What are facts about metal music?

Answer 1

Long long ago... maybe not. Metal comes from rock, the blues and 60s pop. The Kinks produced what many consider to be the first example of a heavy metal riff in their track You Really Got Me, and Steppenwolf used the phrase 'heavy metal thunder' in their hit Born to be Wild. However, metal didn't really start up until the late 60s, when bands such as Cream, Free and Led Zeppelin were playing heavy blues rock. Deep Purple, around the same time, was putting a bit of classical into the mix. Black Sabbath, though, are the real starting point for metal. They formed in the mid 60s, changed their name to Black Sabbath in 68 and got their debut out in 1970. The first track on it, Black Sabbath, featured a heavy, distorted, doomy power chord riff (also utilising the tritone) and occult-themed lyrics.

As the 70s progressed, metal (though not known as that) changed from Sabbath's doom-laden, sludgy, bassy crunch to a cleaner, faster, classic metal sound as bands such as Judas Priest got their paws on it. Motorhead introduced extreme speed, Van Halen made it okay for metal to be happier, Alice Cooper introduced the shock factor and Kiss introduced the glam factor.

In the late 70s to early 80s, the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) broke out, taking the DIY spirit of punk and applying it to metal. This gave the world bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon and Def Leppard. Def Leppard, like Van Halen and Kiss, were a harbinger of glammier things to come while Iron Maiden introduced some of the ideas behind power and prog metal. Venom also appeared in this time, introducing the Satanic themes of black metal and the sound of thrash.

In the early 80s in America, the big scene was glam metal. Motley Crue, WASP, Ratt, Warrant and Twisted Sister all played feel-good, anti-establishment party metal, and it was huge in the charts. Def Leppard were also riding the waves of this movement, even though they predated it.

As the 80s progressed, thrash emerged in America; bands like Metallica and Slayer had taken the blueprint of speed laid down by Motorhead and Venom and added some hardcore, turning it into a new, far more extreme type of metal. Also, prog metal began developing with bands such as Queensryche.

The late 80s saw yet more glam bands coming along; Poison, Cinderella, Guns n Roses and Skid Row, the latter showing the influence of thrash upon the mainstream. At this time, death metal and black metal were also developing from the thrash scene (death taking the brutality of Slayer and intensifying it, black taking the Satanism of Venom and intensifying it)

Grunge, while not a genre of metal, emerged in the early 90s, spelling doom for the glam bands. The more extreme underbelly of metal, the thrash, death and black - also the emerging metalcore and grindcore scenes - continued unchecked, and power metal and prog metal continued their growth.

Later in the 90s, some American kids fused metal with rap - it had been done before by bands such as Faith No More and even thrash crew Anthrax, but this was the first time the genre label 'nu-metal' was heard. Leading bands in this movement were Slipknot, Korn and Limp Bizkit.

In the 2000s, metal has continued to grow at a surprising rate, with new bands coming out in most genres. Metalcore has migrated across the Atlantic to Britain, where it has found a willing home. Glam has had a revival, with the 80s bands reforming and new bands like Steel Panther coming through. The New Wave of American Thrash Metal has contributed some new old-school thrash, and most of the old masters are still going strong.

Answer 2

It's outstandingly diverse - a folk metal track will sound nothing like a glam metal track and nothing like a doom metal track.

It has a big respect for the old masters eg Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden.

It likes the 'shock factor'.

Common themes are death, drugs, the occult, sex and war.