Heavy Metal: What Is The Definitive Description?

Isis, maybe? Though Tesla did have that acoustic album! And Opeth's excellent most recent record is basically ambient new age music. In fact, dark metal has IMPROVED metal by making it more new age. (That stuff = metal because it's made by bands that lots of metal fans already CALL metal. Otherwise, though, metal = loud guitars. By anybody. Wearing retarded leather costumes or not. But I don't wanna get started. I wrote a book on the subject once, if you care.)

I was actually thinking that! But I wanted to see if someone else would say it. (It's a more logical answer than, say, Main.)

I wrote a book on the subject once, if you care.

I've heard of this book.

By the way, metal mole is not music mole's alter ego, though actually maybe it is. Anyway, my definition of heavy metal: it's psychedelic battle music.

Once again, I respectfully differ.

AC/DC brought a kind of cosmic electricity into the blues via disortion. I've always believed that disortion is intensely pscyhedelic as well as aggresive, because it exaggerates harmonic overtones. No psychedelia without harmonic overtones!

Right, I'm out of here before I make a fool of myself. Even more of one. And who is this metal mole anyway? Gaz, is that you under that skin?

Most psychedelic battle music of all, then: IKE TURNER!!!!!! (And by this definiton, Link Wray and Jimmy Castor Bunch and Miles Davis's early '70s stuff and Glen Branca and maybe even Teena Marie -- more pyschedelic than battle, I guess -- DO fit, so what the hell.) But hey, what about WARRANT, or KIX?? They weren't angry, just itchy!! Any defintion of heavy metal that includes yellow-bellied chicken-livered "oh i'm so scared" monster movie idiots like Iron Maiden and Slayer but does not include Warrant or Kix can kiss my butt.

Off to the free clinic for them!

"Long Live Rock & Roll"

( Blackmore / Dio )

At the end of the dream
If you know where I mean
When the mist just starts to clear
In a similar way
At the end of today
I could feel the sound of writing on the wall

It cries for you
It's the least that you can do
Like a spiral on the wind
I can hear it screaming in my mind

Chorus:

Long live rock'n'roll } 3 times

In a different time
When the words didn't rhyme
You could never quite be sure
Then on with the change
It was simple but strange
And you knew the feeling seemed to say it all

It cries for you
It's the least that you can do
Like a spiral on the wind
I can hear it screaming in my mind

Chorus:

Long live rock'n'roll } 3 times

If you suddenly see
What has happened with me
You should spread the word around
And tell everyone here
That it's perfectly clear
They can sail above it all on what they've found

It cries for you
It's the least that you can do
Like a spiral on the wind
I can hear it screaming in my mind

Chorus:

Long live rock'n'roll } 3 times

Pop metal, or glam metal, but definitely not heavy metal. Loud guitars? Then punk is also metal. Harmonic overtones are essential for psychedelia, but are not sufficient. They just add to the magial brew. I'm happy to say there are pscyhedelic components to Ike Turner and esp Link Wray, but I'm not sure I'd call it battle music.

On the other hand, gabba, which has no guitars, is psychedelic battle music and therefore fits my definition of metal, and I'm happy with that.

I am not upset by our minor disagreement, by the way. I am conducting this discussion in a hearty, loving spirit, as two great friends might engage in a friendly wrestling match. Oiled.

Heavy metals are natural components of the Earth's crust. They cannot be degraded or destroyed. To a small extent they enter our bodies via food, drinking water and air. As trace elements, some heavy metals (e.g. copper, selenium, zinc) are essential to maintain the metabolism of the human body. However, at higher concentrations they can lead to poisoning. Heavy metal poisoning could result, for instance, from drinking-water contamination (e.g. lead pipes), high ambient air concentrations near emission sources, or intake via the food chain.

Heavy metals are dangerous because they tend to bioaccumulate. Bioaccumulation means an increase in the concentration of a chemical in a biological organism over time, compared to the chemical's concentration in the environment. Compounds accumulate in living things any time they are taken up and stored faster than they are broken down (metabolized) or excreted.

Heavy metals can enter a water supply by industrial and consumer waste, or even from acidic rain breaking down soils and releasing heavy metals into streams, lakes, rivers, and groundwater.

