Difference between revisions of "Heavy metal music"

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Heavy metal is a genre of rock music, characterized by its loudness and aggressiveness.

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]

Roots

Heavy metal 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 artform, 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.

Criticism

Heavy Metal music is often criticized for promoting violence,^[4][5] sexual promiscuity,^[6][7] and Satanism^[8][9] among impressionable youths.

References

1. ↑ Billboard Hot 100 singles chart: highest position #2
2. ↑ ISBN-10: 0802133290 ISBN-13: 978-0802133298
3. ↑ ISBN-10: 0802133304 ISBN-13: 978-0802133304
4. ↑ Heavy Metal Violence
5. ↑ Filthy Music: It is time for the public to speak out.
6. ↑ Filthy Music: It is time for the public to speak out.
7. ↑ Rock Music: The Devil's Advocate
8. ↑ Rock Music: The Devil's Advocate
9. ↑ Metal News - 35% of Metal songs have Satanic content