The Chatterbox, Random Music Discussion

I can tell the difference between the stuff that hinges closer to hard rock (Black Sabbath and the like, heavy metal is it ? Wouldn't want to offend any metal heads who might be reading) and drone doom, which is the only metal style of which I have records at home (I am quite a big Sunn O))) fan and I enjoy very much what records of Earth and Boris that I own).

Everything else is kind of a blur to me (death, power, black, sludge, extreme, stoner, grind, you name it). I have gathered that the difference with black metal seems to lie mostly in the lyrical content, but other than that... :/

Oh yeah and I also like Ghost (B.C.) and enjoy what I've heard of Rammstein (mostly their debut album) but I don't know where either of these are classified on the metal spectrum.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:30:01 PM by Akalabth

I don't know what all the different subgenres of Metal sound like simply because I don't listen to Metal.

I've always figured Metal to be a subgenre of Rock anyway.

Every popular musical subgenre born after or around the fifties kind of is a subgenre of rock if you think about it. Or is at least related to rock in some way...

edited 17th Nov '14 3:33:50 PM by Akalabth

If you take into account that rock is a sort-of-an-offshoot of R&B, the net grows wider...

What role does classical play in all this?

Well it then also encompasses soul, funk, then disco, and in turn a lot of electronic music (if not techno, which was more inspired by Kraftwerk at least initially, then certainly house was directly influenced by disco and its subsequent mutations), and rap, and...

Yeah this is pretty much endless.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:56:41 PM by Akalabth

Classical is in its own little bubble. Anything that incorporates it in contemporary music is called chamber pop or baroque pop.

For that, you have to go back to the prehistory of popular music.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:47:18 PM by Aldo930

Well in addition to that, and contemporary composers themselves, there is also modern classical as well as a slew of projects, mainly in electronic music, that fuse classical instruments with all sorts of stuff. Projects like Gas, Bersarin Quartet, Docetism, Murcof, Mira Calix, the Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto collaboration, etc.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:55:22 PM by Akalabth

Blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits...

All joking aside think there's an argument to be made that 'extreme' music (death metal, black metal, drone, harsh noise) is a separate musical paradigm to rock/pop. I mean, it's enough steps removed in terms of influence that it has its own standards, ideas and aims, separate to 'conventional' popular music.

Also, classical influence doesn't automatically make something 'baroque.' Pretty much everything has at least a tangential classical influence, and maximising that should be treated as experimenting within whatever musical style one happens to be playing, rather than as creating or moving into a new style...

Can someone suggest me some minor-key Big Band jazz that's energetic, boisterous, maybe even a little mischievous? Basically, like a "dark" version of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood".

edited 17th Nov '14 8:18:16 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

While this is more dance band music, check out any available versions of "Mysterious Mose" for minor-keyed, creepy, energetic jazz.

Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing", "The Mooche", or "East St. Louis Toodle-oo"?

On that same note, Cliff Jackson's "The Terror."

Fixed.

edited 18th Nov '14 5:16:39 AM by Aldo930

^ You didn't link anything.

Any genre that has enough active musicians and fans will have an intricately detailed structure of subgenres, subsubgenres, fusion genres, etc.. It will also have a lot of arguments over the exact boundaries between those subgenres, even if – no, especially if – all of it just sounds like incoherent noise to outsiders. Here's a relevant XKCD strip and here's another one.

For metal, at least, I can try and explain. I'm no expert – far from it – but I think I've got a bit of a feel for what the different subgenres sound like and how they relate to each other.

Hard rock / traditional metal: The first music to be described as "metal" was the blues-based hard rock of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. While most of that isn't really considered metal anymore, I'll include it here for completeness. Judas Priest's first four albums are usually thrown into this category as well.

Musically, there's still a lot of blues-rock influence, although Priest gradually got rid of that. Harsh vocals and crazy-fast tempos weren't really a thing yet – though again, Priest certainly pushed the boundaries on the latter point. Priest is important, kids. I could pick Priest songs as examples for at least four different subgenres if I wanted, but I'll be content with just this one.

Judas Priest – Victim of Changes

New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM): This is where metal as we know it today really kicks off. It's hard to describe the "typical NWOBHM sound" because almost every metal subgenre has at least a few forerunners in this movement; really, the label refers to a period (around 1980) and a "scene" more than to any clearly defined sound. But I'll try.

