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Heavy Metal Music: History and Misconceptions Essay

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Heavy Metal Music: History and Misconceptions Heavy metal music has been a source of social controversy since its early beginnings. It started out as a new age form of rock. Heavy metal brought a new look and sound to rock. The early heavy metal musicians decided to tune their guitars down, increase the tempo, play guitars and drums faster, and get a more grungy sound. The musicians also decided to wear tight, ripped, black clothing, chains, spikes, and combat boots. Most people did as anyone would expect them to do when faced with something fairly new, they found it strange and looked down on it. Much of society did not actually delve into heavy metal to find out what it is truly all about, and made assumptions that were untrue. Heavy …show more content…

This was a side of the subject of war that many had not taken in their lyrical choice. (Reesman, Bryan) Some early metal bands performed crazy, unseen acts on stage that really made society start to have misconceptions about the genre. For instance, the band Black Sabbath usually had live bats at their concerts. At one of these concerts, lead singer Ozzy Osborne caught one of the bats and bit the head off of it while it was still alive and threw it into the crowd. The media, already having a mostly negative outlook on heavy metal, use this repulsive act as ammo to their "Heavy Metal is Evil," campaign. Since the beginning of the heavy metal genre, many different subgenres have branched off from it. Some of which include black metal, thrash metal, grind core, death metal, and liquid metal. Each of these brings their own unique sound to metal, while keeping the same basic precedents set by the first metal bands. Black metal is a more heavy, dark sounding metal. They use different vocal techniques such as deep growls and pig squeals in their songs. Artists of the black metal genre still use the tune downed guitars and fast tempos and drum beats as original heavy metal did. An example of a black metal band is Cannibal Corpse. Thrash metal is a more grungy sounding metal. It is very loud and includes very rapid tempos along with shredding guitar solos. During the verses, of course, they use guitars

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