What Makes Heavy Metal Heavy?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 24 лис 2024
- A metalhead's quest for meaning.
Support 12tone on Patreon to help us keep making cool videos! / 12tonevideos
Watch this video on Nebula: nebula.tv/vide...
As a metalhead, I've been calling things "heavy" for most of my life, but I never really stopped to think about what I meant. It's such an intuitive label to me, with such a clear meaning that neatly translates to the music I'm describing. But these days, stopping to think about what I mean when I talk about music is pretty much my entire job, so I think it's finally time to ask that question: When a metalhead calls a piece of music heavy, what are they actually saying?
Merch: standard.tv/12tone
Discord: / discord
Bluesky: bsky.app/profi...
Email: 12tonevideos@gmail.com
Script: tinyurl.com/38...
Huge thanks to our Elephant Club members:
Susan Jones
Jill Jones
Howard Levine
Warren Huart
Len Lanphar
Ken Arnold
William (Bill) Boston
Damien Fuller-Sutherland
Chris Prentice
Jack Carlson
Kelly Christoffersen
Christopher Lucas
Andrew Beals
Dov Zazkis
Hendrik P
Thomas Morley
Jacob Helwig
Donal Botkin
Stephen Cook
b-rom
Jon Hancock
Hendrik Stüwe
Dan Bonelli
Kevin Boyce
Luke
Ian Seymour
Neil Moore
Blake White
Dhruv Monga
Ken Jones
Obadiah Wright
Carlos Rendon
Kylie McInnes
OrionWolfie
Laurence T Maloney
Michael Mol
RAD Donato
Oliver Marchand
Reiji Kobayashi
Catherine Berry
Matt Ivaliotes
Chris Davis
Luke Klima
Hikaru Katayamma
Fred Kroon
Chris Burgess
HardScale
Chris Piro
Matt Robbins
Ryan Evans
Leigh VanHandel
Geoff
Aaron Boodman
Samuel Ollesh
Mikko Koli
Jonathan Lonowski
DrJRad
David Krieger
Staal
Jay Roman
Gopal
George Romaka
Romain Baugue
And thanks as well to Henry Reich, Gene Lushtak, Eugene Bulkin, Oliver, Anna Work, Adam Neely, Dave Mayer, David Bartz, CodenaCrow, Arnas, Caroline Simpson, Michael Alan Dorman, Blake Boyd, Charles Gaskell, Tom Evans, David Conrad, Ducky, Nikolay Semyonov, Chris Connett, Kenneth Kousen, h2g2guy, W. Dennis Sorrell, Andrew Engel, Peter Brinkmann, naomio, Alex Mole, Betsy, Tonya Custis, Dave Shapiro, Walther, Jake Sand, Graeme Lewis, Jim Hayes, Scott Albertine, Evan Satinsky, Conor Stuart Roe, ZagOnEm, Kai, רועי סיני, Kottolett, Brian Miller, Pamela O'Neill, Thomas Morgan, Mark James, Matty Crocker, Adam Ziegenhals, Mark, Amelia Lewis, Justin St John-Brooks, DialMForManning, JD White, Andrew Wyld, Joe Johnston, A Devoted Servant of the Holy Water Bottle, Claymore Alexander, gunnito, Graham Orndorff, Kayla Sparks, Douglas Anderson, Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, Paul Tanenholz, Tom, William Christie, Joyce Orndorff, Stephen Tolputt, Kyle Kinkaid, Isaac Hampton, Mark Mitchell Gloster, Andy Maurer, William Spratley, Don Jennings, Cormag81, Derek Hiemforth, Bryan, Mikeyxote, Milan Durnell, Dan Whitmer, Thel 'Vadam, N Zaph, M3RK Chaos Official Patreon page, Mike Wyer, Marc Testart, Carlfish, Michael Morris, Bill Owens, Martin Romano, George Burgyan, Belinda Reid, Matthew Soddy, Flavor Dave, DraconicDon, John W Campbell, StellarDrift, Jimmy2Guys, Megan Oberfield, morolin, An Oni Moose, Ken Birdwell, Blue 5alamander, Panda, Cliff Hudson, Olivia Herald, Macy Allen, JayneOfCanton, or dahan, Alin Nica, Ethan Savaglio, Robert Bailey, Deirdre Saoirse Moen, juneau, Sina Bahram, Ira Kroll, Patrick Minton, Justin Katz, Roahn Wynar, Chuck Dukhoff of The Stagger Lee Archives, Bob D'Errico, Robert Shaw, Shawn Beshears, David Shlapak, JD, Rennie Allen, Travis Briggs, Donald Murray, Cindy Klenk (Highlands Recording Arts LLC), Jonah C., Greyson Erickson, Matt Deeds, Claire Postlethwaite, Strife, Brian Covey, Miles_Naismith, Jemuel Gardner, Jordan Nordstrom-Young, Jay Harris, Sean Murphy, JasperJackal, Tommy Transplant, Wolfgang Giersche, Autographedcat, ParzivaLore, Alexander Whisnant, Amanda Jones, Olaf, Colleen Chapman, Gil, M. Dodge Mumford, Jon Purdy, Ken Brown, Colin Kennedy, Christopher Bork, Granger Meador, The Mauses, Tom Belknap, christopher porto, Steffan Andrews, and William Wallace! Your support helps make 12tone even better!
Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold!
Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) Thanks to Tristan Johnson, Foreign, Thomas Frank, and Alie Astrocyte for lending me their voices for various quotes!
2) To be clear, when I said that metal bands sometimes distort the vocals, I meant they sometimes add a distortion effect to the recording. Obviously, the vocals themselves are also sometimes distorted through harsh vocal/scream techniques.
3) I learned while working on this that apparently most iconic lion roars in film are actually tiger roars, which sound different and cooler. I considered switching to that, but I thought it would be neat to include an actual clip of an actual lion.
4) I should note that Dr. Miller doesn't fully subscribe to the "surplus noise" explanation, and I think he's right to want to complicate it, but it's still a useful framework, even if it's incomplete.
5) To be clear, my disagreement with Drs. Berger and Fales is not with the idea that guitar timbres are the main surface-level thing being described by the term "heavy", I just don't think all other uses must therefore be metaphorical references to them. Difficulty-based heaviness, for instance, doesn't seem self-evidently metaphoric for guitar timbre. I would say, instead, that guitar timbres are a particularly clear and consistent instance of the metaphorical extension of what I would argue is heavy's actual primary meaning, which I get into later in the video.
6) I hope I don't get too roasted for citing Drowning Pool as an example of heaviness. I like the song, but more importantly it's one that I'm pretty confident is in drop, as opposed to using a 7-string, and the sparseness of the verse orchestration makes the downtuned rumbling really easy to hear. Besides, I cite Nile 30 seconds later, so, like, be nice to me.
7) Did I purposefully pick a particularly heavy, low-end section of Dr. Feelgood in order to prop up my claim that Motley Crue sounds sonically heavy? Sure. Is it still one of the less heavy-sounding examples in the video? Absolutely. But my point is just that it's aiming in the right direction.
8) I should note that the final definition of heaviness that I present isn't directly sourced from any particular scholarship on the topic. It's my own interpretation, from decades of experience with the genre.
9) One thing I didn't super get into in this video is metal's relation to the occult. That's certainly another aspect of its aesthetic transgression, but it's not really something that I tend to think of as "heavy" directly. Others may disagree.
Just gonna point out that recently we've had a massive resurgence of bands who emulated Black Sabbaths sound and the scene who likes them, Trad Doom fans will 100% call them heavy. I should know, I'm one of them.
Здоровья тебе побольше, брат. Отличное видео!
Yea drowning pool kinda killed your equilibrium but gained it back with niie and lorna.. kinda like saying your going to a nickleback show.. thered be a certain number of people who would laugh at you..
You did however fail to mention pantera. The godamn staple of groove metal and power metal.. but the one metal band most all heads will agree on..
14:10 my favorite part of this video
Very good vid, love the drawings too
Thanks for making a video directly at me, Cory!
Worlds collide. Love your content Adam \m/
Wait are you a metal head?
@@DAFLIDMAN he wears a dio shirt in a lot of his vids
@@DAFLIDMAN He did a full metallica discography and brief history rundown on his podcast, sometime around the last album's release. His opinions however don't match mine, so there's no way he can be a *REAL* metalhead.
/s
Love your podcast!!
I always felt that slow music really is better described as heavy while for extremely fast music the term brutal just feels more appropriate in my opinion.
Some low sludge metal goes a long way. 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻
Death-doom 😎🤘🏽
I always think of it as faster metal being (usually) more chaotic and/or aggressive, slower metal generally more foreboding or massive sounding. Like comparing being mauled by a pack of rabid dogs vs mauled by a huge polar bear. Both can be equally intense and heavy, but in different ways
@@SuffyANX The way I would define heavy is feeling massive and oppressive / depressing. And as with heavy matter, it tends to be slow.
