Subgenres of Metal

Metal as we understand it today first hit the scene in 1969 with the advent of the British band Black Sabbath and the release of their self-titled debut album the following year. Now, more than 50 years after the release of the first Black Sabbath album, metal is a sprawling musical universe that encompasses more subgenres than most people could possibly imagine. Not only that, there are fusions between metal subgenres, fusions of metal subgenres with other non-metal genres, sub-subgenres, and so on. Since the 1980s, it has become increasingly insufficient to simply call something "metal" and leave it at that if you're hoping to communicate what a particular band sounds like. There is a writeup in the Heavy metal node that touches on the subject, but even by the standards of 2002, it's woefully inaccurate and incomplete. It therefore falls to me to overload you with information about this misunderstood music.

How Will this Work?

Since I listen to a wide variety of metal subgenres, I could probably go on endlessly about each one. It is my goal to not do that. I'll give a brief overview of each subgenre, any (brief) personal feelings I might have about the subject, and an album recommendation or two (note that these are not necessarily the best or even my favorite albums in these subgenres, just that I think they are particularly good at representing them). Many of the subgenres I'm going to list already have individual nodes here, so I will try to link to them as appropriate. Since I didn't personally author any of these writeups (with the exception of the groove metal node), I can't vouch for all of the information contained within them.

In the interests of readability, I'm not going to try to make this into some big tree-looking thing or attempt to arrange these things chronologically. Instead, I'm going to list what are considered top-level subgenres in BOLDED ALL CAPS and in alphabetical order, with their child genres underneath (also in alphabetical order) in Bold Text. Since I know most people will skim this rather than reading literally every word, this should help them quickly locate the different subgenres. The recommendations are all in italics underneath each subgenre entry, so those will be easy to find too.

While the intent of this writeup is to be as comprehensive as possible, it's not necessarily going to be all-encompassing. There are certain microgenres within metal that only include a few bands and are not in my opinion particularly noteworthy; these are not going to be on the list (e.g., "kawaii metal" is comprised of the band BABYMETAL and a handful of imitators). There are also some subgenres that are arguably not really "metal" at all, or at least are not primarily metal (e.g., metalcore is mainly hardcore with some metal elements, rather than the other way around). Finally, there are also cases of redundancy where a band might claim to be part of a really obscure, niche subgenre, but in reality their music already falls under a more generalized rubric (e.g., there are several bands that are called "pirate metal," but almost all of them would be considered folk metal or power metal with lyrical themes related to pirates).

Finally, since there are so many fusion subgenres, the list is going to assume that you have at least some passing familiarity with music other than metal. I am not, for example, going to explain what hip hop is when I talk about rap metal. With all of that out of the way, let's dive into this. Warning: this is going to be looooooong, so you might want to get a snack (or at least bookmark it and work through it in small doses).

The List

ALTERNATIVE METAL: I struggled with whether or not to include alt metal at all because I think you can make the argument that it's more alternative rock than it is metal. However, it has a handful of notable subgenres, so I opted to add it in for the sake of completion. There is a significant overlap between grunge and alt metal, which is appropriate considering the latter became a thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Imagine, if you will, the more vulnerable, emotional tendencies of alt rock and grunge combined with the heaviness and technical skill of 1980s metal, and you've got an idea of what alternative metal sounds like.

Recommendation: Alice in Chains - Dirt

• Funk Metal: Funk metal is not so much a distinct type of music as it is a name in search of a sound. To the extent that it can be generalized, it's largely bass-driven and incorporates elements of funk (duh), alternative rock, and various metal subgenres. Generally does not take itself too seriously.
  
  Recommendation: Infectious Grooves - The Plague that Makes Your Booty Move
  
  
• Nu-Metal: The bogeyman of metal from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, nu-metal is sometimes not considered a real metal subgenre because its roots are so far removed from the metal norm that it is probably better considered a type of alt rock. Other than that, influences may include hip hop, industrial, punk, and mainstream rock.
  
