101 rules of black metal

[isoFlux]

\"Metal\" basically means distorted guitars, loud bass and drums, and riffing, but also a \"heavy\" sound. Bands like Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Blue Oyster Cult pioneered the sound. These late-60\'s and 70\'s bands are usually reffered to \"Heavy Metal\", a sub-genre of metal pretty much determined by the time of their popularity, but also styles and so forth: things like covering blues songs, long guitar solos, etc etc. The \"Metal\" tag can pretty much be put on every band that uses distorted, riffing guitars, except for certain genres like Grunge and Pop, simply because of the lack of \"power\" or \"heaviness\" in the songs.

Case: Smashing Pumpkin\'s Today or Nirvana\'s Smells Like Teen Spirit vs Metallica\'s Leper Messiah or Iron Maiden\'s The Trooper. The former two obviously are heavily influenced by Metal, use riffing, distorted guitars, and a lot of bass, but neither have the apparent power and heaviness of the latter two (in addion to the lack of prominent and long guitar solos). Smashing Pumpins is largely not like Slayer and Venom: they don\'t make you want to sacrifice children and break stuff But bands like Alice In Chains are a hybrid of traditional Metal and Grunge, having that more mainstream, alt-metal feel while still keeping the power and solos.

However, Tool is Metal: Progressive Metal. They have a super-heavy, dark sound, use bass everywhere (the insrument and the lower ranges), use riffing everywhere, and feature some guitar solos (even if they aren\'t traditional). They lack the progrssive attitude in the songs (not the pretentious, operatic vocals and styles of bands like Yes, Queensryche, or Dream Theatre).

In any case, \"Metal\" is a VERY broad category, encompassing almost every genre mentioned above. Its like the \"root\" genre from which sooooo many come from (Death, Doom, Heavy, Gothic, Thrash, Speed, Power, etc etc). Hell, even Jethro Tull has some Heavy Metal leanings in songs like Aqualung.