Metal Genres

Heavy metal, the oldest foundry in the building, burned off the blues, forged two guitars into one line, set a singer aiming for the back wall and cast the riff, the gallop and the voice every later genre still pours from.

The fastest steel mill of the 1980s, thrash metal was forged by American and German teenagers who tore the gallop off British heavy metal and in 1986 hammered out Master of Puppets, Reign in Blood and Pleasure to Kill.

The abattoir of extreme music, death metal cut the melodies out of thrash, took its name from a 1984 Bay Area demo tape and within six years had hauled Tampa, Chuck Schuldiner and Stockholm onto the same slab.

Black metal, the music of frost and pyre, was printed on a Venom sleeve in 1982, hammered into shape by Quorthon and two borrowed players in a converted Stockholm garage two years later and was torching Norwegian churches by 1993.

Doom metal, metal's slowest slab, was hauled out of Black Sabbath's first riff, given a Latin title by Candlemass in 1986 and dragged through the dirt by Saint Vitus until every riff it touched ground down to a funeral tread.

Stoner metal, the heavy music that learned to swing, is fed on fuzz pedals, tube amplifiers and the longest jams of the early seventies and rolls one down tuned riff like a boulder down a dry riverbed until the room nods along.

Sludge metal, the slowest brawl in heavy music, was dragged out of Louisiana swamps and Bay Area punk clubs at the turn of the nineties and drowns the Black Sabbath riff in feedback and hardcore rage until the amplifiers sound ready to burst.

Power metal, the loudest optimism the genre ever produced, was hammered into shape by German and American bands who refused to let heavy metal sound tired, and it rides every chorus into battle on a tenor's top note.

Progressive metal, the heaviest music ever to bring a slide rule to rehearsal, was built in the eighties by bands that wanted a riff to carry a story, snapping the bar into odd meters and welding the pieces into long songs.

Gothic metal, the heaviest music ever to light a candelabra on stage, was carried out of the doom and death metal rehearsal rooms of the early nineties and dressed for a funeral that never quite ends, to turn grief into theatre.

Symphonic metal, the heavy music that travels with its own choir and string section, was built by bands who refused to choose between the mosh pit and the concert hall, and it drags the whole orchestra onto the festival stage.

Folk metal, the music that sends a hurdy-gurdy into the front line, was pulled out of the village square and armed with distortion by bands from Dublin to Helsinki, driving tunes centuries old straight through a stack of amplifiers.

Grindcore was welded out of hardcore punk and the fastest drumming of the late 1980s, fired from Los Angeles to Sweden and Singapore in bursts that seldom reach two minutes, every song torn down to the blast, the roar and the slogan.

Metalcore, the music of the scream and the sung hook, welded the hardcore breakdown to the harmonised metal lead in Cleveland and Syracuse, rode Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying onto the Billboard charts and tore the pit open.

Deathcore, the heaviest offspring of the breakdown, was dragged down from metalcore into the death metal cellar by Despised Icon in Montreal and Job for a Cowboy in Arizona, and went on to flatten pits from Riverside to Sydney.

Nu metal, the metal that learned its rhythm from a breakbeat, was cut with Ross Robinson at a ranch studio above Malibu, carried to number one by System of a Down in September 2001, and flattened the charts.

Industrial metal, the metal that answers to a machine, was spliced together from tape loops, drum machines and heavy guitars in Chicago and London studios before the 1980s ran out and marched from the Wax Trax! catalogue to platinum records.

Hardcore, the loudest argument ever held in a small room, was ritualised on the Washington floors where slam dancing began and then dragged by its own children into sludge, grindcore and metalcore, and it still runs flat out.