Based on this, I personally wouldn't classify fast music as heavy. That doesn't mean, that it is in any way inferior or anything, but, like I originally said, in my opinion there is a big difference between being heavy and being brutal. They scratch very different itches and therefore it seems sensible to classify them differently.
That actually makes sense.
Shouting out bands with 462 monthly listeners on Spotify. Hell yeah, doing the good work
Yes, agreed. The name drops on here were spot on. This man did his work.
Excellent examples all around.
Would be even better if he linked the songs in the description I think. I now have to rewatch the video to find the cool examples again... though maybe it's part of the plan?
@@vsevolodalipov4375Are we too lazy to type things into a search now?
not the ones with 463. Those sellouts are less heavy than blink-182
One note on the slowness aspect: I think this calls back to what you were saying at the start about heaviness being about the sound of something physically massive. Deep, powerful sounds at a slow rate conjur up the image of a behemoth creature, its footsteps crashing into the earth. Fast tempos are a threshing machine, slow tempos are a colossus.
I love this. Fast implies direct violence, high energy, aggression, danger; slow implies massive, unstoppable, even unfathomable - consider "Battery" versus "Call of Cthulhu", how their tempos align with their subject matter
Reminds me how slam metal, one of the most stompy, chuggy, brutal types of death metal with deep inhuman gutturals as vocals, tends to have massive monsters on their album covers for some reason
And you can occasionally find both in the same song. To bring out contrast, as a counterpoint, and to provide the occasional break like the calm before the storm. The little moment of contemplation and relative peace isn't going to last for long, which makes the parts that go hard seem that much more intense.
@@spicymeatballs2thespicening low frequency energy is darker too.
To double down on the slowness aspect as in fact being heavy, bands like YOB and The Sword I would consider heavy as hell.
A big part of modern metal guitar tone is actually EQ. Mid frequencies are boosted hard into a very distorted preamp, and then those mids are taken back out after the preamp. This results in bass frequencies being much less distorted, and more prominent, while adding a lot of sustain in the mids, and the highs are also not harsh. The bass provides the thump, because it's not crushed into a flabby mess, the mids provide endless sustain while not being overbearing or harsh, and the highs provide subtle definition. This is how the really massive sounding palm mutes are achieved.
As a very untechnical pedal-less person who's only ever plugged a guitar into an amp and put the knobs on it how I like them, that's interesting to learn how it's done properly. I get an okay sound and I kinda like the 'barn door engineer' basicness of it, but I wouldn't say I'd shy away from something more biting either. At the same time I kinda like the feeling of gazing in from the outside as a rank amateur. Retains a sense of wonder, y'know? But yeah that sounds like a cool setup from how I'm picturing it in my head (and am sure have heard plenty, including probably from some of this video's examples?).
Thanks for helping me add sonic weight to my palm mutes.
@@Torthrodhel All you need is a fairly high gain amp with an EQ section and a Tubescreamer style overdrive pedal to get it. The pedal is there to boost mids and drive the amp harder, and then EQ the result to taste on the amp. A lot of big name metal guitarists used to throw a rack mount graphic EQ in the effects loop of the amp to get surgical with their tone, but that's not necessary to get a passible metal tone.
Except in most cases the bass is actually what makes the whole thing sound heavy. The guitars have some bass frequencies usually cut off to not enter into the bass guitar’s territory. And that has the very low frequencies cut to not meddle with the kick drum.
And thus you get a full sounding mix where you hear every instrument and it sounds damn heavy.
@@josku5 This is true. When I talk about lows, it's relative of course.
A big part of metal is expanding your tolerance to inaccessible sounds I’d say. It’s fun and increasingly rewarding so it adds a whole new dimension to it. Started with Sabaton and Ghost, now I’m jamming Vildhjarta every day.
I was thinking the same thing, it reminds me of spicy food. Its hard to realize exactly when spicy = good happens in your brain, just like I don't know whether I ever would have heard a "heavy" song for the first time and started headbanging immediately. It is kind of an acquired taste but once you acquire it, you keep seeking it out and your definition of heavy (like hot) constantly changes and expands.
I think there is also a pavalovian response there where we listen to heavy music in "heavy" situations, reinforcing its heaviness cyclically.
thall
Exactly this lmao. I remeber the first time i heard Ne Obliviscaris and i thought it was just incomprehensible mush with a violin thrown in there. Hearing them again 6 months later was a real eyeopener. Its cool to think of myself as "getting better" at listening to music.
thall
Started with Avenged Sevenfold, now jamming to Brain Drill lmao
Well done, I am a metalhead and I think you hit everything on the head and taught me a few things as well. Amazing content.
I love that, even when it's only half an inch tall and scrolling at full speed, I can immediately pick out Galder's bald ass doing the ridiculous shit he does with his face. It's like if there's even a single visual recording device somewhere in a room that man will find it and get mugging. I've always respected Galder for having the balls to put all that time and effort into getting into corpse paint and then just making the face of an excited puppy on stage for an entire set like a real-life Toki Wartooth. He's probably my favorite Demon Burger that's not Vortex.
12tone is a metalhead himself
One of my favorite uses of slow breakdowns is Infant Annihilator's "Baptized, Bastardised, Sodomised." The very beginning is an inhuman 225 BPM (it's more correctly described as 75 BPM subdivided into 12-tuplets), immediately followed by a not a halving, not a quartering, but at LEAST a 64th-ing of the time, where the bass and snare hits are separated by about 6 seconds. Right after that, it pops back up to 150 (16ths/32nds instead of 12-tuplets).
It's hard to describe in words how incredibly hilarious yet substantially heavy this riff is - I recommend a listen of the first 52 seconds of this song to see what I'm failing to actually capture with words.
ua-cam.com/video/g_HTpeC2tW4/v-deo.html
@@tiyeninthe thing with infant annihilator is they're a studio band...OP is right that a lot of the technical wizardry is meant to assert authority or inspire envy in the audience. that sort of disappears when the band is seen as "cheating" in some way and unable to play the material live. there was quite a big controversy in power metal when it looked like DragonForce couldn't play their own songs.
the exception to this is black metal where there are lots of studio-only projects but the whole ethos of that genre is a completely different thing and probably the main omission from this video.
As someone quite involved in electronic music scenes like drum n bass and dubstep it is really interesting to me that metal's quest for heaviness and and genres like dubstep and hardcore getting more and more intense drops are basically just two sides of the same coin
Your gateway drugs: Sleep Token and Spiritbox
Not surprisingly there’s a lot of bands that are blending the two together now.
I listen a lot to electronic music as well! I think you can compare a heavy drop in electronic music with a breakdown in deathcore, take for example those in Lorna Shore's "Into the Hellfire".
Not only that, but certain electronic styles were pioneered by people with a background in heavy music, such as breakcore and industrial.
And yes, as someone who listens to both metal and electronic, I agree with them being two sides of the same coin in that aspect. I tend to find myself gravitating towards the more heavy and aggressive sounding styles of electronic because they give me that similar feeling of heaviness like metal does.
Tokimonsta and Pendulum are interesting examples of people with metal backgrounds going into electronic
I saw an older interview with Roger Glover of Deep Purple a long time ago where he said they finally figured out the key ingredient to what makes a song heavy: attitude. Not speed, not volume...but attitude.
Hell. Yes.
"Perfect Strangers" should be rated among the heavier tunes out there; the riff in there isn't the fastest, but damn it has attitude. Fun fact: It's the riff inspired the middle section of Metallica's "Damage Inc."
@@luke5100 I think that's what so many people get so wrong about one of my favorite songs (bear with me here) "Smoke on the Water." Sure, when it's that kid in the music store, or a mediocre cover band, it's "Oh god, not that cliche again..." But if you don't feel anything when you hear Ritchie Blackmore himself play the riff...bro...do you even have a pulse?
That is a very good way to describe it I like a lot of metal and punk and even though the misfits can be super fast even in the punk scene they’re not the most heavy at least to me then you have bands like Alpha Wolf super heavy metalcore high energy and on the flip side all of doom metal and for punk Black flag some of them have elements of heaviness but are not really heavy but most do
Eh. Sounds profound but it's just dodging the question. "What makes music heavy?" "Attitude." "OK, so what makes an attitude heavy?" "Er..."
@@beeble2003 not really, that's just circular reasoning. If the person you're answering knows what attitude means in a musical/cultural context, then you don't have to explain it any further. If they don't, then you explain what attitude means, not what makes "an attitude" heavy.
The Brotherhood of steel symbol at 18:02 for "what's unlikely to change" really got me. I had to spend a moment to realize why, and it's because "War. War never changes."
The fact that you've put such an deep Fallout reference right there amazes me, and it's in perfect reference with everything you said about the culture of defining heavy metal, radiation, cold war and everything. Kudos to you for that one!