  Recommendation: Deftones - White Pony
  
  
• Rap Metal: There is a significant overlap between rap metal and all of the other alt metal subgenres, but the defining characteristics would be almost exclusively rapped vocals (obviously) and a focus on rhythm. The first "real" rap metal album was Body Count's Cop Killer, but interestingly, the music was basically crossover thrash (scroll way, way down for more info on this) with Ice T rapping over it. Subsequent releases in the genre would develop a more standardized sound.
  
  Recommendation: Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

BLACK METAL: The butt of endless jokes and memes today, black metal was once considered the scariest and most extreme form of metal out there. It's probably my favorite form of metal. At one point, the term "black metal" merely referred to metal bands that made extensive use of Satanic lyrical themes (the "first wave" of black metal), but it eventually came to signify a specific type of music that was derived mainly from thrash metal and made extensive use of speed-picking, screamed vocals, arpeggiated minor chords, and blastbeats (a type of very fast drumming that is a better workout than most exercise routines). The most prominent of these second wave black metal bands were from Norway (and to a lesser extent Sweden), but it is now a worldwide phenomenon. There are many subgenres within black metal, some being more worthwile than others.

Recommendations: Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark

• Atmospheric Black Metal: This style of music takes the basics of black metal and reworks them into a framework that resembles something more like Tangerine Dream than Darkthrone. In fact, this type of black metal used to be known as ambient black metal, which is appropriate when you consider its focus on soundscapes, slowly-building tension, minimalism, and repetitive riffing.
  
  Recommendation: Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
  
  
• Blackgaze: A combination of black metal and shoegaze music in the style of My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive. While I like both black metal and shoegaze, blackgaze doesn't appeal to me for whatever reason.
  
  Recommendation: none personally, but Deafheaven - Sunbather is apparently a highly regarded album of this type.
  
  
• Depressive Black Metal: Exactly what it sounds like. Whereas your standard entry-level black metal is typically aggressive in sound, this type of music makes you want to take a luxurious bubble bath with your toaster. There's really no way to describe this variety of black metal other than to say it just sounds...well, depressing.
  
  Recommendation: Mütiilation - Vampires of Black Imperial Blood
  
  
• Melodic Black Metal: Again, the name is fairly descriptive of what you'll hear: black metal with a focus on melodic sensibilities. Not quite as hard-edged as the parent genre, production values for melodic black metal releases tend to be better than what is typical for the style overall. This is probably the best entry-point for people who might want to check out black metal but are put off by its extremity.
  
  Recommendation: Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane
  
  
• Symphonic Black Metal: "Symphonic" is kind of a misnomer because it implies a type of black metal that includes instruments you might hear in a symphony orchestra. In reality, most of the non-guitar work is done with keyboards, and this type of music used to be called keyboard-based black metal. The compositional style, however, is frequently similar to what you might expect from a symphony in terms of the way songs are organized and structured.
  
  Recommendation: Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse
  
  
• Viking Metal: I'm cheating a little bit because I said that I wanted to avoid subgenre redundancy and a lot of people lump viking metal in with folk metal. This is fair, to an extent, but the difference is that most folk metal uses power metal or more traditional heavy metal as a base, while viking metal comes from black metal. Lyrical themes pertain to, guess what, vikings (and Scandinavian history/culture more broadly). There is a closely-related subgenre called pagan metal that also uses black metal as a base with folk music elements, but its themes are oriented around non-Nordic paganism; I consider viking metal and pagan metal part of the same overall folk black metal grouping.
  
  Recommendation: Bathory - Hammerheart
  
  
• War Metal: Remember when I said that most of the early notable black metal bands came from Scandinavia? This is a type of black metal derived from some of those bands who didn't. South America was home to a vibrant metal scene in the 1980s, with Brazil specifically taking a leading role. In a time when both black metal and death metal were still sorting out what they would sound like as they branched off from thrash, the South Americans said "fuck that" and jammed them all into the blender and created a style that would defy easy categorization, but eventually it all kind of slid more into the black metal camp and proliferated around the world. This type of music is fast, aggressive, and seemingly anti-melodic. Not a personal favorite of mine, but notable anyway.
  
