Where did metal come from? What is the line between extreme metal and metal?
Where did metal come from? What is the line between extreme metal and metal?
Nathan Peterson
Adam Allen
Metal came from psychedelic rock and blues.
Extreme metal is typically anything with harsh vocals.
Lucas Cooper
Black Sabbath are the grandaddies of heavy metal, and Venom are often cited as the progenitors of extreme metal. They weren't that extreme by today's standards, because they just sound like satanic motorhead, but they inspired a lot of music. There's a ton of demos, like Sodom's Witching Metal which are pretty damn early examples of extreme metal, but they're pretty obscure. Things got spicy around 83 though, with a bunch of cool thrash and shit. I dunno how curious you are about all that shit though.
Josiah Edwards
I like how metal evolved out of hippie shit
Anthony Campbell
This is actually helpful:
deathmetal.org
Metal is heavy, Psychedelic and Blues-based Rock music structured in either minor-key, modal or chromatic scales. Power chords, quick picking and galloping riffs are also very important. Bands that don’t utilize them in any fashion can’t be considered Metal in my book. Furthermore, the tonal centers of the Metal riffs in each composition are not fixed but progress over the course of it. The rhythm guitar is therefore not a merely a rhythm instrument but, in fact, the lead one. The drum kit (and timpani if you’re Master’s Hammer) is enslaved to the guitars as a mere metronomic timekeeper despite whatever swing, texture, or fills the drummer flourishes the music with.
If “Robbing the Graveyard and Raping the Dead” from Satan’s Massacre is any proof, you construct Metal music simply with your amp and guitar with no bass or percussion needed at all:
youtu.be
youtu.be
It’s these reasons I refuse to dub Black Sabbath’s self-titled album and even “Paranoid” as Metal. Black Sabbath’s Metal work started with “Master of Reality” and virtually every album since that time. Ozzy’s most Metal album with Sabbath was a toss up between “Sabotage” and “Vol. 4” with “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” not far behind. “The Wizard” may have that one riff (I’d argue it’s a Hard Rock riff [the fills, phrasing, and little notes popping up here and there are even more indication]), but even so, claiming the debut is the first Metal album is inane.
Just listen to “Ride the Sky” by Lucifer’s Friend which dropped in November of 1970, almost a year before the world would hear “Children of the Grave”. That song alone is heavier than most of what Sabbath made until that “Master of Reality”. For shits and giggles, follow that up with “Deceiver” by Judas Priest and you’ll notice some parallels:
youtu.be
youtu.be
Jason Walker
Funny enough, Black Sabbath actually spawned as some kind of anti flower-power thing.
"We were living in Birmingham. Drizzly rain, no shoes on my feet. And I thought, 'This shit is for the rest of my life.' And I put the radio on and there's some guy singing, 'If you want to go to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair.' I thought, 'This is bullocks, the only flower I am likely to wear is on my fucking grave.'" - Ozzy
Daniel King
Metal comes from the deepest corners of the white man's racial memory (with occasional allowance for Spic, a lot of whom are part Conquistador anyway), and Extreme Metal officially begins at Slayer
Wyatt Hall
Perhaps the biggest and most controversial thesis that DMU / ANUS has posited is that Heavy Metal is the natural continuation of Classical music applied to Rock'n'Roll's compositional arrangements. My own feelings on the Metal / Blues / Classical argumentum ad fedora that ANUSites always bring up are somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, I think the shift away from Rock and Blues that Extreme Metal (especially chromatically-based Thrash, Black and Death Metal) represents is self-evident and inarguable.
However, the idea that there is some clearly obvious Classical or Neoclassical influence in Death Metal or Black Metal is a load of bullshit. I think this particular pillar of the ANUS catechism---that Extreme Metal is a natural extension of Classical---derives from confused and muddled thinking, along with their well-documented desire to overthink the creative processes of musically-inclined societal dropouts.
In short: Extreme Metal's move away from Blues and Rock didn't represent a move back towards Classical or a re-imagining of Classical music for the modern world; it represented a wholly novel concept of taking an existing concept and going much further with it than previously imagined while incorporating other existing genres of Rock music, especially Punk and Hardcore.
