# The non-classical noobs question thread



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I don't know how many people on this forum were fans of classical music first and got into non-classical genres of music later (the opposite seems to be the more popular direction) but that's the situation I'm in. I've just gotten into other forms of music besides classical in the last 2 years or so. So at the risk of sounding like I've lived under a rock for years, I'd like to make a thread dedicated to questions that noobs like myself have about non-classical music. 

So my first question is, what is the difference between Heavy Metal, Death Metal and Black Metal? I don't really hear that much of a difference between them so far besides the fact that Black Metal seems like it usually has vocals that sound like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Maybe I'm not listening closely enough to the difference though, or can't hear it. :/


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

Black metal - screaming
Death metal - growling

That's the extent of my knowledge


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Garlic said:


> Black metal - screaming
> Death metal - growling
> 
> That's the extent of my knowledge


So the genres are only defined by what kind of scream they use? That seems a little bit, excessive? lol


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

I'm sure there's more to it than that, but I don't know the technical details. To my untrained ear the vocals are the most obvious difference.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Garlic said:


> I'm sure there's more to it than that, but I don't know the technical details. To my untrained ear the vocals are the most obvious difference.


Ah, I see. So you're in a similar situation to me then. Well, hopefully someone on this forum can school us with their knowledge.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

violadude said:


> So the genres are only defined by what kind of scream they use? That seems a little bit, excessive? lol


If you think that's confusing, there is also "blackened death metal."


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

And blood metal - correction, I made that up for my blog. 

Wrt the question, not a big fan of death or black metal (I prefer prog metal and 70s hard rock), but I also thought it was all about the voice uses.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Crudblud said:


> If you think that's confusing, there is also "blackened death metal."


Sounds like a recipe.

Stupid character limits. Brevity is the soul of wit. Ever heard of it?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

violadude said:


> So the genres are only defined by what kind of scream they use? That seems a little bit, excessive? lol


I don't know if it's used also in other countries, but in Italy we use to say that "the mother of idiots is always pregnant". Someone I know has changed this in "the mother of metal subgenres is always pregnant"


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Led Zeppelin was originally considered Heavy Metal. I think Heavy Metal is the general category, and Glam, Death, etc. are subsets of it.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Doesn't this guy have his own metal sub genre?


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

For the sake of convenience, simplify heavy metal as "Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc" in your mind. There's plenty of crossover with older blues/hard rock type stuff (Sabbath being considered the grandaddies of metal), but most of the time people are referring to gallopy stuff full of fantasy lyrics, melodic leads, puffed out chest operatic vocals, etc.

Eventually the genre took notice of punk rock, and so they started going faster. Then, we got thrash metal--snide, rhythmic political metal with lots of fast palm-muting. Melody began to leave the equation. I mention thrash metal because death/black metal both grew out of that genre at the same time, with lots of overlap going both ways.

Death metal has grotesque comic book imagery and mostly atonal/chromatic riffs that sound like getting crushed in a trash compactor. Bottom-end is emphasized in the production. Very little to no emphasis on melody. 

Black metal is trebly, lo-fi and shrill rather than bassy. Lyrics almost always concern Satan, paganism, nocturnal vampirism stuff or Nietzsche rather than real life stuff. Lots of melodic tremolo riffs and dissonant arpeggios--black metal bands didn't want to be mosh-fodder and didn't concern themselves with brutality. I guess you could say they wanted to sound "grim," like evil hermits. At the same time, they had Romantic aspirations with a sense of melody sometimes bordering on saccharine.

Keep in mind many many bands broke these "rules" because this genre stuff wasn't so rigid in the early 90s.


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## Guest (Sep 1, 2013)

Thank god one person in this thread didn't butcher extreme metal to death...


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

regressivetransphobe said:


> For the sake of convenience, simplify heavy metal as "Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc" in your mind. There's plenty of crossover with older blues/hard rock type stuff (Sabbath being considered the grandaddies of metal), but most of the time people are referring to gallopy stuff full of fantasy lyrics, melodic leads, puffed out chest operatic vocals, etc.
> 
> Eventually the genre took notice of punk rock, and so they started going faster. Then, we got thrash metal--snide, rhythmic political metal with lots of fast palm-muting. Melody began to leave the equation. I mention thrash metal because death/black metal both grew out of that genre at the same time, with lots of overlap going both ways.
> 
> ...


Thanks! That was really helpful.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

ahammel said:


> Sounds like a recipe.