14:30 I died at the laugh over “slow not being heavy”😂 I’m a drone/doom metal musician who enjoys and writes VERY slow tempos. A lot of drone/doom is hovering around 40bpm and bands like Sunn O))) frequently use free time that holds chords for minutes.
Yeah "slower" seems intuitively "heavy" to me. You know, like a heavy giant monster taking one step would be extremely slow?
Chipmunks On 16 Speed, is Alvin and the Chipmunks pop songs that are slowed down. It really gives some weight to pop rock cover songs.
I can't stand the non stop, wall to wall, never changing blast beats of much of modern metal. No variation, no creativity, no interest. Give me slow and ponderous any day.
@@wingracer1614 I can't stand it either. I played in bands in the Sumerian-core days. I miss those kinds of creative riffage.
@@maillardsbearcat I feel like there's a weird place where heaviness diverges, either being heavier by being slower, or heavier by being faster. Primitive Man and Nails are bands I would consider equally heavy, but they're polar opposites.
I've always felt like what makes metal feel "heavy" is that it makes you focus so strongly on the pulse. That's why you bang your head to it. Everything else about the music is generally chosen to overstimulate you. This is because you wouldn't just sit there banging your head to the drum by itself for very long. "Heaviness" is that quality which makes metal more of a meditative/dissociative rhythmic experience. This is also why it's weightlifting music.
Update: not deleting because I'm proud that the video validated me
true that also with movie scores too...action scenes are better with metal...just look at the latest transformer movie...bunch of rap/hiphop in the scenes took AWAY from the experience..it just didnt vibe together...just made it lame
Two reasons why I support your Patreon:
1. You help me understand music I know, like Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car"
2. You help me understand music I don't know, like metal.
I'm a better music theorist and a better composer for having watched your channel, and I really have fun listening to the way you break things down. Thank you.
I'll see those and raise you a 3. Impeccable sense of comic timing!
And 4. He's probably hot.
@@jovetj So you know, I believe Cory prefers they/them pronouns. Other than that, you may be right.
@@SingularlyNaked That's great. I don't recognize such nonsense.
Funny, it's the reverse for me. I had barely even heard of fast car, but I can say with confidence that Cory's metal examples are impeccable.
From a metalhead who constantly tries to describe “heavy” to everyone around me, this could not be more spot on. I love that you shined the light on the historical context to the evolving landscape of metal and the way that we’re always chasing the next evolution. It’s an imperfect wave that seems to always get better 🤘🏼
It’s interesting because music of all genres has the potential to be heavy. Dubstep can be extremely heavy and at times, so can jazz or classical.
To me, I think it’s mostly rhythmic and the sonic delivery. Love the vid.
Would be interesting for you to dive into Djent and Thall, as I think they’re worthy of a part of this idea.
Dubstep is the metal of electronic genres. There's a lot of crossover between Dubstep, at least the more well known stuff not the original Dubstep, the so called "brostep" and metal. A lot of Dubstep guys started out playing guitar and were metalheads, and that's definitely reflected in the sound.
I'd love to see an episode going all in on explaining Djent. Especially how it is, in fact, a genre
Skrillex had a screamo band before he became famous in dubstep (From First to Last) so it makes sense
@@Patrick-857 I'd say breakcore is more the "metal" of electronic genres at this point (it sounds "heavier" to me at least), although dubstep doesn't exactly not fit into that description
@@thezipcreator dubstep definitely fits especially with how much of it straight up incorporates metal riffs and tones sometimes, I'd argue breakcore is better compared to grindcore and not just because both go crazy fast
Another thing to acount for is contrast. If a song is the same amount of heavy all the way through you'll get accustomed to it. But if you first condition the listener with a less heavy segment, then go all out afterwards it will hit that much harder, making it feel much heavier as well.
I feel this is the main thing missing from a lot of metal bands, that try to just go hard 100% of the time, always screaming, shredding, blast-beating... it quickly turns into a boring drone. Even within a segment, sometimes it can seem heavier when you actually leave more space, such as the classic "power chord on 1 and then let the drums breathe." Less is more!
I'd say the exact opposite. Songs that thunder on like industrial machinery feel way heavier than songs that prance around with different tempos and modes too much. Can't think of anything more corny than those drops grindcore bands do. A fun note is that the reply above used the term "drone" to symbolize boring metal, while Drone is one of the heaviest genres in all of metal.
The heaviest song I've heard is probably Midvinterblot by Unleashed.
@@IlIlIlIlIlIlIllIlIII we're talking about dynamics, or changes in loudness, rather than changes in pitch or tempo
@@magicsofa The breakdown is a prime example of how far off the mark this is. I don't think there's a single band out there these days that just goes all-out constantly thrashing with no mixup of dynamics in the mix.
@@Hadgerz when I tune into college radio I hear a pretty mixed bag, some bands have good dynamics, but I feel like I always hear at least one song that's just trying way too hard to be intense throughout the whole track. Happens with pop music too, with being overly epic and/or emotional.
When talking about distortion and instruments other than guitar I think it's important to mention which instrument was the first to feature distortion - the drum. Adding a snare to the bottom of a drum was the first form of distortion and is still widely used today. We don't call the sound of a snare drum "heavy", but the sound of floor toms and kick drums can be very heavy.
Vocal distortion, albeit not generally to modern extremes, preceded guitar distortion, too.
I absolutely call the sound of a snare drum heavy
I've worked with lots of electronic producers who also make heavy music, and what many people fail to understand is that you need to unbalance people to make music heavy. The most visceral, heavy sound is like torture. The moment comes not when your head's first dunked in the water, but when you come up for a breath and just before you finish taking a lungful of air it shoves you back down, and you have just enough time to realize you're going back in. That's when it hits you.
Really nice analogy. Very creative. 👍
Contrast is one of the most powerful tools you can use in song writing, and it applies to pretty much any genre, metal included.
@Nutty31313 Jimmy Page, Mr Light and Shade, taught me that.
Mrs. Rufty, my grade school music teacher, probably tried years earlier, but rock and roll was the only point of entry.
The laugh at the idea of slow isn't heavy summed up my reaction perfectly. "Yeah, right, get a load of this!" Vids like these not only do well in reminding me that you're a metalhead, yourself, but also give me words to describe things that I didn't even know I needed or lacked the words for. Thank you, and stay awesome \m/
To me, heaviness is in the dynamics. Battery by Metallica will always be one of the heaviest songs ever in my ears because it starts out with relatively quiet acoustic guitar harmonies, basically requiring you to set your volume to taste to enjoy that section, only for the full band to kick in with fully electrified instruments and heavy drums. Sabbath was also good with this, blending softer passages with more aggressive and louder ones to convey a complexity of emotion and a range of severity. Their self-titled track is a perfect example, with whispering verses and roaring choruses. If everything is heavy, it can often feel like nothing is. Having peace disrupted is arguably more dramatic and more engaging than never having known it. This can reconcile why antiquated metal sounds from the 60s and 70s are still heavy, even by modern production and composition standards.
I think this is much the same thing that Led Zeppelin did with "Stairway to Heaven" - it starts off slow and dreamy and gets progressively faster and heavier throughout the song. There are some great examples in metal, where a pleasant, almost classical sounding melody is juxtaposed with a much heavier and recognisably "metal" sound. That juxtaposition emphasizes the heaviness by contrasting it with the more melodic or symphonic passages, with Battery being a good example. Metallica have several songs that follow a similar pattern as well. In fact, they did exactly the same thing with the previous album - listen to the opening track from the "Ride The Lightning" album - "Fight Fire With Fire". The title track of "...And Justice For All" does something similar.
You've got some interesting thoughts.
I view Metallica as a guilty pleasure due to them being so mainstream. They aren't the heaviest band on earth when it comes to that distortion sound, but them mixing in undistorted sounds in otherwise heavy songs gives some feeling of awe that I fail to get from many other heavy metal bands. Not to mention something I feel like the guy in the video failed to address: the lyrics. Heavy Metal lyrics naturally tackles heavy subjects that pop music is unable to carry the weight of. Much of Metallica's lyrics concerns the darkest thinks existence has to offer. Listening to the song "one" resulted in me feeling depressed when thinking about it's subject matter. And that comes from someone who actually likes the sound of the first sound clip played in this video.
I completely agree, and this obviously plays into the whole "the breakdown is often the heaviest part of a modern metal song", as that's where the dynamics can really shine. I've never cared for songs that stick with a blast style beat throughout the entire song, it gives me no room to feel the heaviness.
The best one by Metallica in that regard is The Thing That Should Not Be. Definitely Metallica's heaviest song and it has a similar intro to Battery
@@ZDS104 A guilty pleasure due to them being so mainstream?
Who knew metal heads were such hipsters? 😛
Paying attention to Beethoven and the way he composed his music has a lot of similarities with metal
See I prefer this phrasing of this point.
Like, so many people say x composer invented metal, blatantly ignoring the blues roots of the genera.