  Recommendation: Blasphemy - Fallen Angel of Doom

DEATH METAL: Most people have probably never listened to death metal, but the name is instantly recognizable. Like black metal, it's derived from thrash, but whereas the former emphasized the treble aspect of thrash, death metal definitely focuses more on the lower end. Guitars are usually tuned lower than normal and the drums drive the songs to a higher degree than in some other types of metal. Vocals are uniformly guttural and at times unintelligible. Because death metal has changed so much from its origins in the mid-1980s, you'll sometimes see people talk about old school death metal (OSDM) as a distinct strain from modern death metal, but I'm not going to separate it like that.

Recommendation: Morbid Angel - Blessed are the Sick

• Blackened Death Metal: If war metal is black metal with death metal influences, then blackened death metal is the inverse of that. There's some overlap with melodic death metal, but it's different enough to warrant its own listing.
  
  Recommendation: Necrophobic - The Nocturnal Silence
  
  
• Brutal Death Metal: I find it funny that an already brutal style of music needs an even more brutal subgenre, but here we are. More intense than vanilla death metal, there is a surprising amount of complexity to be found here if you know where to look.
  
  Recommendation: Cryptopsy - None So Vile
  
  
• Melodic Death Metal: Given the fact that there are so many death metal bands out there, it can be difficult to stand out from the pack. Melodic death metal served as a way for bands to maintain that link to the brutality and crushing heaviness of the genre while also taking cues from traditional heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden.
  
  Recommendations: Sentenced - North From Here and In Flames - The Jester Race
  
  
• Technical Death Metal: A bit like melodeath in the sense that techdeath started out as a way for death metal bands to differentiate themselves. Techdeath bands really show off their compositional skill with complex riffs and arrangements. May include non-metal influences like jazz (as in the case of my recommendation for this subgenre).
  
  Recommendation: Atheist - Piece of Time

DOOM METAL: Believe it or not, doom metal actually predates the broader heavy metal genre. Ok, that might not be entirely accurate, but it would be fair to say that at one time, the doom style was essentially the default sound for what was considered "metal." Black Sabbath's first few albums would be considered doom metal if they were released today. Based on that fact, you know what to expect from doom metal: guitars are down-tuned, tempos are slow by metal standards, vocals are usually sung rather than screamed/shouted, and there are still traces of the blues to be found (Black Sabbath started out as a blues band, after all).

Recommendation: Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus

• Death Doom Metal: One thing that is unfortunately common in metal is the use of one term to mean two (or more) different concepts. "Death doom metal" refers both to death metal with doom influences and doom metal with death influences, which are very different beasts. I use it to mean the second one. Like Norway with black metal and Sweden with melodic death metal, one country dominates this category: the United Kingdom. This is doom metal with an angrier, more aggressive bent; vocals alternate between clean and screaming. A little dated (its heyday was in the early 1990s), but it's one of my favorite subgenres.
  
  Recommendation: Paradise Lost - Gothic
  
  
• Epic Doom Metal: Doom metal that incorporates elements of classical music (in terms of composition, not instrumentation), 1980s heavy metal, and even folk to an extent.
  
  Recommendation: Scald - Will of the Gods is a Great Power (note: I know this sounds like poor grammar, and it is, but the band was from Russia, so give them a break)
  
  
• Funeral Doom Metal: Doom metal that is lower, slower, and more depressing.
  
  Recommendation: Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet
  
  
• Traditional Doom Metal: Trad doom metal takes doom back to its roots, i.e., Black Sabbath. Here, the line between doom metal and old school heavy blues rock is sometimes hard to see, but it definitely falls on the metal side.
  
  Recommendation: Trouble - Psalm 9
  
  

DRONE METAL: An extreme derivative of funeral doom metal. This is really more like noise music than it is metal, but these bands use metal instrumentation, so we're stuck with it. Notes happen every once in a while. I find drone metal uninteresting and frankly unlistenable. You don't really hear much about drone metal anymore, so I'm hoping it quietly goes away.

Recommendation: the sound of your dishwasher.