Sorry I can't help with definitions but here's a black metal recipe:


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## febo (Sep 2, 2013)

regressivetransphobe explained it very well.
It may be useful to know that Black metal got pretty diverse in recent 10 years. Nowadays it is sometimes borderlining post-rock (structurally, sonic-wise it usually has still that shrill lo-fi sound). Also repetition is quite common, there are songs that consist of one simple tremolo picked riff played over 7 minutes. this is something very unusual in death metal which features a quite common pop song structure and does not utilize tremolo picking. death metal tends to be slightly more technically difficult to play then black metal (once you mastered tremolo picking, that is).
but mind you, both genres are >20 years old and have evolved into quite some microgenres, so this description includes some broad generalisations.

actually to me Black Metal is like the techno of electrical guitar music, as with its repetition and rather abstract nature tends to have the same almost trance-inducing and carthatic effect that techno can have.

here are some black metal bands that probably show the evolution and different styles:

Some of the "starters"













This is the faster, rawer type:









The more "complex" type:





Some featured folk elements:





There was also a commercially more successful offspring, "symphonic black metal", which is tamed and features a regular production:





The above one was not regarded as "true" in the scene, and as a backlash "raw black metal" spread again. Some of this stuff also includes or borders topics of elitism, racism, glorification of war and violence and national socialism (if this is as issue for you):








This stem also incorporated elements of trash metal and right winged rock/punk later on.

Atmospheric stuff with syntheziers came up:





Then you have suicidal black metal which is slower and features a more misanthropic and self-loathing theme. Also it moved away quite a bit from the orginal black metal:





Newer forms developed that dwell on the edge of suicidal black metal, folk metal and atmospheric black metal but rely on styles of black metal:









This has gone so far to border post-rock and shoegaze and only contains certain limited stylistic elements of original black metal.









The chronolonic order is not really correct (i.e. there have been BM bands using synthesizers before the timeline suggested here), I was trying to sketch out the main development paths in a typical manner on top of my head without using 50 different examples.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

febo said:


> this is something very unusual in death metal which features a quite common pop song structure and *does not utilize tremolo picking*.


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2013)

Tremolo picking is one of the main techniques in death metal guitar playing...what are you on about?


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Who honestly cares about these silly sub-subgenres? 

I have nothing against categorizing music, but it's only meaningful up to a certain point. When people start talking about these very narrow and closely defined sub-sub genres, then to me that is simply an indication that the music that perfectly fits within these little genres is highly formulaic and unoriginal.

This isn't necessarily directed to metal, I also see this kind of over-classification in certain electronic music.


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2013)

Black metal and death metal are pretty major subgenres. Hardly "sub-subgenres"...or are you referring to things like depressive suicidal black metal, melodic black metal (because there's black metal that isn't melodic apparently...), etc?


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

violadude said:


> I don't know how many people on this forum were fans of classical music first and got into non-classical genres of music later (the opposite seems to be the more popular direction) but that's the situation I'm in. I've just gotten into other forms of music besides classical in the last 2 years or so. So at the risk of sounding like I've lived under a rock for years, I'd like to make a thread dedicated to questions that noobs like myself have about non-classical music.
> 
> So my first question is, what is the difference between Heavy Metal, Death Metal and Black Metal? I don't really hear that much of a difference between them so far besides the fact that Black Metal seems like it usually has vocals that sound like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Maybe I'm not listening closely enough to the difference though, or can't hear it. :/


Well I've become more disenchanted with the whole concept of genres at all, but heavy metal is a subgenre of rock that is heavier in sound and more intense and dramatic in general, and then black metal and death metal are subgenres of heavy metal. Heavy metal is sometimes referred to as simply "metal", and it grew out of the bluesy, harder rock coming out in the late 1960s. Black metal tends to be lo-fi in recording style, with screamed vocals, and of all the newer kinds of metal, black metal tends to be very tied to the kind of aesthetic Black Sabbath really originated, and death metal tends to have lower, growling vocals, and tend to be very high tempo compositions, evolving out of the punk-influenced thrash metal of bands like Metallica and Slayer (who are often considered a death metal band). Black metal also traditionally is more tied to anti-Christian sentiments, whereas death metal I don't believe tends to have ties to any single ideological viewpoint, but both often deal with dark imagery either way, and religious elements aren't uncommon. I'll say that this kind of music really isn't for the faint of heart, but I'd also say that of much of Stravinsky and Ives, and some of Beethoven too.

I did a report on the history of metal in high school X3 I can get into more details if you'd like, and recommend some good bands too 

Also I'll warn you that in my experience, many metal music fans are among the snobbiest music fans you'll meet, way worse, way more condescending than even most bad classical fans I've met.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

DeepR said:


> Who honestly cares about these silly sub-subgenres?