You die. Now.

Loud guitar distortion, thudding beats = (either one)
Pop hooks = hard rock
Excessive leather/studs = heavy metal
Keyboards* = hard rock
*exception: overdriven Hammond organ ala Heep Purple = heavy metal
Large female fan base = hard rock
Fantastical, mystical lyrics = heavy metal
Funky danceable beats = hard rock
Recognizable band logo = heavy metal
Vocal harmonies = hard rock
Ümlauts! = heavy metal
LP (or LPs) in Stairway To Hell = hard rock, jazz-rock, rap, or nearly anything BUT metal! (Just kidding, Chuck! My own copy cracked at the spine through overuse and fell apart years ago.)

Anyway, I was gonna say, tell that to Tina Turner, and to everybody who made "Rumble" (note title) a hit in 1958 or whatever year that was - -Ike and Link were TOTALLY battle music, duh!

And Guitar Wolf, and at least half of the punk and hardcore and noise rock bands in history, were OBVIOUSLY metal; even Martin Popoff agrees on the punk part. He says the Sex Pistols were basically nothing BUT metal. David Lee Roth said once that they got everything right except for the haircuts! And Motorhead (and AC/DC) sound more like the Anti Nowhere League than like Iron Maiden, for crissakes.

The heaviest metal (as in atomic weight) is osmium, which was also the title of Parliament's first album, at least until they reissued it under the name *Rheunium* (sp?), which suggests that the periodic table of elements may have changed over the years, but I've always been too lazy to check.

Do you ridiculous people who think that no punk is metal also think that punk isn't hard rock? I'm very curious...

http://www.rockcritics.com/Metal_Roundtable.html

Though the 'pop hooks' clause makes Slipknot hard rock...

"Funky danceable beats = hard rock
Recognizable band logo = heavy metal"

And so on....

Blue Cheer sound like Altamont and holocaust at the end of the world, Ian. And the end of the world arises out of their music NATURALLY; they weren't just conforming to prefabricated genre-shtick specifications like good little boys following rules. They were BREAKING rules. Which them SCARIER. They could crush most '80s/'90s metal bands between their thumb and their forefinger. So could the Stooges or Jimi Hendrix, for that matter. Unless you think "Death Trip" and "Manic Depression" and "Hey Joe" (say) have nothing to do with "mortality and armageddon" (both of which are ALL THROUGH the blues, for crissakes). (And Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses" is pretty darn "fantastical and mystical," I'd say.) (Not being of the British persuasion, I have never heard Screaming Lord Sutch, however.)

I do, chuck. I ridiculous them all! Then I absurd them, and preposterous them, and send them on their way.

Very true! In fact, one time Frank Kogan even pointed out that Nirvana sounded like an amazing new synthesis of Husker Du type music with Bob Mould type vocals!

Of course, arguably, this is where the actuality of 'the blues' reappears in music: brute force technical inventiveness, mystical imagery, sexual passion . ,

Black Sabbath = Heavy Metal
Led Zepplin = Heavy Rock

discuss

Of course not Alex. 95% of it is, in effect, a bunch of librarians arguing over a cataloging system. The limitations of a defintional approach are revealed, once again.

But it's still been enlightening in some ways. For example, on reflection, it seems to me that punk and metal really are driven by different philosophies. Metal aspires upwards, to the supernal, and punk aspires downwards, to the real.

See, that's why I added that little loophole: to cover my ass against all the obvious flaws & contradictions in my dumb little theories! AC/DC do indeed have pop hooks, as do Van Halen (even Slayer, kinda, on occasion), but to my mind AC/Dc is metal, VH hard rock. As for harmony vocals, even Lemmy doubletracked his own on occasion (to extremely weird effect, in "Metropolis") so that's not unheard of. Many punk bands (though they wouldn't admit it) were indeed metallic, or at least had the same roots. (The Kinks, for example.) You could argue that punks could be distinguished by their short hair, but only if you overlook The Ramones and The Saints. Many of my personal favourites (Blue Cheer, Sir Lord Baltimore) probably woulda been considered not metal but "acid rock" - which itself is different from "psychedelic rock!" And, hey, you can't even trust the bands themselves! - don't the unquestionably metallic AC/DC always claim they're "just a rock 'n roll band"? Blah blah blah.