FOLK METAL: Tangent incoming. Obviously this is a combination of metal and folk music, although I should point out that I mean "folk music" in the sense of traditional ethnic music rather than Bob Dylan. Vocals are clean, grunted, screamed, shouted, and everything else in-between. The term might be overly broad because it encompasses not just multiple types of metal (heavy, power, black, death, and doom) but also multiple types of folk music. For example, the band Moonsorrow plays a combination of black metal and Finnish folk music, while Orphaned Land plays a combination of progressive metal, death metal, and traditional Mizrahi Jewish music; both are considered "folk metal." The band Agalloch plays a type of black metal combined with neofolk, which is not technically a kind of traditional ethnic music, but they also get the folk metal tag. However, the alternative is to create hyper-specific microgenres like "Finnish folk black metal" or "Mizrahi folk prog death metal," so we'll have to deal with it.

Recommendations: Primordial - To the Nameless Dead and Vintersorg - Till Fjälls

GOTHIC METAL: Like death doom metal, this category refers to multiple different things (and appropriately enough, some of them intersect with death doom metal). It can be a type of metal that draws influence from goth rock bands like Sisters of Mercy or it can be a type of metal that draws influence from more ethereal darkwave bands like Dead Can Dance; my preference is for the latter, so that's the way I'll be using it. This strain of gothic metal has strong doom elements, particularly slower tempos and down-tuned guitars, but it includes a wider range of instrumentation, including keyboards and even violins, among others. Of all the metal subgenres, gothic metal is the one most likely to feature female vocalists, whether by themselves or in conjunction with a male vocalist (since gothic metal is probably the most overtly sexual metal subgenre, this use of vocal duos tends toward the suggestive).

Recommendations: The Gathering - Mandylion and Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

GRINDCORE: So one night in the mid-to-late 1980s, the extreme side of thrash metal and crust punk got a little tipsy and decided to hop in the sack. In their inebriated state, they didn't use protection, and nine months later, grindcore popped out. As far as sheer abrasiveness is concerned, grindcore is the most extreme of metal subgenres. Songs are usually under 2 minutes in length and feature varying degrees of questionable musicianship. Everything in this genre is centered around short, rapid bursts of energy. Vocals are almost always unintelligibly screamed or shouted. I've never been huge into grind, but I do appreciate some of the classics of the genre. There are multiple alleged subgenres of grindcore, but many of them are not musically distinct from grindcore overall, with the main differences being lyrical fixations (e.g., pornogrind is grindcore but they talk about porn).

Recommendation: Brutal Truth - Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses

• Cybergrind: Grindcore + industrial music = this. This type of music is actually extremely obnoxious. The added electronic/digital component makes it really hard for me to listen to. I've never been able to sit through an entire cybergrind album, so I have no recommendations here.
  
  
• Deathgrind: Imagine the sexual analogy I gave earlier, except it was a threesome and death metal joined in. Deathgrind songs tend to have a bit more substance to them than regular grindcore tracks and they evince a bit more technical skill.
  
  Recommendation: Terrorizer - World Downfall
  
  
• Goregrind: This is one of those iffy grindcore subgenres where it's arguable to what extent there is any musical difference between it and the main genre. Generally, goregrind bands don't play quite as quickly as standard grind bands, although the individual songs are still relatively short. Vocals also tend to be more guttural, although this has to do with the fact that many goregrind bands use pitch-shifters to accomplish this. The real defining characteristic, though, would be the fact that the lyrics (and album covers) appear to be drawn entirely from medical textbooks.
  
  Recommendation: Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness
  
  

GROOVE METAL: If you like thrash metal but you hate its defining characteristics, boy do I have a metal subgenre for you! Groove metal takes thrash-style riffing and composition and slows them down to something with a tempo more closely resembling mainstream rock. This was probably the most broadly popular type of metal in the mid-1990s before it was supplanted by nu-metal. I don't particularly care for groove metal as a whole, but there are a few gems there.

