What about black metal, math metal and nu metal?
Once upon a time, I had a job in a second-hand bookshop. In the dilapidated yet charismatic top floor of an old townhouse, I was the commander of the music section. I spent my days filing newly acquired stock into sections I had created: instrumental sheets, mini scores, guitar anthologies – you name it, we had it, and I could find it.
Our contemporary guitar section wasn’t vast, but we still had some choice, and maybe even rare, tablature anthologies. There came a day when my boss and I, in a discussion of how various sections should be categorised, got into a debate about the appropriate home for a Guns N’ Roses collection. She absolutely insisted it should live under “Heavy Metal”; I was adamant it should be in “Rock”. Many decades my senior, my boss was around in rock music’s heyday, a time when heavy metal would indeed have described the Gunners sound. I, a young whippersnapper, drew heavily on my understanding of current music and stretched my brain to run a marathon it hadn’t done for a while. I won my case, but it left me thinking, “we have evolved, haven’t we?”.
Today we’re almost overwhelmed by metal subgenres – black metal, death metal, nu-metal, math metal, poly-metal. Heck, even hardcore and all the subdivisions of the subgenre could be candidates for a place beneath the one true banner. And with more and more bands insisting they aren’t to be pigeonholed so as to be able to swim freely in their creative endeavours, should we be doing away with subgenres entirely? Should we just label everything that isn’t clearly rock as straight up heavy metal? Should we adhere to labels at all?
What even is heavy metal in 2019? Post-hardcore and hardcore are almost two entirely standalone offshoots. Nu-metal? Well, it’s always going to stir up memories of Limp Bizkit and Korn, for better or worse. And the revolting noise of a genre I like to call vomit metal (you know the kind I’m talking about) can, in some opinions, barely be classed as music at all. Heavy metal today is confusing, overwhelming, and for music journalists who are supposed to listen with a critical ear, the evolution of the genre means we’re constantly listening for various nuances and updated sounds.
As we step into a brand new decade, the third of this century, it’s going to be interesting to see what the scene comes up with in terms of the next big trend. Will heavy metal undergo a face lift yet again? Whatever happens, we can move forward in the comforting knowledge that, at least, Guns N’ Roses aren’t heavy metal.
