History MediaNotes / HeavyMetal

The tide began to turn for heavy metal as TheNineties gave way to the TurnOfTheMillennium. The resurgence of heavy metal had a start of sorts with NuMetal (or [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Nü Metal]]), which is extremely controversial, to the point where (much like hair metal) arguments about its metal status even occur on this page. Nu Metal took all the disparate developments from the Dark Age of Metal and mixed them together, producing a nearly avant-garde mixture of AlternativeMetal, IndustrialMetal, ThrashMetal, {{Goth}}, GrooveMetal, {{Grunge}}, HardcorePunk, HipHop, PostPunk, SludgeMetal, and PostHardcore (though far from all bands would rely on each and every aspect). Nu Metal was unique for its time, at the very least, and its "chug" riffs, pseudo-death growls, extensive breakdowns, hip-hop influences, and [[{{wangst}} angst-ridden]] themes of inner demons and personal struggles were popular among teens and tweens from the late '90s to the early 2000s, but never caught on with the actual heavy metal community, and the genre was slapped with the derisive label "mallcore" by its detractors. Despite this, nü-metal achieved a level of commercial success that simply hadn't been matched by other metal subgenres, with some bands even outselling '80s pop metal acts, registering it as the most successful 'metal' has ever been. During this time, even veteran bands such as Slayer and Metallica experimented with the genre, much to the chagrin of diehard fans. Following the early success of Music/{{Sepultura}}[[note]]already an established thrash/death metal band before switching to nu metal on their NewSoundAlbum ''{{Music/Roots}}''[[/note]] and Coal Chamber, and the meteoric rise of Music/{{Korn}} and Music/LimpBizkit, a wave of Nu Metal bands erupted, and bands such as Music/{{Slipknot}}, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/{{Deftones}}, Music/LinkinPark and many others became the biggest 'metal' bands in years, and although some of these bands also don't consider themselves metal, nu metal remains a gateway for many, much as glam had been over a decade prior.

The source of the name "heavy metal" is, like most things to do with metal, hotly debated. Those who prefer a more "high culture" or "respectable" inspiration point to characters called "the Heavy Metal Kid" and "Heavy Metal People" in works by Creator/WilliamSBurroughs. Lowerbrow types often point to the line "heavy metal thunder" as a metaphor for the sound of motorbike engines in the proto-metal hit [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWRypqz5-o "Born To Be Wild"]] by Music/{{Steppenwolf}}. More generally, the word "heavy" had been used for a long time among hippies to mean "serious" or "depressing", and some people point as well to the group of often-toxic chemical elements known as "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metals heavy metals]]" in chemistry. Some claim that "heavy metal" is merely a natural progression of heaviness from "hard rock" and "heavy rock" (i.e. suggesting an even harder brand of music) so the term was inevitable. When it was first used and when it gained mainstream use is debated, but few deny that it was a well-established term in music by at least 1975, though it was used interchangeably with 'heavy rock' and a multitude of hard rock bands from Music/{{Rush|Band}}, to Music/{{Queen}}, to Music/{{ACDC}} were all labeled heavy metal, even if most didn't consider themselves such, tried to avoid the label, or weren't metal to begin with— even Music/{{Aerosmith}} was at one point called an "American heavy metal-rock band!" This has led to a bit of confusion, with few of the aforementioned bands being mentioned in the same breath as metal these days.

But who strummed the first metal riff? Surprisingly, many consider Music/TheBeatles' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWW2SzoAXMo "Helter Skelter"]] the first heavy metal song while the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUYziiWiW2w electric guitar legend]] Music/JimiHendrix is credited as a major inspiration with the story that a supposed music magazine article described his music as "like bars of metal raining down on the stage." Other potential starters include [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4vIlg4alz8 Blue Cheer in 1968]], a very obscure garage band called Bitter Creek with their 1967 song '[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HV5nH2eHFc "Plastic Thunder"]], and, going back even ''further'', Link Wray, who recorded the heavily distorted ProtoPunk instrumental [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc7Rd_g3Dyo "Rumble"]] in '''1958'''.

Few, however, deny that the ones who hit the lights were an obscure little band from Birmingham known as Music/BlackSabbath, who fused these chaotic sounds with morbid CrapsackWorld imagery and galloping rhythms, as heard on their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkD_0G8zQGI slow-building, satanic-sounding self-titled track]] off of their 1970 debut album, which would in turn develop into the metal we all know and love on their following albums (their sophomore effort ''Paranoid'' sometimes being considered the first all-out metal record). Tony Iommi's distinctive crunchy, aggressive guitar riffs became wildly popular with young people on both sides of the Atlantic, much to [[TheNewRockAndRoll the consternation]] of [[MoralGuardians their parents]] and the newly un-hip '60s "flower generation". Despite the controversy (which would persist and mutate into different forms as heavy metal itself evolved), Black Sabbath enjoyed brisk album sales and a sizable fan-base as their mixture of [[BlackMetal blackened]] [[HeavyMithril lyrical]] [[RockMeAsmodeus themes]], [[SpeedMetal intense]] [[ThrashMetal bursts]] [[PowerMetal of]] [[DeathMetal speed]], [[StonerMetal riff-infestation,]] [[DoomMetal plodding]] [[SludgeMetal tempos]], and [[ProgressiveMetal technicality]] exploded forth into history.

The first movement came from when punk rock's own offspring, the nastier, noisier, more aggressive "hardcore punk", trickled down into a metal scene already amped up on punk rock rage. When hardcore punk bands such as Music/MinorThreat and Music/BlackFlag brought heavy music to the fastest it had ever been, many within the metal scene decided to beat them at their own game and turn it up to eleven. British band Music/{{Venom}}'s 1981 album ''Welcome to Hell'' was perhaps the first prominent fruit of the budding extreme metal subculture. Blisteringly fast, stupendously aggressive, and unabashedly offensive with its lurid [[{{Satan}} Satanic]] imagery and violent themes, ''Welcome to Hell'' was perhaps the most aggressive album ever published at the time, and became a lightning rod for controversy from people who claimed that it was subversive, Satanic, and encouraged all manner of social ills. This, of course, only made it more popular with rebellious youth. European "SpeedMetal" bands began to one-up each other in aggression, creating a massive metal arms race of chainsaw guitar riffs, frenetic drumming, and new vocal styles that mutated the high-pitched wail that had now become the definitive metal voice into nearly incomprehensible shrieking and gibbering. These early extreme metal albums were raw, uncompromising, and hostile, attracting a small but loyal following of hardcore fans, but were too unpolished and off-putting to crack the larger music world.

At the same time, the mainstream music business had gotten wise to the burgeoning success of heavy metal and begun making a more accessible, radio-friendly version, infusing metal elements into glam and arena rock to create a form of music that has at different times and places been called "glam metal", "pop metal", "Eighties metal" (a serious misnomer as there were plenty of other forms of metal at the time), "HairMetal", "cock rock," and other more unflattering terms (some, like glam metal, often get confused with '70s GlamRock). Causing tension among metal fans as to whether it belongs as part of the genre, and more or less laughed at nostalgically in retrospect, Glam metal featured a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOIDqRKo0Y bouncy, dance-friendly beat with an exaggerated echoey "gated" snare tone]], a mixture of loud distortion and radio-friendly guitar work, a scaled-back, more rockish variant of the MetalScream, very polished, pop-esque production, a sleazy HotterAndSexier image with androgynous musicians in [[{{Stripperiffic}} highly sexualized]] outfits, and raunchy lyrics that often centered around prostitution, sex, drugs, partying, and L.A./Vegas nightlife. While reviled by the core metal faithful from its very inception, glam metal became outrageously popular, and many classic metal bands like Tygers of Pan Tang, the ever-changing Scorpions, briefly but by far most notoriously Judas Priest, and most successfully Def Leppard jumped on the bandwagon after the diversification of the metal genre took the wind out of NWOBHM's sails. And, despite its negative connotations, the genre gave rise to highly regarded musicians such as Sebastian Bach, Slash, and Rick Allen, and was the first major gateway into other forms of metal.

One far less known genre of heavy metal was born during this period and hailed little attention: "DoomMetal". Doom arose directly from Music/BlackSabbath and other '70s proto metal groups rooted in the blues, such as Pentagram, Sir Lord Baltimore, Lucifer's Friend, Captain Beyond, Blue Öyster Cult, and others, but it didn't truly grow until the early '80s with the arrival of Music/SaintVitus, Trouble, and Witchfinder General. It faced brutally stiff competition throughout the late '70s and '80s from genres such as glam metal and the emerging thrash, speed, and power metal scenes. Many doom metal bands relied on mid-paced to slower-paced riffs, and focused more on personal themes of sorrow, depression, and death, which were a departure from the usual themes of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, aggression, sword & sorcery, and anti-Christianity/Satanism commonly associated with the genre. The lack of speed in particular led to it being ignored by fans more used to the faster paced styles of metal, and it was generally ignored by mainstream media as well. It wasn't until Music/{{Candlemass}}'s 1986 album ''Epicus Doomicus Metallicus'' that doom enjoyed its first bout of commercial attention. Nevertheless, in the face of more commercial genres such as hair metal, more aggressive genres such as thrash and death metal, and more traditional genres such as power metal, doom metal remained a niche genre; though, with its dirges and sludgy guitar tones, it did wind up directly and indirectly influencing more than its fair share of genres and musicians, some of which would come [[AlternativeRock back]] to [[{{Grunge}} haunt]] [[NuMetal metal]] in the future.

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, which was by now starting to congeal into a cohesive scene that would one day be known as black metal. While the "power metal" 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 and progressive rock, which was now losing the bad reputation it had acquired in the 1970s, spawned a host of new "white-collar" American metal bands like Queensryche, Fates Warning, and Crimson Glory.