I am there with you, but I even think that the whole concept of music genres is silly as it currently is, and it makes no sense, has no consistency. Music genres are sometimes describing when the music is from, or what country its from, or how it was written (or if it wasn't written at all, or if it was improvised), or the various musical elements ranging from what instruments are used to tempo to overall emotional character (which is pretty dubious with music), or even to subject and lyrical content... Its absurd. You have things like electronic dance music where its so ridiculous that it might as well be a new genre per tune, and classical where it describes everything from plainchant to Ligeti (or to some people just a certain time period).

There are genres called Alternative, and Shoegaze, and Post-rock. Can we go back to when people who actually know something about music come up with terms instead of music critics coming up with terms?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Black metal and death metal are pretty major subgenres. Hardly "sub-subgenres"


The metal genre is actually a subgenre of rock music, so black and death metal are sub-subgenres.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

violadude said:


> I don't know how many people on this forum were fans of classical music first and got into non-classical genres of music later (the opposite seems to be the more popular direction) but that's the situation I'm in. I've just gotten into other forms of music besides classical in the last 2 years or so. So at the risk of sounding like I've lived under a rock for years, I'd like to make a thread dedicated to questions that noobs like myself have about non-classical music.
> 
> So my first question is, what is the difference between Heavy Metal, Death Metal and Black Metal? I don't really hear that much of a difference between them so far besides the fact that Black Metal seems like it usually has vocals that sound like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Maybe I'm not listening closely enough to the difference though, or can't hear it. :/


Heavy metal




Black metal ( symphonic)




Death metal


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2013)

Those are not good examples. Ignore.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Those are not good examples. Ignore.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

This is a fun thread

I always liked to describe Dimmu Borgir as Pantera with rejected John Williams scores slathered over the top.

Their first two albums are passable though


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

jani said:


>


Oh yes, that's something else I wanted to ask about.

What does nu "something and "something"-core mean?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

DeepR said:


> Who honestly cares about these silly sub-subgenres?
> 
> I have nothing against categorizing music, but it's only meaningful up to a certain point. When people start talking about these very narrow and closely defined sub-sub genres, then to me that is simply an indication that the music that perfectly fits within these little genres is highly formulaic and unoriginal.
> 
> This isn't necessarily directed to metal, I also see this kind of over-classification in certain electronic music.


I understand. The reason I'm interested in these classifications is not so much so I can place artists in narrow boxes, but moreso to help me understand the history and progression of these different genres because that is something that really interests me.

I understand how classical music progressed over time and who influenced who and what styles branched off from what quite well and I'd like to have that same kind of knowledge with non-classical music too. That's the reason I'm asking about genres and sub-genres


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

violadude said:


> Oh yes, that's something else I wanted to ask about.
> 
> What does nu "something and "something"-core mean?


nu-metal refers to a very eclectic kind of heavy music that developed particularly in the 1990s. It is generally heavy metal music with elements of many other kinds of music, like hip-hop, or hardcore punk, or funk mixed together. Alot of it is actually really creative and imaginative, but it gets a bad rap from close-minded, pretentious music snobs.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

The problem is nu-metal mixed the worst metal with the worst punk with the worst hip-hop. I mean, a bad disco song can be traced to very eclectic influences, but it's still very populist disposable music.

Anyway. "Core"? Now things get confusing. It really has no inherent meaning; there are even electronic "core" genres. When used derisively, it usually refers to kid-marketed metalcore bands like Killswitch Engage, who represent a dumbed down, appropriated mix of punk and metal that panders to hormonal teens with melodramatic lyrics about "inner pain" and predictable mosh riffs. There is also often a certain "toughguy" attitude involved.

"Core" was used as early as the 80s, though. Hardcore punk, grindcore, etc. Legit, influential music. But, it had an expiration date and turned into something really stale.

tl;dr, in rock, "core" means the music's descended from hardcore punk in some way, sometimes very distantly. Often used as a catch-all slur for "fake metal".

That's not even getting into recent bastardizations like deathcore (think death metal + nu-metal) and crunkcore (no comment).

As a society we should collectively agree to stop using "core"


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

regressivetransphobe said:


> As a society we should collectively agree to stop using "core"


I'd get on board with that.


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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

This is considered true metalcore btw:


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## Katie (Dec 13, 2013)

"The problem is nu-metal mixed [with] the worst metal with the worst punk with the worst hip-hop"...sounds like the same end product yielded by feeding chili to a baby...your nuanced understanding of poly-subgenres is Ph.D.-impressive/Katie


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## Exordiom (Nov 27, 2013)

^Love that one! Thank you so much for posting that!


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