Difference between revisions of "Heavy metal music"
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==1980s== | ==1980s== | ||
During the early 1970s three British bands were formed that would arguably become the most dramatically influential of the genre during the 1980s: [[Judas Priest]], Motorhead, and [[Iron Maiden]]. The 1980s also gave rise to the American thrash metal movement with notable bands being [[Metallica]], [[Megadeth]], Anthrax, and Slayer. During the 1980s glam metal also became very popular with bands including Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, and [[Stryper]]. | During the early 1970s three British bands were formed that would arguably become the most dramatically influential of the genre during the 1980s: [[Judas Priest]], Motorhead, and [[Iron Maiden]]. The 1980s also gave rise to the American thrash metal movement with notable bands being [[Metallica]], [[Megadeth]], Anthrax, and Slayer. During the 1980s glam metal also became very popular with bands including Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, and [[Stryper]]. | ||
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==Etymology== | ==Etymology== | ||
Revision as of 01:43, June 5, 2008
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music, characterized by its loudness and aggressiveness. It emerged from bands like King Crimson, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, amid the social upheavals of the late 1960s. Rock music was by then being recorded and marketed as a counterculture which opposed the normal and functional culture that was dominant in society, a marketing strategy which mirrored the developmental process of adolescents, the main audience for rock music, who first reject the world of their parents, then once independent re-assess their own values, and finally rejoin society on the terms of these recreated values.
The first style of rock which grew from this was the loud, distorted blues sound created by San Francisco based psychedelia band, Blue Cheer, whose influence on electric blues bands could be seen from Cream to Jimi Hendrix to ZZ Top. The second style was progressive rock, which in 1968 was led by English band King Crimson, combining jazz, classical, experimental, psychedelic and folk music. The precursor to this sound was The Beatles, arguably the first band to leave the standard rock format, creating longer song structures, many of which were narrative or neo-operatic. This was the main inspiration for later bands such as Camel, Genesis and Yes.
The third strand of rock music was the emerging "dark rock" epitomized by The Doors. Where other rock bands had focused on love or peace, the Doors brought a Nietzsche-inspired morbid subconscious psychedelia to rock music, and were the origins of much of the neo-Romanticism which later bloomed into Heavy metal.
By 1969, the influence of these seminal artists had saturated those parts of the public consciousness which were focused on rock music as a developing art form, and contributed to the explosion of hard rock by, for example, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and the so-called "proto-metal" of Black Sabbath. This year is now seen as the watershed for loud forms of rock, which hybridized in the next decade and became the Heavy metal as recognized today.
Black Sabbath originally started out as an electric blues band named "Earth", but after discovering there was already a band using that name they changed it, inspired by a poster for the 1964 Boris Karloff movie Black Sabbath. Developing a new sound, drawing on the neo-Gothic nihilism of The Doors but relying almost exclusively on power chords, a bassier distortion and the narrative structures of progressive rock, they achieved almost immediate success both on the radio and in record stores.
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1970s
In 1973 the leading exponents of heavy metal were undoubtedly Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, each having a technical prowess and a compositional inventiveness unseen before in mainstream popular music. This era also marked the beginning of the use of Satanic imagery and of the spectacular, energetic live shows which became a hallmark of heavy metal. Led Zeppelin's guitarist Jimmy Page had a strong personal fascination with the occult, while many of Black Sabbath's lyrics dealt with it as well. Unlike many future bands, however, Black Sabbath never claimed to be Satanic. Singer Ozzy Osbourne claims that they were actually looking for a way to tap into the success and popularity of the horror genre, where people willingly paid to see a movie or read a novel intended solely to frighten them; to do so, they began to purposely write dark, ominous songs in an attempt to be music's answer to horror films.
Live shows were becoming bigger and more theatrical, notably Led Zeppelin's "rock till you drop" performances lasting two hours, and Alice Cooper's colossal shows following in the American tradition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, promising "The Greatest Show On Earth". Cooper's shows featured boa constrictors, horrific freak-show mannequins, and dramatic fake-beheading scenes. Other key artists that emerged at this time included High Tide, Black Cat Bones, Black Widow, Uriah Heep, UFO and Blue Oyster Cult, and glam rockers Kiss. Each of the four members of Kiss took the on-stage persona of a cartoon-like character using elaborate face make-up and a science fiction style clothing. Another American band, Aerosmith, took the basic R 'n' B and rock 'n' roll structures of bands such as the Faces and Rolling Stones and transformed them into a new harder form. The late 70s saw a decline in the popularity of heavy metal, as the Punk movement, beginning in 1976, dominated the musical counterculture.
1980s
During the early 1970s three British bands were formed that would arguably become the most dramatically influential of the genre during the 1980s: Judas Priest, Motorhead, and Iron Maiden. The 1980s also gave rise to the American thrash metal movement with notable bands being Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. During the 1980s glam metal also became very popular with bands including Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, and Stryper.
Etymology
The term was first used in a musical context by Canadian rock band Steppenwolf in their 1968 hit record[1] Born To Be Wild, which contained the line: "I like smoke and lightning, Heavy metal thunder..." The song received worldwide exposure the following year when it was used in the soundtrack of the 1969 counterculture movie Easy Rider. However, the phrase "heavy metal" had previously been used in 1962 by William Burroughs in his novel The Soft Machine,[2] which contained a character named "Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid". In 1964, he used it to describe mass technological destruction to the point of biological toxicity in his novel Nova Express.[3]
