by country . Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives ; Retrieved April 22, 2011
