History MediaNotes / HeavyMetal

Other genres also began reaching their stride or were born during the Nineties, and it was during this time that metal's speed began to max out at abominably fast tempos. Punk had been mixed with metal as far back as the seventies to produce NWOBHM and thrash metal, but in the late '80s, metal started returning the favor and several new strains of "punk metal," such as Metalcore, Crust, Crossover, and Grindcore began to emerge, each varying in their proportion of metal and punk. Metalcore focused primarily on mixing the virtuosity of thrash with the rawness of hardcore punk (moreso than thrash already had), hence the term 'metalcore'. Compared to thrash, metalcore was more reliant on breakdowns and varying between clean singing and gravel growling. Crust focuses heavily on punk, and relies almost solely on guttural vocals. Crossover thrash is a more balanced mix of thrash and hardcore punk (moreso than metalcore), and follows thrash's jagged patterns with hardcore punk's straight-edge power. Grindcore emerged in Britain and the United States as one of the most extreme subgenres to date, with bands such as Music/NapalmDeath and Music/AnalCunt pushing punk and metal to their absolute limits of speed and aggression (often within absurdly short songs). While employing techniques such as guttural screaming, Grindcore introduced the ''blast beat'', a form of drumming born from '80s punk with tempos reaching nigh-ridiculous levels, such as 250 bpm and higher.

On the opposite side of the speed spectrum, the ever Sabbathine doom metal finally caught hold of a sizable underground market and saw itself expand, adopting sounds as far as FolkMetal and extreme metal. This update to doom's unapproachable sound widened its audience while its perpetual underground status kept it from being warped by the mainstream. From these points, doom metal began to evolve on its own and subsequently split into four more genres-- Drone Metal, which featured drawn out chords and completely lacked traditional musical progression for the sake of hauntingly bizarre soundscapes; GothicMetal, which fused doom's self-deprecating style with thrash metal and sometimes death metal to produce a symphonic mixture of {{Goth}} and metal; StonerMetal, a fuzzy, sludgy genre which rose with stoner rock (a genre that gained quite a bit of popularity alongside Grunge) as an attempt to recapture the feel of Seventies psychedelic/blues-based heavy rock with occasional influences from hardcore punk; SludgeMetal, which fused hardcore punk and doom metal and often added in the fuzzed guitars of stoner metal to create what could be called a SpiritualSuccessor to the heavier, more abrasive side of grunge, while the lighter side evolve into PostGrunge.

Three new subgenres of note emerged in TheNewTens -- {{Deathcore}}, a mixture of Death Metal and Metalcore which, like hair metal and nu metal before it, has become bitterly polarizing within the metal community, and {{Djent}}, a polyrhythmic style of groove metal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}, while {{Dubstep}} artists took notice and created a DarkerAndEdgier, far more metal-influenced version of their own genre named "brostep", or better known as "metalstep". It was also during this time that a new generation of metal musicians took advantage of the rise of social media and established themselves as influencers, with creators such as [[https://www.youtube.com/@JaredDines_ Jared Dines]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@SteveTerreberry Stevie T]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]], [[https://youtube.com/@331Erock?si=ivcRIsEOMIrYMWSt 331Erock]], and others amassing large online followings with content that ranges from tongue-in-cheek metal covers of songs from other genres to comedic skits that poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture. The trend of royalty-free metal songs has also saw its birth here.

Then came Nirvana. The Seattle {{Grunge}} band released their opus, ''Nevermind'', in 1991, which signaled a sea change not just in hard rock, but in popular music in general. Suddenly the youth of the Nineties had found their icon, which not only reflected the [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks angsty]] [[NinetiesAntiHero new]] [[DarkerAndEdgier cultural zeitgeist]], but seemed [[ThreeChordsAndTheTruth simpler and more "authentic"]] than the glam scene which had now become the face of heavy metal to most people, and wasn't as unapologetically anti-mainstream and inaccessible as thrash and power metal. The scene initially brought in a wide variety of fans from all across the hard rock landscape, from the rawest of punk to the most meticulous of metal, with many metal fans even considering grunge to be a form of punk metal -- but it soon became clear that something had changed. The grunge movement soared to prominence in the music scene with the same sort of overwhelming force as punk in the late 1970s and, ironically, heavy metal itself in 1979-81; many of the metal acts that were signed to major music labels were [[ScrewedByTheNetwork betrayed]] by their own publishers and sidelined in favor of hip new alternative rock bands. Some metal bands, most notably Metallica with their softer self-titled "black album" and former glam metallers Music/{{Pantera}}, who abruptly broke all ties with their past in favor of a stripped-down, testosterone-heavy sound on 1990's ''Cowboys from Hell'', managed to achieve commercial success during this time and keep the metal flag flying. Still, other metal bands, faced with the choice of abandoning their scene or being buried, simply quit. Grunge, once seen by some metalheads as a breath of fresh air and even a return to "real" hard rock and metal, had become the driving force behind metal's decline from mainstream relevance, and as a result the genre became the subject of backlash from the metal community. With the much more simple and down to earth AlternativeRock now the preferred form of rock music by the youth, metal had become irrelevant. Bands that had placed all their trust in their label, be they traditional, thrash, or extreme metal, had only two options: split up, or listen to record executives and "go grunge." By 1993, heavy metal was being used as a punch line on WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead, and 2 years later, ''Headbanger's Ball'' was abruptly cancelled. By 1996, with AlternativeRock, PopPunk, and HipHop the dominant forms of youth music, long hair and guitar solos were deemed "uncool" and metal was stuck between irrelevance and archaism.

