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Thrash metal is also known as speed metal, and since many of the early thrash bands were from San Francisco, it became known as Bay Area Thrash. It started in the early to mid ’80s and was at its peak in the late ’80s. Thrash bands were influenced by New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) and hardcore punk. Thrash was also the inspiration for later extreme genres such as death and black metal.

Musical Style
Thrash is driven by the guitar. It’s played at a furiously fast pace with a staccato, percussive guitar sound. It layers fast riffs with higher pitched solos. Many thrash bands use the double bass drum.

Vocal Style
Thrash vocals are usually very aggressive and sometimes angry sounding, but unlike death or black metal, they are still understandable.

Pioneers

Metallica
Although there were some artists that incorporated elements of thrash into their music, Metallica’s 1983 release Kill ‘Em All is generally considered to be the first thrash album. Former member Dave Mustaine wrote some of the songs on that record and went on to form another seminal thrash band, Megadeth. Metallica went on to release several classic thrash albums, and although their style has evolved, they still hold on to their thrash roots.

Slayer
Slayer is a little more extreme than Metallica, and their debut album Show No Mercy was released in 1983. 1986’s Reign In Blood is probably the best thrash album ever recorded. Like Metallica, Slayer has had longevity and continue to show the younger generation how it’s done.

Recommended Albums
Metallica - Master Of Puppets
Slayer - Reign In Blood
Megadeth - Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying
Anthrax - Among The Living
Exodus - Bonded By Blood
Nuclear Assault - Handle With Care
Annihilator - Never, Neverland
Stormtroopers of Death (SOD) - Speak English Or Die
Testament - The New Order
Overkill - Horrorscope
Metal Church - Human Factor
Sepultura - Beneath The Remains

 

Heavy metal (sometimes referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion and fast guitar solos. The All Music Guide states that “of all rock & roll’s myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality.”

Heavy metal has long had a worldwide following of fans known as “metalheads” or “headbangers”. Although early heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple attracted large audiences, they were often critically reviled at the time, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre’s evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; the New Wave of British Heavy Metal followed in a similar vein, fusing the music with a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed.

Heavy metal became broadly popular during the 1980s, when many now-widespread subgenres first evolved. Variations more aggressive and extreme than metal music of the past were mostly restricted to an underground audience; others, including glam metal and, to a lesser extent, thrash metal went on to mainstream commercial success. In recent years, styles such as nu metal have further expanded the definition of the genre.

Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals. Metal subgenres variously emphasize, alter, or omit one or more of these tropes. The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist. Acoustic keyboards were popular with early metal bands—especially the organ and occasionally the mellotron—but they are now uncommon. Electronic keyboards are often featured today by bands in a variety of styles, including progressive metal, power metal, and symphonic metal.

The electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification is historically the key element in heavy metal.[3] Guitars are often played with distortion pedals through heavily overdriven tube amplifiers to create a thick, powerful, “heavy’” sound. In the early 1970s, some popular metal groups began cofeaturing two guitarists. Leading bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden followed this pattern of having two or three guitarists share the roles of both lead and rhythm guitar. A central element of much heavy metal is the guitar solo, a form of cadenza. As the genre developed, more intricate solos and riffs became an integral part of the style. Guitarists use sweep-picking, tapping, and other advanced techniques for rapid playing, and many subgenres emphasize virtuosic displays.

The lead role of the guitar in heavy metal often collides with the traditional “frontman” or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension. Metal vocals vary widely in style, from the multioctave, theatrical manner of Judas Priest’s Rob Halford and Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, to the intentionally gruff approach of Motörhead’s Lemmy and Metallica’s James Hetfield, to the straight-out screaming of Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe and At the Gates’ Tomas Lindberg, to the phlegm-clogged, possessed style of black metal singers such as Cradle of Filth’s Dani Filth. The bass guitar plays an important role in most metal bands, providing the low-end sound crucial to making the music “heavy.”[4] In addition, the bass is often distorted and modified by a variety of effects pedals. Metal bassists frequently use picks instead of their fingers to get a stronger articulation. Metal songs are more likely than those of other rock genres to employ bass solos, particularly in the first few bars. The drum setup is generally much larger than with other forms of rock music.[5] Aside from the standard toms, bass drum, snare, and hi-hat, ride, and crash cymbals, there is often a double bass drum, additional toms and cymbals (e.g., “splash” cymbals), and other instruments such as a cowbell.