This, doesn't do that.
what similarities? interested to learn more about that
Like, yeah. You can definitely hear those similarities in like Beethoven's 5th
I KNOW RIGHT!! I love it when Beethoven utilized drop C tuning in a 5/8 time signature whilst shredding the minor pentatonic scale with blue notes added!!!
@@alansouthall8221third movement of Moonlight Sonata. I'm no expert, but if that's not metal I don't know what is
This analysis in mind I'd love to hear your thoughts on shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine. The distortion and "heaviness" changes meaning from being powerful to being overwhelmingly melancholic, despite the techniques used to create it being very similar.
And then there's Alcest for the crossover
"Time signatures are for cowards" lol. Great video! Makes so much sense to break it down like this and make this genre so accessible
Another thing you forgot to mention is rhythmic dissonance. Accent displacement and polymeters/polyrhythms are essential to modern metal. Bands like Meshuggah, Periphery and Animals as Leaders utilize these along with tritones to create insanely intricate music akin to classical music and jazz.
Yeszzzzz so agreed. 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻
Agree, metal now relies a lot in dissonance and odd time signatures. This makes not only the harmony but rhythm be part of the cycle of tension/release, and that's great.
This is simply false. Pretty much only microgenres (I'm calling into dissodeath, avant-garde grindcore, and very small niches within dissoblack) hold that as a pillar for composition. Those bands are not representative of the current state of metal, they are all over a decade old.
@@ElephantDestroyer I didn’t state them being essential as a fact. That was my opinion. They may all be over a decade old, but are still making music, are relatively popular enough to be considered modern in my opinion and still influence the creation of many similar bands.
@@sayidofreach7385 They are without a doubt influential, but popularity measures public reception in relative quantity, not age. What you may say is they are still relevant and popular in modern times.
The key thing about distortion is that it's nonlinear. When distorted, more isn't just more, it's different. With multiple notes, it can give you frequencies that are _lower_ than any of the fundamentals. Take a power chord, you have two cycles of the root summed with three cycles of the fifth. Now shave off the tops and bottoms of that combined waveform - you get a distorted waveform that's as long as two cycles of the root. Think of it as a new note with a fundamental frequency an octave below the root.
That's true but it also ads tons of higher harmonics.
Don't forget the overtones
This explains why playing an octave on a bass sounds like a 5th
To me, metal and heaviness is about intensity. It's about matching the intensity of my inner turmoil. It's not necessarily about anger, it can be about any emotion, and often a chaotic mix of emotion, because that's how life is. It only looks like transgression because those intense emotions aren't always welcomed in society.
When someone can create absolute chaos and still retain full control, it's actually soothing in a way, or cathartic. Listening to metal music is like having your feelings validated that you may not know how to express otherwise.
This is like... the most incredibly comprehensive "bite sized" take on Metal.
Why do people listen to it? What's it about? How is metal "metal"?
Great vid. Sending this to my Nonna who asked "why didnt anyone give him a cough drop?" the first time she heard metal.
Thank you, 12tone, for helping me justify my musical taste to my family, whatever these contents are.
My mother was a band teacher that loves the real “rockin’” composers like Dvorak or Rachmaninoff, and I keep telling her she would like instrumental metal.
Show her Pelican
*Rockmaninov*
But seriously, Dvorak's New World Symphony would sound very metal if you just added drums and electric guitars. Compositionally, the heaviness is already there!
@@kevinwillems8720 1000% this
then you would have The Wizard's Last Rhymes, by Rhapsody/Rhapsody of Fire. :) @@InventorZahran
I once impressed my classical-loving music teacher by pointing out that many songs by Nine Inch Nails are in sonata allegro form, a very classical form. The best example (almost, it's a variation on the real deal sonata) is Closer. I made him listen to song and pointed out where the sections were and what they doing and after that he had newfound respect for more modern genres of music.
7:52 that lion's roar was unexpectedly high-pitched
I relate heavy to slow fat sounding riffs. I think Electric Wizard sounds extremely heavy
electric wizard is to me, the platonic form of heavy music. the mix of tempo, register, and intervals is perfect. They also play relatively simple riffs, which i think is an underestimated quality of heavy. I would say the Pyramids at Giza are a very "heavy" structure and the raw simplicity of the form (as well as scale, duh) is part of that. frills and flowery phrases always lighten music.
They use lots of descending movement in their riffs which adds to that "crushing" effect.
Just one minor correction here: properly downtuned guitars don't have looser strings, you just need heavier string gauges to compensate the tension, adjust the springs, action, neck etc. In the end the goal is to have the guitar feel almost the same way as a standard tuned one.
I agree with you except
1. That is not a “minor” correction, it’s straight up misinformation.
2. That was your only note? This video had so many bad takes, specifically that Black Sabbath is “quaint” by today’s standard of heavy. That part was laughable. Supernaut, Black Sabbath (song), Snowblind, Children of the Grave, literally all of Volume 4 (and yes, I’m including Changes because the lyrics are heavy). If these songs were recorded today by an engineer like Jamie King, they’d be classified as heavy metal, no argument.
Some 0.73 for the drop A on the Baritone guitar. It's beastly. 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻
Just out of interest, because I'm not a guitar player: On my violin, the lower strings are looser (even though they have a higher gauge). So can't both be the case? Also, in a quick search, I didn't find any strings designed specifically for drop D tuning.
@@_manox_ I'm very much into heavy and low tunings and there are almost infinite possibilities and brands which povide this. One big on is GHS with their Boomers line. D'Addario, Ernie Ball and Elixir just to name a few. 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻
@@_manox_"light top heavy bottom" strings are perfect for drop tunings
“If your riff isn’t heavy in standard tuning, it’s not heavy. It’s just low.”
Goddamn right! 🤘
I disagree with that bit. Tuning down can definitely make the same riff feel heavier. So can distortion. He makes a point about it not being some sort of auto-heavifying tool, but it's not 100% the case. There's still something to be said for the characters of different keys, even different tuning bases, and definitely lowness. Lowness can absolutely add heaviness. It's not an all-purpose guarantee for achieving a songwriting goal, but then I don't think anything is, for any goal. It can still be generally applicable.
I personally go down to a drop G and find that it lends heft to my stuff. Be realistic. Imagine some riff I might write in that, then imagine plonking it up five octaves. You're seriously going to say it ought to sound equally heavy, so as to be able to judge it via the reverse process, starting with that super-high version? Nah. Now contract that illustrative exaggeration down to the actual example of normal tuning. Same principle, just a more subtle magnitude. I tend to think it follows the same logic.
@@Torthrodhel bass players must hate you... Get out their register with that guitar. 😂
I've been saying this for a while, my band recent decided to abandon Drop B and tune up to Drop D... Still a drop tuning, but in today's world of 10 string baritone guitars in Drop π it's pretty quaint, it's only a whole step off standard tuning... I have found that since we decided to tune higher the quality of our riffs has improved massively because we can't just rely on lowness to provide the heavy
@@cbrindle91 not sure I'm not playing a bass myself, as I took half the strings off it anyway. Eh I'm not calling myself a player of anything aside from piano (my first instrument and the one that I can actually play properly), anyway. Maybe voice too. Definitely not any sort of guitar. The way I play though, such that it is, probably more in the role of a rhythm guitar than a bass, or maybe some sort of hybrid. But I thumb across a power chord mixing in the odd changed 'high' string, anyway. So I figure I can't count. Definitely no need for any jealousy, lol. Unless it's songwriting - now that, I am good at. Playing notsomuch.
I love the register though, it just seems to be the one that works for me. Also always go a tiny arbitrary bit above tuning root as I know the pop standard was designed to scientifically maximize annoyance and that's not the quality I want from my stuff. Think it makes a little bit of difference.
Eh I come from piano. In piano you can use any register you like. With my guitar I just figured why not do the same. On piano I tended to play quite low in general, so I guess that just got ported over somewhat.
@@Torthrodhel I was gonna say something about you playing the piano. Figures you already are a piano player if you tuning a guitar way down there. 😂 Some people just have to feel that thump of the low end. For real, try a bass. Haha
Black Sabbath and Lorna Shore are two of my favorite bands and to see them back to back in this video brings me joy.
“You can have an acoustic guitar and a clean reverb voice, and make the heaviest thing ever.” - Scott Reeder
In that case I don't honestly think I've heard the heaviest thing ever. To me that takes at least something away from it. Clean voice maybe notsomuch, but acoustic instrument almost definitely.
Opeth's Damnation album
That’s hilarious because you just cannot do that
@@nondescriptcat5620 I really like damnation, but wouldn't call it heavy at all
can't believe there isn't a single mention of sincopation throughout this entire vid. riffs like dream theater's in the name of god intro and opeth's the grand conjuration's chorus are face melting specifically because of their sincopation
When I saw the title of the video, I thought, “The Grand Conjuration has got to be featured on this” I was very sad it wasn’t 🥲
Even as a metalhead: No objections, sounds reasonable. Although I might say, the appeal of the technical and skill oriented stuff (e.g. Animals as Leaders as you featured) is a prominent facet in heavy music, but I wouldn't describe it as heaviness. In fact, in my death metal band, we specifically add simpler and slower sections when we feel the song would otherwise lack heaviness for the sake of displaying prowess.