Thrash metal also felt the influence of power metal. Thrash had always had a technical, "musician's music" streak with its penchant for lengthy compositions like Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and Exodus' "Deliver Us to Evil" and noodly "shred" guitar solos, but a new wave of "technical thrash" or "tech thrash" bands took this to an extreme. Bands like Forbidden, Toxik, Watchtower, Coroner, and Heathen reveled in multilayered compositions and tricky, jagged rhythms, and even the more mainstream elements of the subgenre got in on the act -- Metallica's 1986 and '88 albums ''Master of Puppets'' and ''...And Justice For All'' had songs that approached the ten-minute mark and Dave Mustaine recruited a succession of guitarists from the highly musician-oriented jazz fusion scene (most notably neoclassical virtuoso Marty Friedman) for Megadeth, their practiced chops providing a striking contrast to his wild and creative leads. Two and three-guitar bands proliferated as guitarists throughout the metal scene reveled in playing off each other and "dueling" with elaborate solo passages.

The harsh, extreme metal-influenced German strain of thrash was now also taking root in America, and a number of bands in California and Florida were putting a violent new twist on it. The new "[[DeathMetal death metal]]" scene resembled thrash but was clearly not thrash, with heavily down-tuned, percussive, hammering riffs, a fixation on [[{{Gorn}} gruesome]], horror movie-like violence, and the harsh screaming of ordinary extreme metal being further mutated into gurgling, monstrous growling noises. The impact of Possessed's ''Seven Churches'' and Death's ''Scream Bloody Gore'' was felt on both sides of the Atlantic, signaling a new wave of extreme metal as death metal took the US metal faithful by storm and Europeans, especially in Sweden, put out their own variations on the genre.

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 metal blasting on. Still more heavy 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 led to the downfall of their very own genre in the mainstream. When they realized this, metalheads quickly turned tail and rejected grunge. 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.

Though pop metal was off the charts in the US, it was reaching its zenith in other parts of the globe. One such place was Europe, where glam metal and grunge had much less impact than in the US. Just as Britain was contending with Madchester and the earliest days of {{Britpop}} (essentially their own version of Grunge), German act Helloween rose from a second-tier speed/power metal act to an overnight success with their ''Keeper of the Seven Keys'' duology, which focused on catchy vocal melodies, a much LighterAndSofter attitude, and influences from synthesizer-heavy European pop music, spawning hundreds of imitators throughout TheNineties. Music/DreamTheater created a modest but enduring fanbase by taking the progressive rock influences of power metal and running with them, merging metal and prog-rock into a unique sound that gained a following with people who wanted something "smarter" than grunge. Their sophomore effort ''Images and Words'' sold 800,000 copies despite being released at the height of the grunge craze. The success of Pantera is credited with having kept metal from completely vanishing from mainstream attention during this period, with the band's unique groove-laden style connecting with millions of fans and spawning the appropriately named GrooveMetal subgenre [[NuMetal (which would itself inadvertently lay the groundwork for another, much more contentious subgenre later in the decade).]] Industrial Metal (and, to a lesser extent, its Germanic offshoot Neue Deutsche Harte) rose to commercial prominence due to its strong association with the alternative scene by mainstream listeners, and as a result bands such as Music/NineInchNails and {{Music/Ministry}} received heavy MTV/rock radio airplay and became main attractions at festivals such as Lollapalooza, while Music/{{Rammstein}} would gain a lot of traction. Black Sabbath survived by ignoring most of the developments of the 80s and returning to the stomping, bluesy proto-metal that had carried them through TheSeventies, culminating in a brief resurgence of fame as they reunited with former frontman Music/RonnieJamesDio for the 1992 album ''Dehumanizer'', which is still highly regarded to this day. Death metal, a niche genre to begin with, maintained a small but devoted fanbase, with an up-and-coming band from Long Island by the name of Music/{{Suffocation}} making a particularly big splash in 1991 with their Roadrunner debut ''Effigy of the Forgotten'', which combined extreme heaviness and technical proficiency to create a new style of death metal that would slowly but surely shape the scene to come. Also, a group of musicians in Norway had turned the chaotic extreme metal scene into a coherent musical movement that would gain notoriety far beyond its small fanbase.

This new movement was called ''black metal'', an evolution of the violent extreme metal bands of TheEighties that was fiercely independent, virulently anti-mainstream, and even more provocative than its antecedents. Many of them believed that metal was doomed the moment it courted the mainstream, and cultivated a sound that was as exclusive and "out there" as possible. With deliberately muddy production, extremely harsh soundscapes, and anti-Christian lyrics that ranged from GodIsEvil to literal Satanism, black metal was the ultimate in cult fandoms (and some people have literally compared the early scene to a cult). While the movement was very small, often with album sales in triple digits, black metal musicians became most identified with a sort of cultural jihad against Christianity, with outrageous anti-religious statements, disturbing imagery featuring Satanic symbols, bondage gear, and ghoulish makeup, arsons and other attacks on churches and other Christian cultural sites, and identification with Norse mythology (whose association with ThoseWackyNazis was milked for all it was worth). The scene spread slowly but surely, first in Scandinavia and then worldwide, with black metal bands springing up in America, Eastern Europe, and Japan.

As new genres such as alternative metal and progressive metal thrived alongside the aforementioned scenes in the underground, and the fall of grunge in the mid '90s begun, rumors began to circulate and speculation rose: was heavy metal about to stage a comeback?

The tide began to turn for heavy metal as TheNineties gave way to the TurnOfTheMillennium. The resurgence of heavy metal had a start of sorts with "NuMetal" (or [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Nü Metal]]), which is extremely controversial, to the point where (much like hair metal) arguments about its metal status even occur on this page. Nu Metal took all the disparate developments from the Dark Age of Metal and mixed them together, producing a nearly avant-garde mixture of AlternativeMetal, IndustrialMetal, ThrashMetal, {{Goth}}, GrooveMetal, {{Grunge}}, HardcorePunk, HipHop, PostPunk, SludgeMetal, and PostHardcore (though far from all bands would rely on each and every aspect). Nu Metal was unique for its time, at the very least, and its "chug" riffs, pseudo-death growls, extensive breakdowns, hip-hop influences, and [[{{wangst}} angst-ridden]] themes of inner demons and personal struggles were popular among teens and tweens from the late '90s to the early 2000s, but never caught on with the actual heavy metal community, and the genre was slapped with the derisive label "mallcore" by its detractors. Despite this, nü-metal achieved a level of commercial success that simply hadn't been matched by other metal subgenres, with some bands even outselling '80s pop metal acts, registering it as the most successful 'metal' has ever been. During this time, even older bands such as Slayer and Metallica experimented with the genre, much to the chagrin of diehard fans. Following the early success of Music/{{Sepultura}}[[note]]already an established thrash/death metal band before switching to nu metal on their NewSoundAlbum ''{{Music/Roots}}''[[/note]] and Coal Chamber, and the meteoric rise of Music/{{Korn}} and Music/LimpBizkit, a wave of Nu Metal bands erupted, and bands such as Music/{{Slipknot}}, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/{{Deftones}}, Music/LinkinPark and many others became the biggest 'metal' bands in years, and although some of these bands also don't consider themselves metal, nu metal remains a gateway for many, much as glam had been over a decade prior.

While NuMetal fell off the map completely by 2004, a more traditional form of metal with more focus on technicality and melody arose. Dubbed "The New Wave of American Heavy Metal", {{Metalcore}} bands such as Shadows Fall, Lamb of God[[note]]although more GrooveMetal than metalcore[[/note]], Trivium, Chimaira, and Music/KillswitchEngage became the metal of choice for the mainstream metalhead. Some of these bands, such as Music/AvengedSevenfold and Music/BulletForMyValentine, were much more radio-friendly and emo-influenced, and were derided by traditional metalheads as "mallcore"; while the heavier and more technically proficient bands such as the aforementioned Shadows Fall and Chimaira were all too often lumped in with the latter. This scene fell off in popularity in the early 2010s.

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]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]] amassing large online followings with comedic skits that not only poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture, but also showcase their musical prowess. And another metal infuencer [[https://youtube.com/@331Erock?si=ivcRIsEOMIrYMWSt 331Erock]] gave metal a breath of fresh air by covering non-metal songs (usually, pop, rap, soundtrack or folk) and made them metal.

Since then, we've seen a series of ups and downs in popularity but today, heavy metal continues to change with the times. With the popularity of the Internet, metal fans have largely eschewed music television and radio -- which have become almost entirely focused on pop and rap -- and instead focus their interests as a community and welcome those who find their way into this culture. Meanwhile, the mainstream has also embraced metal in most of its forms, with many prominent names being known metalheads while metal superstars also top headlines. Trends in metal change -- from alternative metal to metalcore to deathcore to djent to the recent wave of occult metal, but metal fans continue to expand their horizons while awaiting the "new Metallica's" arrival.

It's been 50-odd years. Things will change, but the spirit of metal charges on.