My final points: 1. To me, no band epitomizes "heavy metal" more than
Black Sabbath; 2. To me, there is no finer "metal" LP than Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come; and 3. Who really gives a damn? I'm not gonna waste my time going grey(er) trying to choose between Aerosmith and Motorhead (and Budgie/Stooges/MX-80 Sound/Led Zep) based on some arbitrary pigeonholing that shouldn't matter to anyone except record-store employees.

I don't think there's any understanding genres without understanding the mental state, the psychodynamic, of the people who write the songs. Heavy metallers aspire to universalise their experiences of conflict, creating larger than life personas which rapidly become archetypal and hallucinogenic.

That’s a torturous way of putting it, but it makes sense to me, anyway.

love it.

Does this mean that *Fargo Rock City is somehow "dishonest" or "not likeable"? And if so, how? Just curious... I'm not a huge fan of much that Klosterman's written since, but I don't think the book is either of those things (though people who use "honesty" as a measure of opinions about music do tend to make me suspicious, since I've never understood what it means for music criticism not to be honest. People accused *Stairway to Hell* of that too, and those people were morons.)

Is Fargo Rock City a book about music? I don't think so. I got the impression from the book that the actual music was the least important gift of the entire heavy metal package. So inasmuch as that book presents itself as "Confessions of a Former Heavy Metal Maniac," I happen to know there were young lives far more compromised by heavy metal than that. I should have said "more honest and likeable". I think Klosterman's approach to metal is like Dave Barry's approach to fancy New York restaurants. I'm enjoying Hell Bent more than that.

They could crush most '80s/'90s metal bands between their thumb and their forefinger.

Napalm Death vs. Blue Cheer you're giving to Blue Cheer? Like I said in the first place, there's a generational thing at work here. I think heavy metal became a noun instead of an adjective around 1980.

duane of ILM steered me in the direction of Blue Cheer. I liked it. It did not sound like heavy metal to me at all, and did not hit the spots in my brain heavy metal hits. It sounded garagey, loose, psychedelic in the extreme and sort of soft and dreamlike. This surprised me because I'd been led to expect a sonic assault of massive, nihilistic, distortive intent from reading Mojo. Especially, Blue Cheer were a lot looser and more rambling than I had expected.

Then, again, I found that if I listened to Blue Cheer with what I imagined would be the mind of a 60's teenager, it did suddenly sound a lot rowdier, crazier and more armageddonic (yes, armageddonic, get into the new terminology). I could also see more clearly from this perspective how it fed into the stream that created heavy metal. Not just UK heavy metal (mainly Black Sabbath), but also, separately, and far more strongly, the kind of thing done by The Butthole Surfers - heavier on the psychedelic side than the battle/warrior side.

I don't know whether it's fair to compare them to 80's/90's metal like Napalm Death, with their precise and surreally rigid rhythms. Is the comparison really flattering to Blue Cheer? It might make them sound sloppy and self-indulgent. I think they should be compared to newer psychedelic rock bands like the Buttholes and Bongwater,who may be their real heirs.

I'm thinking something quieter than even Black Sabbath's "Solitude," I'm talking complete near emptiness. Metal can be quiet but HOW quiet?

Discounting the quiet Burzum passages because of that band's loud subtext, the 20-minute Satie-esque piano into to Corrupted's "Llandose de Gusanos" gets my vote. Andy Earles, I think, described it as a Japanese convenience store manager grumbling to himself at 2AM while Satie plays in the background. Heavy!

While Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and even earlier gods of noize like Blue Cheer and Jimi Hendrix are also responsible for the storied future of hard rock and metal, Black Sabbath stand apart from their peers on a high mountainous peak made of doom, cannabis, and the monster riffs that, along with evil t-shirts, volume, and uncut hair, have fueled a million basement dreams of dark glory. They took the blues out of blues-rock and replaced it with Wagner, creating epic battle rhythms filled with a tension and release that any adolescent boy would know about first hand.

Maybe it's also a generational thing, but my definition of totally rocking is Judas Priest - 'Hell Bent For Leather' or Pantera - 'Far Beyond Driven'. Blue Cheer rocks too, in a very different (stoned, 60's, Califonia)way. But you know, rocking is a deeply personal thing. I can't believe I just said that.

