What is Heavy Metal?

What is heavy metal? A music genre. Okay, but what does it stand for? What are its codes? Its values? Its mythology, or as Varg Vikernes would say, its logos? Here is an intellectual exercise for you. Take a pause in reading this article and make a list of everything that separates heavy metal from other music genres such as pop, rock, punk, jazz, blues and classical music.

Done? Did you talk about the guitar distortion, the harsh vocals, the 'heaviness', the fast drumming? It's pretty surprising how easily people can recognise and acknowledge heavy metal's external aesthetics, but remain willfully bland to heavy metal's inner nature. Its soul in other words.

Heavy metal is not a 'technique', and has very little to do with harsh vocals and heavy guitars. Phantom's The Epilogue to Sanity and Burzum's Hvis Lyset Tar Oss would still be heavy metal if played on a violin, or sung a cappella. Tere is a certain spirit, and atmosphere that pervades all great heavy metal work and that can be found in no other music genre, except perhaps in romantic era classical music - Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner come to mind. Unsurprisingly, many extreme metal artists have admitted being influenced by classical music, and most have stated their disgust towards mainstream rock music.

Heavy metal can best be seen as a compromise between classical music and rock. The function of classical music - narrative structures that develop over the course of a composition - with the form of modern rock music - guitars, screamed vocals, fast drumming. It is the opposite of most B-rated movie scores, which take the function of modern rock - pop hooks, cyclical song structures, 'catchy' choruses - and dress in up as classical music - pianos, violins and other orchestra (digital) instruments.

Heavy metal is a revolt against the ineptitude and idiocy of rock music. Why then does it borrow some of its techniques? In Rome do as Romans, as they say. Heavy metal can borrow technique from any and every genre, from rock to punk to jazz, but it may never compromise its inner soul, lest it cease being metal. Metalcore, for instance, takes heavy metal technique and applies it to hardcore song structures. Thus, it ceases to be heavy metal and becomes shunned by the metal community.

Start here for a list of the best heavy metal bands.