Henry Baker
Holy shit Ozzy is based, although there were heavy sounding psychedelic bands with gloomy lyrics before Black Sabbath
Jackson Ross
METAL = TOXIC MASCULINITY + BLUES + LOTS OF DISTORTION PEDALS
Oliver Hall
Metal sprang from the 80s. The 80s is the worst decade of music in the 20th century. No thanks, metal is shit.
Only good Metal Bands are Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, bands from the 70s.
Isaiah Richardson
I know Coven is a good example but would you have any more?
I’m also really interested in how things like the Manson Murders initially started as East Coast hippie type movements. It feels like there’s a darker side of psychedelics that is oft ignored
Ethan Hill
>The 80s is the worst decade of music in the 20th century.
kill yourself you hairy ape
Luis Howard
It’s the worst from 1960-now 2000s are a close second
Ian Sullivan
>not the 70s
be gone
Christian Myers
no they saw people lining up to watch horror movies and thought that a musical equivalent was what the world needed.
Matthew Cooper
>What is the line between extreme metal and metal?
That line is Hardcore punk.
Grayson Gonzalez
Which begs another interesting question:
Where goes the line between (HC) Punk and Metal?
How much punk is allowed in metal so that it still remains metal, and vice versa?
Genres in question usually being (Crossover) Thrash, Sludge and Grindcore.
Nathaniel Parker
Meh, I can see the logic in saying that but not really true.
It just depends on which side they lean closer to....Metallica is obviously a metal band, even in their earliest "punkiest" days, it was clearly metal music. Old D.R.I. and Suicidal Tendencies, is very different. If a band shows more punk or hardcore influence than metal it's more in that world, and vice versa.
Austin Howard
It depends on the genre i guess, most people would consider Thrash to be metal today, even tho thrash was originally a hardcore style in the early 80's (and similar in many ways). Thrash is kinda like heavy metal but with the rawness in sound and attitude from hardcore and usually much faster tempo wise.
Not that inte sludge so i dunno, grindcore is different considering it is core and doesn't really have anything to do with metal with the exception of deathgrind.
What makes it not true? Early hardcore and early anarchopunk were very influential on certain extreme metal genres like thrash, black and death. Like Chronos from Venom said, we took Heavy metal and added some Sex Pistols just to make it nasty. And kablam. birth of crossover, thrash, death, black and so on followed shortly after.
No one would call early GISM metal, but they are very metal sounding.
youtube.com
Nolan Ramirez
The influence is there but I say it's untrue because you don't need to be punk at all to be extreme metal, some bands were very punk or punk influenced, others were not at all. Extreme metal really just comes down to two things, faster than normal for "rock music" tempos and harsh vocals, there are extreme metal bands who are more in line with prog rock than anything punk, it's just "extreme"
Zachary Myers
>Manson Murders initially started as East Coast hippie type movements.
No.
The hippy movement is just the one Manson drifted into, because of the free sex and drugs aspect, and used the whole thing to push his own fantasies and agenda. He was hanging with Process members and the music industry types, before he started the Family shit.
Robert Long
Yeah true, but most of those stuff came from hardcore, at least the harsh vocals that had been a thing in hardcore for like ever.
It also depends on when these extreme bands you are talking about, early to mid 80's are very different from let's say the 90's, extreme metal wise.
Kevin Smith
Yes that's why I make a distinction, also hardcore screaming is a lot different than death metal growling or black metal shrieking, it all gets pretty convoluted but just as a general rule, I say hardcore punk had a major influence on extreme metal, but what I meant was it isn't exactly a line between traditional metal and extreme metal, cause there are many exceptions to the rule in different ways, even with bands who were influenced heavily by hardcore not being "extreme metal". Punk influence in metal and which bands are metal or punk is one of those case by case things, for me anyway.
Nolan Flores
There were hardcore bands who did growling as well and the black metal shrieking is straight outta the hardcore book.
By influence i mean things like guitar tone, drumming style (blast beats, d-beats which all came from jazz originally but were more common in hardcore), vocals, tempo, sound etc. It also depends on where the band is from, European death metal is very different from American death metal, you can clearly hear the old hardcore influences in most euro death, but not really in burger death. Also when the band was active play a important role as well what they listened to (for influences). But i would still say that hardcore is that line, metal bands took all the cool things from hardcore and made it metal, then it evolved into bunch of stuff, because without that there would be no Hellhammer, Venom, Metallica etc, only Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath ripoffs.