Metal Genealogy - Family Tree - Evolution - Beginning of a series of posts [Metal Tree: 1]
I wrote a post on documentaries the other day about metal. One of the documentaries I covered in the most depth was Metal Evolution by Banger Films and Sam Dunn. It only had that one season and then was done.
During the series it keeps showing a very colorful chart, or family tree if you will of many sub-genres of Heavy Metal music. It had many band names listed, and it gave hope for a lot of cool future episodes of Metal Evolution. That never happened. In addition, the episodes that do focus on some of those nodes of the tree only touch upon some of the bands listed.
I have decided I am going to do my own series where I go through each of the nodes on that tree and perhaps some nodes from trees made by other people on the internet. I would like to explore Heavy Metal and it's sub-genres and make a Metal Tree.
I suspect it will take me quite awhile to get through this tree. I will post no more than one such post per day, and I will likely skip some days occasionally. I will most likely not make posts of this nature on the weekends, but I may change my mind depending upon where the inspiration takes me. I will tag these posts with the tag #metaltree .
#metaltree
I will also steer you towards the works of people like Sam Dunn, and other artists. I fully expect to learn a lot during this process as well as there were many things on Sam's chart that I was unfamiliar with.
I know not all of my followers are into metal. This is another reason I am limiting myself to a single such post per day. That will leave me up to 3 other posts that I can use to write about other things.
Banger Films does have a poster version of their Metal Evolution Family Tree for sale on their website for $100. That's pretty expensive, but it is out there if any of you are die hard collectors and are up to it.
Steem On!
EDIT: adding list of episodes as long as it will let me keep editing.
- Episode 2 - Before there was heavy metal
- Episode 3 - The roots and rise of heavy metal in the United States
- Episode 4 - The roots and rise of heavy metal in the UK and Australia
- Episode 5 - Taking a parallel path... Progressive Rock while not always metal was influential
- Episode 6 - We don't need your technical eliteism!!! Original Punk Rock blasts onto the scene
- Episode 7 - Gasps from the audience... Did they just do that? This is Shock Rock.
- Episode 8 - With punk a force metal was dying, or was it? Enter the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (aka NWOBHM)
- Episode 9 - You can have your Game of Thrones and Metal at the same time... it does the mind good.
- Episode 10 - Wow... That singer is a beautiful woman... Dude, that's a guy! Glam Metal
- Episode 11 - Did I just hear that? What is this? I've never heard anything this intense... Thrash Metal
- Episode 12 - Punk gets harder, and embraces more distortion, still not caring about prowess... Hardcore
- Episode 13 - Practice, Skill, a little of this, a little of that, and add distortion. Progressive Metal
- Episode 14 - Too much hair, too much technical, you're losing touch with the soul... Grunge Rock
- Episode 15 - Evil is fun... Evil sells... Horror sells... or so thinks the First Wave of Black Metal
- Episode 16 - Jesus built my hotrod... sometimes called just Industrial... on some charts Industrial Metal
- Episode 17 - Do you hear that? The drums in the deep... are we in Mordor? No that's just the DOOM METAL
- Episode 18 - The growl that rumbles... the gutteral sounds... battlefield scavengers... DEATH METAL
- Episode 19 - Go ahead... see if you can resist the urge to mosh... Metalcore
- Episode 20 - Not quite this... not quite that... but often quite heavy... Hard Alternative
- Episode 21 - How black can black get... black days, black thoughts, black actions... Black Metal
thanks for your posts - incredible well written and informative for a huge metal fan like me!
I'm glad you like them. They took me awhile. I have a weird metal project planned for the future. I want to take the Ayreon concept albums and go through them start to finish from the beginning of the tale to the end. They are pretty epic with a lot of guest musicians and vocalists from all over the place so I think it could make an interesting little series.
Metal Tree was one of my favorite projects so far.
great - then i am looking forward for your next posts!
I missed this when you posted it. Remedied that by following you.
That Metal Evolution family tree is fantastic! Man that captures my entire life in metal music! A ton of my favorites in there. My taste has expanded beyond metal, but metal is my first love and I know it best.
Thanks for sharing. I'm off to binge watch as much of that series as I can find. Looking forward to your posts as well.
It's nice to connect on other topics than anarchism, blockchains, philosophy and psychology. Music captures / expresses raw emotional power!
Thanks, I agree. I like to post about a wide array of topics, but this was a big project undertaking to TRY to complete that entire tree in a month. I might go just a little bit over a month at this rate since I only post 5 episodes per week (M-F).
My good man, kudos on this idea! I am very excited to follow through this series (though admittedly late, I'm sorry to say). I just shared the link to this post on my Facebook timeline, and gave a little description of it to get people interested in not only checking out your series, but also to join the Steemit community! Hopefully it works! :D Steem on brother, and I salute you with the metal horns! \m/
If I forget anything feel free to add a reply with a video link.
Tomorrow I do Doom Metal which will finish off that row of the tree. That episode will be kind of exciting for me because I don't know anything about any of the bands in that particular sub-genre. So tomorrow is new music exposure day.
Doom Metal, you say? If I may be so bold, might I suggest Type O Negative as a fairly decent starting point? Some may call them Industrial, but I have always felt personally that their sound epitomizes how Doom Metal should sound. One of my favorite bands ever since I was in high school.
I'll make sure to add them to the list... I get a list... find out when they first released any recording, and what nationality they are and I introduce the bands in chronological order.
I'll make sure to include them.
Interestingly enough if you look at that Metal family tree on THIS post... they have Type O' Negative listed as Goth Metal which is in the bottom row. Though I have seen many cases where bands fit within multiple branches of this chart.
So you are saying Type O' Negative is Doom Metal? I am familiar with Type O' Negative, but I don't know ANY of the bands in the Doom Metal branch on that chart. :)
Meh.... more than anything, I'm just saying that I've always personally considered Type O to be Doom Metal in my own opinion....
Though I can see very clearly why they would place them in the Goth Metal subgenre. Makes a lot of sense due to Type O's heavy gothic-esque atmosphere in both their sound and live presence. Just sucks that the lead singer/bassist Peter Steele died back in 2010. They were a band that I've never gotten to see live but always wanted to. :/
They seem to fit... I just finished the post on Doom Metal... though Overkill is primarily Thrash... they have some songs that REALLY fit the Doom Metal vibe, so I threw them into the mix as well.
nice :)
Wow, I had no idea that Metal has such complex and varied expression! I've never much been "into it" but there have been a few pieces that I've enjoyed...
I have a grandson who is a connoisseur of all kinds of music, I know he loves Metal, and so I'll pass this article along to him... Thanks! 😄😇😄
It actually is even more complex than this. It keeps spawning off new branches. :) They all have certain ways they approach things. Though this is part of the journey. I want to learn these things too.
I will be sure to only do one of these a day so that I am writing about other stuff besides metal.