(that's a very in-joke that only EST survivors would understand)

(paraphrased from memory...)

...based on some arbitrary pigeonholing that shouldn't matter to anyone except record-store employees.
well it matters to record-store punters as well
'where's your reggae section?'
'sorry, we don't go along with arbitrary pigeonholing round here'
(and isn't calling it 'arbitrary' just assuming the conclusion?)

Has anything been definitively proven here (other than that threads about genre conventions/definitions are pointless)?
hmmm i must be missing all those other music threads where something gets 'definitively proven' - where are they ?(& does that mean 'proven by definition'? cos that seems to self-contradict the complaint)
threads can be interesting without being definite in conclusion - i never liked 'heavy metal' (or punk) in the 70's (never liked gtrs actually), but was (pleasantly) surprised at how much i liked Killing Joke when they appeared - an experience that wasn't repeated until the early 90's when a bunch of 'machine metal' crossover/hybrids of 'industrial' rhythms/sounds and metally gtr sounds appeared - i have enjoyed this thread nonetheless as lots of ppl with Big Metal Knowledge have discussed something i know not of and although i don't get the band refs i like the stuff trying to describe the themes/metaphors of it all as well as the particular forms

An understatement.
And here's the tracklisting of their first album, to prove it:

1. Multinational Corporations - 1:06
2. Instinct of Survival - 2:26
3. The Kill - :23
4. Scum - 2:38
5. Caught... In a Dream - 1:47
6. Polluted Minds - :58
7. Sacrificed - 1:06
8. Siege of Power - 3:59
9. Control - 1:23
10. Born on Your Knees - 1:48
11. Human Garbage - 1:32
12. You Suffer - :04
13. Life? - :43
14. Prison Without Walls - :38
15. Point of No Return - :35
16. Negative Approach - :32
17. Success? - 1:09
18. Deceiver - :29
19. C.S. - 1:14
20. Parasites - :23
21. Pseudo Youth - :42
22. Divine Death - 1:21
23. As the Machine Rolls On - :42
24. Common Enemy - :16
25. Moral Crusade - 1:32
26. Stigmatized - 1:03
27. M.A.D. - 1:34
28. Dragnet - 1:01

You discount metal after Maiden at the peril of no longer talking about metal. Death metal and grindcore have been part of the landscape for over 20 years. If Morbid Angel or Napalm Death don't hold up to the standards of ROCK, it's time to get new standards. See also Satyricon, Converge, Enslaved, and rock on in a town near you...

I agree that the definitive description of heavy metal has something to do with being contentious.

Funny, I talk about metal (and write about it) (and encourage writers to write about it in the music section I edit) all the time. And I still love a lot of it. But I also HATE a lot, and lots of the stuff I hate is the stuff the canonizers tell me I'm supposed to love; why toe their line? And lots of the stuff I love I love for different reasons from the old stuff I used to love; what's wrong with that? (Though from Guns N Roses' first album and Cinderella's and Faster Pussycat's 2nd albums to lots of so-called "stoner rock," stuff that rocks like the old stuff didn't exactly DIE after 1980, of course.)

One recent example of me writing about it:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0351/eddy.php

And I know people who'd subsitute "Creed" for "Morbid Angel" and "the Dave Matthews Band" for "Napalm Death", and say the same thing. Iffy logic, either way -- Just because individual rock bands don't meet the standards, that doesn't necessarily mean the standards are wrong.

By the way, $30 Mexican metal blowout this weekend at a salsa club in Woodside, Queens. The promoters used a typical salsa design template for the huge color posters!

Okay, I'm not gonna lie --this does sound pretty enticing, even for an old fogey like me, I admit. I betcha anything they don't have any songs as great as "Lost Johnny" or "Disappear in Smoke", though....

Or, lead if you want the smart-arse answer.

I mean, we could air our views on what we like or dislike, but that could be another thread?

Anyway, here's what the initial post was:

"What Is your definitive description of the genre 'heavy metal'?
Bands, Albums , anything. What does it mean to YOU?"

