Heavy metal branch Full entry · 1970
Heavy metal
Heaviness 8
Speed 6
Melody 7
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
In short
It split off from hard rock and blues rock when Black Sabbath tuned down and wrote riffs on the tritone. Volume, riff and a code of its own — every branch below starts here.
How it sounds
- Riffs built on power chords, with palm muting and constant rather than occasional distortion.
- The tritone and minor scales as the basic harmonic material.
- Double kick drumming, guitars tuned at or below standard E, and volume as an aesthetic parameter.
History
On 13 February 1970, Black Sabbath released an album that opens with rain, a bell and a tritone. Tony Iommi had lost the tips of two fingers in a factory accident, so he slackened his strings and tuned down — that is where the tone comes from. Judas Priest added the twin guitars and the leather, Iron Maiden the speed and the epic scale, and the genre has branched more than any other rock family since.
Branches into
- Alternative metal
- Black metal
- Death metal
- Doom metal
- Folk metal
- Glam metal
- Grindcore
- Industrial metal
- Kawaii metal
- Metalcore
- Neoclassical metal
- Nu metal
- NWOBHM
- Power metal
- Progressive metal
- Proto-metal
- Speed metal
- Symphonic metal
- Thrash metal
- Traditional heavy metal
On the timeline
Siblings on this branch