Though pop metal was off the charts in the US, it was reaching its zenith in other parts of the globe. One such place was Europe, where glam metal and grunge had much less impact than in the US. Just as Britain was contending with Madchester and the earliest days of {{Britpop}} (essentially their own version of Grunge), German act Helloween rose from a second-tier speed/power metal act to an overnight success with their ''Keeper of the Seven Keys'' duology, which focused on catchy vocal melodies, a much LighterAndSofter attitude, and influences from synthesizer-heavy European pop music, spawning hundreds of imitators throughout TheNineties. Music/DreamTheater created a modest but enduring fanbase by taking the progressive rock influences of power metal and running with them, merging metal and prog-rock into a unique sound that gained a following with people who wanted something "smarter" than grunge. Their sophomore effort ''Images and Words'' sold 800,000 copies despite being released at the height of the grunge craze. The success of Pantera is credited with having kept metal from completely vanishing from mainstream attention during this period, with the band's unique groove-laden style connecting with millions of fans and spawning the appropriately named GrooveMetal subgenre [[NuMetal (which would itself inadvertently lay the groundwork for another, much more contentious subgenre later in the decade).]] Industrial Metal (and, to a lesser extent, its Germanic offshoot Neue Deutsche Harte) rose to commercial prominence due to its strong association with the alternative scene by mainstream listeners, and as a result bands such as Music/NineInchNails and {{Music/Ministry}} received heavy MTV/rock radio airplay and became main attractions at festivals such as Lollapalooza. Black Sabbath survived by ignoring most of the developments of the 80s and returning to the stomping, bluesy proto-metal that had carried them through TheSeventies, culminating in a brief resurgence of fame as they reunited with former frontman Music/RonnieJamesDio for the 1992 album ''Dehumanizer'', which is still highly regarded to this day. Death metal, a niche genre to begin with, maintained a small but devoted fanbase, with an up-and-coming band from Long Island by the name of Music/{{Suffocation}} making a particularly big splash in 1991 with their Roadrunner debut ''Effigy of the Forgotten'', which combined extreme heaviness and technical proficiency to create a new style of death metal that would slowly but surely shape the scene to come. Also, a group of musicians in Norway had turned the chaotic extreme metal scene into a coherent musical movement that would gain notoriety far beyond its small fanbase.

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]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]] amassing large online followings with comedic skits that not only poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture, but also showcase their musical prowess.

Thrash metal also felt the influence of power metal. Thrash had always had a technical, "musician's music" streak with its penchant for lengthy compositions like Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and Exodus' "Deliver Us to Evil" and noodly "shred" guitar solos, but a new wave of "technical thrash" or "tech thrash" bands took this to an extreme. Bands like Forbidden, Toxik, Watchtower, Coroner, and Heathen reveled in multilayered compositions and tricky, jagged rhythms, and even the more mainstream elements of the subgenre got in on the act -- Metallica's 1986 and '88 albums ''Master of Puppets'' and ''...And Justice For All'' had songs that approached the ten-minute mark and Dave Mustaine recruited a succession of guitarists from the highly musician-oriented fusion jazz scene (most notably neoclassical virtuoso Marty Friedman) for Megadeth, their practiced chops providing a striking contrast to his wild and creative leads. Two and three-guitar bands proliferated as guitarists throughout the metal scene reveled in playing off each other and "dueling" with elaborate solo passages.

Heavy metal largely fell under the radar in the mid to late 1970s as Deep Purple disbanded and Black Sabbath began to fall apart at the seams; both bands were considered the flagships of the genre with few others taking up the role. With heavy metal not only a dying trend but also an undefined label given to bands with negative press, there needed to be some sort of cohesive movement, one that would give heavy metal its own image. The new sensation of punk music provided much of the aggression of heavy metal in a rawer, stripped-down package to appeal to a music-buying public sick of the theatrics of ProgressiveRock and sluggish tempos of the remnants of classic rock. However, the success of British punk bands was providing fresh inspiration to a new generation of metal musicians, who blended the gritty, street-smart anger of punk with the drama and thunderous bombast of heavy metal. In late 1979, the NewWaveOfBritishHeavyMetal (NWOBHM) exploded onto the British music scene, bringing with it new bands like Music/{{Motorhead}}, Music/IronMaiden, Music/DefLeppard, and more that were faster than Sabbath, louder than Priest, and angrier than The Sex Pistols. Soon, even the classic metal acts were signing into this new movement, with new and uncompromising releases from Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Music/{{Dio}}. The collapse of the original punk scene brought even more wind into heavy metal's sails and metal bands began springing up, not only in the UK, but all over America and Europe, and as the genre's success grew, three very different movements were coalescing within a once more-or-less unified genre.

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 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 metal blasting on. Still more heavy 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 led to the downfall of their very own genre in the mainstream. When they realized this, metalheads quickly turned tail and rejected grunge. 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.

Few, however, deny that the ones who hit the lights were an obscure little band from Birmingham known as Music/BlackSabbath, who fused these chaotic sounds with morbid CrapsackWorld imagery and galloping rhythms, as heard on their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkD_0G8zQGI slow-building, satanic-sounding self-titled track]] off of their debut album, which would in turn develop into the metal we all know and love on their following albums (their sophomore effort ''Paranoid'' sometimes being considered the first all-out metal record). Tony Iommi's distinctive crunchy, aggressive guitar riffs became wildly popular with young people on both sides of the Atlantic, much to [[TheNewRockAndRoll the consternation]] of [[MoralGuardians their parents]] and the newly un-hip '60s "flower generation". Despite the controversy (which would persist and mutate into different forms as heavy metal itself evolved), Black Sabbath enjoyed brisk album sales and a sizable fan-base as their mixture of [[BlackMetal blackened]] [[HeavyMithril lyrical]] [[RockMeAsmodeus themes]], [[SpeedMetal intense]] [[ThrashMetal bursts]] [[PowerMetal of]] [[DeathMetal speed]], [[StonerMetal riff-infestation,]] [[DoomMetal plodding]] [[SludgeMetal tempos]], and [[ProgressiveMetal technicality]] exploded forth into history.

The tide began to turn for heavy metal as TheNineties gave way to the TurnOfTheMillennium. The resurgence of heavy metal had a start of sorts with "NuMetal" (or [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Nü Metal]]), which is extremely controversial, to the point where (much like hair metal) arguments about its metal status even occur on this page. Nu Metal took all the disparate developments from the Dark Age of Metal and mixed them together, producing a nearly avant-garde mixture of AlternativeMetal, IndustrialMetal, ThrashMetal, {{Goth}}, GrooveMetal, {{Grunge}}, HardcorePunk, HipHop, PostPunk, SludgeMetal, and PostHardcore (though far from all bands would rely on each and every aspect). Nu Metal was unique for its time, at the very least, and its "chug" riffs, pseudo-death growls, extensive breakdowns, hip-hop influences, and [[{{wangst}} angst-ridden]] themes of inner demons and personal struggles were popular among teens and tweens from the late '90s to the early 2000s, but never caught on with the actual heavy metal community, and the genre was slapped with the derisive label "mallcore" by its detractors. Despite this, nü-metal achieved a level of commercial success that simply hadn't been matched by other metal subgenres, with some bands even outselling '80s pop metal acts, registering it as the most successful 'metal' has ever been. During this time, even older bands such as Slayer and Metallica experimented with the genre, much to the chagrin of diehard fans. Following the early success of Music/{{Sepultura}}[[note]]a veteran thrash/death metal band that made the switch to nu metal on their NewSoundAlbum ''{{Music/Roots}}''[[/note]] and Coal Chamber, and the meteoric rise of Music/{{Korn}} and Music/LimpBizkit, a wave of Nu Metal bands erupted, and bands such as Music/{{Slipknot}}, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/{{Deftones}}, Music/LinkinPark and many others became the biggest 'metal' bands in years, and although some of these bands also don't consider themselves metal, nu metal remains a gateway for many, much as glam had been over a decade prior.

Since then, we've seen a series of ups and downs in popularity but today, heavy metal continues to change with the times. With the popularity of the Internet, metal fans have largely eschewed music television and radio -- which have become almost entirely focused on pop and rap -- and instead focus their interests as a community and welcome those who find their way into this culture. Meanwhile, the mainstream has also embraced metal in most of its forms, with many prominent names being known metalheads while metal superstars also top headlines. Trends in metal change -- from alternative metal to metalcore to deathcore to djent to the recent wave of occult metal, metal fans continue to expand their horizons while awaiting the "new Metallica's" arrival.

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 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 metal blasting on. Still more heavy 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 led to the downfall of their very own genre in the mainstream. When they realized this, metalheads quickly turned tail and dissed grunge, only to find metal had been discarded. 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.

Since then, we've seen a series of ups and downs in popularity but today, heavy metal continues to change with the times. With the popularity of the Internet, metal fans have largely eschewed music television and radio -- which have become enamored with pop and rap -- and instead focus their interests as a community and welcome those who find their way into this culture. Meanwhile, the mainstream has also embraced metal in most of its forms, with many prominent names being known metalheads while metal superstars also top headlines. Trends in metal change -- from alternative metal to metalcore to deathcore to djent to the recent wave of occult metal, metal fans continue to expand their horizons while awaiting the "new Metallica's" arrival.

Music/{{Metallica}} were the first thrashers out of the gates with their 1983 debut ''Kill 'Em All''. The distinctive guitar styles of James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine (who had already been ejected from the band by that point, but arguably had far more impact on Metallica's early style than his replacement Kirk Hammett) and tougher, more masculine imagery of the band themselves were a hit, and they were quickly joined in the scene by bands like Exodus, Music/{{Megadeth}} (masterminded by an enraged Dave Mustaine trying to one-up Metallica), Testament, Music/{{Slayer}}, and others. The thrash movement spread across the US but truly found second homes in the East Coast, where Music/{{Anthrax}} and Music/{{Overkill}} infused an extra dose of punk elements to create a pounding, crowd-pleasing "mosh" rhythm and acerbic DeadpanSnarker attitude, and in Germany, where it intermingled with European extreme metal to fuse the best of both worlds, spawning bands such as Kreator, Sodom, Tankard and Destruction.

