American culture

Heavy metal

Heavy metal, often referred to as simply metal, is a form of music characterised by aggressive, driving rhythms and highly amplified distorted guitars, generally with grandiose lyrics and virtuosic instrumentation.

Heavy metal is a development of blues, blues rock, rock and prog rock. Its origins lie in the hard rock bands who between 1967 and 1974 took blues and rock and created a hybrid with a heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound.

From the late 1970s on, many bands would fuse this sound with a revival of European classical music. Heavy metal had its peak popularity in the 1980s, during which many of the now existing subgenres first evolved. Although not as commercially successful as it was then, heavy metal still has a large world-wide following of fans known by terms like metalheads and headbangers.

Characteristics

Heavy metal is characterised by virtuosic instrumentation, especially a guitar, dark themes and lyrics, aggressive, uptempo rhythms and classical or symphonic styles.

Of all rock & roll's myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality. There are numerous stylistic variations on heavy metal's core sound, but they're all tied together by a reliance on loud, distorted guitars (usually playing repeated riffs) and simple, pounding rhythms.