Heavy Metal Music

Heavy metal music has been traditionally associated with distorted, loud guitars, strong rhythms, vigorous vocals and dense bass and drum sound. These features may be altered, omitted or emphasized by the different metal sub-genres.

According to New York Times critic Jon Pareles, heavy metal music is a major sub-species of hard rock, with less of blues and syncopation and more of brute force and showmanship.

The typical heavy metal music band will include a drummer, bassist, rhythm guitarist, lead guitarist and a singer who may not be an instrumentalist. The fullness of the sound is sometimes enhanced by keyboard instruments.

Heavy metal music has always relied on the electric guitar and its sonic power enhanced by amplification. The guitar, in its lead role, is sometimes in conflict with the bandleader or frontman role of the vocalist; this leads to a musical tension as the two jostle for dominance, but in good natured rivalry. It is a fact that heavy metal music demands the voice to be subordinated to the total sound of the band. However, an “explicit display” of emotion is considered essential in the vocals, to establish its authenticity.

According to critic Simon Frith, the metal singer’s tone of voice is to be considered more important then the lyrics. A wide variance is style is found in the metal vocals – Motorhead’s Lemmy and Metallica’s James Hetfield display a gruff style, while Judas Priest’s Rob Halford and Iron Maiden’s Bruce Diskinson display a multioctave and theatrical approach, while many death metal performers produce what sounds like growls.

The bass plays a prominent role in heavy metal music and is in fact the key to the metal sound, and the interplay of the guitar and the bass has a central place. It is the bass guitar that provides the low end sound that is crucial to making the music sound “heavy”. Some bands even showcase the bass as its lead instrument, as was done by Metallica’s Cliff Burton in the 1980’s.