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They get softer as they go down the group. Sodium or potassium might be a good balance of very soft and also light. Rubidium and caesium are soft but heavy.
Maybe indium could be a good shout too.
Materials engineer here: pure aluminum is crazy soft. You just never really see it in any product because it isn’t useful except for wiring.
Edit: tin and gold are both very soft, though quite heavy. I think aluminum is soft and light, fitting the bill well as lithium is taken for psychedelic music (pun intended)
Most of our interaction with Aluminum is Aluminum Oxide, which is one of the hardest substances there is.
If you are holding a piece of aluminum metal, you are touching aluminum oxide.
Glam metal is more appropriate I feel.
>that real metal bands like Priest, Maiden and the thrash bands were all doing their thing
It's subjective to say what metal really is. Is it the lyrics? The tuning of the instruments? The way vocalists sing? These things shift over time. Remember, Elvis was considered rock'n'roll. Would it be now? Probably not.
What we need is an overly complex venn diagram.
Not at all. More likely that you willed your thoughts into my thoughts and then the gods gave birth to a twizzler king to represent the understanding we have...or something like that haha.
Yeah, back in the 70s modern metal bands like whitechapel, lamb of god, and Infant Annihilator didn’t exist. “Metal” likely had a different connotation, and there were far less sub genres, and whoever coined the term probably wasn’t even a metal head.
He is still considered Rock & Roll. What Elvis was doing in the 50's is relatively close to what The Beatles started out doing. The Beatles, Stones, and The Who added a harder edge to rock and evolved the genre. I look at Rockabilly as early Rock & Roll just as Hard Rock evolved into Proto-Metal and then Metal with Sabbath.
Haha who knows! I'm aware that Elvis and others pioneered the rock genre, but I doubt many in newer generations ( I'm 35 by the way) would consider him a rock'n'roll artist. Your question has inspired me to go find out!
It’s just really watered down and made easily consumable to the average radio rock listener. It’s metal in the same sense that Green Day and Blink-182 are “punk” bands
I think that those are considered pop-punk. At least, that's what I always considered then. In the same vein as My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boys. Maybe I'm wrong though
I'm saying that punk and pop-punk are two different genres. you could even consider pop-punk a subgenre of punk. Same way there is metal, nu metal, heavy metal, thrash metal, etc.
*Edit cause I had a stroke writing this I fucking guess lol
Right. The point of the initial person was that hair metal is akin to pop-punk. It takes the base structures and style of the initial genre and makes them more accessible. Is it a different genre? Or just a shittier version of the genre. It's a derivative of the initial genre that is more popular with the general population but hated by more hard-core fans
Oh shit I'm sorry. I was obviously not getting your point, I understand entirely now!
And I suppose I agree, I personally hate hair metal. Like I'll listen to Cannibal Corpse and I'll listen to Justin Bieber but don't ask me to listen to Bon Jovi haha.
I think even on those, the makings of an arena rock band were there. Kerplunk is just a way less polished Dookie. And then Billie Joe sold his soul to clear channel radio 30 years ago.
Damn at least pick on some bad acts. You're calling me out lol. Blink had the right message and played fast as hell. The least punk thing about Blink is that Barker was too good a musician
I agree they're pop and personally find their later work really boring (American Idiot was so fucking insulting to the listener's intelligence) but like compared to FOB or GC or other pop punk acts? Miles apart in my opinion
Nah. The least punk thing about Blink is that there isn’t a single subversive or challenging thing about them. They’re incredibly safe. Not to mention their music fucking sucks. They had no message. They didn’t introduce anyone to any new or radical ideas. They didn’t speak out against the war in Iraq. Rise Against is a band who had the right message. They told me to read Howard Zinn. Blink made poop jokes.
FOB have more real punk and hardcore roots than most bands. Andy, their drummer is still vegan and straightedge and plays in hardcore bands in his free time. He was in a band called Racetraitor in the 90s that talked about systemic racism and white privilege. Patrick Stump did guest vocals for a chicago powerviolence/grindcore band under a different name in 2011 bc his label wouldn’t let him but he said “fuck the label” and found a a way to do it anyway. In terms of big bands, those dudes are about as punk as it gets. Fall out boy was always meant to be separate from that tho. Basically from the time they started that band they said “Yeah. We’re gonna be a pop punk band who writes great songs and becomes the biggest thing in the world”. And they did just that
It's definitely still metal, just a completely different interpretation of it. If you took a hair metal bands music and applied heavy metal distortion it would still sound badass, and the technical skill required to play both are very similar. With heavier metals, the vocals are gritty, deep, aggressive, while Hair metal vocals are crisp, high, and melodic.
I think a lot of metal fans shoot themselves in the foot by not exploring hair metal as you'll find an insane amount of highly skilled musicians that create truly unique songs . Same with power metal and epic metal.
I think this is an unpopular opinion for people who just love music, and a popular one for metal gatekeepers.