Heavy metal largely fell under the radar in the mid to late 1970s as Black Sabbath began to fall apart at the seams. They and Deep Purple were considered the flagships of the genre with few others taking up the role, and many of the 'moderate metal' bands from 1973-1978, including [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSq3dshjrqk Bedemon]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p884WqCYZfQ False Prophet]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Z1L8xYaQc Iron Claw]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjlXjZ62dv4 Lucifer's Friend]] were left as independent acts that never saw any commercial success or even album releases, dooming them to obscurity and denying them a place in the history of metal. With heavy metal not only a dying trend but also an undefined label given to bands with negative press, there needed to be some sort of cohesive movement, one that would give heavy metal its own image. The new sensation of punk music provided much of the aggression of heavy metal in a rawer, stripped-down package to appeal to a music-buying public sick of the theatrics of ProgressiveRock and sluggish tempos of the remnants of classic rock. However, the success of British punk bands was providing fresh inspiration to a new generation of metal musicians, who blended the gritty, street-smart anger of punk with the drama and thunderous bombast of heavy metal. In late 1979, the NewWaveOfBritishHeavyMetal (NWOBHM) exploded onto the British music scene, bringing with it new bands like Music/{{Motorhead}}, Music/IronMaiden, Music/DefLeppard, and more that were faster than Sabbath, louder than Priest, and angrier than The Sex Pistols. Soon, even the classic metal acts were signing into this new movement, with new and uncompromising releases from Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Music/{{Dio}}. The collapse of the original punk scene brought even more wind into heavy metal's sails and metal bands began springing up, not only in the UK, but all over America and Europe, and as the genre's success grew, three very different movements were coalescing within a once more-or-less unified genre.

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 early grunge. In fact, bands on the heavier side of grunge such as Tad, Music/{{Soundgarden}} and Music/AliceInChains were also considered metal and toured alongside other metal bands, and grunge's heavier, raw, and more abrasive side would eventually be absorbed into metal, eventually playing a role in the creation of subgenres such as AvantGardeMetal.

The tide began to turn for heavy metal as TheNineties gave way to the TurnOfTheMillennium. The resurgence of heavy metal had a start of sorts with "NuMetal" (or [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Nü Metal]]), which is extremely controversial, to the point where (much like hair metal) arguments about its metal status even occur on this page. Nu Metal took all the disparate developments from the Dark Age of Metal and mixed them together, producing a nearly avant-garde mixture of AlternativeMetal, IndustrialMetal, ThrashMetal, {{Goth}}, GrooveMetal, {{Grunge}}, HardcorePunk, HipHop, PostPunk, SludgeMetal, and PostHardcore (though far from all bands would rely on each and every aspect). Nu Metal was unique for its time, at the very least, and its "chug" riffs, pseudo-death growls, extensive breakdowns, hip-hop influences, and [[{{wangst}} angst-ridden]] themes of inner demons and personal struggles were popular among teens and tweens from the late '90s to the early 2000s, but never caught on with the actual heavy metal community, and the genre was slapped with the derisive label "mallcore" by its detractors. Despite this, nü-metal achieved a level of commercial success that simply hadn't been matched by other metal subgenres, with some bands even outselling '80s pop metal acts, registering it as the most successful 'metal' has ever been. During this time, even older bands such as Slayer and Metallica experimented with the genre, much to the chagrin of diehard fans. Following the early success of Music/{{Sepultura}}[[note]]by way of their NewSoundAlbum ''{{Music/Roots}}''[[/note]] and Coal Chamber, and the meteoric rise of Music/{{Korn}} and Music/LimpBizkit, a wave of Nu Metal bands erupted, and bands such as Music/{{Slipknot}}, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/{{Deftones}}, Music/LinkinPark and many others became the biggest 'metal' bands in years, and although some of these bands also don't consider themselves metal, nu metal remains a gateway for many, much as glam had been over a decade prior.

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 began establishing themselves as social media influencers, with creators such as [[https://www.youtube.com/@JaredDines_ Jared Dines]], [[https://www.youtube.com/@SteveTerreberry Stevie T]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/@BradleyHallGuitar Bradley Hall]] earning large online followings with comedic skits that not only poke fun at various aspects of the metal subculture, but also showcase their musical prowess.

Though pop metal was off the charts in the US, it was reaching its zenith in other parts of the globe. One such place was Europe, where glam metal and grunge had much less impact than in the US. Just as Britain was contending with Madchester and the earliest days of {{Britpop}} (essentially their own version of Grunge), German act Helloween rose from a second-tier speed/power metal act to an overnight success with their ''Keeper of the Seven Keys'' duology, which focused on catchy vocal melodies, a much LighterAndSofter attitude, and influences from synthesizer-heavy European pop music, spawning hundreds of imitators throughout TheNineties. Music/DreamTheater created a modest but enduring fanbase by taking the progressive rock influences of power metal and running with them, merging metal and prog-rock into a unique sound that gained a following with people who wanted something "smarter" than grunge. Their sophomore effort ''Images and Words'' sold 800,000 copies despite being released at the height of the grunge craze. The success of Pantera is credited with having kept metal from completely vanishing from mainstream attention during this period, with the band's groove-laden style connecting with millions of fans and spawning the appropriately named GrooveMetal subgenre [[NuMetal (which would itself inadvertently lay the groundwork for another, much more contentious subgenre later in the decade).]] Industrial Metal (and, to a lesser extent, its Germanic offshoot Neue Deutsche Harte) rose to commercial prominence due to its strong association with the alternative scene by mainstream listeners, and as a result bands such as Music/NineInchNails and {{Music/Ministry}} received heavy MTV/rock radio airplay and became main attractions at festivals such as Lollapalooza. Black Sabbath survived by ignoring most of the developments of the 80s and returning to the stomping, bluesy proto-metal that had carried them through TheSeventies, culminating in a brief resurgence of fame as they reunited with former frontman Music/RonnieJamesDio for the 1992 album ''Dehumanizer'', which is still highly regarded to this day. Death metal, a niche genre to begin with, maintained a small but devoted fanbase, with an up-and-coming band from Long Island by the name of Music/{{Suffocation}} making a particularly big splash in 1991 with their Roadrunner debut ''Effigy of the Forgotten'', which combined extreme heaviness and technical proficiency to create a new style of death metal that would slowly but surely shape the scene to come. Also, a group of musicians in Norway had turned the chaotic extreme metal scene into a coherent musical movement that would gain notoriety far beyond its small fanbase.

But who strummed the first metal riff? Surprisingly, many consider Music/TheBeatles' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWW2SzoAXMo "Helter Skelter"]] the first heavy metal song while the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUYziiWiW2w electric guitar legend]] Music/JimiHendrix is credited as a major inspiration with the story that a supposed music magazine article described his music as "like bars of metal raining down on the stage." Other potential starters include [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4vIlg4alz8 Blue Cheer in 1968]], a very little known garage band called Bitter Creek with their 1967 song '[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HV5nH2eHFc "Plastic Thunder"]], and, going back even ''further'', Link Wray, who recorded the heavily distorted ProtoPunk instrumental [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc7Rd_g3Dyo "Rumble"]] in '''1958'''.

The source of the name "heavy metal" is, like most things to do with metal, hotly debated. Those who prefer a more "high culture" or "respectable" inspiration point to characters called "the Heavy Metal Kid" and "Heavy Metal People" in works by Creator/WilliamSBurroughs. Lowerbrow types often point to the line "heavy metal thunder" as a metaphor for the sound of motorbike engines in the proto-metal hit [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWRypqz5-o "Born To Be Wild"]] by Music/{{Steppenwolf}}. More generally, the word "heavy" had been used for a long time among hippies to mean "serious" or "depressing", and some people point as well to the group of often-toxic chemical elements known as "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metals heavy metals]]" in chemistry. Some claim that "heavy metal" is merely a natural progression of heaviness from "hard rock" and "heavy rock" (i.e. suggesting an even harder brand of music) so the term was inevitable. When it was first used and when it gained mainstream use is debated, but few deny that it was a well-established term in music by at least 1975, though it referred to or was used interchangeably with 'heavy rock' and a multitude of hard rock bands from Music/{{Rush|Band}}, to Music/{{Queen}}, to Music/{{ACDC}} were all labeled heavy metal even if most didn't consider themselves such, tried to avoid the label, or weren't metal to begin with— even Music/{{Aerosmith}} was at one point called an "American heavy metal-rock band!" This has led to a bit of confusion, with few of the aforementioned bands being mentioned in the same breath as metal these days.

Few, however, deny that the ones who hit the lights were an obscure little band from Birmingham known as Music/BlackSabbath, who fused these chaotic sounds with morbid CrapsackWorld imagery and galloping rhythms as can be heard on their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkD_0G8zQGI slow-building, satanic-sounding self-titled track]] off of their debut album, which would in turn develop into the metal we all know and love on their following albums (their sophomore effort ''Paranoid'' sometimes being considered the first all-out metal record). Tony Iommi's signature crunchy, aggressive guitar riffs became wildly popular with young people on both sides of the Atlantic, much to [[TheNewRockAndRoll the consternation]] of [[MoralGuardians their parents]] and the newly un-hip '60s "flower generation". Despite the controversy (which would persist and mutate into different forms as heavy metal itself evolved), Black Sabbath enjoyed brisk album sales and a sizable fan-base as their mixture of [[BlackMetal blackened]] [[HeavyMithril lyrical]] [[RockMeAsmodeus themes]], [[SpeedMetal intense]] [[ThrashMetal bursts]] [[PowerMetal of]] [[DeathMetal speed]], [[StonerMetal riff-infestation,]] [[DoomMetal plodding]] [[SludgeMetal tempos]], and [[ProgressiveMetal technicality]] exploded forth into history.

