Death metal and grindcore both had roots in the decaying thrash metal scene of the mid-1980s. As that decade concluded, musicians on both sides of the Atlantic were looking for new and horrific ways to shock. The styles ended up gravitating towards one another, but began life as very different entities. Death metal bands like Morbid Angel and Death ...
Eddie Van Halen redefined the sound of heavy metal at the end of the 1970s. His high-velocity solos, distinguished by his finger-tapping technique and tremolo-bar effects, on Van Halen’s 1978 debut album heralded a new era in hard-rock guitar that rejected the clichés of a jaded genre. His solo on Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ in 1982, which effectively ...
When singer-guitarist Dave Mustaine was dismissed from the original Metallica line-up, it opened the door for a young Bay Area-based guitarist named Kirk Hammett (b. 1962) to come in and lead the thrash-metal charge. What Hammett and his mates in Metallica would accomplish from that point, no one could have predicted. Born in San Francisco, California, Hammett ...
The term ‘heavy metal’ came from the controversial US Beat Movement novel, Naked Lunch, in which the author, William Burroughs, talked about ‘heavy metal thunder’. This phrase was used in Steppenwolf’s 1968 single ‘Born To Be Wild’, and helped christen an emerging sub-genre of hard rock. The origins of heavy metal are heard in the hard rock ...
Speed and thrash metal sprang to prominence in America during the early 1980s, with fans around the globe forming their own groups. Equally indebted to the do-it-yourself ethos of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and the underground spirit of hardcore punk, the style’s original progenitors were frighteningly young, but had spent years sharpening their musicianship. Speed ...
Canadian trio Rush had little idea of the magnitude of their actions when they released Caress Of Steel in September of 1975. Just seven months after the group’s second album, Fly By Night, it saw them board a creative wave that for many fans would peak with their next studio release, 1976’s conceptual album 2112. Though still recognizeable ...
By the end of the 1980s, thrash metal was on its last legs. Metallica and Slayer were on the path towards acceptance by the mainstream and it seemed as though heavy metal was in danger of losing not only the extremity upon which it had been founded, but also its shock value. How ill-founded those assumptions turned out to ...
Funk stars of the 1970s like The Ohio Players, Sly & The Family Stone and Funkadelic didn’t realize for a decade that hard rock ears had been paying attention. That same decade, Aerosmith’s combination of white-boy electric blues and propulsive arena hard rock had been deemed as unique, with just Grand Funk Railroad working along the similar lines. ...
As the genre’s name so boldly implies, timing and image were both of critical importance to the realm of nu metal. In pure musical terms there was little to unite the scene’s leading exponents, save for the radical detuning of their instruments and a desire to distance themselves from such old-school hard rock favourites as Iron Maiden and Metallica. ...
A range of metal percussion instruments are found in the western orchestra, many of which have ancient and global origins. Triangle The triangle comprises a slim steel bar, circular in cross-section, bent into an equilateral triangle (18 cm/7 in each side) with one corner open. It is played with a metal rod, and is suspended from a ...
Inspired largely by heavy metal founders Black Sabbath, the doom metal bands based their sound on the slower and more ‘sludgy’ elements of Sabbath’s sound, as can be heard on ‘Planet Caravan’ from Paranoid (1970) and ‘Sweet Leaf’ from Master Of Reality (1971), rather than the faster and more brutal elements of their music. As the name suggests, ...
Formed in California 1981 by drummer Lars Ulrich (born in Denmark, 26 December 1963) and James Hetfield (born 3 August 1963, vocals, guitar) who shared a mutual love of British new-wave heavy metal. Dave Mustaine (lead guitar) and Ron McGovney (bass) were recruited for early live work but due to personal and musical issues the pair were ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1982–present) As their name suggests, this UK band dealt in burning extremes of sound and volume. The original exponents of grindcore, their songs were brutally short – ‘You Suffer’ was exactly one second long – but played with maximum intensity and speed. Numerous personnel changes occurred between cult days of Scum (1986) and the metal-pounding of ...
During the mid-1960s, America’s military action in Vietnam was escalating out of control; students around the world were becoming more politically involved, civil rights and feminism were hot issues and the burgeoning youth movement was turning onto the effects of mind-bending drugs. Accordingly, certain strains of popular music melded attitude, experimentation and a social conscience, and ...
Growing out of Belgian ‘Hoover’ tracks (seemingly featuring the sounds of insanely trumpeting harmonic vacuum cleaners) by the likes of T99, and old hardcore tunes such as Beltram’s ‘Energy Flash’, a Dutch strain of rave added an absurdly fast Roland 909 drum machine to the music. This shuddering, rapid kick-drum sound took off in Rotterdam, which was attempting ...
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David Bowie
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