In the second half of the 60s in Great Britain the legendary band Cream gave birth to a new, previously unseen style – hard rock, which was an energetic, hard rhythm and blues, characterized by the special sound of “overloaded” electric guitars with a distorted sound. The then unknown band Led Zeppelin continued the development of this direction. Refusing to become a Cream clone, LZ has adopted many of the harmonic lines and techniques of black blues, especially in terms of creating a tense, dramatic sound, which, combined with folk motifs, makes it extremely rich, dense, physically heavy, with a powerful rhythm section and flamboyant, virtuoso guitar, which carefully “writes out” every sound. To this day. Led Zeppelin is the only band you can’t compare it to and can’t be confused with anyone else.
But don’t think that rock music was driven only by two bands. The album “In Rock” by DEEP PURPLE, released in 1970, told the world that rock music had come of age, reaching almost academic heights. Long compositions with complex harmonic structure, a lot of changing dimensions and guitar riffs, deep and serious lyrics came to replace the radio format of the three-minute rock’n’roll song which was popular in the beginning of the 60’s. For the first time all band members had their own solo parts, allowing the audience to fully explore their musical and technical abilities… The virtuoso organ, hard guitar and inimitable vocal produced a rock fans were so unforgettable that they called Perple’s music progressive rock, as the term “hard rock” did not exist by that time! By the way, the stylistic description “progressive” stuck to all the bands which continued the DP cause in the part of playing “serious”, melodically and technically perfect rock music (DREAM THEATER, CRIMSON GLORY, FATES WARNING, MAJESTIC).
BLACK SABBATH. Everyone has probably heard this combination. A true titan of rock music, whose contribution to the further development of diverse musical iron is almost unmeasurable.
Unlike their comrades-in-arms, BS did not focus on speed, slowing down and making their music as heavy as possible. The visiting card of the band since far 1969 and up to this day are rough sound, gloomy music and lyrics, shrill and forced vocals, usage of witchcraft, mystic and cemetery themes, massive crosses on musicians’ necks. Subsequently, the style of BLACK SABBATH got the name of stoner, which is in tune with the “stone heaviness” of the sound and found its followers in KYUSS and CATHEDRAL.
Nowadays, hard rock as a style of music-making almost never occurs in its pure form. The memory of the classic sound is preserved by the few hard rock supergroups that are still functional (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH, URIAH HEEP).
In the early 1980s one of the branches of hard rock became widespread: heavy metal. It represents the most commercialized direction in rock of the 1980s. The aggregate of all the “heavy” music was called hard and heavy. According to the “gravity” of the sound, techniques and speed of performance, as well as the themes of the texts, speed metal, black metal and thrash metal are distinguished. The most commercially successful form of hard and heavy metal is so-called “melodic” or “harmonic metal”, which is closer to pop-music. Typical representatives are EUROPE, POISON and the late SCORPIONS.
Like hard rock itself, heavy metal was the brainchild of Great Britain, arising as a subconscious reaction to the dominance of unprofessional and commercially untenable punk rock, which took place in the second half of the 70s in England. The punk aversion of musicians, many of whom started their careers in hard rock bands, however, did not prevent them from adopting an incredible punk speed and critical attitude to the surrounding reality as the basis of the new style. These ingredients multiplied by hard rock’s fluency, toughness, melodicism and dark romanticism made up a mixture that captivated young people from the first chords. The number of bands who wanted to play such music grew so fast, that by the end of the 70s the whole world was talking about “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal”, and the list of new trendsetters grew day by day. Among the most outstanding are SAMSON, PRAYING MANTIS (who were reborn in the early ’90s and released several records), DIAMOND HEAD (together with HOLOCAUST and BLITZKREIG who inspired the young tennis player Lars Ulrich to drop his racket and play drums), as well as the young monsters MOTORHEAD, JUDAS PRIEST and IRON MAIDEN. In the beginning of the 80s heavy metal bands began to appear in continental Europe and Scandinavia, the bright example of which can be the impressive works of Danish MERCIFUL FATE and King Diamond’s solo works (the first consistent Russian heavy metal work was the album of “Aria” band in 1985 “Magnificence Mania”). After all said above, it is hardly surprising that for a decade heavy metal has bravely kept the bar of primacy on the world heavy scene.