Recommendations: Grip Inc. - Nemesis and Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power

HEAVY METAL: "Wait a minute," you say, "aren't we already talking about heavy metal?" And the answer is "kinda." The term "heavy metal" used to be the generic descriptor for all metal bands until the early 1980s when genre differentiators came into being. Heavy metal then came to refer specifically to the energetic, upbeat style of metal that rose to prominence in the mid-1970s. It was very close to the mainstream hard rock of the time, which is why many commenters and listeners (including many soi-disant "experts") seem to believe that bands like AC/DC, Kiss, and Queen should be considered "heavy metal." Vocals are almost always sung cleanly and with a high degree of skill. The songwriting is not necessarily complex (although it can be), but it is often more challenging to play than, say, a lot of Black Sabbath's early material; twin guitar harmonies are common.

Recommendations: Mercyful Fate - Don't Break the Oath and Rainbow - Rising

• NWOBHM: Short for New Wave of British Heavy Metal, this was less of a coherent aesthetic and more of a Zeitgeist or moment in time (specifically the late 1970s and early 1980s) that would go on to revolutionize metal all over the world. While NWOBHM bands were extremely stylistically diverse, they had two things in common: first, they eschewed the mainstream rock influences that had crept into metal and turned instead to the immediacy of punk; and second, they were British. We have the NWOBHM to thank for bands like Iron Maiden, Venom (who created the terms "black metal," "speed metal," and "death metal"), and Motörhead, among many others.
  
  Recommendations: Iron Maiden - Killers and Diamond Head - Lightning to the Nations

INDUSTRIAL METAL: As you might have guessed, this is a fusion of metal and industrial music. Like folk metal, though, the name of the subgenre is deceptively straightforward. Black, death, grindcore, thrash, and others have been combined with industrial, which itself is a multifaceted genre that encompasses relatively mainstream acts like Nine Inch Nails as well as harsher and more underground groups like Throbbing Gristle or Boyd Rice. Industrial metal is hit and miss, with bands like Godflesh and Ministry making some great stuff while others -- particularly those that mix industrial with black metal or grindcore -- verging on intolerable.

Recommendations: Godflesh - Streetcleaner and Ministry - Psalm 69.

• Neue Deutsche Härte: A pun on the 1980s term Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave), NDH means New German Heaviness. We've talked about countries dominating subgenres (Norway and black metal, the UK and death doom metal, etc.), but I don't think we've talked about individual bands owning an entire category of music. In this case, since we're talking about industrial metal from Germany, you can probably guess that I'm talking about Rammstein. Rammstein straddles the line between industrial rock, alt metal, and to some extent groove metal. Once upon a time, Rammstein was called Tanz Metall (German for Dance Metal), but in a phenomenon that should surprise absolutely nobody, the most internationally famous German musical export since Ludwig van Beethoven spawned a legion of imitators in the German-speaking world (and beyond), thus necessitating a name for this "movement." None of the groups in question have ever attained or will ever attain anything remotely approaching Rammstein's success, so I have real doubts about the long-term viability of NDH.
  
  Recommendation: Rammstein - Mutter

NEOCLASSICAL METAL: Neoclassical metal features highly technical playing with a strong devotion to applying the standards of classical music to metal. Guitarists in this genre have some of the biggest egos in metal (e.g. Yngwie Malmsteen), meaning that a very high proportion of neoclassical metal bands are actually solo projects centered around one guy with a revolving door of disposable session musicians. In fairness, the guitarists in this subgenre are some of the best in the world, but their preoccupations with music theory and technical flourishes often prevent them from remembering to make their songs interesting or emotionally resonant.

Recommendation: Marty Friedman - Dragon's Kiss

POWER METAL: To some extent, it's difficult to tell where early speed metal ends and early power metal begins since the characteristics of both are so similar. Power metal is highly melodic and is one of the few metal subgenres that places a major emphasis on the technical skill of the vocalist. Male power metal vocalists are typically tenors with major falsetto capabilities while female vocalists are usually sopranos with very strong vibrato skills. Power metal is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition for most people; these bands are, for the most part, very fast, but they're not particularly aggressive and harsh vocals are almost completely unheard of. The lyrical themes tend to revolve around fantasy and/or mythology. Originally, a distinction was made between the styles of European power metal (EUPM) and American power metal (USPM), but by the early 1990s, the Europeans had come to dominate the genre so completely that the EUPM style simply became known as power metal.