Yeh I feel the speed thing is to make it noisier and not necessarily make it complicated. The other thing I think that's missing is the contrast of having lots of noise to having no noise when everyone just stops playing for a second.
Animals as Leaders are cool, I won't knock their sound or skill, but they're the epitome of "noodling"! Which yeah, too much of in metal often gets derided as self-indulgent rather than embraced as "heavy". "Heavy metal" still needs that tight, snappy, riffy core to the sound!
This is a good observation. I think technicality and skill can be a heaviness enhancer, but are not "heavy" on their own. For example, bands like First Fragment, Animals as Leaders, etc. display a ton of technicality, skill, and mastery of their instruments, but despite the distortion, the occasional driving drums, and the growling vocals, they just don't come off as "heavy." It is not pop for sure, but it comes off more as a pure display of skill than heavy music. On the flip side, bands like Archspire and Origin use insane technical ability and skill to make a heavy sound somehow even heavier. Both bands are so "heavy" that a lot of self-proclaimed metalheads find them too extreme. If you haven't checked them out, I highly recommend doing so, if for no other reason than just to see what the more extreme ends of metal are capable of. Try looking up Chaosmos from Origin or Drone Corpse Aviator from Archspire.
Imo technical death metal is a much heavier technicality focused subgenre than prog metal
@@spicymeatballs2thespicening You get more traditional prog metal bands like Threshold or Royal Hunt or even Ayreon sounding more heavy than Animals as Leaders, though of course, technical death metal still has those beat :P
I loved that you used the Phyrexian symbol for "Machine Like"
This is such a great historical account of metal. I would argue that with your last point I don’t think the arms race necessarily makes anything in the past obsolete. There are bands now that are still doing the doom and stoner stuff like sabbath that would still be heavy but in a different way. Metalheads know how to implicitly compartmentalize different types of heaviness for different styles and generes. I think your point with Lorna shore demonstrates that… because sometimes it (or other modern bands) can be redundant or derivative and ironically lose its heaviness and value. However there’s obviously a strong level of subjectivity behind all of this. Such an amazing video it made me happy to hear all my favorite bands in here
this. Metal is a land of contrasts. Meshuggah and Nile didn't make Tool or Primus "not heavy enough," they're doing their own Heavy Thing.
Was about to say the same.
I don't think it is even compartmentalized exactly as much there are several ways to approach thing (see the discussion about classical being "heavy"). Most modern metal has picked its tropes it seems to differentiate itself from the past, but has kinda wrote itself into a corner much like hardcore did and becomes a caricature of itself.
The arms race is true. There's a very clear partition in extreme metal history in the 90's, and it's easily observable in how most death metal subgenres focus on making it heavier, whereas black metal goes in very different directions one from another. Obsoleteness is outright false though, I imagine 12tone isn't aware of the popularity of power metal, and bands like Visigoth that are carrying the heavy metal underground.
I don't think anybody thinks Lorna Shore is better than Sabbath, and if they do, you know how the Sarcofago and Manowar songs go.
@@nondescriptcat5620 Tool and Primus are not metal
@@ElephantDestroyer yes, they are, and you have zero authority to claim they aren't.
My favorite thing about metal music is when it pops up in truly unexpected places but everyone from every walk of life can still enjoy it.
Like when Madonna played Pantera at one of her concerts. Not a big fan of Madonna. Most metal heads arent.
But for a moment, Madonna fans and Pantera fans overlapped in a unique and very special way.
When I first got into Maiden and Anthrax et al, "heavy" meant mostly distorted guitar, but it didn't hold up. For instance, decades later Slipknot came along with down-tuned, distorted guitars and to me didn't sound very heavy at all. Their guitar was so low in the mix and so close to the vocal that it barely sounded heavy at all to my ear. I'd argue that the least heavy Slayer track was heavier than the heaviest Slipknot (as they were when they first arrived at least; they seem to have got heavier). So it wasn't just that. I am still unsure what makes heavy heavy, but I think I know it when I hear it. It's a long time since I was chasing the heavy alone, but I still love it.
I disagree there, for sure. (sic) and especially almost anything off of Iowa are unfathomably heavy. Not on the level of the heaviest death bands but it does get into how we judge it. To me, most thrash isn't all that heavy. It's aggressive, sure, but a band like Anthrax lacks the heft of a Cannibal Corpse or Suffocation.
@@HonkeyKongLive yeah idk what he means by slipknot being heavy xD like yeah they have not heavy stuff, and some of their hits are only slightly heavy (thinking stuff like duality and before I forget)
but the first two albums, especially Iowa, are so goddamn heavy and even since then they have lots of really heavy stuff.
I find anthrax funny because most metalheads consider anthrax the wiggles of thrash metal. Like, do they really count?
@@jeffreychandler8418heavy is different depending on the person, I saw slipknot play all of Iowa live and was very disappointed, I heard it was their heaviest so I thought I might enjoy it but it didn’t strike me as heavy or exciting at all. Anthrax actually played at the same festival and they absolutely killed, caught in a mosh is absolutely heavier to me than anything slipknot has done by a long shot, even the new material anthrax played was far more engaging and assertive than slipknot. When Slayer came out there was just a totally different atmosphere to slipknot, that’s when the bonfires and moshing really got started. They make slipknot sound like bubblegum pop, I’m a big proponent of speed and aggression being the most important parts of heaviness haha
@@jacksonbarker7594 That's true. it is highly variable. I know I'm very particular with trash xD like I don't like slayer but give me early death metal or death thrash and oh man I fucking love it.
Using the phyrexian symbol for "machine-like" is a nice touch.
Good. It wasn't just me thinking that was the Phyrexia symbol!
Many folks seem to equate heaviness with “extremeness” now And just because bands like Meshuggah exist, Black Sabbath, early Priest, and Deep Purple don’t suddenly cease to be metal. I still think Godflesh’s Streetcleaner is one of the heaviest albums of all time. And lots of the early protometal bands branched out and transcended earlier categorization.
Streetcleaner is one of the best examples of a heavy album, it works so well. I always separate heavyness from extremeness. Some extreme bands sound brutal, and stunning with a lot of things happening, but the overal tone of all is very thin, when instruments are pushed to high levels of speed and distortion some strange things start to happen, the kick drum becames just a little click without body, same with the snare tone. Bass sound compressed without time to breath and guitar tone is just thin because is the only way to have some clarity. When you play fast music with a slow/midtempo sound setting it sounds just like mud. Wich is not always bad, but it depends on the goals of every band. Not every metal band is aiming for heavyness as a prime goal, some bands priorize things like sounding psychedelic, cinematic or avant-garde rather than pure raw power.
@dirk62457 I agree. I think Godflesh would have had better results with a real drummer. Maybe the machine gave them a particular sound that they were going for. Or perhaps they just hadn't found "the guy." Your point about the clarity of the guitar is accurate. That's where metal drums were heading though very midrange, very mechanical.
I think most metalheads would agree Black Sabbath and Deep Purple are more metal than Meshuggah ever could try to be. Like you said, "heaviness" does not equal metal. There has to be the fuckin metal spirit there yk?
I met Children of Bodom guys in a small venue in Jyväskylä, Finland back when they had just released their first mini-CD. I had also my first doom metal CD release out so we ended up talking about heaviness. Basically Alexi Laiho thought heaviness comes from speed and I thought it comes from slowness. As we see here, it's a bit more complicated but that's what it boiled down to at the time.
Musicians across all genres have some hilarious adjectives to describe various attributes of sound; sometimes they’re onomatopoeic, but usually they’re just filler words.
“That bass is so flubby.”
“Listen to that raunchy drum fill.”
“This pedal gives me a squanky feel.”
3:08 can we talk about how fucking good that dinosaur drawing is?
just a little addendum to the down-tuning thing:
You can counter the added "looseness" of the string by a) getting thicker strings and b) longer scale length guitars.
A thicker string reacts differently to the plek and the pickup, getting more attack and a higher signal and the longer scale makes it vibrate longer. So, with everything else the same (amp, effects etc.) it feels heavier.
Or just getting a guitar with more strings. Like 7 strings.
Or 8.
Or 9.
Or 10.
You get the idea.
@@CAPTAIN_CLOCKwell, those guitars use thicker string gauges and longer scale lengths. Makes no difference for the low strings if it's a 7 string or a down-tuned 6 string. More strings mainly gives you more range (since tuning the whole guitar down gives you more low notes, but less high notes)
In regards to losing string tension when tuning lower: when metal guitarists want to tune lower, we just buy thicker-gauge strings lol. String tension is important for intonation and tone. Extended range/baritone guitars with longer scale lengths are common, as well.