The tradition of heavy metal is continued by power metal, the homeland of which is Germany and the progenitors are HELLOWEEN, ACCEPT and BLIND GUARDIAN. In general romantic and harsh melodic orientation of its predecessor power metal is characterized by even higher speed, extensive use of keyboards and “academic” instruments, a variety of male and female vocals and the connection with traditions of classical or folk music (an example of that – creativity of the Italian power players RHAPSODY or Finnish “melodic-opera-metalists” NIGHTWISH with the vocalist Tarja Turunen) and movement towards progressive or folk-metal, taking inspiration in traditional folk melodic. The last years of XX century brought a wave of European power metal, the centers of which can be found, for example, in Italy (LABYRINTH, SKYLARK), Finland (STRATOVARIUS, FINTROLL), Sweden (HAMMERFALL).
Thrash Metal – is nothing else but the American answer to the British. It represents hammering and absolutely not melodic songs with milling guitar sound, “wet” bass guitar, barking, growling or screaming vocals, filling the lyrics with social problems, descriptions of murders, horrors of wars and satanic rituals, own neurosis and hatred for the whole world.
The work of American hardcore pioneers BLACK FLAG and CIRCLE JERKS contributed a lot to its formation. In spite of the fact that the priority of the thrash sound belongs to the METALLICA 1983 album “Kill” Em All”, within a couple of years the virus of decay has spread to all corners of America and Europe, leaving descendants with beautiful examples of the genre like Americans SLAYER, MEGADETH, POSESSED, M.O.D, ANTHRAX and Germans KREATOR, SODOM and DESTRUCTION. The most famous exponent of thrash tendencies on the Russian heavy scene of the last decade was probably Moscow’s early 90s band Corrosion of Metal…
In addition, as thrash sub-genres one can distinguish Angry metal (the classic of the genre is Phillip Anselmo’s band PANTERA, which is notable for its particularly aggressive choice of themes and material presentation), speed metal whose performers see their task as catching up with and surpassing the speed of sound (OVERKILL), techno metal using the arsenal of electronic music as an arrangement element (DIE KRUPPS) or rhythmic basis (RAMMSTEIN).
The appearance of death metal on the world heavy scene marked the further continuation and development of thrash idea. The centers of distribution of death metal contagion were Tampa in the American state of Florida (MORBID ANGEL, DEATH, DEICIDE, CANNIBAL CORPSE) and Stockholm in Sweden (HYPOCRISY, DISMEMBER), but despite the presence of two competing musical clans, there were more similarities than differences between American and European adepts of the genre.
Death metal, as well as all other extreme movements of the 90’s music appeared in the beginning of the decade as a musical response to the increasing extremism of public life. The increased cruelty of the world gave birth to an incredibly morbid lyricism, replete with details of sadistic rapes, murders, torture, and blatantly anti-Christian motives. The “clean” vocals were replaced by furious growling into a microphone, which distorted the words to such an extent that it became impossible to understand the lyrics without a text insert, the guitars were built one and a half to two tones below the classical harmony, and pictures were drawn on record covers, which even the liberal Scandinavian censorship forbade! Another extremely popular genre in the early 90s – grindcore owed its existence to the activity of American hardcore and English punk-extremists like CRASS and RUDIMENTARY PENI. The infernal mixture of high-speed and evil components gave birth to musical monsters, the most famous of which were CARCASS and NAPALM DEATH, famous for their torpedo-like speeds at the limit of human possibilities, buzzing guitars, psychopathic vocals, nauseating covers, and record titles like “A Faerie of Pathetic Anatomical Necrophilia”.