If Black Sabbath were the TropeMakers of heavy metal, then the classifiably contentious Music/DeepPurple could potentially be considered the {{trope codifier}}s, being held-back by a keyboard-driven, catchier sound with a more old-fashioned, mid-boosted guitar tone but nevertheless influencing an entire generation of metal musicians to come. Providing a faster, smarter variation of Black Sabbath's crushing riffwork, they mixed razor sharp riffs, agile leads, and one of the earliest examples of the dramatic, high-pitched vocals and searing "MetalScream" that became almost synonymous with metal in the mid-to-late 1980s. Fast-paced burners like [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2BO3UTOhZ8 "Highway Star"]] stripped away Black Sabbath's doomy blues baggage, providing a sound that was nothing short of revolutionary, later on being taken to the nth degree by the first self-conscious metal band, also often considered the {{trope codifier}}s, Music/JudasPriest. Abandoning the more classic hard rock sound of their debut, they picked up where Sabbath left off on their sophomore album, ''Sad Wings of Destiny'', with similarly plodding and bass-heavy guitar riffs. They would further innovate a punchier, gallop like sound on tracks such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntvF-VZ-ppQ "Dissident Aggressor"]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoZDyGpB0_E "Stained Class"]] and a "rev your engines go" approach on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tlEa0rDZbM "Exciter"]] that anticipated the speed metal and thrash metal movements of the 1980s. Unfortunately, the genre's sound turned out to be too revolutionary for the conservative '70s rock scene and heavy metal enjoyed limited mainstream success at this time, with almost all of the mid '70s metal bands remaining small, unsigned, and having been forgotten (and in some cases {{vindicated by history}}) while leaving the progressive, glam, and heavy rock bands of the day to merely experiment with heavy metal but never adopting the sound in full.

The first movement came from when punk rock's own offspring, the nastier, noisier, more aggressive "hardcore punk", trickled down into a metal scene already amped-up on punk rock rage. When hardcore punk bands such as Music/MinorThreat and Music/BlackFlag brought heavy music to the fastest it had ever been, many within the metal scene decided to beat them at their own game and turn it up to eleven. British band Music/{{Venom}}'s 1981 album ''Welcome to Hell'' was perhaps the first prominent fruit of the budding extreme metal subculture. Blisteringly fast, stupendously aggressive, and unabashedly offensive with its lurid [[{{Satan}} Satanic]] imagery and violent themes, ''Welcome to Hell'' was perhaps the most aggressive album ever published at the time, and became a lightning rod for controversy from people who claimed that it was subversive, Satanic, and encouraged all manner of social ills. This, of course, only made it more popular with rebellious youth. European "SpeedMetal" bands began to one-up each other in aggression, creating a massive metal arms race of chainsaw guitar riffs, frenetic drumming, and new vocal styles that mutated the high-pitched wail that had now become the definitive metal voice into nearly incomprehensible shrieking and gibbering. These early extreme metal albums were raw, uncompromising, and hostile, attracting a small but loyal following of hardcore fans, but were too unpolished and off-putting to crack the larger music world.

Music/{{Metallica}} were the first thrashers out of the gates with their 1983 debut ''Kill 'Em All''. The distinctive guitar styles of James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine (who, although ejected from the band by that point, arguably had far more impact on Metallica's early style than his replacement Kirk Hammett) and tougher, more masculine imagery of the band themselves were a hit, and they were quickly joined in the scene by bands like Exodus, Music/{{Megadeth}} (masterminded by an enraged Dave Mustaine trying to one-up Metallica), Testament, Music/{{Slayer}}, and others. The thrash movement spread across the US but truly found second homes in New York, where Music/{{Anthrax}} and Music/{{Overkill}} infused an extra dose of punk elements to create a pounding, crowd-pleasing "mosh" rhythm and acerbic DeadpanSnarker attitude, and in Germany, where it intermingled with European extreme metal to fuse the best of both worlds, spawning bands such as Kreator, Sodom, Tankard and Destruction.

At the same time, the mainstream music business had gotten wise to the burgeoning success of heavy metal and was busy making a more accessible, radio-friendly version, infusing metal elements into glam and arena rock to create a form of music that has at different times and places been called "glam metal", "pop metal", "Eighties metal" (a serious misnomer as there were plenty of other forms of metal at the time), "HairMetal", "cock rock," and other more unflattering terms (some, like glam metal, often get confused with '70s GlamRock). Causing tension among metal fans as to whether it belongs as part of the genre, and more or less laughed at nostalgically in retrospect, Glam metal featured a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOIDqRKo0Y bouncy, dance-friendly beat with an exaggerated echoey "gated" snare tone]], a mixture of loud distortion and radio-friendly guitar work, a scaled-back, more rockish variant of the MetalScream, very polished, anti-metal production, and a sleazy HotterAndSexier image with androgynous musicians in [[{{Stripperiffic}} highly sexualized]] outfits, raunchy lyrics that often centered around prostitution, sex, drugs, partying, and L.A./Vegas nightlife. While reviled by the core metal faithful from its very inception, glam metal became outrageously popular, and many classic metal bands like Tygers of Pan Tang, the ever-changing Scorpions, briefly but by far most notoriously Judas Priest, and most successfully Def Leppard jumped on the bandwagon after the diversification of the metal genre took the wind out of NWOBHM's sails. And, despite its negative connotations, the genre gave rise to highly-regarded musicians such as Sebastian Bach, Slash, and Rick Allen, and was the first major gateway into other forms of metal.

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, which was by now starting to congeal into a cohesive scene that would one day be known as black metal. While this "power metal" 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 and progressive rock, which was now losing the bad reputation it had acquired in the 1970s, spawned a host of new "white-collar" American metal bands like Queensryche, Fates Warning, and Crimson Glory.

By 1991, hair metal was more ''hair'' than metal with the only judge of a band's worth being their flash and their love ballads. Fourth and fifth generation glam bands were incredibly processed and cookie cutter in nature, with their only resolve being 'make money and get women', leaving their musicianship to be a passing after thought and their song structures being very simple and corporate "Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus." The genre hollowed out, and as TheEighties turned into TheNineties, even as the record industry was drunk on the genre's success and former bad boys Metallica came within a hair's breadth of taking home a Grammy award, the scene suddenly collapsed.

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 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 metal blasting on. Still more heavy 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 led to the downfall of their very own genre in the mainstream. When they realized this, metalheads quickly turned tail and dissed grunge, only to find metal had been discarded. With the much more down to earth and simpler 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, whether they were 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 1992 to 1997 was the [[AudienceAlienatingEra Dark Age of Heavy Metal]]. During this time, anything that was once glorified by metal was now vilified, and the theatrical, technical, and excessive natures of metal became a reason for headshaking and scorn as Alternative's ThreeChordsAndTheTruth ideology became mainstream. Stacking the odds against metal further was the stratospheric success of hair metal in the '80s. This brand of metal was advertised extensively thanks to MTV, and thus, in the popular mind, metal rested squarely from the silliness of Cinderella, Poison, and Bon Jovi to the 'brutality' of Metallica and Slayer, leaving the experimental, traditional, and underground bands and genres to rot and branding the term "heavy metal" with goofy connotations of big hair, macho posturing, overt sexism, pigheadedness, an obsession with destruction, and unrealistic opulence.

Though pop metal was off the charts in the US, it was reaching its zenith in other parts of the globe. One such place was Europe, where glam metal and grunge had much less impact than in the US. Just as Britain was contending with Madchester and the earliest days of {{Britpop}} (essentially their own version of Grunge), German act Helloween rose from a second-tier speed/power metal act to a megahit with their ''Keeper of the Seven Keys'' duology, which focused on catchy vocal melodies, a more light-hearted LighterAndSofter attitude, and influences from synthesizer-heavy European pop music, spawning hundreds of imitators throughout TheNineties. Music/DreamTheater created a modest but enduring fanbase by taking the progressive rock influences of power metal and running with them, merging metal and prog-rock into a unique sound that gained a following with people who wanted something "smarter" than grunge. Their sophomore effort ''Images and Words'' sold 800,000 copies despite being released at the height of the grunge craze. The success of Pantera is credited with having kept metal from completely vanishing from mainstream attention during this period, with the band's groove metal stylings connecting with millions of fans [[NuMetal (though inadvertently laying the groundwork for another genre which would emerge few years later).]] Industrial Metal and its subgenre Neue Deutsche Harte was on the rise thanks to bands like {{Music/Rammstein}}. Black Sabbath survived by ignoring most of the developments of the 80s and returning to the stomping, bluesy proto-metal that had carried them through TheSeventies, culminating in a brief resurgence of fame as they reunited with former frontman Music/RonnieJamesDio for the 1992 album ''Dehumanizer'', which is still highly regarded to this day. Death metal, a niche genre to begin with, maintained a small but devoted fanbase, with an up-and-coming band from Long Island by the name of Music/{{Suffocation}} making a particularly big splash in 1991 with their Roadrunner debut ''Effigy of the Forgotten'', which combined extreme heaviness and technical proficiency to create a new style of death metal that would slowly but surely shape the scene to come. Also, a group of musicians in Norway had turned the chaotic extreme metal scene into a coherent musical movement that would gain notoriety far beyond its small fanbase.

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 was 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 early grunge. In addition, ex-Grunge bands like Tad, Music/{{Soundgarden}} and Music/AliceInChains were considered metal bands and toured alongside other metal bands, and Nirvana's heavier and darker songs were covered by metal bands; thus while lighter forms of grunge eventually became PostGrunge, which came to be seen as a watered down version of the genre, grunge's heavier, raw and more abrasive side was absorbed into metal. Moreover, both grunge and post-grunge played a role (as with all other metal, punk and rock genres) in the creation of AvantGardeMetal.

