Heavy Metal

Heavy metal is both the name of a genre and the name of the whole family. As a specific genre it describes the line running from Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in the early 1970s to the British explosion at the end of that decade — the NWOBHM, which gave the world Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Saxon. This is where the elements everything else would inherit were settled: the riff as the centre of composition, harmonised guitars, a heavy rhythm section and vocals that project over the top.

Unlike the subgenres that followed, classic heavy metal never strayed far from the song. The structure stays recognisable, melody remains in the foreground and speed is a device rather than a rule. That is why it is still the most common entry point into metal, and the common ground where audiences from very different subgenres continue to meet.