In terms of live sound, volume is considered vital.[6] Following the lead set by Jimi Hendrix and The Who—which once held the distinction of “World’s Loudest Band” in the Guinness Book Of World Records—early heavy metal bands set new benchmarks for volume. Dick Peterson of Blue Cheer says, “We had a place in forming that heavy-metal sound. Although I’m not saying we knew what we were doing, ’cause we didn’t. All we knew was we wanted more power.”[7] Tony Iommi, guitarist for the pioneering Black Sabbath, is among the numerous heavy metal musicians to suffer substantial hearing loss due to the volume of their live performances. Heavy metal’s volume fixation was mocked in the rockumentary spoof This Is Spinal Tap in which guitarist “Nigel Tufnel” reveals that his Marshall amplifiers have been modified to “go to eleven.”

Heavy Metal Themes

Common themes in heavy metal lyrics are sex, violence, fantasy, and the occult. The sexual nature of many heavy metal lyrics, ranging from Led Zeppelin’s to those of latter-day nu metal bands, derives from the genre’s roots in blues music. Heavy metal songs often feature outlandish, fantasy-inspired lyrics, lending them an escapist quality. Iron Maiden’s songs, for instance, were frequently inspired by mythology, fiction, and poetry, such as “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” based on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem. Other examples include Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard,” Megadeth’s “The Conjuring” and “Five Magics,” and Judas Priest’s “Dreamer Deceiver.” Other artists base their lyrics on war, nuclear annihilation, environmental issues, and political or religious propaganda. Examples include Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” Ozzy Osbourne’s “Killer of Giants,” Metallica’s …And Justice for All, Iron Maiden’s “2 Minutes to Midnight” and “For the Greater Good of God,” Accept’s “Balls to the Wall,” and Megadeth’s “Peace Sells.” Death is a predominant theme in heavy metal, routinely featuring in the lyrics of such different bands as Black Sabbath, Slayer, and W.A.S.P.

As with much popular music, visual imagery plays a large role in heavy metal. A heavy metal band’s “image” is associated with the thematic content of their lyrics, and is expressed in album sleeve art, stage sets, the clothes of the band, and even band logos, as well as the sound of the music.

The thematic content of heavy metal has long been a target of criticism. Music critics have often deemed metal lyrics and imagery banal, and others have objected to what they see as advocacy of misogyny and the occult. During the 1980s, the Parents Music Resource Center petitioned the U.S. Congress to regulate the popular music industry due to objectionable lyrics, particularly those in heavy metal songs.

Physical gestures

Certain body movements are widely performed at heavy metal concerts, including headbanging, moshing, and various hand gestures such as the infamous devil horns, popularized by vocalist Ronnie James Dio while with Black Sabbath and Dio. Gene Simmons of Kiss claims to have been the first to make the gesture in concert. Stage diving, air guitar, and crowd surfing are also practiced.

 The appropriation of “classical” music by heavy metal typically involves musical elements associated with Baroque, Romantic, and Modernist composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Niccolò Paganini, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Béla Bartók, and Igor Stravinsky. The tritone, for instance, was already exploited for its dark, anguished connotations by Romantics like Franz Liszt and 20th-century classical composers such as Bartók, Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg. Deep Purple/Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore began experimenting with musical figurations borrowed from classical music in the early 1970s. In the 1980s, guitarists Randy Rhoads and Uli Jon Roth looked to the early 18th century for models of speed and technique. Yngwie Malmsteen, drawing from similar roots, has inspired myriad neoclassical metal players including Michael Romeo, Michael Angelo Batio, and Tony MacAlpine.