The tide began to turn for heavy metal as TheNineties gave way to the TurnOfTheMillennium. The resurgence of heavy metal had a start of sorts with "NuMetal" (or [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Nü Metal]]), which is extremely controversial, to the point where (much like hair metal) arguments about its metal status even occur on this page. Nu Metal took all the disparate developments from the Dark Age of Metal and mixed them together, producing a nearly avant-garde mixture of AlternativeMetal, IndustrialMetal, ThrashMetal, {{Goth}}, GrooveMetal, {{Grunge}}, HardcorePunk, HipHop, PostPunk, SludgeMetal, and PostHardcore (though far from all bands would rely on each and every aspect). Nu Metal was unique for its time, at the very least, and its "chug" riffs, pseudo-death growls, extensive breakdowns, hip-hop influences, and [[{{wangst}} angst-ridden]] themes of inner demons and personal struggles were popular among teens and tweens from 1997 to around 2002, but never caught on with the actual heavy metal community, and the genre was slapped with the derisive label "mallcore" by its detractors. Despite this, nü-metal achieved a level of commercial success that simply hadn't been matched by other metal subgenres, with some bands even outselling '80s pop metal acts, registering it as the most successful 'metal' has ever been. During this time, even older bands such as Slayer and Metallica tried out the genre, much to the dismay of their fans. Following the early success of Music/{{Sepultura}} and Coal Chamber, and the meteoric rise of Music/{{Korn}} and Music/LimpBizkit, a wave of Nu Metal bands erupted, and bands such as Music/{{Slipknot}}, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/{{Deftones}}, Music/LinkinPark and many others became the biggest 'metal' bands in years, and although some of these bands also don't consider themselves metal, nu metal remains a gateway for many, much as glam had been over a decade prior.

In 2001, the music industry experienced an album sales bubble. Nu metal commanded and led this pop music blitzkrieg, and soon its nickname 'mallcore' played into effect as those who once shunned metal (i.e. mall dwellers such as jocks and preps) began following bands without knowing anything about the music, its history, or the style. Nu metal's diverse sounds of industrial, rap, and hard rock made it the darling on MTV. In fact, it was MTV that pushed this scene the most, marketing it as the faithful return of heavy music with a more musically diverse twist, and nu metal thus enjoyed much airplay. A new generation of fans were brought into the fold, many of whom had grown up never having heard of the likes of hair metal or NWOBHM. The divide between older metal fans was visible, as many of the supporters of traditional metal felt that this new style simply lacked the power, virtuosity, and draw that older genres had, while fans of nu metal thought that most old-school metal was simply "outdated." Coupled with PostGrunge and the early days of {{Emo}}, though people were saying metal was back, it still seemed the classic idea of the genre was nowhere to be seen.

While NuMetal fell ''hard'' in 2003, a more traditional form of metal with more focus on technicality and melody arose. Dubbed "The New Wave of American Heavy Metal", {{Metalcore}} bands such as Shadows Fall, Lamb of God[[note]]although more GrooveMetal than metalcore[[/note]], Trivium, Chimaira, and Music/KillswitchEngage became the metal of choice for the mainstream metalhead. Some of these bands, such as Music/AvengedSevenfold and Music/BulletForMyValentine, were much more radio-friendly and emo-influenced, and were derided by traditional metalheads as "mallcore"; while the heavier and more technically proficient bands such as the aforementioned Shadows Fall and Chimaira were all too often lumped in with the latter. This scene fell off in popularity in the early 2010s.

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 polyrythmic style of GrooveMetal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}. And even in 2020s, a band named Kardashev invented once-thought impossible genre, deathgaze, which is basically death metal and shoegaze mixed together, as a response to Blackgaze. Youtubers such as [=331Erock=] added novelty to the heavy metal genre by covering non-metal genres (mainly pop, film scores or meme songs). A very metal-influenced dubstep genre named "metalstep" (known as "brostep") also came around, heavier than all dubstep that had come before.

Meanwhile in Japan, a unique metal genre arose, taking the country, East Asia, and eventually the world by storm, assimilated with [[JapanesePopMusic J-pop]]--Kawaii Metal. Groups such as {{Music/BABYMETAL}}, Ladybaby and Deadlift Lolita made it possible to combine J-pop's cuteness with heavy metal's more extreme style, and at least in BABYMETAL's case, received acclaim from Western metal acts.

* AlternativeMetal is the genre from which NuMetal originated. A rather diverse genre, which, as the title would imply, combines Metal riffs and darkness with AlternativeRock songwriting and musical touches. As mentioned, the genre is rather diverse- the aforementioned NuMetal, FunkMetal and IndustrialMetal are all arguably subgenres of it, and it overlaps quite a bit with {{Grunge}} and PostGrunge, especially on the heavier end. While not as divisive as NuMetal, it's still polarizing with more purist metal audiences.

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[[caption-width-right:350:From top to bottom: Music/BlackSabbath, Music/MotleyCrue, Music/{{Pantera}}, Music/{{Metallica}}]]

[[quoteright:350:[[Music/JudasPriest https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/judas_priest-painkiller_4023.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[MetalScream YAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!]]]]

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Heavy metal largely fell under the radar in the mid to late 1970s as Black Sabbath began to fall apart at the seams. They and Deep Purple were considered the flagships of the genre with few others taking up the role, and many of the 'moderate metal' bands from 1973-1978, including [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSq3dshjrqk Bedemon]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p884WqCYZfQ False Prophet]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Z1L8xYaQc Iron Claw]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjlXjZ62dv4 Lucifer's Friend]] were left as independent acts that never saw any commercial success or even album releases, dooming them to obscurity and denying them a place in the history of metal. With heavy metal not only a dying trend but also an undefined label given to bands with negative press, there needed to be some sort of cohesive movement, one that would give heavy metal its own image. The new sensation of punk music provided much of the aggression of heavy metal in a rawer, stripped-down package to appeal to a music-buying public sick of the theatrics of ProgressiveRock and sluggish tempos of the remnants of classic rock. However, the success of British punk bands was providing fresh inspiration to a new generation of metal musicians, who blended the gritty, street-smart anger of punk with the drama and thunderous bombast of heavy metal. In late 1979, the NewWaveOfBritishHeavyMetal (NWOBHM) exploded onto the British music scene, bringing with it new bands like Music/{{Motorhead}}, Music/IronMaiden, Music/DefLeppard, and more that were faster than Sabbath, louder than Priest, and angrier than The Sex Pistols. Soon, even the classic metal acts were signing into this new movement, with new and uncompromising releases from Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Music/{{Dio}}. The collapse of the original punk scene brought even more wind into heavy metal's sails and metal bands began springing up, not only in the UK, but all over America and Europe, and as the genre's success grew, three very different movements were coalescing within a once more-or-less unified genre.

At the same time, the mainstream music business had gotten wise to the burgeoning success of heavy metal and was busy making a more accessible, radio-friendly version, infusing metal elements into glam and arena rock to create a form of music that has at different times and places been called "glam metal", "pop metal", "Eighties metal" (a serious misnomer as there were plenty of other forms of metal at the time), "HairMetal", "cock rock," and other more unflattering terms (some, like glam metal, often get confused with '70s GlamRock). Causing tension among metal fans as to whether it belongs as part of the genre, and more or less laughed at nostalgically in retrospect, Glam metal featured a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOIDqRKo0Y bouncy, dance-friendly beat with an exaggerated echoey "gated" snare tone]], a mixture of loud distortion and radio-friendly guitar work, a scaled-back, more rockish variant of the MetalScream, very polished, anti-metal production, and a sleazy HotterAndSexier image with androgynous musicians in [[{{Stripperiffic}} highly sexualized]] outfits, raunchy lyrics that often centered around prostitution, sex, drugs, partying, and L.A./Vegas nightlife. While reviled by the core metal faithful from its very inception, glam metal became outrageously popular, and many classic metal bands like Tygers of Pan Tang, the ever-changing Scorpions, briefly but by far most notoriously Judas Priest, and most successfully Def Leppard jumped on the bandwagon after the diversification of the metal genre took the wind out of NWOBHM's sails. And, despite its negative connotations, the genre gave rise to highly-regarded musicians such as Sebastian Bach, Slash, and Rick Allen and was the first major gateway into other forms of metal.

One far less known genre of heavy metal was born during this period and hailed little attention: "DoomMetal". Doom arose directly from Music/BlackSabbath and other '70s proto metal groups rooted in the blues, such as Pentagram, Sir Lord Baltimore, Lucifer's Friend, Captain Beyond, Blue Öyster Cult, and others, but it didn't truly grow until the early '80s with the arrival of Music/SaintVitus, Trouble, and Witchfinder General. It faced brutally stiff competition throughout the late '70s and '80s from genres such as glam metal, and the emerging thrash, speed, and power metal scenes. Many doom metal bands relied on mid-paced to slower-paced riffs, and focused more on personal themes of sorrow, depression, and death, which were a departure from the usual themes of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, aggression, sword & sorcery, and anti-Christianity/Satanism commonly associated with the genre. The lack of speed in particular led to it being ignored by fans more used to the faster paced styles of metal, and it was generally ignored by mainstream media as well. It wasn't until Music/{{Candlemass}}'s 1986 album ''Epicus Doomicus Metallicus'' that doom enjoyed its first bout of commercial attention. Nevertheless, in the face of more commercial genres such as hair metal, more aggressive genres such as thrash and death metal, and more traditional genres such as power metal, doom metal remained a niche genre; though, with its dirges and sludgy guitar tones, it did wind up directly and indirectly influencing more than its fair share of genres and musicians, some of which would come [[AlternativeRock back]] to [[{{Grunge}} haunt]] [[NuMetal metal]] in the future.

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, which was by now starting to congeal into a cohesive scene that would one day be known as black metal. While this "power metal" 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 and progressive rock, which was now losing the bad reputation it had acquired in the 1970s, spawned a host of new "white-collar" American metal bands like Queensryche, Fates Warning, and Crimson Glory.

By 1991, hair metal was more ''hair'' than metal with the only judge of a band's worth being their flash and their love ballads. Fourth and fifth generation glam bands were incredibly processed and cookie cutter in nature, with their only resolve being 'make money and get women', leaving their musicianship to be a passing after thought and their song structures being very simple and corporate "Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus." The genre hollowed out. As TheEighties turned into TheNineties, even as the record industry was drunk on the genre's success and former bad boys Metallica came within a hair's breadth of taking home a Grammy award, the scene suddenly collapsed.

