Introduction
In popular media, “heavy metal” has become synonymous with extreme music, which is unfortunate because it overlooks what heavy metal actually is and what it’s really about. I find heavy metal to be extremely beautiful music, but few people discover this because they are turned away from the genre due to popular misconceptions. With this blog I hope to educate people about what metal really is so I can share it’s beauty with more people.
Heavy metal is a genre of music related to but distinct from hard rock. The biggest misconception is that extremity is what differentiates heavy metal from hard rock, with a related myth that this is the reason heavy metal is even called heavy metal in the first place. The actual origin of heavy metal’s name is complicated and not entirely clear, but this myth is based on the reasoning that metals are heavier than rocks so heavy metal should be heavier than hard rock. However, we could flip this analogy around by noting that rocks are harder than metals as metals are soft and malleable while rocks are hard and rigid, which is an accurate description of the genres as well. While heavy metal is generally heavier than hard rock, it has numerous other musical differences, like taking more influence from classical music for tighter compositions. The main way I like to interpret the name “heavy metal” is that heavy metal is more sophisticated than hard rock like how the iron age followed the stone age, and it is this sophistication that makes metal beautiful.
All forms of music have their own forms of beauty, but I find metal music to be beautiful in a *conventional* sense. Overall, heavy metal is less about being extreme and more about being dramatic. The two aspects are easy to confuse, but drama has always been an element of both popular entertainment and high art and thus can’t be considered truly extreme, while true extremity exists only in entertainment relying on shock value to draw attention or art that seeks to push boundaries. The key thing to note is that while metal often uses superficially extreme elements to enhance drama, it has never been about extremity for its own sake. It has always fallen within the realm of popular music based around melodic hooks for mass appeal, and the classical elements just bring classical aesthetics onto this base such as utilizing it to create more complex hooks, so becoming too extreme would defeat it’s purpose. There are other forms of music that are much more extreme than heavy metal, like serialism, free jazz, and industrial, they just get overlooked because they lack the mass appeal that heavy metal has precisely because they are more extreme. Even so-called extreme metal, the subgenre of heavy metal with screamed vocals, still retains these popular and classical elements as it’s what metal fans enjoy, and can’t reach the level of extremity of these genres that really are about extremity for it’s own sake, whether it be for pushing musical boundaries, or for shock value alone. For the most part, people are unaware that these genres even exist, while extreme metal is popular enough that it has become part of popular culture.
Part of the misunderstanding that metal is distinguished by it’s extremity comes from the fact that increasingly people only recognize extreme metal as being metal. This is likely because this superficial difference of having screamed vocals makes it easy to differentiate from hard rock, but it was never an essential part of heavy metal, as if it was the “extreme” in extreme metal would be redundant. An actual distinguishing point between heavy metal and hard rock is that heavy metal places more emphasis on the instrumentation than hard rock does, which is why extreme metal even works in the first place - the screamed vocals are acceptable because the vocals where never the focus. In particular, a key difference between heavy metal and other forms of popular forms of music in that the melodic hooks the genre is based around are instrumental, not vocal. Another key thing to note is that extreme metal got its extremity from hardcore punk, not heavy metal. Unlike metal, hardcore punk was about extremity for it’s own sake, but extreme metal increased hardcore punk’s musical appeal by focusing it’s superficial extreme elements around more interesting music. As such, people should really be describing extreme things as being hardcore, not metal, which makes way more sense anyway. While extreme metal has it’s value, it’s extreme elements are turn-off for many people who would not be turned away from other forms of heavy metal. These days heavy metal is one of the most active genres in producing music that is both instrumentally complex and emotionally intense, so it’s a shame people who would otherwise be interested in metal music due to filling this niche are missing out on it due to thinking only extreme metal exists. As such, I’ve decided to create this blog to highlight metal music that is not extreme - hence “light metal”. My goal for this blog is to share one “light metal” song a day. Obviously it is still heavy metal and some of the music shared may actually be heavier than traditional heavy metal, but the goal is emphasis the metal part of heavy metal rather than the heavy part, showing it as something distinct from hard rock with value for reasons other than being heavy. Being “light” for metal while still clearly metal makes the point clear.