Recommendation: Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part II

• Symphonic Power Metal: Sometimes just called symphonic metal. As you might expect, this strand of power metal makes extensive use of symphonic instrumentation (or at the very least, emulated symphonic instrumentation) and favors huge sounds and arrangements. This type of music is sort of a guilty pleasure for me because I don't know a soul who doesn't consider it incredibly cheesy.
  
  Recommendation: Rhapsody - Dawn of Victory
  
  
• US Power Metal: I briefly touched on USPM earlier, but I didn't really go into the differences between it and EUPM. What I also didn't mention is that there was another schism in the power metal world, this time within USPM. There was "white collar" USPM and "blue collar" USPM, with the former being more technical and experimental and the latter being harder-edged and verging toward speed/thrash metal. The blue collar variety is what is now USPM and what I mean by the term. The vocal techniques and characteristics are largely the same as in EUPM, but the instrumentation and composition are more aggressive. Unlike the NWOBHM, however, USPM does refer to a distinct sound and it has practitioners all over the world.
  
  Recommendation: Jag Panzer - Ample Destruction
  
  

PROGRESSIVE METAL: What we now call "progressive metal" originated in the white collar strain of USPM I just mentioned. It came to adopt certain aspects of progressive rock, namely the use of unconventional time signatures and song structures as well as a willingness to push the boundaries of acceptable lengths of time. It's important to note that many metal subgenres have prog varieties and those will be mentioned below, although additional descriptions are unnecessary.

Recommendation: Devin Townsend - Terria

• Avant-Garde Metal: There's no really good definition for "avant-garde metal" other than to say that it is an even more experimental form of prog metal with liberal uses of non-metal instrumentation and multiple outside influences.
  
  Recommendation: Arcturus - La Masquerade Infernale
  
  
• Progressive Black Metal: Recommendation: Enslaved - Ruun
  
  
• Progressive Death Metal: Recommendation: Death - Symbolic
  
  
• Progressive Thrash Metal: Recommendation: Coroner - Mental Vortex
  
  

SLUDGE METAL: A combination of doom metal and hardcore punk. Guitars are down-tuned, and as the name implies, the music has a churning quality that brings to mind a swamp filled with industrial waste (appropriate since many sludge bands originate in Louisiana). This music is depressing and oppressive. However, it is also a surprisingly fertile ground for experimentation, with many bands in the genre incorporating a ton of outside influences such as death metal, Southern rock, and alternative music.

Recommendation: Crowbar - Sonic Excess in its Purest Form

• Atmospheric Sludge Metal: Between the mid-2000s and the early 2010s, atmospheric sludge metal was for some reason the critical darling of every slightly counter-cultural outlet that covered metal. The style had been around for quite a while at that point (thanks to the innovative sludge band Neurosis), but it really took off around 2006 or so. To this day, I still have no idea why that was the case, but I actively avoided the newer releases of that type because I thought "if VICE likes it, it can't be good." Well, I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong, and I can say that while it's never going to be my personal favorite kind of metal, I was impressed by a decent number of the releases I heard. Taking the philosophy I mentioned in the atmospheric black metal description and applying it to sludge opens up a ton of possibilities for sophisticated harmonies and interesting riffs.
  
  Recommendation: Isis - Panopticon
  
  

SOUTHERN METAL: I don't know if this should really be a top-level subgenre, but in a way it kind of has to be because while it is influenced by multiple different types of metal, no single one of them is predominant enough that we can definitively say "this belongs here." Southern metal is doomy, sludgy, groovy, bluesy, and just a bit country (at times). Riffs and rhythms are big, crunchy, and maybe a little meandering. This is the kind of music you could listen to in any gas station parking lot in Alabama without anyone batting an eye.