Though pop metal was off the charts in the US, it was reaching its zenith in other parts of the globe. One such place was Europe, where glam metal and grunge had much less impact than in the US. Just as Britain was contending with Madchester and the earliest days of {{Britpop}} (essentially their own version of Grunge), German act Helloween rose from a second-tier speed/power metal act to a megahit with their ''Keeper of the Seven Keys'' duology, which focused on catchy vocal melodies, a more light-hearted LighterAndSofter attitude, and influences from synthesizer-heavy European pop music, spawning hundreds of imitators throughout TheNineties. Music/DreamTheater created a modest but enduring fanbase by taking the progressive rock influences of power metal and running with them, merging metal and prog-rock into a unique sound that gained a following with people who wanted something "smarter" than grunge. Their sophomore effort ''Images and Words'' sold 800,000 copies despite being released at the height of the grunge craze. The success of Pantera is credited with having kept metal from completely vanishing from mainstream attention during this period, with the band's groove metal stylings connecting with millions of fans [[NuMetal (though inadvertently laying the groundwork for another genre which would emerge few years later).]] Industrial Metal and its subgenre Neue Deutsche Harte is on the rise thanks to bands like {{Music/Rammstein}}. Black Sabbath survived by ignoring most of the developments of the 80s and returning to the stomping, bluesy proto-metal that had carried them through TheSeventies, culminating in a brief resurgence of fame as they reunited with former frontman Music/RonnieJamesDio for the 1992 album ''Dehumanizer'', which is still highly regarded to this day. Death metal, a niche genre to begin with, maintained a small but devoted fanbase, with an up-and-coming band from Long Island by the name of Music/{{Suffocation}} making a particularly big splash in 1991 with ''Effigy of the Forgotten'', their Roadrunner debut, which combined extreme heaviness and technical proficiency to create a new style of death metal that would slowly but surely shape the scene to come. And a group of musicians in Norway had turned the chaotic extreme metal scene into a coherent musical movement that would gain notoriety far beyond its small fanbase.

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 was 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 early grunge. In addition, ex-Grunge bands like Tad, {{Music/Soundgarden}} and [[{{Music/AliceInChains}} Alice In Chains]] are now considered metal bands and tour alongside other metal bands, and Nirvana's heavier and darker songs were covered by metal bands, thus while ligther forms of grunge eventually became PostGrunge, which is seen as watered down version of the genre, grunge's heavier, raw and more abrasive side was absorbed into metal. Moreover, both grunge and post-grunge played a role (as with all other metal, punk and rock genres) in creation of AvantGardeMetal.

The tide began to turn for heavy metal as TheNineties gave way to the TurnOfTheMillennium. The resurgence of heavy metal had a start of sorts with "NuMetal" (or [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Nü Metal]]), which is extremely controversial, to the point where (much like hair metal) arguments about its metal status even occur on this page. NuMetal took all the disparate developments from the Dark Age of Metal and mixed them together, producing a nearly avant-garde mixture of AlternativeMetal, IndustrialMetal, ThrashMetal, {{Goth}}, GrooveMetal, {{Grunge}}, HardcorePunk, HipHop, PostPunk, SludgeMetal, and PostHardcore (though far from all bands would rely on each and every aspect). Nu Metal was, at the very least, unique for its time and its "chug" riffs, pseudo-death growls, extensive breakdowns, hip-hop influences, and [[{{wangst}} angst-ridden]] themes of inner demons and personal struggles were popular among teens and tweens from 1997 to around 2002, but never caught on with the actual heavy metal community and was slapped with the derisive label "mallcore" by its detractors. Despite this, nü-metal achieved a level of commercial success that simply hadn't been matched by other metal subgenres, with some bands even outselling '80s pop metal acts, registering it as the most successful 'metal' has ever been. During this time, even older bands such as Slayer and Metallica tried out the genre, much to the dismay of their fans. Following the early success of Music/{{Sepultura}} and Coal Chamber, and the meteoric rise of Music/{{Korn}} and Music/LimpBizkit, a wave of Nu Metal bands erupted, and bands such as Music/{{Slipknot}}, Music/SystemOfADown, Music/{{Deftones}}, Music/LinkinPark and many others became the biggest 'metal' bands in years, and although some of these bands also don't consider themselves metal, nu metal remains a gateway for many much as glam had been over a decade prior.

In 2001, the music industry experienced an album sales bubble. Nu metal commanded and led this pop music blitzkrieg and soon its nickname 'mallcore' played into effect as those who once shunned metal (i.e. mall dwellers such as jocks and preps) began following bands without knowing anything about the music, its history, or the style. Nu metal's diverse sounds of industrial, rap, and hard rock made it the darling on MTV. In fact, it was MTV that pushed this scene the most, marketing it as the faithful return of heavy music with a more musically diverse twist, and NuMetal thus enjoyed much airplay. A new generation of fans were brought into the fold, many of whom had grown up never having heard of the likes of hair metal or NWOBHM. The divide between older metal fans was visible, as many of the supporters of traditional metal felt that this new style simply lacked the power, virtuosity, and draw that older genres had, while fans of nu metal thought that most old-school metal was simply "outdated." Coupled with PostGrunge and the early days of {{Emo}}, though people were saying metal was back, it still seemed the classic idea of the genre was nowhere to be seen.

While NuMetal fell ''hard'' in 2003, a more traditional form of metal with more focus on technicality and melody arose. Dubbed "The New Wave of American Heavy Metal", {{Metalcore}} bands such as Shadows Fall, Lamb of God[[note]]although more GrooveMetal than metalcore[[/note]], Trivium, Chimaira, and Killswitch Engage became the metal of choice for the mainstream metalhead. Some of these bands such as Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine were much more radio-friendly and emo-influenced, and were derided by traditional metalheads as "mallcore"; while the heavier and more technically proficient bands such as the aforementioned Shadows Fall and Chimaira were all too often lumped in with the latter. This scene fell off in popularity in the early 2010s.

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 polyrythmic style of GrooveMetal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}. And even in 2020s, a band named Kardashev invented once-thought impossible genre, deathgaze, which is basically death metal and shoegaze mixed together, as a response to Blackgaze. While Youtubers such as [=331Erock=] added novelty to the heavy metal genre by covering non-metal genres (mainly pop, film scores or meme songs). A very metal-influenced dubstep genre named "metalstep" (known as "brostep") has also seen its dawn, that is heavier than all dubstep came before.

Meanwhile in Japan, a unique metal genre have arisen, taking the country, East Asia and eventually the world by storm, assimilated with [[JapanesePopMusic J-pop]]. Enter Kawaii Metal. Groups, such as {{Music/BABYMETAL}}, Ladybaby and Deadlift Lolita have made it possible to combine J-pop's cuteness with heavy metal's more extreme style.

Since then, we've seen a series of ups and downs in popularity but today, heavy metal continues to change with the times. With the popularity of the Internet, metal fans have largely eschewed music television and radio -- which have become enamored with pop and rap -- and instead focus their interests as a community and welcome those who find their way into this culture. Meanwhile, the mainstream has also embraced metal in most of its forms, with many prominent names being known metalheads while metal super stars also top headlines. Trends in metal change -- from alternative metal to metalcore to deathcore to djent to the recent wave of occult metal, metal fans continue to expand their horizons while awaiting the "new Metallica's" arrival.

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 shrieks or growls 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.

* ThrashMetal is characterized by its choppy rhythms, frequent tempo shifts, and typically large number of riffs per song. Lyrics tend towards more concrete and less fantastic than other types, often with a political or social bent. Prominent examples include Music/{{Metallica}}, Music/{{Megadeth}}, Music/{{Anthrax}}, Music/{{Slayer}} ("The Big Four"), Music/{{Kreator}}, Music/{{Sodom}}, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Watchtower. The more intellectual forms can overlap with aggressive power metal and the more aggressive forms overlap with death metal. Sometimes mixes with hardcore to form "crossover thrash", as exemplified by Music/SuicidalTendencies and D.R.I.. To differentiate from speed metal, thrash metal vocals feature more of a growl and the guitars tended to be downtuned in some respects. Expect fans to argue that this is metal at its purest.

''' I..I '''

One of the [[RockMeAsmodeus most]] frequently misunderstood genres of popular music, heavy metal traces its origins back to the late 1960s, as the hippie movement rose and fell and psychedelic hard rock bands began to proliferate, bringing with them a new, [[DarkerAndEdgier hard-edged]] style of guitar playing. When the acid rock bands began adding more lightning and thunder to their music, something new was born. Something big.

But who strummed the first metal riff? Surprisingly, many consider Music/TheBeatles' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8SImoLm_UI "Helter Skelter"]] the first heavy metal song while the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OTvz1lJzmI electric guitar legend]] Music/JimiHendrix is credited as a major inspiration with the story that a supposed music magazine article described his music as "like bars of metal raining down on the stage." Other potential starters include [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU5uDozoSSM Blue Cheer in 1968]], a very little known garage band called Bitter Creek with their 1967 song '[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXgrmCvtxv8 "Plastic Thunder"]], and, going back even ''further'', Link Wray, who recorded the heavily distorted ProtoPunk instrumental [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjs5QWjvNWc "Rumble"]] in '''1958'''.

Few, however, deny that the ones who hit the lights were an obscure little band from Birmingham known as Music/BlackSabbath, who fused these chaotic sounds with morbid CrapsackWorld imagery and galloping rhythms as can be heard on their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISXnYu-Or4w slow-building, satanic-sounding self-titled track]] off of their debut album, which would in turn develop into the metal we all know and love on their following albums (their sophomore effort ''Paranoid'' sometimes being considered the first all-out metal record). Tony Iommi's signature crunchy, aggressive guitar riffs became wildly popular with young people on both sides of the Atlantic, much to [[TheNewRockAndRoll the consternation]] of [[MoralGuardians their parents]] and the newly un-hip '60s "flower generation". Despite the controversy (which would persist and mutate into different forms as heavy metal itself evolved), Black Sabbath enjoyed brisk album sales and a sizable fan-base as their mixture of [[BlackMetal blackened]] [[HeavyMithril lyrical]] [[RockMeAsmodeus themes]], [[SpeedMetal intense]] [[ThrashMetal bursts]] [[PowerMetal of]] [[DeathMetal speed]], [[StonerMetal riff-infestation,]] [[DoomMetal plodding]] [[SludgeMetal tempos]], and [[ProgressiveMetal technicality]] exploded forth into history.