Thankfully it's open-ended, volatile, and even if we could contrive a single mission statement for heavy metal, it would already be obsolete. This a boisterous exchange among colleagues and friends -- you should read a 7-page spitfest on a dedicated metal board under the subject "Are Marduk Norsecore or Tru Metal?".

Also, to address lovebug's question about hip hop in a tangential fashion, does heavy metal have to have guitars?

And, finally, what is the factor that makes heavy metal heavy? Is it the armageddon quotient?

Email forward from the guy who named the genre:

Kevin Eric Saunders wrote:
I found this "rebuttal" on the "Mike Saunders" Talk page and
contributed my own re-rebuttal... "You want a rebuttal... how about
this!" (Homer Simpson).

____________________________
SAUNDERS DID NOT COIN THE TERM "HEAVY METAL"

This is very clearly an error. Mars Bonfire coined the term in the
song "Born To Be Wild" in 1968, when he wrote the line "I like smoke
& lightning, heavy metal thunder..." in the lyrics. From that point
forward every musician in the country, my band included, started
using "heavy" and "heavy metal" to describe particularly powerful
music, and it grew exponentially from there. The first Iron Butterfly
album from 1968 - "Heavy" - contributed to the birth of this
terminology as well, but it was Mars Bonfire who literally coined the
term 'heavy metal' 2 years before this supposed Humble Pie review. If
Saunders used it to describe "As Safe As Yesterday Is" he simply
applied a term he had undoubtedly heard coming out of John Kay's
mouth via 10 million radios for the previous 2 years. 75.20.213.5
(talk) 04:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, actually William Burroughs was apparently the first to employ
the term outside its chemical use (in a non-musical context in 1962).
Bob Seger & The Last Heard released "Heavy Music" in 1967, a very
heavy song... it's true, "Heavy" was an appellation applied to a
number of bands, e.g., Cream, Iron Butterfuly, and The Jeff Beck
Group's early releases, none of which fall into the "heavy metal"
genre. As for the relevance of Steppenwolf and Mars Bonfire's
excellent song, it is not heavy metal, and the lyric refers to the
"heavy metal thunder" of a powerful automobile as opposed to that of
a musical genre. If "every musician in the country" were employing
the phrase, surely it would have worked its way into the idiom long
before 1970... instead, "downer rock" was being used to label the
archetypal heavy metal band, Black Sabbath. E.g., Lester Bangs refers
to the "downer rock" epithet three times in an article on Black
Sabbath in Creem (June 1972) but never uses the term "heavy metal".
Bonzesaunders (talk) 01:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

____________________________

Oh yeah, "my band included...", sure, Mr. 75.20.213.5! Whatever you
say! ))
((ED - dude! i suspect this is some guy who used to be in Iron Butterly! or BETTER YET, some acid-burnout who imagines he way. hey! maybe it's van nuys DANNY! yowsa. come back to haunt us all.

What I remember is that back at church summer camp in 1971 the kids
were endlessly playing "Master of Reality" and "Love It To Death" by Alice Cooper on a cheap phonograph which ran fast, but I don't recall a single use of the phrase "heavy metal"!

thanks,
bonze

=======================================================
mike_in_oakland
wrote --

whoa this is hilarious

maybe 5 years from now every ignoroid in the metal world who "imagined" mr poster #1's hallucinatory evolution of the bla bla bla blal bla will have chipped in their version of 10 million bands with 10 million radios buying "heavy metal" rolling papers from 10 million 1969 head shops...

but i have to warn ya, rational educated people trying to logically impart even the simplest of facts to drug-burnout nimrods can and will come to no good end!

<< like some of the "samoans forum" posts where i just tell the same retards (who show up once or twice a month, call mikey metal "crazy" "mentally disturbed" or imply that i was/am a drug/meds user) to go fuck themselves. >>

the beauty of the accidental-use (twice, the humble pie insult-fest and the Sir Lord Baltimore thinking-out-loud review) of that dreaded HM phrase is that --

i have CREDENTIALS!

i was in FRESHMAN CHEMISTRY 101, fall 1969 and spring 1970, Univ of Arkansas at Fayetteville -- inbetween "writing record reviews for grocery money" obviously -- and you bet your ass we had that "Periodic Table of the Elements" memorized. which is the only place i would have ever seen the term used (i was not even aware of the military-artillery usage until the VH1 special researchathon) in print.

also, re Steppenwolf, there was no such thing as "oldies radio" stations in the late 60's, early 70's. (the first, retarded, poster should be reminded of this). when a hit song dropped of the Top 40 it was just about never heard again.