I love that the metronome that opens your videos is set in 5/4. Heavily underutilized but great time signature. Honestly I'd love to see a video exploring its use in popular music.
I hear it as 4/4 with the last note being an accented downbeat
Out of the more common 'odd' time signiatures, I find myself writing a lot more frequently in 7 (even probably more than the much more usual but still a teensy-bit odd 3), but 5's definitely very cool whenever it emerges. I say 'emerge' since I don't like to force these things, I like for them to arrive of their own accord, so-to-speak. I think 7's a lot easier to feel, at least for me anyway.
I don't count most examples of rarer ones, though. To me something's not in one of these odd signiatures if it feels like it's just say an 8 with a bit lopped off or a 4 with a bit tagged on. I just call those 8 and 4, plus a 'grace dent' or a 'grace bump'. It has to feel 7 to really be 7, and feel 5 to really be 5 (and hell... even feel 4 to be 4, as common as that feeling is). Know what I mean? Because I mess with things all the time and use a lot of dents and bumps. Some people might call it working in a 13 or a 17 or something but I wouldn't call them that personally. I think I did do something that actually felt like an 11 once though. Dunno if I could play it back if asked, but I remember the feeling of recognising it is unusual anyway.
Same Here@@NickHoad
@@Torthrodhel7/8 is definitely one of my favorite time signatures. So versatile
@@sleepdeep305 I think with me it's heavily inspired by Soundgarden. They mucked around with time signiature all the time and it always sounded pretty natural.
Distortion is important, but it is rhythm and timbre that really cement “heaviness.” Low, dark timbres and double-bass-drum prowess are always featured in the heaviest tracks.
Heaviness feels like some kind of combination of intensity and a kind of, just a thing to feel. I think I often hold slowness or at least a sense of slowness.
Yeah, the thing you said
@@kevinwillems8720 Did you reply to yourself?
I agree. Intensity is the primary thing for me.
@@robertinogochev3682 yes that was delibrate
@@robertinogochev3682 although that was actually directed to 12tone
Metal fan and long time 12-tone follower here. I'm gonna be really nitpicky here, but the difference between a lion's roar and a cat's meeaw are not just due to size difference. Pantherines (big cats) actually have a different hyoid bone structure, allowing them to roar but not purr and vice versa. A small dog's yap vs a big dog's low bark would be a much better analogy, as these are basically the same species with the same skeletal anatomy.
Sorry, seeing Nile spelled out in notes is the funniest thing. I love your work!
And also, good job being bloody informed!
Very helpful video!
I hadn't heard anything by Nile before and I already love them just from that short clip. The vocals remind me a lot of Dethklok, rather amusingly.
They’re basically an Egyptian themed brutal death metal band
Nile are classic pillars of Death Metal. they're one of the main bands Dethklok is spoofing.
I was expecting the same regurgitated garbage most other essays discuss when talking about metal and its "heaviness" but you actually hit the nail on the head and used a wide range of examples from multiple subgenres, really respectable and well spoken
1. This was a fascinating and a very insightful video, and I love the way you open the doors to appreciating new genres for me!
2. Seeing Noise really made me smile, it's so fun to see your dictionary of little symbols grow and develop
I think one thing that you missed regarding how heavy something is, is the emotion put into it. While that's hard to quantify, I do feel that honesty and emotion are huge in what makes something heavy. Steven Brodsky of the band Cave In had a great quote in an interview from 2001 regarding the band stylistic change on the "Jupiter" record saying (paraphrased) "people are saying we're not heavy anymore, and I just don't think that's the case, we are heavy, we're just not metal anymore."
Great video by the way!
Cave In is such a good band, cool to see them mentioned here
The Monty Python foot for "something different" made me laugh out loud, well done!
I remember when I was first getting into rock and Punk in like Middle School and saying I didn't like music you couldn't understand, or stuff without discernable melodies. Then here I am today excited to here a sample from Lorna Shore's "To The Hellfire". Lorna Shore is an amazing example of several points you made about the elements of what is heavy, Speed, Distortion, Excess Noise. Also great guys and amazing live!
Most time that's not because the melody is undiscernable, is because the listener haven't done his work to train his ears yet. Same applies to Jazz or every less accesible thing in art. The first reaction is blaming the piece when the problem is on the listener who is not ready yet, you need years of learning the language and codes of every genre, the tropes, the types of production and how every instrument sound in common contexts. Same happened to me thinking black metal was just bad because it sounded messy, but when my ears were trained with years of listening other subgenres, then it clicked and I can undestand everything that's happening there, so the problem was me trying to understand something beyond my possibilities. Same with Jazz, once you can figure the cycle of chord progressions and separate the foundation of the song and the ornaments, then the improv don't sound that random.
Such a good video! I think you nailed all of the key technical and sonic elements of what makes metal- metal. For me it's everything you mentioned- which creates a certain FEELING in the listener of HEAVYNESS.
Both of my siblings went to college for music related majors, with my oldest one being a band teacher, and if they start talking music theory things I don't really understand them, but I enjoy the way you explain it. It's engaging to me and makes me realize the little things that I miss in the music I like.
I'm curious if you could do an Understanding video about the song Honeybee by Steam Powered Giraffe? It's one of their most well known songs and I think it might be the most beautiful song I've ever heard.
I find it fascinating that there was a time when some folks considered Bon Jovi to be a type of "metal" yet somehow I don't think I've ever heard anyone use that term for the Rolling Stones, but the Stones seem infinitely more "metal" to me.
Your research seems rock solid, the way you present your arguments seems so relatable and unbiased, and your voice characters are awesome. I'm so glad you did this one!
I’d like to attempt to help define heavy by looking for heaviness outside of metal.
Tori Amos’ “Pretty Good Year from the 1994 album Under the Pink has a moment that always hit me as heavy.
The section from 1:51 to 2:28 illustrates to me a very heavy part, with a wind-up from 1:51-2:01 (beginning with “Somethings…”), notched up and repeated from 2:02-2:10, and sort of an inhale (the word “well”) from 2:11-2:12 and finally the heavy pay-off from 2:13-2:28 (beginning with “Hey…”).
I think 2:13-2:28 could stand on its own as heavy, but with the build up and return to quiescence after the heavy part, I think that 15 seconds just has more power than a lot of “hair metal bands” whole catalogue.
It used dissonance and contrast and vocal expression. I think there is some mild distortion on the guitar, but not much, if any, and not needed if it’s there.
Anyone else familiar with this song and notice this section and agree or disagree that it’s heavy?
Absolutely - Tori has a lot of songs/sections that I'd describe as 'heavy' e.g., "Precious Things". Same with, e.g., Ani DiFranco etc.
It's like that old quote from Alice In Chains' Jerry Cantrell:
"I've always been interested in bands that make heavy shit without sounding so obvious. There's something about having strength and not flaunting it. It's not about coming out and mauling your ass, but easing in. Before you know it, you're in a death lock, which you didn't see coming because it was so smooth and seductive you didn't know it until it had your face down on the canvas. To me, being heavy has nothing to do with how many speakers you blow or how many decibels you play at."
This whole thread reminds me of an old interview with one of the members of Deftones. They said they consider something like Thelonius Monk heavier than Metallica. Something like that. I don’t remember the exact quote. 🤔
Not familiar with that particular song, but will give it a listen.
@@RockandRollWoman Please do and report back if you would, Madam Secretary.
ultra based of you to use nile as an example. good video.
oh yeah and the phyrexia symbol was a nice touch for "machine-like" aswell.
Metal in a way is a lot like what people call "classical" music, like, it all sounds similar, but at the same time extremely different based on the period and place, it can be extremely slow/extremely fast, very simple or very complex, even the themes, you have black metal talking about depression, the futility of life, hate and paganism, and you have powermetal talking about killing dragons and saving the world, what they both have in common? (besides lord of the rings references) both are heavy, in their own way, truly a wonderful genre of music
Metal is a lot unlike what people call "classical" music, because metal all sounds like the same distortion noise throughout a track, but "classical" music, traditional music or art music or orchestral music or chamber music, is played on instruments that have pitches that can be heard, as the purpose of how the instruments are designed and played, so that the pitches can form melodies and harmonies and tunes, things that metal does not have.
@@SonnyMoonie I don't know what kind of metal you listen (or tried to listen once), maybe you listened to some extreme genre of metal music and decided that all metal sounds the same because it shares distortion but as i stated: much like classical music, metal can sound the same for the unfamiliarized ear, but a quick in depth analysis can promove a great change in perspective.
Just check:
EDU FALASCHI l Rebirth l Temple Of Shadows In Concert
Listen to that and say it's just noise throughout a track.
@@SonnyMoonie oh my, metal the same👏👏👏
Sometimes metal, especially death metal have similar style of composition and sound. For example phobophile by cryptopsy, in some moments it reminded me on Vivaldi or Litvinovsky.
