Heavy Metal

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The term "heavy metal" encompasses a wide variety of styles held together by a common "heaviness" that can be achieved through manifold means, such as distorted guitars, fast tempi, and growled or screamed vocals. However, each of these rules has exceptions, and there is no one constant through every piece of music classified as heavy metal, making this extremely broad genre difficult to accurately describe. Instrumentation often includes electric guitar (most often distorted in tone), bass guitar, drums, and sometimes vocals and keyboards, with all other instruments being relatively rarely found. There are several sub-genres of heavy metal to be noted:

Thrash Metal

Thrash metal is generally characterized by its "harsh" sound; extremely fast tempos, low register guitar riffs, and a often relentless percussion. Thrash metal is also often formally quite complex with an extended introductions and endings andcomplicated bridges breaking up the standard structure of Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge (generally containing a guitar solo)-Chorus. Thrash metal also often features multiple guitar solos as opposed to just one. Harmonically, Thrash metal is a bit hard to pin down with bands like Metallica focusing largely on the Aeolian, Dorian, and Pentatonic minor modes while bands like Slayer make more use of octatonic and chromatic scales.

Thrash metal started somewhere in the mid-80s and was generally considered as an answer to the increasingly popular trend of Glam Rock (Otherwise known as "Hair Metal"). While Glam metal was quite commercially viable at the time (with lyrics that often focused on partying, drinking, having sex, and generally having a "good time" and unchallenging guitar riffs that often were secondary to the vocals), Thrash metal was intended as a sort of anthithese to this; with lyrics that often focused on death, murder, war, and general violence and much more complicated and percussive guitar riffs that had equal if not greater signifcance than the vocals. The four leading Thrash metal bands that lead this movement were all California-based: Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. Slayer can especially be seen as a complete opposition to everything that Glam metal was characterized by.

While all of the four prominent thrash metal bands still remain active to this day, Thrash metal reached the height of its fame toward the end of the 80s. Since, Metallica infamously made a turn towards more commercially "acceptable" and less complex music with each subsequent record after "... And Justice For All" while Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer (who already did not share quite the same popularity as Metallica) all slowly fell into obscurity when the 90s hit; continuing to function only by the support a strong cult following.

Power Metal

Power metal is the most melodic genre of metal, with simple song structures, usually clean vocals, and diatonic harmonies.

Black Metal

Black metal is a very fast-paced musical form, with vocals often screeched or screamed, tremolo picked guitars, and drums played with blast beats.

Doom Metal

Doom metal is noteworthy for its extremely slow tempi, as this is the manner through which it draws its heaviness. Keyboards are found fairly often, and songs will often last well over ten minutes.