Despite the fact that many metal musicians have cited classical composers as inspiration, heavy metal is hardly the modern descendant of classical music. As many critics and analysts have observed, heavy metal musicians focus on and borrow only superficial aspects of classical music, such as motifs, melodies, and scales. Heavy metal bands, including progressive and neoclassical metal bands, generally do not try to observe the basic compositional and aesthetical exigencies of classical music. Classical music is erudite music, whereas heavy metal is popular music. Players who cite Bach as an influence, for example, seldom make use of the complex counterpoint that is central to the composer’s work. Moreover, the extensive use of power chords in heavy metal, implying countless consecutive fifths and octaves, violates rules of harmony at the heart of the classical aesthetic.

In 1968, the sound that would become known as heavy metal began to coalesce. Many scholars and fans point to Blue Cheer’s cover of Eddie Cochran’s classic “Summertime Blues,” released in January 1968, as the first true heavy metal song. That same month, Steppenwolf released its self-titled debut album, including “Born to Be Wild,” with its “heavy metal” lyric. In July, another two epochal records came out: The Yardbirds’ “Think About It”—B-side of the band’s last single—with a performance by guitarist Jimmy Page anticipating the metal sound he would soon make famous; and Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, with its 17-minute-long title track, a prime candidate for first-ever heavy metal album. In August, The Beatles’ single version of “Revolution,” with its redlined guitar and drum sound, set new standards for distortion in a top-selling context. The Jeff Beck Group, whose leader had preceded Page as The Yardbirds’ guitarist, released its debut record that same month: Truth is another candidate for first heavy metal album.[40] In October, Page’s new band, Led Zeppelin, made its live debut. In November, Love Sculpture, with guitarist Dave Edmunds, put out Blues Helping, featuring a pounding, aggressive version of Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance.” The Beatles’ so-called White Album, which also came out that month, included “Helter Skelter,” one of the heaviest-sounding songs ever released by a major band. In January 1969, Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album was released and reached number 10 on the Billboard album chart. In July, Zeppelin and a power trio with a Cream-inspired, but cruder sound, Grand Funk Railroad, played the Atlanta Pop Festival. The following month, another Cream-rooted group, Mountain, played an hour-long set at the Woodstock Festival. In the fall, Led Zeppelin II went to number 1 and the album’s single “Whole Lotta Love” hit number 4 on the Billboard pop chart. The metal revolution was under way.
Music samples:

* “Whole Lotta Love” (file info) — [Play media] play in browser (beta)
o Sample of “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin, from Led Zeppelin II (1969). The heavy riff-based song, using lyrics culled from blues songwriter Willie Dixon, reached number four on the Billboard charts.[43]
o Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Led Zeppelin defined central aspects of the emerging genre, with Page’s highly distorted guitar style and singer Robert Plant’s dramatic, wailing vocals. Other bands, with a more consistently heavy, “purely” metal sound, would prove equally important in codifying the genre. The 1970 releases by Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath and Paranoid) and Deep Purple (Deep Purple in Rock) were crucial in this regard. Black Sabbath had developed a particularly heavy sound in part due to an industrial accident guitarist Tony Iommi suffered before cofounding the band. Unable to play normally, Iommi had to tune his guitar down for easier fretting and rely on power chords with their relatively simple fingering. Deep Purple had fluctuated between styles in its early years, but by 1969 vocalist Ian Gillan and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had led the band toward the developing heavy metal style. In 1970, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple scored major UK chart hits with “Paranoid” and “Black Night,” respectively. That same year, three other British bands released debut albums in a heavy metal mode: Uriah Heep with Very ‘eavy… Very ‘umble, UFO with UFO 1, and Black Widow with Sacrifice. Wishbone Ash, though not commonly identified as metal, introduced a dual-lead/rhythm-guitar style that many metal bands of the following generation would adopt. The occult lyrics and imagery employed by Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, and Black Widow would prove particularly influential; Led Zeppelin also began foregrounding such elements with its fourth album, released in 1971.
Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath onstage in 1973.
Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath onstage in 1973.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the trend-setting group was Grand Funk Railroad, “the most commercially successful American heavy-metal band from 1970 until they disbanded in 1976, [they] established the Seventies success formula: continuous touring.”Other bands identified with metal emerged in the U.S., such as Dust (first LP in 1971), Blue Öyster Cult (1972), and Kiss (1974). In Germany, the Scorpions debuted with Lonesome Crow in 1972. Blackmore, who had emerged as a virtuoso soloist with Deep Purple’s Machine Head (1972), quit the group in 1975 to found Rainbow. These bands also built audiences via constant touring and increasingly elaborate stage shows.[49] As described above, there are arguments about whether these and other early bands truly qualify as “heavy metal” or simply as “hard rock.” Those closer to the music’s blues roots or placing greater emphasis on melody are now commonly ascribed the latter label. AC/DC, which debuted with High Voltage in 1975, is a prime example. The 1983 Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll entry begins “Australian heavy-metal band AC/DC…” Rock historian Clinton Walker writes, “Calling AC/DC a heavy metal band in the seventies was as inaccurate as it is today…. [They] were a rock’n'roll band that just happened to be heavy enough for metal.” The issue is not only one of shifting definitions, but also a persistent distinction between musical style and audience identification: Ian Christe describes how the band “became the stepping-stone that led huge numbers of hard rock fans into heavy metal perdition.”

