by Frank Menecola

Created on: February 09, 2008

Now, to my personal definition of Heavy Metal. I am including all of the sub genres of Metal in my beginning definition. My purpose is to describe what I feel are the characteristics of Heavy Metal, which will be more than a short sentence or paragraph.

Heavy Metal is a musical form that uses heavy, thick distortion on very loud guitars. The EQ is often set with a lot of bass and a lot of treble, but very little mid-range. This gives the equalizer a "scooped" pattern. The graphic equalizer sometimes looks like a roller coaster, with a lot of low, a dip in the mid-range, and you climb back up on the highs.

Heavy Metal music communicates a very dark, gloomy message most often, so to do that, the musicians want a very dark, gloomy sound. To achieve that, they down tune their instruments from standard tuning to at least a semitone lower. This lower tone gives a foreboding feeling to the music. With the heavy distortion and the down tuning, the guitars sound as much like a percussion instrument as the drums. Many of the rhythms of Heavy Metal have a galloping feeling. The riffs come at you like a stampede of wild horses. You have to either jump on and go along for the ride or get trampled on. I find it very difficult to listen to a good heavy metal song without at least a slight headbanging.

I personally feel that the aspect of Heavy Metal that I connect with the most is the content of the lyrics. This is also the part that is of course the most controversial. Most often, people who are not fans of Heavy Metal will criticize it because of the loudness, and tone of the instruments and because of a superficial listening to the lyrics. My mantra is always that you should "first seek to understand before you seek to be understood." In other words, we should listen to what the person is trying to say before we criticize them. Often the criticism comes without any attempt to understand. I want to encourage people to listen to all people who are different from you and try to really understand what they are saying before you make a judgment about them and to begin to criticize.

I admit that the content of Heavy Metal music can be quite devilish, dark and gloomy. One big thing to remember is a word that I used above a few times. Heavy Metal is a "Genre" of music. That means that it has a musical form that it follows. With the Heavy Metal genre comes a certain style of lyrics. I don't believe that it is always wise to take the lyrics to a Heavy Metal song at face value. Sometimes

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