If Black Sabbath were the TropeMakers of heavy metal, then the classifiably contentious Music/DeepPurple could potentially be considered the {{trope codifier}}s, being held-back by a keyboard-driven, catchier sound with a more old-fashioned, mid-boosted guitar tone but nevertheless influencing an entire generation of metal musicians to come. Providing a faster, smarter variation of Black Sabbath's crushing riffwork, they mixed razor sharp riffs, agile leads, and one of the earliest examples of the dramatic, high-pitched vocals and searing "MetalScream" that became almost synonymous with metal in the mid-to-late 1980s. Fast-paced burners like [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRt3PIDER94 "Highway Star"]] stripped away Black Sabbath's doomy blues baggage, providing a sound that was nothing short of revolutionary, later on being taken to the nth degree by the first self-conscious metal band, also often considered the {{trope codifier}}s, Music/JudasPriest. Abandoning the more classic hard rock sound of their debut, they picked up where Sabbath left off on their sophomore album, ''Sad Wings of Destiny'', with similarly plodding and bass-heavy guitar riffs. They would further innovate a punchier, gallop like sound on tracks such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_mpt8xyZVI "Dissident Aggressor"]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z44z-knCLf8 "Stained Class"]] and a "rev your engines go" approach on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02V2XWbpf1s "Exciter"]] that anticipated the speed metal and thrash metal movements of the 1980s. Unfortunately, the genre's sound turned out to be too revolutionary for the conservative '70s rock scene and heavy metal enjoyed limited mainstream success at this time, with almost all of the mid '70s metal bands remaining small, unsigned, and having been forgotten (and in some cases {{vindicated by history}}) while leaving the progressive, glam, and heavy rock bands of the day to merely experiment with heavy metal but never adopting the sound in full.

Heavy metal largely fell under the radar in the mid to late 1970s as Black Sabbath began to fall apart at the seams. They and Deep Purple were considered the flagships of the genre with few others taking up the role, and many of the 'moderate metal' bands from 1973-1978, including [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4pXhdfi5Y Bedemon]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p884WqCYZfQ False Prophet]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSRZz13YiqI Iron Claw]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5DpOdf-_yM Lucifer's Friend]] were left as independent acts that never saw any commercial success or even album releases, dooming them to obscurity and denying them a place in the history of metal. With heavy metal not only a dying trend but also an undefined label given to bands with negative press, there needed to be some sort of cohesive movement, one that would give heavy metal its own image. The new sensation of punk music provided much of the aggression of heavy metal in a rawer, stripped-down package to appeal to a music-buying public sick of the theatrics of ProgressiveRock and sluggish tempos of the remnants of classic rock. However, the success of British punk bands was providing fresh inspiration to a new generation of metal musicians, who blended the gritty, street-smart anger of punk with the drama and thunderous bombast of heavy metal. In late 1979, the NewWaveOfBritishHeavyMetal (NWOBHM) exploded onto the British music scene, bringing with it new bands like Music/{{Motorhead}}, Music/IronMaiden, Music/DefLeppard, and more that were faster than Sabbath, louder than Priest, and angrier than The Sex Pistols. Soon, even the classic metal acts were signing into this new movement, with new and uncompromising releases from Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Music/{{Dio}}. The collapse of the original punk scene brought even more wind into heavy metal's sails and metal bands began springing up, not only in the UK, but all over America and Europe, and as the genre's success grew, three very different movements were coalescing within a once more-or-less unified genre.

At the same time, the mainstream music business had gotten wise to the burgeoning success of heavy metal and was busy making a more accessible, radio-friendly version, infusing metal elements into glam and arena rock to create a form of music that has at different times and places been called "glam metal", "pop metal", "Eighties metal" (a serious misnomer as there were plenty of other forms of metal at the time), "HairMetal", "cock rock," and other more unflattering terms (some, like glam metal, often get confused with '70s GlamRock). Causing tension among metal fans as to whether it belongs as part of the genre, and more or less laughed at nostalgically in retrospect, Glam metal featured a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7moSK-bzYo bouncy, dance-friendly beat with an exaggerated echoey "gated" snare tone]], a mixture of loud distortion and radio-friendly guitar work, a scaled-back, more rockish variant of the MetalScream, very polished, anti-metal production, and a sleazy HotterAndSexier image with androgynous musicians in [[{{Stripperiffic}} highly sexualized]] outfits, raunchy lyrics that often centered around prostitution, sex, drugs, partying, and L.A./Vegas nightlife. While reviled by the core metal faithful from its very inception, glam metal became outrageously popular, and many classic metal bands like Tygers of Pan Tang, the ever-changing Scorpions, briefly but by far most notoriously Judas Priest, and most successfully Def Leppard jumped on the bandwagon after the diversification of the metal genre took the wind out of NWOBHM's sails. And, despite its negative connotations, the genre gave rise to highly-regarded musicians such as Sebastian Bach, Slash, and Rick Allen and was the first major gateway into other forms of metal.

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 polyrythmic style of GrooveMetal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}. And even in 2020s, a band named Kardashev invented once-thought impossible genre, deathgaze, which is basically death metal and shoegaze mixed together, as a response to Blackgaze. While Youtubers such as [=331Erock=] added novelty to the heavy metal genre by covering non-metal genres (mainly pop, film scores or meme songs).

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 early grunge. In addition, ex-Grunge bands like Tad, {{Music/Soundgarden}} and {{Music/AliceInChains}} are now considered metal bands and tour alongside other metal bands, and Nirvana's heavier and darker songs were covered by metal bands, thus while ligther forms of grunge eventually became PostGrunge, which is seen as watered down version of the genre, grunge's heavier, raw and more abrasive side was absorbed into metal. Moreover, both grunge and post-grunge played a role (as with all other metal, punk and rock genres) in creation of AvantGardeMetal.

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 polyrythmic style of GrooveMetal highly influenced by bands such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/{{Periphery}}. And even in 2020s, a band named Kardashev invented once-thought impossible genre, deathgaze, which is basically death metal and shoegaze mixed together, as a response to Blackgaze.

* HeavyMetal, also known as traditional metal, trad metal, or "true metal" (although that overlaps with American power metal), is the original style. It usually features medium to fast tempos (although some bands are slower) with a high degree of melody and clean vocals. Prominent examples include Music/BlackSabbath, Music/JudasPriest, Music/{{Manowar}} and Music/IronMaiden. Note that what is called Heavy Metal can also be labelled as Power Metal by some, as many Power Metal bands make use of the same tempos as "trad" metal bands. Traditional heavy metal has, in recent years, undergone a major resurgence in the metal underground. This is typically referred to as the ''New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal'' and is oft confused with American Power Metal.

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 early grunge. In addition, ex-Grunge bands like Tad, {{Music/Soundgarden}} and {{Music/AliceInChains}} are now considered metal bands and tour alongside other metal bands, and Nirvana's heavier and darker songs were covered by metal bands, thus while ligther forms of grunge eventually became post-grunge, which is seen as watered down version of the genre, grunge's heavier, raw and more abrasive side was absorbed into metal.

** Speaking of BABYMETAL, related to avant-garde metal is kawaii metal, which well, a metal genre where you take a traditional metal vocalist out of the band, and in ther place you put a Japanese IdolSinger in, combining J-pop's idol culture and general cuteness with metal's aggressive instrumentation. It could range anything from HairMetal to BlackMetal or deathgrind. Beside BABYMETAL, there is also Ladybaby and Deadlift Lolita.

** Speaking of BABYMETAL, related to avant-garde metal is kawaii metal, which well, a metal genre instead of a traditional vocalist, you got a Japanese IdolSinger, combining J-pop's idol culture and general cuteness with metal's aggressive instrumentation. It could range anything from HairMetal to BlackMetal or deathgrind. Beside BABYMETAL, there is also Ladybaby and Deadlift Lolita.

* AvantGardeMetal, also called "art metal" and "experimental metal", is a subgenre of metal characterized by innovative, unconventional, and eclectic musicianship heavily influenced by AvantGardeMusic and WorldMusic, resulting in a bizarre, abstract sound that [[GenreBusting is extremely difficult to pigeonhole]]. The genre has rather mysterious origins, with precedents in bands such as Music/CelticFrost, Music/DreamTheater, and Music/{{Therion}}, but it later came into being in TheNineties amidst the rampant experimentation that also gave rise to AlternativeMetal and NuMetal. Music/{{Korn}}, Music/MrBungle, Music/SystemOfADown and ''Roots''-era Music/{{Sepultura}} have been credited for the genre's emergence in the West, while it developed independently in Europe and Asia thanks to more extreme acts such as Music/{{Meshuggah}} and Music/DirEnGrey that sought to push the limits of what can be considered acceptable in metal. The genre experienced [[PopularityPolynomial massive shifts in popularity]] throughout its history - it was an unfortunate casualty of the decline of its [[AlternativeMetal more]] [[NuMetal accessible]] [[RapMetal counterparts]], but managed to explode back in vogue in TheNewTens as many new metal bands sought to stand out in a scene dominated by retro-metal pandering and soundalike "mallcore" bands. Due to its postmodern aesthetic that seeks to defy genre stereotypes by way of GenreMashup and GenreRoulette, it is often the go-to label for metalheads to label bands that are too difficult or too bizarre to be classified under any other metal genre, examples include Music/DiabloSwingOrchestra, Music/{{BABYMETAL}},
Music/SoundHorizon, and Music/SystemOfADown.