In certain cases, there is little debate. After Black Sabbath, the next major example is Britain’s Judas Priest, which debuted with Rocka Rolla in 1974. In Christe’s description, Black Sabbath’s

audience was…left to scavenge for sounds with similar impact. By the mid-1970s, heavy metal aesthetic could be spotted, like a mythical beast, in the moody bass and complex dual guitars of Thin Lizzy, in the stagecraft of Alice Cooper, in the sizzling guitar and showy vocals of Queen, and in the thundering medieval questions of Rainbow…. Judas Priest arrived to unify and amplify these diverse highlights from hard rock’s sonic palette. For the first time, heavy metal became a true genre unto itself.

Though Judas Priest did not have a top 40 album in the U.S. until 1980, for many it was the definitive post-Sabbath heavy metal band; its twin-guitar attack, featuring rapid tempos and a nonbluesy, more cleanly metallic sound, was a major influence on later acts. While heavy metal was growing in popularity, most critics were not enamored of the music. Objections were raised to metal’s adoption of visual spectacle and other trappings of commercial artifice, but the main offense was its perceived musical and lyrical vacuity: reviewing a Black Sabbath album in the early 1970s, leading critic Robert Christgau described it as “dull and decadent…dim-witted, amoral exploitation.”

Metalcore, an originally American hybrid of thrash metal, melodic death metal, and hardcore punk, emerged as a commercial force in 2002–3. It is rooted in the crossover thrash style developed by bands such as Suicidal Tendencies, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, and Stormtroopers of Death in the mid-1980s. Through the 1990s, metalcore was mostly an underground phenomenon, but by 2004 it had become popular enough that Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache and Shadows Fall’s The War Within debuted at numbers 21 and 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart. Lamb of God broke into the top 10 with Sacrament (2006). In recent years, metalcore bands have received prominent slots at Ozzfest and Download Festival.

In Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia, metal continues to be broadly popular. Acts such as the thrash shredding group The Haunted, melodic death metal band In Flames, and power metal group HammerFall have been very successful in recent years. In English-speaking countries, the term “retro-metal” was applied in the early and mid-2000s to such bands as England’s The Darkness and Australia’s Wolfmother. The Darkness’s Permission to Land (2003), described as an “eerily realistic simulation of ’80s metal and ’70s glam,” topped the UK charts, going quintuple platinum. Wolfmother’s self-titled 2005 debut album, with “Deep Purple-ish organs,” “Jimmy Page-worthy chordal riffing,” and lead singer Andrew Stockdale howling “notes that Robert Plant can’t reach anymore,” also sold well and was widely praised by critics.