"oldies weekends" were more of a manic-Top-40 mid-60's thing. KAAY used to be big on those. i dunno if it was every other song, or every third song. annnnd you know what, their idea of "oldies weekends" was always stuff (mostly) just starting from the Beatles onward.

DOUBLE WHOA -- "my band included" -- is this an Iron Butterfly dork? some of the orig members are dead you know.

and trust me, there is NO "heavy metal" anywhere on any album jacket liner notes (in the IB's case it's a shaggy dog myth; it ain't there) nor in any "live review" of Jimi Hendrix.

the sublime thing about the first (accidental) usage in the Humble Pie review is that the term HADN'T been "codified" yet. i.e., defined. as to what the hell it meant if used in a musical context. of course Humble Pie's ASAYIs is a "heavy" album. jesus.

alt universe #39 where you go back in time, delete me from it, or better yet just my use of that phrase "heavy metal" in any written shape sense or form (the written comminques to Detroit would have all been to Lester Bangs, since i never wrote to Dave Marsh at all after a couple early exchanges in early 1971.

or better yet...have a copy editor deletes the "heavy metal" sentence from the Sir Lord Baltimore review. and the phrase dies back with the Humble Pie review, per my using or never remembering it.

i'm telling ya, take the world "METAL" out of the music world, and an awful lot of studs, leather jackets, and bad Judas Priest albums disappear just like that.

one great thing about the Chuck Eddy Stairway To Hell/Top 500 book is that he did not list one single Priest or Maiden album in the Top 500. although i bet there would have been a flock in the BOTTOM 500. talk about the most hookless guitar-writers in history. those Priest dorks are just most clueless/stupid than a dumpster full of dead chimps walking.

ric riegel unearthed a late 1966/early 1967 CRAWDADDY where, who else, Sandy Pearlman throws the term (no doubt from his same memory of chemistry class) like crazy. in what you ask? a double/joint review of FOUR TOPS LIVE / ROLLING STONES Got Live If You Want It yeppp. i never had that issue (CD had very low circulation, mostly up on the eastern seaboard.).

This wasn't a Moley thread?

Just bagsied Iron Butterly as future screen name FYI

loud music by sweaty people

jam band = shit music by sweaty people

who smell of patchouli

Would argue that Steppenwolf dude is obviously comparing the music made by his band to the "heavy metal thunda!" of big bikes.

I mean, I would argue that if I wanted to, but I don't, so I won't.

at church summer camp in 1971 the kids
were endlessly playing "Master of Reality" and "Love It To Death" by Alice Cooper on a cheap phonograph which ran fast, but I don't recall a single use of the phrase "heavy metal"!

Maybe because the music wasn't slow enough! (If they'd got their turntable fixed, we wouldn't even be having this discussion!)

It's your one way ticket to midnight. Call it heavy metal.

Can you feel the rage?

...tonight?

like a rat in a cage?

And with the existence of the song "Heavy Metal Machine," proof that Billy Corgan founded the term.

Heavy Metal = banging your head for Satan

Nothing more needs to be added to this definition.

What about Candlemass?

and Trouble

Candlemass sang about Satan too, and Trouble is crap. Thank you.

The Who started Heavy Metal and Led Zeppelin finished it.

By starlight
The heaviest will rise up
Magnetic mirror
Scattered bodies slow
All chaos of matter
River of fire
A night sea crossing
The cosmic fluid flows

The above is an example of how Heavy Metal lost its way with Satanic imagery.

I wrote a mini-essay about colors and shapes and metal, but I deleted it just to say that Judas Priest Sad Wings of Destiny would be my example of the most "Heavy Metal" Heavy Metal album. Since I'm not a metalhead, I don't think it's the greatest album, just the HeavyMetalist.

When I was in high school I had strict definitions about what was Heavy Metal and what was Hard Rock. I even considered Sabbath to be hard rock.

Then I grew up and decided it was all metal and Iron Maiden Killers is fucking awesome.