The period between 1983-1991 is widely considered the golden age of heavy metal and was the zenith of the genre's popularity and influence and filled with many of the genre's most esteemed classics, but even in these heady years, there manifested the forces that would soon send metal spiraling downward. As the Eighties progressed, the formerly quite distinct divide between American and European metal blurred and the various strains of metal began to hybridize. In continental Europe, the "vanilla" heavy metal had taken a different path from that in the US, becoming more and more refined and intellectual in nature as a contrast to the raw fury of extreme metal. While the PowerMetal subgenre had analogues in American bands like Music/{{Queensryche}} and Music/{{Manowar}}, it was far more popular in Europe, where bands like Iron Maiden (not a power metal band itself, but the first significant "thinking man's" metal band and the most important progenitor of power metal), Music/{{Helloween}}, Music/YngwieMalmsteen's Rising Force, and others were wowing metal fans with high-flying instrumental theatrics and escapist, [[HeavyMithril fantasy-oriented]] lyrics. Power metal would eventually trickle back into the US and fuse with progressive rock, which was by then losing the bad reputation it had acquired in the 1970s, to spawn a host of new "white-collar" American metal bands like Queensryche, Fates Warning, and Crimson Glory.

Three new subgenres of note emerged in TheNewTens -- {{Deathcore}}, a mixture of Death Metal and Metalcore which, like hair metal and nu metal before it, has become bitterly polarizing within the metal community, and {{Djent}}, a polyrhythmic style of groove metal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}, while {{Dubstep}} artists took notice and created a DarkerAndEdgier, far more metal-influenced version of their own genre named "brostep", or better known as "metalstep". It was also during this time that a new generation of metal musicians took advantage of the rise of social media and established themselves as influencers, with creators such as [[https://www.youtube.com/@JaredDines_ Jared Dines]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@SteveTerreberry Stevie T]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]], [[https://youtube.com/@331Erock?si=ivcRIsEOMIrYMWSt 331Erock]], and others amassing large online followings with content that ranges from tongue-in-cheek metal covers of songs from other genres to comedic skits that poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture.

The exact definition of heavy metal is a point of contention [[http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&global=1&q=Metal+Fans#/d3vh3wj even among metal fans]], but it is generally understood that the most defining element of heavy metal is the "metal riff", a sequence of chords (usually power chords, but not always) that is both melody and rhythm, and exudes a sense of power, aggression, urgency, weight, or various combinations thereof (in simple terms, it's "heavy"). A typical metal song typically uses several riffs instead of the one or two featured in a normal rock song, varying from a mere three or four to more than 10. Vocal style varies widely, but medium to high, dramatic tenors and guttural growls or piercing shrieks or screams are the most prominent vocal styles. Thrash tends towards gruff shouting as part of its punk roots, and some very conservative metal bands have more traditional blues/rock vocals. SopranoAndGravel is popular among "gothic" and "symphonic" bands. Lyrics vary, but the most universal and popular lyrical theme for metal is death. Virtually every metal band that has ever existed has written at least one song concerning death, and it has a similar role as a dependable standby subject as love does in traditional rock music--you just can't go wrong with a song about death. Metal also comes with far more bombast than does hard rock or punk rock. Metal comes in many different speeds as well, from the most insane .0005 second-per-beat Grindcore bands to Drone metal acts who sometimes have no beats within an album at all.

Three new subgenres of note emerged in TheNewTens -- {{Deathcore}}, a mixture of Death Metal and Metalcore which, like hair metal and nu metal before it, has become bitterly polarizing within the metal community, and {{Djent}}, a polyrhythmic style of groove metal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}, while Music/{{Dubstep}} artists took notice and created a DarkerAndEdgier, far more metal-influenced version of their own genre named "brostep", or better known as "metalstep". It was also during this time that a new generation of metal musicians took advantage of the rise of social media and established themselves as influencers, with creators such as [[https://www.youtube.com/@JaredDines_ Jared Dines]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@SteveTerreberry Stevie T]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]], [[https://youtube.com/@331Erock?si=ivcRIsEOMIrYMWSt 331Erock]], and others amassing large online followings with content that ranges from tongue-in-cheek metal covers of songs from other genres to comedic skits that poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture.

On the opposite side of the speed spectrum, the ever Sabbathine doom metal finally caught hold of a sizable underground market and saw itself expand, adopting sounds as far as FolkMetal and extreme metal. This update to doom's unapproachable sound widened its audience while its perpetual underground status kept it from being warped by the mainstream. From these points, doom metal began to evolve on its own and subsequently split into four more genres— Drone Metal, which featured drawn out chords and completely lacked traditional musical progression for the sake of hauntingly bizarre soundscapes; GothicMetal, which fused doom's self-deprecating style with thrash metal and sometimes death metal to produce a symphonic mixture of {{Goth}} and metal; StonerMetal, a fuzzy, sludgy genre which rose with stoner rock (a genre that gained quite a bit of popularity alongside Grunge) as an attempt to recapture the feel of Seventies psychedelic/blues-based heavy rock with occasional influences from hardcore punk; SludgeMetal, which fused hardcore punk and doom metal and often added in the fuzzed guitars of stoner metal to create what could be called a SpiritualSuccessor to the heavier, more abrasive side of grunge.

Two new subgenres of note emerged in TheNewTens -- {{Deathcore}}, a mixture of Death Metal and Metalcore which, like hair metal and nu metal before it, has become bitterly polarizing within the metal community, and {{Djent}}, a polyrhythmic style of groove metal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}. It was also during this time that a new generation of metal musicians took advantage of the rise of social media and established themselves as influencers, with creators such as [[https://www.youtube.com/@JaredDines_ Jared Dines]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@SteveTerreberry Stevie T]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]], [[https://youtube.com/@331Erock?si=ivcRIsEOMIrYMWSt 331Erock]], and others amassing large online followings with content that ranges from tongue-in-cheek metal covers of songs from other genres to comedic skits that poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture.