Slang, youth subcultures and rock music

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11. METAL

Main Entry: heavy metal Function: noun Date: 1974 : energetic and highly amplified electronic rock music having a hard beat

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

HEAVY METAL - a typically 80's style of music that features most of the characteristics of classic rock but with louder, more distorted guitars, ominous and driving rhyth, and screaming vocals about subjects such as drug use, war, religion, and problems with girlfriends. Most heavy metal bands also write sappy love ballads that find their way into mainstream radio play lists.

Heavy metal emerged in the late 60s mostly from bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Such bands tended to be "hard" in that they succeeded in torturing parents in ways that the Beatles just couldn't, but in most respects they were very different from one another. Later, bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden added to the genre as it expanded into and borrowed from pop. This culminated in the late 80s diversification of heavy metal into several completely different branches. There were the blues-based big haired glam metal bands such as Great White and Motley Crew that sang exclusively about babes, there were the attitude bands like Guns 'n' Roses who also sang about babes (with an emphasis on how easy they are to get into bed), there were the dark and mysterious alternative metal bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden that avoided glamour and sang about angst and other water sign issues, there were the bands like Living Colour, Fishbone and Faith No More that were either black or borrowed from rap and soul culture, and there were the fast bands like Slayer and Metallica that sent many a parent in search of an exorcist.

Although the origin of the term heavy metal is widely attributed to novelist William Burroughs, its use actually dates well back into the 19th century, when it referred to cannon or to power more generally. It also has been used to classify certain elements or compounds, as in the phrase heavy metal poisoning. Heavy metal appeared in the lyrics of Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" (1968), and by the early 1970s rock critics were using it to refer to a specific style of music. Heavy metal has historically required one thing of its performers: long hair. Heavy metal musicians and fans came under severe criticism in the 1980s. Political and academic groups sprang up to blame the genre and its fans for causing everything from crime and violence to despondency and suicide. But defenders of the music pointed out that there was no evidence that heavy metal's exploration of madness and horror caused, rather than articulated, these social ills. The genre's lyrics and imagery have long addressed a wide range of topics, and its music has always been more varied and virtuosic than critics like to admit.

Heavy metal fragmented into subgenres (such as lite metal, death metal, and even Christian metal) in the 1980s.

SPEED METAL - a genré of music typified by a continuous double-bass drum roll, high-speed distorted guitar rhyths, an almost silent bass, and screeched or groaned vocals concerning war, death, fighting, environmental abuse, brutality, and (in rare cases) lust. The main problem with most speed metal bands is that they still see a need to put guitar solos in their songs, and the guitar solos are always really bad and last entirely too long. Speed metal seems to be a result of a marriage between punk rock and heavy metal.

. Examples of speed metal bands: Kreator, Exodus, Nuclear Assault, Megadeth, Prong, Pantera

THRASH METAL - speed metal with an especially strong punk influence. While in general speed metal musicians pride themselves on their talent and knowledge of music theory, thrash musicians laugh at such concepts or else skillfully conceal their acquaintance with them. Examples of thrash bands: DRI, Tool, some Suicidal Tendencies, and even some Black Flag.

Реферат опубликован: 7/06/2006