NWOBHM bands are heavily indebted to the "traditional" metal bands described above (especially to Judas Priest – did I mention Priest is important?), but the blues influence is mostly gone by now, and playing fast has become the rule rather than the exception. Many bands stick to a "clean", melodic sound, with guitarists teaming up for harmonised passages, and high-pitched singers soaring above it all. There's aggression to the music, certainly, but the atmosphere is still relatively bright.

Saxon – Machine Gun (not to be confused with the Jimi Hendrix song of the same name)

Speed metal: Speed metal still has the clean sound, but it's faster (duh) and more aggressive than NWOBHM fare.

This is a rather narrow field; there are few songs that are clearly "speed metal" before anything else, and even fewer bands that have played the genre consistently throughout their career. Speed metal shares a large grey area with power metal, and a just as large one with thrash metal. However, as the direct ancestor of both of those subgenres, speed metal is a very important part of metal's history.

Accept – Fast as a Shark

Power metal: Power metal takes the "clean and melodic" side of speed metal and runs with it. The tempos are fast and the riffs are loud, but most of all power metal is about creating an grandiose, epic atmosphere. To achieve this, power metal turns the "melody" and "harmony" knobs Up To Eleven. Sonically, high-pitched clean vocals are still an important element; synthesisers are used a lot more than in other subgenres, especially for background strings/choirs. Power metal tends to stick to traditional verse-chorus-bridge structures quite rigidly. Choruses must be suitable for blaring along at the top of your lungs, and are almost always preceded by a pre-chorus (a short section that builds up tension to the chorus).

The atmosphere of power metal isn't only epic, it's also a lot brighter than in other subgenres. The lyrics often contain uplifting and hopeful messages. Fantasy is a popular theme. If a song makes you feel like you're riding a unicorn and fighting a dragon while a volcano erupts in the background, you're probably listening to power metal.

Note that the above mostly concerns the European (read: German unless stated otherwise) power metal scene, which dominates the subgenre. There was also a US power metal (USPM) movement in the late 1980s, but it was a lot smaller and more underground. I'm not too familiar with it, either, but its main differences from the European variety seem to be rawer production, a gloomier atmosphere and a more aggressive sound.

Helloween – March of Time (Europe)
Omen – Ruby Eyes of the Serpent (US)

Thrash metal: The illegitimate child of speed metal and hardcore punk, thrash metal is very fast and very aggressive. Double-bass drumming and "chugging" guitar playing are indispensable. Melody is thrown out the window with force, replaced by harsh riffs full of semitones and tritones. Vocals usually aren't really "harsh" in the sense of growling or screaming, but it seems a bit of a stretch to call them clean... The best description would be "angry shouting". There are often tempo changes, but once the aggression kicks in (that is, either right from the start or after the ominous intro) it never lets up. All of this contributes to an atmosphere of violence, anger and evil.

Slayer – Angel of Death (what else?)

Doom metal: Doom metal is metal that is slow and gloomy. It has considerable overlap with the "stoner metal" category. Early doom metal bands took their inspiration not from Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, but directly from Black Sabbath.

...And that's pretty much all I know about doom metal. I don't listen to it. The "slow" aspect seems to be the most important, though.

Saint Vitus – Born Too Late

Black metal: Black metal can be divided into two distinct periods or "waves". The first wave of black metal coincides with the NWOBHM, and was crucial to metal's further development; any and all "extreme" forms of metal, including thrash metal and death metal, took important cues from Venom, Bathory and Celtic Frost. These first-wave black metal bands put raw production values and dark, Satanic themes on the map for good.

What most people think of when they hear "black metal", however, is the second wave, which was most active in Norway in the 1990s. Second-wave black metal can be recognised by its tin-can production values, particularly the fuzzy guitars and unintelligible screaming vocals. Compositionally, the music is extremely simple – a single riff is often repeated for minutes with little to no variation. The appeal of second-wave black metal is mostly in the atmosphere: music doesn't get much grimmer or darker than this.

Black metal's... unconventional sound and imagery, combined with many of its musicians taking it way too seriously, have made it a popular target for parodies. Poe's Law is in full effect.

Venom – Countess Bathory (first wave)
Burzum – Jesu Død (second wave)

Death metal: Hoo boy. Death metal is thrash metal turned Up To Eleven... or really, metal Up To Eleven in general. Blast beats (lots of snare-drum beats in rapid succession), growling vocals and extremely heavy, low-pitched guitar chords are some of the hallmarks of this subgenre. So is high compositional density: there are often tons of different riffs in a song, and the tempo changes constantly, establishing a frantic, chaotic feel. Whereas thrash metal songs still have verses and choruses, in death metal those are foreign concepts.