Recommendation: Down - NOLA

SPEED METAL: So there's a bit of controversy over what speed metal is and how exactly it relates to thrash. At one time, the two terms were used almost interchangeably. Then they were declared separate, with a band like Metallica representing speed metal and a band like Sodom representing thrash, with the understanding that speed metal was generally more melody-driven and technically proficient than thrash. Currently, that same understanding exists, but Metallica et al have been moved back into the thrash camp and speed metal is now considered to refer to the proto-power metal sound of the early albums from bands like Helloween and Blind Guardian. I will broadly accept this latest revision but reserve the right to create my own subgenre(s) of thrash. Both speed and thrash were descended from the faster NWOBHM bands, with speed metal leaning more into melody and thrash leaning more into aggression. Unsurprisingly, there is a huge degree of overlap between early releases in both genres.

Recommendations: Scanner - Hypertrace and Venom - Welcome to Hell

STONER METAL: Doom metal meets heavy psych and stoner rock. We can say that one band, Rammstein, created the NDH genre, but here it seems like one song -- Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" -- created the stoner metal genre. Sort of like Southern metal, this should probably not be a top-level subgenre, but its influences are dispersed enough that we just have to roll with it. The music is slow, warm, and guided by the bass guitar. I'm not a huge fan of this subgenre overall because, as you might have predicted from the name, many of these bands write and perform under the influence of marijuana, which means there are a ton of great ideas that unfortunately go nowhere. I strongly prefer the bands that show a stronger doom influence than the ones that show a stronger stoner rock influence.

Recommendations: Cathedral - the Ethereal Mirror and High on Fire - Blessed Black Wings

THRASH METAL: If you've made it this far, congratulations, you're at the final top-level metal subgenre! As I alluded to earlier, thrash metal was a descendant of the NWOBHM, and three bands in particular -- Diamond Head, Motörhead, and Venom -- were the catalysts for the explosion of this genre. Even though the NWOBHM absorbed a lot of punk influences, the first thrash bands kicked this up a notch by becoming metal in punk clothes. Speed and intensity for their own sake are of paramount importance to thrash. The guitars tend to hover around standard tuning, which is good because it would probably be difficult to distinguish one powerchord from another at the speed most thrash bands play if they had adopted doom metal tunings. Vocals can be sung, shouted, screamed, grunted, or what-the-hell ever; thrash makes no judgments. It's impossible to overstate the importance of thrash to the development of what we would call extreme metal. Thrash is the direct ancestor of black metal, death metal, grindcore, and groove metal with a number of sub-subgenres in its own right.

Recommendation: Slayer - Hell Awaits

• Bay Area Thrash: I said I'd be making up my own subgenres! In reality, "Bay Area thrash" is already a well-known term, referring as it does to the slightly more commercial and melodic thrash bands emanating from around the San Francisco area. The best known band of this type is, of course, Metallica, but this region produced a ton of others with a similar sound. It is not necessary for a band to come from this area as it refers more to a sound than a geographical location.
  
  Recommendation: Megadeth - Rust in Peace
  
  
• Crossover Thrash: We've established that thrash has had pretty fruitful relationships with a variety of punk subgenres over the years, and the "crossover" here is between thrash and hardcore. Bands of this type combine thrash riffs with hardcore rhythms and play at speeds that are faster than either genre individually. Song lengths can be anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. The lyrical subject matter is usually not especially serious.
  
  Recommendation: D.R.I. - Crossover
  
  
• Technical Thrash Metal: Like techdeath, technical thrash features a lot of musicians who love playing fast and want to show you that they can do it at a high level with complex riffs and interesting compositions.
  
  Recommendation: Sadus - Illusions
  
  
• Teutonic Thrash: Like Bay Area thrash, this is not an "official" subgenre, but it ought to be. At the same time California and New York were seeing an explosion in thrash bands, the German-speaking world was also cranking them out with that famously ruthless Teutonic efficiency. The thrash bands from Germany and Switzerland were generally more extreme than their American contemporaries, eschewing anything close to clean vocals. When I talk about thrash leading to the development of black and death metal, this is the variety I'm referring to. These guys were faster, less concerned with showing off their skills, and all around more evil-sounding.
  
  Recommendations: Sodom - Persecution Mania and Kreator - Extreme Aggression