American blues music was a major influence on the early British rockers. Bands like The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds recorded covers of many classic blues songs, using electric guitar where many of the originals had used acoustic and sometimes speeding up the tempo. As they experimented with the music, the UK blues-based bands—and the U.S. acts they influenced in turn—developed what would become the hallmarks of heavy metal: At the core was a loud, distorted guitar style, built around power chords. The Kinks played a major role in popularizing this sound with their 1964 hit “You Really Got Me.” A significant contributor to the emerging guitar sound was the feedback facilitated by the new generation of amplifiers. In addition to The Kinks’ Dave Davies, other guitarists such as The Who’s Pete Townshend and the Tridents’ Jeff Beck were experimenting with feedback. Where the blues-rock drumming style started out largely as simple shuffle beats on small kits, drummers began using a more muscular, complex, and amplified approach to match and be heard against the increasingly loud guitar.[34] Vocalists similarly modified their technique and increased their reliance on amplification, often becoming more stylized and dramatic. In terms of sheer volume, especially in live performance, The Who’s “bigger-louder-wall-of-Marshall’s” approach was seminal.[35] Simultaneous advances in amplification and recording technology made it possible to successfully capture the power of this heavier approach on record.

The combination of blues-rock with psychedelic rock formed much of the original basis for heavy metal. One of the most influential bands in forging the merger of genres was the power trio Cream, who derived a massive, heavy sound from unison riffing between guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce, as well as Ginger Baker’s double bass drumming. Their first two LPs, Fresh Cream (1966) and Disraeli Gears (1967) are regarded as essential prototypes for the future style. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut album, Are You Experienced (1967), was also highly influential. Hendrix’s virtuosic technique would be emulated by many metal guitarists and the album’s most successful single, “Purple Haze,” is identified by some as the first heavy metal hit

The origin of the term heavy metal in a musical context is uncertain. The phrase has been used for centuries in chemistry and metallurgy, as shown by citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. An early use of the term in modern popular culture was by countercultural writer William S. Burroughs. His 1962 novel The Soft Machine includes a character known as “Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid.” Burroughs’s next novel, Nova Express (1964), develops the theme, using heavy metal as a metaphor for addictive drugs: “With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music.”

Metal historian Ian Christe describes what the components of the term mean in “hippiespeak”: “heavy” is roughly synonymous with “potent” or “profound,” and “metal” designates a certain type of mood, grinding and weighted as with metal. The word “heavy” in this sense was a basic element of beatnik and later countercultural slang, and references to “heavy music”—typically slower, more amplified variations of standard pop fare—were already common by the mid-1960s. Iron Butterfly’s debut album, released in early 1968, was titled Heavy. The first recorded use of heavy metal in a song lyric is in Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” also released that year: “I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder/Racin’ with the wind/And the feelin’ that I’m under.” A late, and disputed, claim about the source of the term was made by “Chas” Chandler, former manager of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In a 1995 interview on the PBS program Rock and Roll, he asserted that heavy metal “was a term originated in a New York Times article reviewing a Jimi Hendrix performance,” in which the author likened the event to “listening to heavy metal falling from the sky.” The specific source for Chandler’s claim has never been found.

The first documented usage of the term to describe a musical style is in a May 1971 Creem review by Mike Saunders of Sir Lord Baltimore’s Kingdom Come: “Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book.”Creem critic Lester Bangs is credited with popularizing the term via his early 1970s essays on bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. “Heavy metal” may have initially been used as a jibe by a number of music critics, but it was quickly adopted by fans of the style.

The terms “heavy metal” and “hard rock” have often been used interchangeably, particularly in discussing bands of the 1970s, a period when the terms were largely synonymous. For example, according to an entry in the 1983 Rolling Stone encyclopedia, “known for its aggressive blues-based hard-rock style, Aerosmith was the top American heavy-metal band of the mid-Seventies.” Few would now characterize Aerosmith’s classic sound, with its clear links to traditional rock and roll, as “heavy metal.” Even some acts closely identified with the emergence of the genre, such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, are not considered heavy metal bands by some in the present-day metal community.