I agree with most of this, but neither down tuning or drop tuning is essential, and I would also like to point out DROP tuning is typically used by core bands, and a lot more infrequently with metal bands
I always felt “heavy” to me to be more of the “hit hard” factor you mentioned. Distortion is essential, it adds the “weight” and mass like an ocean being dropped on top of you. But how the music forms that mass of sound into a solid ball of steel that crushes you with explosive force is ultimately what makes it “heavy” to me. Another thing to consider is how contrast is essential to creating the “illusion” of heaviness. The less resistance a breakdown has to drop, in other words, less competing sounds, the better.
I would really love to see a video on Periphery and/or TesseracT sometime. I think they're making some of the most interesting and eye-opening modern metal out there. Any single one of their songs has an immense depth.
When I was a kid taking piano lessons, my dad would refer to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff as "the heavy stuff." He was born in the 20s and didn't listen to rock of any source, so I doubt he picked up "heavy" from any of the sources you cite.
well, even orchestral music can be oppressive. overwhelming and overpowering. and scary.
@@Celatra And some studies would also suggest that there's the most overlap between enjoyers of classical and (heavy) metal music, more so than classical and rock/pop/etc.
Most obvious in certain sub-genres of metal music, like melodeath and of course neoclassical metal (think Yngwie). A lot of those artists have done actual cover versions of classical pieces.
I'd consider Rachmaninoff to be metal asf lol, due to the intensity and atmosphere of his work. I listen to metal primarily but I highkey respect his work and take inspo from it
This feels accurate to me. As I get older and chase more heavy metal to listen to, I find that some of the older music I like doesn't sound as heavy as I once thought. This pushes me to find heavier music which becomes pretty difficult sometimes if I just don't get lucky enough to find a band that hits the spot. Finding new music I like is a lot like searching for treasure, some days I don't find anything, other days I find something good enough to hold me over for a while, and sometimes I hit the jackpot.
That last part is exactly me! Every now and then I take recommendations from people on Discord on which new bands to listen to. Usually I like it, but not enough for it to become a favorite. Then once a year I find something that just takes my breath away and becomes an instant favorite - like Meshuggah!
I'm a picky listener, and they tick every box. Their guitar tone is godlike (especially from Nothing to obZen but the ones on Koloss and later are good too), Jens' vocals are insane, the complexity of the rhythms and composition! Can you tell I'm in love with their music right now? Lol. I definitely want more of their CDs, thank you local CD store for having a CD that I randomly picked up and thought looked cool, only to listen to it months later and be absolutely amazed! It was obZen.
And then you got King Crimson's "21st century schizoid man" from '69... chaotic, noisy, excessive, distorted, heavy... but with roots not just in rock, but also in jazz and experimental avant-garde music.
For some reason, I got the feeling that a good video to follow up on this subject, would be the New Zealand siren battles.
I think on the quest for heaviness, the metal genre of Thall stands at the very front of the pack, and is often described as the metal of the future thanks to it's near-alien feel thanks to its use of dissonance & rhythmic complexity.
If heaviness is what it means to be deep and powerful - Thall IS heaviness. A band I can point to in this regard is Humanity's Last Breath, their recent album Ashen is a good example here, in that both conceptually, spiritually and technically speaking it uses almost all of the techniques & strategies you talked about to attain and maximize heaviness. In my opinion, their Bearer track is one of, if not the heaviest song ever created so far.
Also band Last days of humanity pretty heavy, especially their album putrefaction in progress
I cannot believe you made an entire video on metal and heaviness without playing a clip of meshuggah. Not in a "you didn't play my favorite band" way, but in the fact that they really helped define the modern definition of heaviness in metal.
I don’t think you got the whole story on heaviness. I think heaviness is a dimension that can be attributed to every piece of music (although most would fall on the light side). The same way that a song can be fast/slow, loud/quiet, dynamic/static, bright/dark, it can be heavy/light. A good example outside of metal or hardcore might be “The Dream is Collapsing” from the Inception soundtrack. It’s almost enough to make you start hardcore dancing at the end. And yet…no distortion. And it’s not just about darkness either. Easycore exists, which can definitely be heave. So the question then is…what makes something heavier or lighter? I haven’t been able to come up with a good definition yet.
Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet, 2nd Movement
I understand the struggle to define heavy
I always explain to people that I like aggressive music because it makes me feel powerful
Sometimes, "Heaviness" feels like a fight or flight situation where you choose to fight, and luckily for you, it's going well
I don't think I'm able to describe every dimension of heaviness this way though
something grotesque and evil like Slamming Death Metal doesn't fit my description
@@XueYlva yah, and the thing is, sometimes deathcore songs honestly don’t sound as heavy as metalcore songs. Like, even though the deathcore song will have more blast beats, etc, it can become so much that it loses its effect. There’s not enough contrast. Whereas a metalcore song, which varies more throughout the song, can sometimes end up feeling heavier
Yes, but the term was born with metal, so if we judge other genres by heavyness, metal is still the first genre you must understand before trying to apply its concepts to older pieces, even if they were heavy unintentionally.
As a metal guitar player, I think you're lacking some specific knowledge that really only comes from trying to get a decent metal sound.
1. Gain staging and EQ. You want a clean boost before the amp, preferably one that also gives a bump to the mids like a tube screamer. Then you want an EQ in the fx loop to carve out room for the bass guitar. Palm mutes have a LOT of bass, you want them to be tight and punchy instead of wide and flubby.
2. Loose strings are usually a bad idea for metal, it's hard to pick fast when your strings flop around in the breeze and you really want to be picking hard to get a good sound. If you're downtuning, beef up the strings gauges a bit. Most people use 10-52 or 11-56 for Drop C on a 25.5" scale guitar.
3. A good cab matters way more than a good amp, so honestly find some cab impulses you like and call it good unless you can afford a nice speaker cab.
4. The more you downtune, the more mids you add in and the more bass you cut out.
5. Ignore all my advice if you play stoner, doom, noise, or anything like that.
I'm a huge fan of doom metal, or at least the small subsection of doom metal I've gone out to listen to. I think the most important term for the heaviness I like is "thunderous" - it really gets across the Sunn O))) Live, Boris Flood Part Three-ness of it all. I sort of think of the faster metal I like as fun and cool but not really that heavy.
I saw Sunn 0))) live, and I still haven’t gotten over the “glacial maximism”
@@BradsGonnaPlay i saw boris close with not last song (the live version with the drone) and it made my friend finally understand why i like doom metal
You dont just want to make it sound good, you dont, just want to bathe them, in sound,
You have to bathe them in fire and lightning. Its about the FEEL. Its always gunna come back to how it feels, it raising some hairs is just how you know it works. The thing that does it is this, feeling like the floor drops out from under you. Just soaring through noises so beautiful it brings some to tears because its so satisfying.
Maybe i just watched too many amvs as a kid, but to me music is very visual, and the songs dont need lyrics to have meanings. The reason disturbed hot away with all the "ah ah"s is because no one cares lol theyre too busy listening to the music, and hearing him do that just adds to the aggressive feel, of the music, behind the voice. Those more interested in the lyrics tend to be thrown off by it. But those into the music are so absorbed they barely notice it, its just a beat.
Heavy Metal and Punk Rock have a lot in common... they both stop being their genre when they become mainstream. They both love loud and difficult to digest (in very specific ways)
Thrash is heavily Punk Rock inspired, and you have the popularity of genres like Metalcore which hybridize metal elements with Hardcore punk (hence the name) and then all the spin off genre's of that movement (like Deathcore). Punk Rock and Metal are very closely aligned.
This is the first video I’ve seen from you and my initial reaction to the title was “oh here we go, another jazz enthusiast here to sit on his ivory tower holding his music theory degree and tell us what makes things heavy and how it’s terrible.” But I was pleasantly surprised. It seems you really understand the ins and outs of the scene, even on a “meta” level like how you expressed fan’s willingness to abort a genre if it gets mainstream. I’ve been a metal fan for about 12 years now and have been a hardcore fan of metalcore that whole time, and I’ve seen that distain for the poppy sound with a lot of metal elitists. Just two thing I would add, they’re minor but still.
For me personally a melodic sound can coexist with heavy music, and even add to the heaviness in a way, but it has to be done right not just because that’s what you do, phinehas is a good example. But I will say that is a personal opinion, a lot of people would disagree with me I think.
Second is, and you touched upon thins but I feel like it needs more emphasis. One thing the half steps and distortions are trying to achieve is making a part of your brain go “this ain’t right” is creates tension and angst which then brings out the emotional reaction that you want. This isn’t done haphazardly though, because otherwise it would just be white noise (or doom metal depending on who you ask) it’s just another show of talent that these musicians do to flex on us all
Glam Metal got me in the door. And I still listen to it.
But man, the changing landscape is something I didn't consider. People trash Ghost for the pop influence and I never understood that. It's turning it on it's head. But I get that most people in the heavier circles wear the outsiders status harder than I do.