In the second half of the 90s death metal entered the phase of evolution, continuing to this day, which was largely caused by the fall of fans’ interest to its “classical” form, manifested in the active merging of death metal constructions with other styles of heavy music. This led to the genre of melodic death, which is much more commercially successful, combining growling vocals and original lyrics with melodic guitar arrangements (sometimes with two-guitar processing in a heavy metal vein), This was noticed, for example, by Swedish deathsters IN FLAMES and DARK TRANQUILITY), as well as the appearance of bands playing in the borderline styles of death-doom, deathgrind and death-black, using elements of death metal in the construction of their compositions and arrangements.
The foundation of doom metal was laid back in the 70’s by the seminal work of BLACK SABBATH, which proved that slow playing sounds not at all easier and not weaker than “fast” rock This idea has long found worthy incarnators in the face of PARADISE LOST, TIAMAT, MY DYING BRIDE, ANATHEMA, etc. Slow and heavy “doom” music duly reflected the twilight state of their creators’ soul, creating in listeners a gothic, solemn and funereal mood with the help of means, unusual for heavy music before – an abundance of keyboards, violins and flutes, acoustic guitars, female voices and choral arrangements of vocals.
“Lightened” version of doom metal is called atmospheric-doom (analogously for black metal – atmospheric-black) and differs from orthodox doom (black metal) by not so intensive sound, put forward on the foreground keyboard sound, complex arrangements and beautiful, sometimes quite commercial melody.
The most vicious offspring of heavy music, which went farthest in the propaganda of their own ideas and worldviews is black metal
Modern black metal was forming during two decades; the foundation for it was given by the British trio VENOM who in 1982 released the first record under the title “Black Metal”. In spite of the fact that in 1982 VENOM played aggressive heavy metal, far from the manner of modern black metal bands, the band succeeded in forming the ideology of future anti-Christians, playing their concerts with insightful hymns to Satan and other demons. The next step in the development of black metal ideas was linked with CELTIC FROST and BATHORY bands, experimenting with black-mystical themes (which grew in BATHORY into outright satanism) and over-the-top speeds. But if CELTIC FROST evolved into an art-metal formation by the end of their existence, then at the threshold of the 90s, BATHORY could be fairly fairly called a proto-black band, combining anti-Christian rhetoric, indecipherable screaming vocals and harsh recording quality.
A new wave of black metal rose in Norway in the person of MAYHEM, BURZUM and DARKTHRONE. The distinctive feature of the style was orientation on extremely rough and extreme sound. The vocals got the ripping and screaming intonations. This was accompanied by texts cursing Christianity and praising the beauty of the harsh northern nature. Also the band had to paint their faces in black and white and to make photos of ancient Viking weapons and set churches on fire.
Unusualness and extremity of the genre caused a lot of examples to follow, and since the mid-90s we can talk about the beginning of a global fashion to black metal. In the performance of such music distinguished mostly Scandinavians: worth to mention an impressive line-up of SATYRICON, and solo works of Satyr, including excellent folk-metal projects STORM and VONGRAVEN, “viking-metal” formation ENSLAVED, talented IMMORTAL, and also the Finns IMPALED NAZARENE.
Now our scene is dominated by new-metal (MARYLIN MANSON, LIMP BIZKIT), which is an extremely commercial musical activity aimed mostly at a teenage audience. The real roots of “new-metal” should be sought not in metal, but in the traditions of American glam, funk and hip-hop. In turn, new metal is divided into several genres. It is a rapcore which cultivates a mix of aggressive funk and hardcore rhythms with the peculiar to the rap culture technical arsenal and recitative vocal parts (LINKIN PARK, CRAZY TOWN), funkcore which is differed by a strong bias to the progressive funk music, This is the history of that rock music, which is characterized by a strong bias towards progressive funk music and classic rock and less aggressive pitch (INCUBUS, PAPA ROACH) and so-called “new school punk” which is a variation on the theme of pop-punk, assiduously cultivated by record companies like Epitaph and bands like GREEN DAY, OFFSPRING and BLINK 182.
That’s the history of the rock music we’re listening to now. As you can see, every year rock is becoming more and more commercial. More and more the emphasis is not on the quality of music, but on getting the money out of the fans. It’s understandable, everyone wants to make more money, but is there any future for rock with such an attitude?
