Encyclopedia Of Heavy Metal Music
It has been reviled, dismissed, attacked, and occasionally been the subject of Congressional hearings, but still, the genre of music known as heavy metal maintains not only its market share in the recording and downloading industry, but also as a cultural force that has united millions of young and old fans across the globe. Characterized by blaring distorted guitars, drum solos, and dramatic vibrato, the heavy metal movement headbanged its way to the popular culture landscape with bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath the 1970s. Motley Crue and Metallica made metal a music phenomenon in the 1980s. Heavy metal continues to evolve today with bands like Mastodon and Lamb of God.
Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal Music
Providing an extensive overview of the music, fashion, films, and philosophies behind the movement, this inclusive encyclopedia chronicles the history and development of heavy metal, including sub-movements such as death metal, speed metal, grindcore, and hair metal.
As it was, most of the original rock-and-rollers fell victim to a premature anachronism. Of all the pioneer musicians who carved rock and roll out of the musical wilderness, only Johnny Cash and Elvis survived the early 1960s as anything more than an oldies-but-goodies attraction. A list of these performers reads like a litany of bad luck and willful destruction: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper dead in a plane crash, February 3, 1959; Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, who found out too late that fame could not insulate them from the law; the flamboyant Little Richard, who traded in rock and roll for the Bible; Carl Perkins, destroyed by alcohol and drugs; rockabilly legend Eddie Cochran, killed in an automobile accident in England just after rock's first decade came to a close. Pioneering always exacts a heavy price on body and soul, and it would appear that bringing rock and roll into fruition turned out to be one of the more lethal endeavors in the creative history of the modern era.
Rock and roll music managed to do what nothing else could in the mid-twentieth century: it integrated white and African American cultures by melding the distinctive musical styles of each. Although it seemed to burst on the scene almost overnight in the mid-1950s, rock and roll was actually the culmination of more than a century of musical experimentation. With its heavy back-beat and amplified guitars, early rock and roll was raw and rowdy. It appealed to a young audience in a way music never had before. Rock and roll was more than music: it was attitude and style.
Glam metal artists were popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. Also known as hair bands, these musicians used music videos to increase their fan base. Glam metal featured distorted guitar riffs, power chords, and guitar solos. The earlier glam metal bands included Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, and Ratt. Poison enjoyed commercial success, and the band Bon Jovi appealed to audiences of glam metal, hard rock, and country rock.
Yet soon after, as the Stones played a different festival in Altamont, California, a young black attendee was murdered by Hell's Angels bikers who had foolishly been hired to protect the stage. Rock had lost its innocence, and as the music's popularity grew in the 1970s and 1980s it became a far more standardized industry. Young female teenyboppers were encouraged by teen magazines and AM radio to consume airbrushed pinups like Donny Osmond and the Bay City Rollers. Boys read Rolling Stone, listened to FM radio, and learned about arena rock, the cartoonishly heavy metal sounds of bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The music's cross-racial alliances faded as black and Latin disco and funk separated from white singer-songwriter earnestness. MTV, a cable network relying on music videos for its programming, appeared in 1981, linking rock to television around the clock. The youth market was bigger than ever. Stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen enjoyed global popularity. It was now possible to find kids in virtually every location on earth obsessed with the same musical icons.
Some rock bands turned up the power on their electric instruments and created the sound known as heavy metal, a name that seems to have been derived from a line in the 1968 Steppenwolf song, "Born to Be Wild." One performer, Alice Cooper, moved into shock entertainment by integrating the occult, sadomasochism, and animal abuse in his act. The shock element developed from an unplanned event in 1969. During a concert in Detroit, Michigan, Cooper released some chickens into the audience at the close of his act. The audience killed them and tore them to pieces, a fact subsequently noted in the press.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, heavy metal was on the edge of the larger rock community as music expressing teenage rebellion in both England and the United States. As such, it was music enjoyed for a relatively few years before its followers reached adulthood. The music survived because there was always a new crop of teenagers entering the market each year. However, due to the rapidly changing audiences it was difficult for many bands to survive on top for more than five to seven years. In order to capture the attention of an audience with an increasingly short attention span, some bands moved into the most graphic portrayals of sex, sadism, and Satanism, themes that played predominantly to male teenagers.
Satanist themes dominated heavy metal lyrics and images, horrifying pastors and parents (even those raised on Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones). These people saw heavy metal music as both a direct attack upon the mind and morals of their children and a new low in cultural degeneracy.
Performers such as Ozzy Osbourne were singled out for particular criticism. After leaving Black Sabbath, Osbourne formed a new band that later released the albums Talk of the Devil (1982), Bark at the Moon (1983) with Osbourne as a werwolf on the cover, and Ultimate Sin (1984). Incidents in which teen delinquency was tied to listening to heavy metal rock received wide publicity and Osbourne was accused of instigating crimes and suicides.
Contemporary rock has been criticized especially for the values it incorporates. However, to date, no valid evidence has been produced to link even the more objectionable form of heavy metal music as a causal agent to specific patterns of antisocial behavior or to long-term negative effects among devoted fans.
Larkin believed that rock music and popular music were at least as significant historically as classical music, and as such, should be given definitive treatment and properly documented. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music is the result.In 1989, Larkin sold his half of the publishing company Scorpion Books to finance his ambition to publish an encyclopedia of popular music. Aided by a team of initially 70 contributors, he set about compiling the data in a pre-internet age, "relying instead on information gleaned from music magazines, individual expertise and a hideous amount of legwork".[1] He financed and founded a new company, Square One Books, to publish the encyclopedia. The first edition of the encyclopedia "pushed Larkin to the brink of bankruptcy".[3] It was a four-volume set and went into print in 1992.
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music covers popular music from the early 1900s to the present day, including folk, blues, country, R&B, jazz, rock, heavy metal, reggae, electronic music and hip hop.
Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives (commonly known as Metal Archives per the URL or abbreviated as MA) is an online encyclopedia based upon musical artists who predominantly perform heavy metal music along with its various sub-genres.[1] Encyclopaedia Metallum was described by Matt Sullivan of Nashville Scene as "the Internet's central database for all that is 'tr00' in the metal world."[2] Terrorizer described the site as "a fully-exhaustive list of pretty much every metal band ever, with full discographies, an active forum and an interlinking members list that shows the ever-incestuous beauty of the metal scene".[3] Nevertheless, there are exceptions for bands which fall under disputed genres not accepted by the website. 041b061a72