# A Beginner's Guide to Heavy Metal Music



## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

Being an outsider to classical music culture (whatever that is anyway), I mostly come to this forum for the lists and recommendations, particularly the lovely Beginner's Guide. I see there's some interest in metal here, so I thought it would be fun to "give something in return" so to speak, being primarily a metalhead, and to also revisit some albums I love and properly re-discover some classics I already know but haven't paid that much attention to yet.

*1. Running Wild - Port Royal (1988)*

YouTube playlist
Spotify link






I want to start this not with something as respectable to non-metalheads as 70s Sabbath or as popular as Metallica, but to jump straight into the unashamedly campy wonderland that is Germanic heavy/power metal. Hey, classical music is already very Germanic, so this should be a good idea, right? Running Wild are colorful, seafaring, badass, and boast a wide variety of riffing styles on this album. The closing track, "Calico Jack", is particularly noteworthy with the epic tremolo-picked riff in the beginning and the long-winded adventurous composition.

Yes, the camp may be initially alienating, but you have to love the camp if you want to really love metal, and if you just focus on the wonderful guitar parts, I guarantee you a good time with this album.


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

A worthwhile attempt. Interested in seeing how much traction you get.

I'm a fan of that old school 70s proto-metal, like *Steppenwolf, Uriah Heep,* and *Iron Butterfly *(and even* Blue Oyster Cult*), but lost interest when it evolved and became its own legit genre, and especially when it spun off its own subgenres like Thrash Metal, Doom, Goth, and whatnot. Wasn't *Led Zeppelin* considered _"Heavy Metal"_?


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Against my better judgement I decided to give the two tracks a listen. Never heard of *Running Wild* before, and the first track is truly a crack up . . . nice to see they have a sense of humor. There's some real craft in their music, like how they begin the song in 7/4

*Conquistador* is more the sort of "heavy metal" I'd have listened to back in the late 1970s. The pirate epic, *Calico Jack*, did have several true Prog changes in it, so very enjoyable. A bit weird for a band to adopt a pirate theme, but, whatever. If it was good enough for *ELP*, then anything is fair game.


----------



## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

Glad to hear you enjoyed the songs, @pianozach! I would say the biggest split between (1) metal in the 70s sense as that mesh of different influences from blues rock to psychedelia and prog, and (2) "genre metal" where the tendency for many bands was to dig into their specific niche came in the mid 80s with the advent of the extreme styles such as black and death metal. There was a kind of arms race at the time in the underground, revolving around things like who could play the fastest, who could downtune the most, who could cram the most riffs into a single song, who could belt out the most inhumane vocals and come up with the most brutal lyrics and imagery... This extreme metal movement itself decomposed into many smaller niches in the 90s as the arms race quickly reached its limits both in sonic terms and in terms of extremist commitment to the heavy metal subculture as some sort of nihilistic countercultural ideal - I'm thinking here of the church burnings and the handful of murders and suicides in Scandinavia associated with the metal underground there back in the early to mid-90s.

But this apparent close-mindedness of the metal scene is in my opinion illusory, even if you get into the most extreme sub-subgenres: metal as a genre has always been in contact with "outsider" influences and has in fact managed to stay vibrant based on its ability to assimilate virtually everything into its aesthetic. Even the Norwegian black metallers were very obviously inspired in their extreme endeavors by hardcore punk, by industrial music, by electronic music, by krautrock, depending on which band and album you pick. I've always thought of Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger album as less a descendent of Sabbath, Priest, and Rainbow, and much more of a kind of Discharge-meets-Neu experiment.

Nowadays metal expands in all sorts of different directions. Some bands have turned it into something openly avant-garde and almost completely detached from rock music - it reminds me more of avant-prog. There are extreme metal bands returning to the progressive and psychedelic roots of the genre. On the other extreme of the spectrum there is basically hypercommercialized Eurovision-style pop music with heavy guitars (as much as I loathe it, hah).

I definitely want to include Blue Oyster Cult at some point here, the Fire From Unknown Origin album in particular since it's their most metallic. The 70s roots of the genre are a goldmine for great music, even if they don't always live up to whatever ideal for "pure" metal there is, and virtually all the classic 80s metal bands were living and breathing that music whether we're talking about Iron Maiden worshipping Jethro Tull and Wishbone Ash (it's no wonder they recorded all their classic albums with Martin Birch as producer), or about Death's Chuck Schuldiner being a KISS fan.


----------



## prlj (10 mo ago)

Love the idea of this thread. I grew up with 80's hair bands, which I still dig. My son (now 23) really got into metal in the last 10 years, and I have been enjoying it with him. Amon Amarth, Polyphia, Periphery, Alestorm (ha!), Ice Nine Kills, Ghost, Rammstein, Epica, and so many more. I do recognize that those are all over the map, genre-wise. 

Before he could drive, I used to take him to metal concerts that he wanted to see. I have to say that the hardcore metal crowds are some of the nicest, kindest, most welcoming people I've ever met. Our classical audiences could learn something from them.


----------



## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

*2. Bruce Dickinson - The Chemical Wedding (1998)*

Full album on Spotify
Full album on YouTube

Bruce Dickinson is the legendary vocalist of Iron Maiden who has been with them throughout most of their discography and has sung on their most acclaimed albums "The Number of the Beast", "Piece of Mind", and "Powerslave". Why not just post a Maiden album then? Well, I feel that Bruce is a great songwriter and Iron Maiden being bassist Steve Harris' band, the majority of their material is penned by Harris and other members of the band don't participate with their own original material very often. That's why I wanted to turn everyone's attention to what is one of the best metal albums of the 90s - and you can listen to Maiden later, those albums aren't running away. 

"The Chemical Wedding" is dark, modern sounding, anthemic, at times a bit proggy heavy metal with a penchant for romantic grandeur (which you can immediately tell from the title and cover art by William Blake of course). It even features Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith, so you're getting a bit of him too on the song "Killing Floor". There is a lot to love here, from the self-titled anthem:






...through the hard rocking "The Tower" with its busy groove and cheesy music video:






...the sinister "Killing Floor":






...and there's even Dickinson's own tribute to William Blake's "Jerusalem":






And if you like this be sure to check what is one of Iron Maiden's finest songs, written by Bruce Dickinson - the epic and "Revelations":


----------

