Heavy Metal

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Heavy Metal

Heavy metal, a genre of rock music that was hugely popular in the United States and much of the world during the 1980s, not only left an influence on successive trends in rock music, but affected the cultural tastes and style of its many fans. The heavy metal sound was characterized by loud and distorted guitars and vocals; its image by aggressive male posturing and a preoccupation with sexuality, identity, and the corrosion of traditional social institutions. While sometimes causing controversy, even outrage among the establishment for its perceived negative influence on youth, heavy metal expanded the range of recognized images and sounds in rock 'n' roll, developing a formula that combined musical virtuosity with social rebellion. While the groups achieved little Top 40 success even at the height of the genre's popularity, their albums and concerts outsold all their contemporaries, and outlasted them in influence.

Historically, the term "heavy metal" refers to radioactive elements or powerful artillery units. While heavy metal music was not directly named to signify either of these traditions, the bands have always welcomed the associated imagery. Rock critics first began applying the label in the late 1960s, referring primarily to the British bands Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. These three are considered to have laid the framework for the genre. Deep Purple brought classical influences, Led Zeppelin adapted and applied the African-American blues hook, and Black Sabbath lent an air of dark mysticism to their work. Each stressed the importance of distorted guitar sound and long guitar solos.

Heavy metal might never have reached beyond a fanatical cult following if not for a reintroduction of the genre's principles by British and American chart-friendly bands at the beginning of the 1980s. From overseas came Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne (the original vocalist of Black Sabbath). Home-grown American metal of this era included KISS, Van Halen, and Mötley Crüe. This second generation of heavy metal artists was better groomed and less gloomy than their predecessors, and their heavy metal was about lifestyle as well as music. Their songs were played on MTV as often as on the radio and, for the first time, heavy metal records found a market among women and minorities. However, the music never lost its core following of white, teenage suburban males. Record sales remained more stable than any other genre of the 1980s, and bands from the expanding array of heavy metal groups often dominated the top five album spots. Pop and rap acts incorporated guitar solos, a revived blues tradition, and power chords. MTV premiered Headbanger's Ball in 1986, and the show quickly became their top-rated offering. Throughout the decade, heavy metal dominated summer tour attractions such as the "Monsters of Rock" and "US Festival."

With so much commercial success, heavy metal was bound to splinter. Bands who toned down their anger, and the volume on their guitars, came to be referred to as "glam metal" or "pretty metal." Groups such as Bon Jovi, Warrant, and Poison sold albums on their hairsprayed, long locks and sexually risque lyrics. Bon Jovi produced the third-best-selling album of the decade in 1986 with Slippery When Wet. By contrast, bands like Metallica and Megadeth were intent on preserving a rawer, purer form of heavy metal, and gained the mainstream in the late 1980s. Termed "speed metal" or "thrash" because of their blistering drum beats, these bands infused an animal, Punk-rock sensibility into heavy metal, playing loud and hard, growling or screaming, and delving into the psychological and pathological. Crunching along amid the mainstream were the gloomy "dark metal" bands, a subgenre of throwbacks to the early days—led by Judas Priest and Iron Maiden—who employed visual and lyrical images of fantastic worlds, monsters, and heroes.

The heyday of heavy metal appeared to coincide with a period of cultural mistrust in America. The divorce rate was increasing and an American president had resigned. While disco and lite rock dominated the airwaves, heavy metal, like punk rock, built a following around tearing down discredited social institutions. The thrill of a heavy metal concert or a punk show lies at least partially in the bold flaunting of as many rules of decency as possible. While punk called for a rebellious stance against conformity and a simplicity in its attack on social mores, heavy metal insisted on musicianship and even virtuosity. Guitar heroes of the heavy metal age needed to display stage presence, pure speed, and a thorough knowledge of blues and classical music. Heavy metal publicized their heroes through extravagant concert productions and live videos.

The enormous negative reaction of mainstream America to heavy metal music indicates just how influential it was. Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore, formed the Parental Music Resource Center in the early 1980s to examine the effects of modern music lyrics on American youth. The PMRC took Ozzy Osbourne to court for "Suicide Solution," a song they claimed encouraged and glori-fied suicide (Ozzy maintained that it warns of the dangers of drink). Their next target was Judas Priest—the PMRC claimed that when they played Judas Priest's 1978 album Stained Class backwards they found satanic messages on it. Though each case was resolved in the musicians' favor, critics continued to connect heavy metal to Satanism, violence, and drug use. Black Sabbath's use of symbols such as the inverted cross, and Iron Maiden's album, Number of the Beast, seem to invite such attacks. The bands almost always pointed to the ultimately positive message of their work—while, for example, they openly dabbled in the occult, the good guy always won.

The graphic imagery of heavy metal's most lasting offspring, speed metal, horrifies many casual listeners. "Landmine has taken my head/has taken my arms/has taken my legs … " shouts Metallica in 1998's "One." Again, a closer examination of the song reveals an anti-war theme. Heavy metal artists have never denied that they lead a life laced with sex and drugs—Van Halen's 1978 debut single "Running With The Devil," long considered a prototype of the genre, celebrates a life led with no regard for social convention or restriction. "We're not like this because we're in a rock band," said Van Halen's David Lee Roth in one interview, "we're in a rock band because we're like this."

Whether or not one gives any credence to the supposed sociological or psychological messages claimed by its adherents, heavy metal indubitably advanced rock 'n' roll by breaking through visual and lyrical taboos. Though eventually commercially successful in their own right, heavy metal bands climbed to that success through the ranks of the counterculture, and proved that there was much more to the American popular music scene than reaching the Top 40. Its hard-core, purist nature would demand "authenticity" from the next generation of musicians. The guitar heroes of heavy metal upped the ante for rock stars of their era by insisting on classical training and technical prowess, while their feral, sexual lead singers reminded fans and singers that the essence of rock 'n' roll lay in excess.

—Colby Vargas