firebirdflys wrote:Um hummmm, we have gone well beyond classical, rock, pop jazz, blues, folk, country, (which in my opinion has turned into rock), Eh?
It's hard to keep up. I really like most music, although I don't care for rap unless it's Blondies little rif in Rapture! LoL the original rapper!
Rap these days isn't even rap any more, its audio vomit. I used to listen to 80's US rap when I was kid, back then they did some good stuff. These days its just lazy, obnoxious bullshit lyrics and premade beats without anything "real" to it. Well, mostly. I don't follow any of it, I can't stand it.
Youn were interested about different flavours of heavy metal so here we go, I'll give you little idea about the main genres these days.
1. Classic heavy metal & NWOBHM(New wave of British heavy metal.)
Old school stuff, there's some differing opinions of what goes under this one. I tend to bunch up all the good old heavy under this banner. Stuff like Black Sabbath, Dio, Iron Maiden, Angel Witch, Motörhead, Anvil, and so on. Its like rock, but usually faster with way heavier sound, usually clean high pitched vocals. Think about rock on steroids with ton of power and speed in it. Pretty much every metalhead in existence likes some of this, no shit as that's where the roots are.
2. Thrash / Speed metal
It wasn't even called thrash in the beginning, they called it power metal or what ever. These days speed/thrash are thought to be somewhat different, but its pretty much the same stuff, that's one of the stupid "genre" differences people have made up. Thrash metal is like NWOBHM combined with hardcore punk in a way. Its fast as heck, the sound is often more punkish and harsh, its like 70's metal overdone with way more speed. Vocals are often on the verge of screaming, not as clean as in classic metal, but this depends on the band. Lot of fast and complicated guitar work, solos in almost every song. Drums are often double speed compared to old school metal, a lot of double bass. Often chaotic in a punkish manner. This is the genre I grew up with. Check out bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Exodus, Sepultura(Their 80's stuff), Kreator, Sodom, Annihilator, Charged, Stone, Airdash, Lääz Rokit, Morbid Saint to name some. There's ton of good bands, but this isn't about listing everything.
My main band Antabus also plays 80's style thrash metal with a twist, you can find our stuff on my channel.
3. Death metal.
Death metal is a development of thrash into way darker lyrical concepts and heavier sound. This stuff started to show up around mid 80's. Often as fast as the slowest player in the band. This is the genre which made the growl vocals a thing. Low growling which sounds totally inhuman and is often so badly done you can't make out any words even though they are there. DM vocalist who actually makes the words audible just like that is a rare one. Often low tuned guitars and lot of bass/low frequencies in the mix. Its like thrash made more extreme. The old school death metal is quite different from the "technical" stuff they do these days.(Total garbage in my opinion, old school all the way or none at all.) Lyrics are often so gruesome and disgusting that its almost cartoonish, over the top what ever it is. There's gazillion death metal bands but some of the better ones in my opinion are Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Bolt Thrower, Edge of Sanity(Melodic/progressive dm.), Vomitory, Fleshcrawl, Demilich, Amorphis(Early.). There's again lot more but these are into my liking. I'm extremely picky about death metal as I don't like the trends of last twenty years or so, to me its not development, its just going down the drain.
4. Black metal
They speak of first and second and even third wave of black metal, I don't care about that. Black metal is black metal. Black metal is related to all of the above, but with clear difference to typical death metal. Many black metal musicians started with a death metal band, either got bored with it, or they jumped the bandwagon when black metal came trendy. Again often very fast music, usually more melodic than death metal, everything higher pitched, not so much emphasis on bass / low frequencies in the mix. Its like a opposing reaction to death metal almost. Very much alike, but at the same time very different. High pitched growl vocals are the norm. Riffs often sound like bees buzzing due to the speed, less rhythmic than death metal, atmospheric. The sound is raw and dark, often kind of "cold". The usual old school black metal is quite lo fi and not as polished and produced as death metal is. Typical lyrical theme is anti christian and/or satanic. Mostly its typical heavy metal stuff, but overdone to be as dark and grim as possible. Many black metal musicians are quite serious with the stuff or at least they want to give that image. I think black metal is some times too serious and unable to laugh at itself, there's a lot conflicting ideas. BM is much further away from thrash and old school heavy metal than any other genre in my opinion. There's again ton of good bands to check, here's some of my favourites. Emperor, Immortal(early), Thy Serpent, Behexen, Troll, Mayhem(anything up to Wolf's Lair Abyss, the newer stuff is garbage), Dimmu Borgir(First two albums). I play drums on Thelemic Gates, which is sort of atmospheric old school black metal with lyrical themes based on Thelema, I think you know Aleister Crowley? The guy who started the band is into that stuff, so its an atypical black metal band, no "satanic" stuff in it.
5. Folk / Pagan / viking metal.
We talked about this a bit earlier and I think you got the idea. Its usually heavy metal with influences from almost any other genre of metal combined with folk/pagan music and/or lyrical themes. Some bands are heavy on using traditional instruments(Like my previous band Auringon Hauta was.) Most band in this genre sing about their own countries traditions and mythology, but there's ton of viking metal bands from other countries for example. This genre is very varied and the sound can be almost anything. Its some times bit hard to put clear boundaries for it. There's for example clearly black metal bands who call it pagan metal because their lyrical concepts are not typical BM stuff and they want to draw a line there.
These I think are the clearly differing genres which are easy to recognise most of the time. There's a lot of cross over and splinter "genres" which aren't genres at all. I didn't list "nu metal" because that is no metal at all and I did lot of generalisation to make sense. Then I used the words often and usually a lot, that's because there's so much variation inside the genres and some bands have some unique thing which doesn't always fit with the norm. I almost wish we could go back in time to when heavy metal was heavy metal and that's it. Making up countless of sub genres with minimal differences just makes the whole thing a big mess. I hope this helps.