Musical Metal

Sander generously gifted us a mix-CD for our future child’s birth. It is a caring collection of his favorite tunes entitled “Baby’s First Metal”

I’ve never really listened to Metal. Nor do I entirely understand its roots or its breadth. In the music that Sander provided there were a few obvious trends:

  1. A incredible focus on percussion, most notably the bass pedal
  2. Paired Guitar riffs on thirds (oddly common)
  3. Growling of varying severity
  4. A surplus of Umlauts

There are a bunch of fairly comprehensive graphical metal trees that show different types of Metal and how they are all related (like this one from staffmetal.com). My favorite of the bands on Sander’s disc is Mastodon which seems to be classified as simply “heavy metal.” Not to be confused with Thrash, Glam, Industrial, or Nu Metal. Curiously, that graphic linked to above hints that even Jimi Hendrix and Cream were inspiration for future metal heads. As for the origin of the growling? I don’t know. I’m sure it evolved from increasingly throaty singing… but without hearing each stage of the progression it’s hard to imagine.

Thanks to Sander for a great gift!

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