Children of Bodom got me through a lot and I miss Alexi every time I hear COB.
Honestly, the first time I watched a music video of Ghost I was... confused. The makeup and staging they do gave me the impression that they'd be much heavier than they actually are. And it's not that they're bad, it's just that I had very different expectations for what they'd sound like. I think that's at least part of what's led people to be so harsh on them.
Another very important factor that I think was not mentioned in this video is that the bass frequencies require a powerful subwoofer speaker system that can reproduce the low frequencies of the bass guitar (and bass drums), otherwise you won't be able to hear nor feel the "heavy" bass.
Since a lot people around the world don't even have a Subwoofer but only cheap phone speakers, they wont even be able to hear or feel the bass
Here is a simplified ranking list of the "heaviest" Metal genres that exist today:
*1. Extreme Brutal Slam Death Metal* (incluing Deathcore, Gringcore, Gorecore) this is the "heavíest" and most extreme Metal genre today
*2.* followed by "normal" *Death Metal* (including melodic Death metal)
*3. Metalcore / Hardcore Metal* (also known as Metallic hardcore) including all sub-genres of Metalcore that evolved over the past 15 years, someties includes Pop elements
*4. Doom Metal* (again simple and slow but heavy riffs)
*5. Sludge Metal* (simple and slow but heavy downtuned riffs)
*6. Nu-Metal* (a very dynamic combination of Heavy Metal, Alernative Metal, Pop, Hip Hop, Rap and heavily downtuned bass riffs with Breakdowns which make it very groovy)
*7. Thrash Metal* (a faster and more aggressive form of classic Heavy Metal)
*8. Groove Metal* (for example Pantera, Sepultura)
*9. "Modern Heavy Metal" including Alternative Metal, Progressive Metal and Symphonic Metal* (for example Disturbed, Tremonti, Trivium, TOOL, Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, Alter Bridge, The Veer Union)
*10. Modern Hard Rock* bands (nowadays combining heavily downtuned Metal riffs with Hard Rock elements) for example Breaking Benjamin, Alter Bridge)
*11. Post-Hardcore Metal* (a softer version of Hardcore Metal, with more clean singing parts and Pop elements, using Heavy Metal riffs and drumming)
*12. Classic "Heavy Metal" (1980's)* comes last in this list, even behind modern Hard Rock, this sillustrates how much Metal and Rock as a whole has evolved over the past decades
When I first heard metal I listened to Sabbath and Metallica, then Megadeth and Pantera, then Sepultura and Slayer, and on and on. As I acclimated to each degree of sonic transgression, I was amenable to deeper dives into heaviness.
Loved this video. Rock on, bruh 🤘🏻
I saw what you did there while saying "What's unlikely to change" you drew Brotherhood of Steel logo and I loved that! Thank you! Just because: "War, war never changes."
If this was a college paper, I’d give you an A-. You did a fantastic job of getting the elements across. It’s obvious you listen to metal. You hit all the main points about guitar,but you missed the importance of the drums. You touched on rhythm a bit, but it’s a vital point. While lead guitar can add to the heavy, it’s the rhythm that make you want to jump in a mosh pit.
The groove can be heavy as can be the build up in intensity. One of the first heavy metal tunes is, IMHO, is Sing, Sing, Sing by The Benny Goodman Orchestra. It contains all the elements of metal. Yeah, technically it’s big band, but that tune at the time must’ve blown people away. Aggressive as hell, loud with pounding drums and cymbals, riffs flying by at speed…that’s pretty @#$&ing metal
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is still fkn heavy and Black Sabbath, the song, IS heavy metal.
Oh, yeah! The first breakdown: Dat. Dut. Dat dat dat da-dat dah... bwa-d-d-d-da-dah....
Awesome video. One element I think is super important in the "heaviness arms race" is that not only have tastes and techniques changed, but so has technology. The things that Periphery does to sound heavy nowadays was not possible with technology even 20 years ago. And that technical innovation came in part from the arms race. Metal is a genre that really shows how artists and engineers can fuel each other
The problem with "modern" heavy metal and it's "brutal" riffs and chugs is that when you're always dialed to 11, you might was we be at 1.
🤘🤘 this guy friggin gets it!!!
YES! If you don't have dynamics, then it isn't really "heavy".
Contrast is so important when you're creating something you intent to sound heavy.
My favorite modern example of this is I Saw The Light and It Was Repulsive by Sermon of Flames. The interludes give a great feeling of approaching doom, but you have no choice but to wait patiently while the music's lack of aggression makes you more and more anxious about whats to come
@@neverclosetoperfect "Ramble On", my friend...
It's essentially the loudness wars as applied to music.
"If there is no soft, there can be no loud."
I feel it's important to remember the etymology, the word heavy, during the time of proto-metal bands formations, was a slang term often used to describe concepts or situations that were deep, depressing, morbid, political, spiritual/religious. Expressions such as "that's too heavy for me' for example, would describe not wanting to engage in an intense, thought provoking or morbid conversation. It's seems fitting considering the subject matter of most metal songs.
the part about metal that's too close to pop is so true. especially when you think about softer bands with metal elements like ghost, babymetal or most of symphonic metal.
then again, i think we can be adults here and admit that music can be real metal even if it’s too gay (or whatever the excuse is now) for metalheads.
Ghost IS pop. I don't care what kinda costumes they wear or if they sing about Satanic shit, they're a pop-rock band.
@@pymandresFUCKING YES. Love Babymetal, fuck those insecure fake machos who prerend not to like songs like "Distortion" or "BxMxC"
for some of the people yes. but i feel like I hear "that's not real metal" more often. But even that only online@@pymandres
I agree. BM's whole thing is being a walking contradiction. Melodic Japanese pop on top of 7, 8, and 9 string guitars making some objectively heavy stuff a lot of the time (BxMxC is the best example of this), and also incorporating nearly every style of metal into their repertoire.
Lots of great points in this breakdown. Good job!
It can still go a lot further though. And I have to strongly disagree that heavy is, ‘by definition’, not pop. I just do not accept that. Granted, it does not happen often, but there are pop tunes that get really heavy. At least in my ears. Even in rap/hip hop, EDM, funk… actually when thinking about it, all styles of music has examples that contain heavyness.
I really think it mostly comes down to specific bpm ranges, tambers, and execution. Also it seems to me that syncopation often plays a role. Anyway, this is a fascinating subject to study!
Thank you for your awesome work!
One of my favorite uses of slow breakdowns is Infant Annihilator's "Baptized, Bastardised, Sodomised." The very beginning is an inhuman 225 BPM (it's more correctly described as 75 BPM subdivided into 12-tuplets), immediately followed by a not a halving, not a quartering, but at LEAST a 64th-ing of the time, where the bass and snare hits are separated by at least 6 seconds. Right after that, it pops back up to 150 (16ths/32nds instead of 12-tuplets).
It's hard to describe in words how incredibly hilarious yet substantially heavy this riff is - I recommend a listen of the first 52 seconds of this song to see what I'm failing to actually capture with words.
ua-cam.com/video/g_HTpeC2tW4/v-deo.html
Great video! Metalhead here and it was spot on, including "the secret code that proves you can hang", which is real but not necessarily a good thing in all cases. It has also generated a lot of exclusion and prejudice in some sub genres (including prejudices of sub genres of metal against other sub genres of metal) and a crazy debate of what or who is "true metal" or not. In the and it is (or should be) just an outlet for outcast kids to release their anger in a safe and productive way.
Tbh.. metalheads will never agree on anything
When you tune down on the guitar, you can get thicker gauge strings to keep the string tension you’re used to in E standard/Drop D. For example, in C standard/Drop B flat - I’ll use a 12-60 set of strings as opposed to a 10-46 set, but what set you go with for tunings is player preference.
Also, it’s kinda cool to hear the “cowboy chords” sound different when you tune down, like the B7 chord on the guitar
A friend once told me rock is what it is, and metal is heavier. Rocks are not as heavy as a mass of metal the same size. So as a genre, whats heavier then rock....metal....
Like aluminum?
@@michaelbond4609 my favorite white stripes song
@@michaelbond4609 exactly.....lol
Great overview! You nailed that metal maiden shut 🤘 I was particularly satisfied when you mentioned the respect metalheads have for their elder gods. Even if musically we've moved way passed their style, their contributions and fame will never be forgotten, which is something that mainstream music lacks greatly
Can we put together some non metal composers from different genres to write some metal music? That would be so interesting to listen to. And I think everyone would enjoy hearing how they are represented.
There's a video by Paul Davids where he gets a few non metal guitarists to write some metal riffs and see what they came up with. slight spoiler: a lot of sludgy bluesy riffs, but some weird stuff too. They were all good though.
Wow ... that would be fun to hear. 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻
I'm very appreciate hip hop influence in metal, slam is a good example.
Not mentioning Doom or Drone metal when going into slower forms of metal felt like a small oversight but that was the only negative i could find, great vid as usual!