Death metal is one of the least accessible subgenres of metal, which is entirely intentional. To the uniniated, death metal songs may sound like impenetrable walls of spam. (They still often sound like that to me, but I'm slowly warming up to the subgenre.)

Morbid Angel – Immortal Rites

Melodic death metal: Opposites Attract. And so it happened that power metal and death metal – two subgenres that are diametrically opposed on almost every count – had a baby. They called it melodic death metal, or "melodeath" for short, and it's one of the most popular subgenres of metal today. It has the heavy low-end chords, growling vocals and fast drumming of death metal, and the epic melodies, straightforward songwriting and shiny production values of power metal. Whether it sounds like "power metal with harsh vocals" or "death metal with fancy melodies" varies from band to band – and from listener to listener, of course.

Amon Amarth – Twilight of the Thunder God

Folk metal: Metal mixed with folk music. Most of it either goes for a heroic/epic vibe – in which case it can be nigh-indistinguishable from melodic death metal – or for a wild, hyperactive "party" feel. The following example is quite clearly in the latter category.

Korpiklaani – Happy Little Boozer

Industrial metal: Metal mixed with industrial music. It uses pounding rhythms and simple riffs to evoke a sense of steady movement and associations with heavy machinery. Sonically, the use of sounds and techniques from electronic music is a dead giveaway.

Rammstein – Ich will

Groove metal: Basically, funk rock dolled up to sound like thrash metal. That is, it mostly draws from funk rock rhythmically and from thrash metal sonically.

Another subgenre which I know next to nothing about because I don't listen to it.

Pantera – Cowboys from Hell

There. Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion among the non-metalheads in this thread without angering the actually knowledgeable metalheads too much.

edited 20th Nov '14 1:17:43 AM by MidnightRambler

For early Doom metal at least, the most important factor would probably be that it takes its influence for Black Sabbath. Candlemass, Pentagram, Pagan Altar, etc all have songs that, while not that fast by metal standards, are pretty speedy compared to their reputation.

I'd personally just fuse NWOBHM into traditional metal to avoid the whole "Is NWOBBHM a genre????" confusion that happens so much. We have to remember that vanilla prefix-free heavy metal was a pretty expansive movement and existed beyond just what the brits were doing. America, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, lotta countries that made their contributions and turned what the British started into a fortress of sound.

Speed metal... well it might be worth a short blip in the heavy metal segment. At best it was a transition state from classic metal towards power, thrash, or potentially certain variants of very, very early black metal.

I'd say the older American style of power metal was rarely gloomy (except for the proggier bands but those are generally associated more with prog metal now) as much as it was triumphant and full of masculine bravado in a pulpy post-Robert E. Howard kind of way.

For thrash you might want to specify that the genre went in a lot of different directions (the brainy progressive/technical stuff like Watchtower, Megace, and Deathrow, the proto death/black mayhem of Kreator, early Sepultura, and Slayer, the melodic fare from Metallica, Forbidden, and Testament etc etc.). It's basically a springing point for a lot of different genres.

To specify on melodeath it initially began as death metal bands, typically from Scandinavia, starting to work melodic lead guitar work from classic/power/thrash bands back into a death metal framework and generally focusing on using very prominent melody as the centerpiece of compositions. The early works of Dark Tranquillity, At the Gates, Eucharist, and Sentenced on their second album are very strong examples of this. Later on, the actual death metal elements were toned down to the point where the only parts that really were death metal were the vocals, some of the rhythm guitar tecnique, and the odd blast beat now an dten. At this point in time, most "melodic death metal" is closer to post-Painkiller style power/speed/thrash metal with harsh vocals over it.

Folk metal is potentially more broad than progressive metal as the "metal" aspects of it can be drawn from pretty much damn near any genre of metal.

& - Thanks !! Ultra ultra useful, I finally feel like I have at least the beginning of a grasp on this mess

Would Armored Saint be considered US Power Metal? They have a similar sound to other bands branded with that label (ie, Omen, Vicious Rumors, etc).

I always thought they were more of just a classic heavy metal band - not quite riffy enough to hang with Omen and Helstar. But I'll need to relisten later.

What genre is this?

Starts off with a kind of bossa nova-ish beat and morphs into a kind of rock so soft it might as well be pop.

So bossa nova-rock ? South American pop ?

Sounds like Alt-Rock to me.

That sort of soft rock combined with Bossa Nova elements is often called Latin Rock.