REVISED No Longer Paranoid About Heavy Metal

This week, I'll be looking at the genre of heavy metal!! I postponed looking at this genre FOR THE LONGEST TIME (@BillyJoel) because I was seriously scared. I can honestly say that I thought listening to heavy metal music would be like being thrown back into Hot Topic in the early 2000s. Hot Topic is actually the first thing I thought of when I chose heavy metal music as the next genre for me to tear apart because the music they used to play was my only definition of "metal". And I was really scared of Hot Topic back in the day. Middle School Mikayla just wanted to buy some nerdy Harry Potter shirts, but I was constantly assaulted by the screams that blared throughout the store and the piercings of the employees. So therefore, I always thought that heavy metal was piercings and screaming.  And maybe you did too. But after reading this post, you’ll probably realize that metal music isn’t all just incomprehensible screaming with some scary background music, as I once thought. This is a candid of what I thought listening to heavy metal all weekend would be like:

It wasn't that painful thankfully. 

I think it’s pretty obvious that it takes a lot for me to really and wholeheartedly enjoy music (in case you haven’t noticed from my past blog posts oops). I feel like it really needs to mean something, it needs to hit me in my heart and give me a new opinion of the world or some fluffy crap like that. Heavy metal may seem like it doesn’t have that oompf that other genres have, but I’ve realized after researching a bit (ugh) that most of the oompf for heavy metal comes from its past.

Heavy metal is a really complex genre, actually. It was really just a transformation from the late stages of rock, think Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, etc. Most critics of the genre agree that the first band that was actually “heavy metal” was Black Sabbath. This comes from like multiple blogs and also in a book by Scott Wilson. After this, some other bands in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s started to appear like Metallica and Megadeath etc and made heavy metal music the most popular it would be. The genre relied on being loud and distorted and different from other genres that came before it which really led to its rise in popularity until it branched off into different subgenres like screamo, death metal, thrash metal and nu metal in the ‘90s. 

As popular heavy metal and rock blogger DestroyerofHarmony stated in 2014, "each band in each metal genre needs to create a song that hits us on the first listen". A few paragraphs ago I talked about songs hitting me, and when I read this off of a really creepy metal blog, I realized that heavy metal can hit you. I don’t think DestroyerofHarmony necessarily meant that heavy metal hits you in the heart all the time like I really like music to do (probably because he’s all strong and cool and wears black clothes and I compare myself to Taylor Swift on the daily), but like heavy metal can hit you in the gut (loud and kind of painful) or in the mind (think Pink Floyd here maybe), or yes even in the heart sometimes I guess. So heavy metal is obviously a very powerful kind of sound, but in a different way. Most heavy metal tracks, unlike other genres like country or pop, use the background music to really get into people's faces and make their ears bleed. Pop and country use things like a powerful melodic line or some really cool vocals to get their powerful image across (I'm thinking Ariana or Adele here). Heavy metal tracks could also hit with really powerful and introspective lyrics, or even some relatable lyrics that come close to home. Heavy metal hits the listener in multiple body parts (gross this probably needs reworded but oh well) and ways, and soon you’ll see if the band I listened to, Black Sabbath, hit me or not.

I’ll be listening to the band that is commonly credited with creating heavy metal, Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath started after lots of oppression because everyone in England was tired of the economy sucking. Most of the members of the band Black Sabbath actually worked in factories, the main job of the time period in England. Their darker sound is accredited to the main guitarist, Tony Iommi losing two of his fingertips in a factory accident which made him loosen his guitar strings. Loosening the strings made it easier for him to still play guitar. By loosening his guitar strings, he changed the key of the instrument (fondly called drop d tuning by many people currently because apparently like no one plays in standard tuning anymore) and it changed the sound of the band. Heavy metal really relies on the distorted electric guitar just because of Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath. Also, the lead singer of Black Sabbath was Ozzy Osbourne like pre ALLLLLL ABOARDDDD HAHAHAHAHAHHHAHA crazy train era. His voice and strong accent set him apart from lead singers of previous bands.

 Most of the songs on the Black Sabbath album Paranoid have long electric guitar features by Tony Iommi. You can think of this when you listen to “War Pigs/Luke’s Wall” (because if I had to listen to this album, you have to try too). Like the whole first minute of the song is just guitar playing. It’s obvious that the beginnings of heavy metal music focused more on the sound of the background music than the lyrics or melody. The melody in every song, especially the title track from this album, is the same thing repeated over and over again. The only things that differ in songs are the intense electric guitar solos or the drumming sequence. It seems like Black Sabbath just really wanted their music to be felt not listened to, if that makes any sense. Every song on the album hits the main points of the trends of heavy metal set down by experts because Black Sabbath WAS the original heavy metal band. They created the genre so what they've included in their first album IS the genre. It's hard to try to fit Black Sabbath into a certain mold because they created the mold. The seemingly short 8 track album is something special because each of the songs stays on the heavy metal brand.

It seems like the band used a lot of technology to make some of the special sounds on their album. For example, in “Planet Caravan”, Ozzy’s voice sounds far away and almost underwater. This sonic effect allows the listener to feel like the band felt when they wrote this song – lost in nature and themselves. Other songs, like “Electric Funeral” use some sort of distortion machine for the guitar, making the sounds it produced all drawn out and sloppy. This gives kind of a lazy yet knowing sound to the guitar, perfect for this song. A good many songs, like “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” don’t play with these elements, and the band truly just sticks to what they know (some really cool, really powerful songs).

So yeah, like I said before I’d let you guys know if Black Sabbath “hit”. Black Sabbath DEFINITELY hits. I guess it’s something that you’d just have to experience, but the band really does make it their mission to get into the body of the listener and make them feel like they are experiencing something different and new and wonderful. Black Sabbath mostly hit me in my gut and my mind, which is truthfully usually not the way I like to be “hit”, but they did it so well that I almost don’t mind. Please. Listen to this album. I don’t think I’ve ever actually wanted someone to experience music more than I do now.

Like thanks Black Sabbath for cracking my hard exterior that hates to be wrong. This album is definitely something you need to not only listen to, but like look up the lyrics. Find the inspiration behind the songs. Every single part of this band, their history, the members, their lyrics, their sound, everything is interesting and deserves to be appreciated. If I can appreciate heavy metal, then anything is possible pretty much.