What's with all the different metal genres?

Question

Thrash metal

Speed metal

Death metal

Black metal

Heavy metal

Glam metal

Power metal

I mean, do you ever feel that some genres of music have too many sub-categories?

I mean, take Slayer for example... they are supposed to be thrash metal, but couldn't they also be considered black metal or power metal as well?

Shouldn't some of these genre names be eliminated or do I just not understand enough about music categorization?

Answer 1

yeah, you could spend forever just thinking up sub-genres for sub-genres, and eventually you'd have a genre for every single band. Can't we just call Slayer Slayer?

Answer 2

It's become something of an in-joke for fans of the genre. (I hope) There are a lot of genres based on the subject material of the songs, which is obviously ridiculous, and makes me think that they look at song-writing in a faulty way. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_meta...

Answer 3

i know!!

its all so **** confusing! this is just aimless classification of metal..i guess its basically slow and fast metal...all this is just to confuse us :p !!

Answer 4

i agree but you gotta admit there are distinct differences here n there like technicality, the rythm of the riffs, the drumbeats and of course the vocal styles

Answer 5

It makes it a helluva lot easier for reviewers to categorise bands.

For example, Anaal Nathrakh and Edguy are considered metal bands, but their sounds are totally different.

Also, it helps metalheads' "music" category in their myspaces look a lot flashier.

Answer 6

Same with the *core thing (hardcore, grindcore...). Just hipster garbage.

Answer 7

You're barely scraping the edge with metal subgenres...

Symphonic Metal

Gothic metal

Doom Metal

Sludge Metal

Folk Metal

Blackened Death Metal

Groove Metal

Industrial Metal

Metalcore

Avant-garde Metal...

And there's still more...

And no, I wouldn't call Slayer power or black, but that's just me. Black metal is more along the lines of Mayhem, Darkthrone, Immortal, etc and power is Iced Earth, Primal Fear, and Helloween. I agree there is alot of genre's but I think we can agree that whatever genre of metal it is, it still kicks ***. (Except Nu-metal/alt metal)

Answer 8

Yeah, same here! Maybe in purpose to keep fans something to argue about.

Answer 9

In the history of a band, there's some point of their life when they change their style;

or they make an album with a different genre;

or they have hybrid style or they fuse different genres into one.

Yeah, some bands don't belong to only a single genre.

Yes, Slayer is a good example.

Sepultura is a good one too. Their early material is death metal, then they change to thrash, then groove....