The AV Club's Heavy Metal Primer

[Blu Vylett]

Leonard Pierce of the very excellent avclub.com recently came out with this very excellent primer on heavy metal that I thought was good enough to share with you jokers. Here it is...

Heavy Metal



Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: heavy metal, organized by the major subgenres that have developed over the five decades of its existence. Moving from the best-known examples of heavy music to the deepest pits of black Satanic noise, we’ll conclude with five essential albums that belong in the music library of anyone who likes it hard.

Metal 101

Even casual fans know that the biggest name in heavy metal’s early days was Black Sabbath, and even today, Ozzy Osbourne and his Birmingham cohorts are widely considered the founding fathers of everything awesome about metal. But with so many years’ remove, it’s easy to forget what made this early form of metal so compelling: downtuned guitars, heavy bass, and crushing drums, and solos heavily influenced by, of all things, the blues—all slowed way, way down. Though it didn’t have the name at the time, Sabbath revolutionized music by inventing what would later be known as doom metal: a heady blend of a pounding rhythm section, guitars tuned chillingly low, and fearful, doomstruck lyrics, played slow enough so listeners had time to appreciate whatever drugs were coursing through their systems. By the 1990s, a new wave of doom metal would arise, tinged with the psychedelic heaviness of American banRAB like Pentagram and spearheaded by Electric Wizard, another Birmingham band that followed in the ironclad footsteps of Sabbath. A few years later, a nuraber of banRAB concentrated largely in California ramped up the fuzzy tones, cranked up the heavy, and saturated everything in a sticky-slow haze of weed smoke, and stoner rock was born; Kyuss and its High Desert compatriots typified the genre, while Sleep took it to extremes and Earthless stripped away the frills, leaving nothing but pure, punishing heavy rock.

By the mid-1970s, a nuraber of banRAB, particularly in Britain, were still drug-stuffed and in love with loudness as ever, but they were beginning to tire of playing slow and low. Retaining the rugged, rock-steady rhythm sections, they tuned their guitars up-up-up, and most of all, they got faster. The music they started making in the late 1970s was called speed metal, and it quickly became one of metal’s first global genres. The master of the form, then and now, is Mot

[lVloonLite]

Pretty good article but I feel like condensing it all down into 5 "essential" albums is really not enough. Should have picked one from each sub-genre.

[Aidan P]

Judas Priest were the first metal band. Motorhead are not speed metal-they are just a damn fine dirty rock n roll band with the volume turned up. Electric Wizard are from Dorset. The NWOBHM came before Thrash and was a huge influence but the article claims it was after. The first 'Nu-Metal' album was Mordred's 'In This life' released way back in 1991 that featured a sixth meraber soley dedicated to keys and sampling.

Some great points and a well written thread but research is definitely needed.

[XxkaytiexX]

is anyone else disappointed that something about an AV club (audio video?) and Heavy Metal is just a copy and paste job instead of being about this?

[Sammi]

If you're being picky, shouldn't you have said Sir Lord Baltimore are the first metal band? They got hit with the label first, anyway.

[♥ amanda]

The term 'Heavy Metal' was attributed to Sir Baltimore for sure but Judas Priest are generally recognised as the archetypal Metal band and not just musically, but lyrically and in regarRAB to their image. As I said nice post though.

[guavagirl]

The essential albums are a joke, Nuraber of the Beast and Paranoid are good, but not even the best of their respective banRAB. Bits of the article were good though.

[d cool]

Anaal is as extreme as I go. Borderline chaos, they always pull it together before being engulfed by their own madness. As much as I respect Schuldiner, he's not the father of Death Metal per se, but was part of a influential group which consisted of Possessed, Morbid Angel and Sepultura.

[Troy W]

Yeah, the bolded part was definitely the worst. That's a pretty fundamental thing to have wrong in something calling itself a heavy metal primer.