Your way in
First wave 1981
The bands that supplied the name and the themes, while still playing speed or thrash metal. Venom released the album that christened the genre.
- Heaviness
- 8
- Speed
- 8
- Melody
- 5
- Where from
- UK / Sweden / Switzerland
- Tempo
- 160-220 bpm
- Song length
- 3-5 min
- Written about
- Satanism, theatrically, Blasphemy, Speed and violence, Occult imagery borrowed from horror
- Vocals
- Growled or shrieked
Why this one
| You said | First wave | Match | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| A growl or a shriek When someone is singing, what should come out? | harsh | 100% | ×3 |
| The seventies and eighties Does it matter when it was made? | 1981 | 100% | ×1 |
| Normal How long should a song be? | up to 5 min | 96% | ×1 |
| Weighted mean | 99% | ||
Ranked over all 150 genres in the encyclopedia, on the 3 answers you gave, weighted vocals 3, era 1, length 1 out of 5. First wave leads the next by 1 point. Where two genres score the same the broader one wins, because a genre with subgenres under it is somewhere to carry on from and a leaf is a full stop.
Five records, in this order
- 1Start one step outside
Darkthrone, A Blaze in the Northern Sky 1992
Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky. The production is intentional, not a flaw.
- 2The one to put on first
Bathory, Bathory 1984
Bathory - Bathory. Recorded on almost no budget, and it sounds like another planet.
- 3Then
- 4Then
- 5Then
The first is the entry point for Black metal, one step outside, so the second record has something to be heard against. After it come First wave's essential records in the order the encyclopedia lists them. Every one of these has a page here with links out to somewhere it can be played.
If that is not it
-
Brutal death metal 98%
Built for density and weight: dissonant riffing, low guttural vocals and crushing breakdowns.
4 steps from First wave, meeting it only at Heavy metal.
The way into Brutal death metal -
Screamo 98%
Emo pushed into hysteria: continuous screaming, cutting guitars and songs that collapse into silence. Also called skramz.
On the other branch of the tree entirely, and 9 steps from First wave.
The way into Screamo
Not simply the second and third of the ranking: those are almost always near neighbours of the first, which is three names for one suggestion. An alternate has to sit at least 4 steps through the tree from the headline and from the other alternate, which is the same floor the "sounds like this, but isn't" panel uses.
What your answers ruled out
- A growl or a shriek put 78 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Alternative rock, Blues rock, Doom metal. Worth 3 of 5.
- The seventies and eighties put 4 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Kawaii metal, New nu metal, Progressive metalcore. Worth 1 of 5.
- Normal put 13 genres at the bottom of that one question, among them Progressive rock, Krautrock, Acid rock. Worth 1 of 5.
Counted as genres scoring 20% or less on that answer alone. A recommendation that only shows what it chose is hiding half of what it did.