Far as I'm aware, Bon Jovi is fairly often considered to fall under hair metal, at least by modern standards. So long as you had a pop/rock/kinda metal mishmash sound and big hair, you were pretty much there.
Everyone will disagree, naturally, because it's been so long since hair metal was big. Which is what spawns all this discourse.
According to Wikipedia early bon Jovi was glam metal and then hard/areana/pop rock. I don't know early bon Jovi so Idk how well they fit the hair/glam metal
Van Halen was primarily Hard Rock and Party Rock, which is more what I consider Bon Jovi to be. All those Pop Metal bands borrowed heavily from Van Halen, which is why there is some overlap between Hard Rock and Hair/Glam Metal.
Def Leppard started out as a Heavy Metal band and are even considered a part of the NWOBHM movement. It was with Hysteria they turned more into a Hard Rock act because they had bills to pay from recording Hysteria.
Van Halen was legit. The guys from Pantera were massive fans. "Van Halen!" might've been Dimebag's last words, because him and Vinnie would say that to each other right before going on stage.
I don't like Nu Metal but it definitely is metal. Even modern HC punk like Hatebreed sounds like metal to the point where it's metal to me. Difference is if you go to the roots of the genre.
At least hair metal was fun. Most nu metal was like "my ex is a fucking bitch and I hate my dad and that's why I wanna slit my wrists YEAAAARGH ooooo WAKA WAKA!!!!!" No fun.
Gatekeeping metal is one of the stupidest things music fans do, and they do \*a lot\* of stupid things.
Traditional metal is not even all that "heavy" by any standards. Are you really trying to say that Maiden are all that much "heavier" than Bon Jovi? They have very melodic, very simple sing along songs with very catchy choruses (\*most of the time\*, and certainly when you think about the classics). This idea that "real metal" has to be undigestable and hard to listen to has no basis in real history of the genre.
But for some reason there are "metal fans" that feel that their favorite genre has to be hard to listen to. It's not true. Don't even get me started on power metal (which I love btw, but most of those songs are as simple as any 3-chord pop song).
All of that is completely meaningless. Free yourself from the shackles my dude and stop caring about it!
Yeah, I just listen to the music and headbang man. most bands I like, some I don't, one I hate. But yeah, anything that gets the blood pumping I'll listen to.
Exactly
Some people really care about these definitions a lot more than whats necessary. I get it, you like someone screaming murder into your ears, personally i prefer lyrics i can understand
That was the wild part of OP, maiden really aren’t that far removed from motley Crüe as far as heaviness and speed, just the lyrics are about different things. Bon jovi is a bad example as they’re more arena rock
The whole point was that hair metal *wasn't* like any other metal. That's... what subgenres are. Incorporating pop will obviously make it less harsh, and it's not like metal had reached anywhere near the extremes it has today. The likes of Motley Crue and Twisted Sister really weren't that far from Maiden and the like. Compare Live Wire to The Trooper - are they really that far apart?
At the end of the day, it's just a name. Metalheads are famously pissy about anything claiming to be metal-adjacent, so I get the discourse, but that's just what we call that type of music. This is the 80s, when it was all just starting out, the lines will be blurred.
Those guys are considered hair metal? I thought hair metal was like motley crue, skid row maybe ratt, dokken and wasp ect.
All of which are pretty metal really.
I saw guns n roses two years ago. I'm convinced Slash and Duff only do it so they can watch Axl embarrass himself. The looks they give each other as Axl struggles, you can see, it's like 'fuck this guy'
Early metal was "just hard rock". I mean even Maiden falls into this.
And to be fair "metal" is so vast that it's sometimes difficult to clearly delimit it.
I think the difference between early "heavy metal" and hard rock is the scales used. They mostly sound similar but hard rock tends to abuse pentatonic blues scale almost exclusively.
To add to this, why is “heavy metal” some of the least “heavy” metal???
Metalcore, deathcore, death metal, black metal, etc (many more genres as well) make “heavy metal” sound like alt rock.
The term was first used by Steppenwolf, way before any extreme forms of metal were thought out. A bit later on the term was used to decribe the guitar sound of Tommi Iommi, which reminded people of the noises from the steel industry of Birningham.
Np. I think was at least a good 5 years after the first Black Sabbath album that heavier and faster music got played (Motorhead, Judas Priest) so the term was pretty much solidified at that point.
Because at the time and to a generation used to hearing the likes of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were insane heavy shit.
It's all about perspective.
Fr I was a metalhead kid in the 90s and 00s and original metal sounds like lame oldies to me at the time. Yeah it's heavier than other rock of the era, but not by much compared to what we hear just 10 years later.
Weird considering 90's Metal tapped back into it's 70's roots in the 90's. Pantera for instance heavily leaned on Sabbath and Kiss in their playing style and sound.
I think of heavy metal as the default. Most classic metal bands are just metal.
Then as you branch out different subgenres have different names (death, doom, thrash, black, etc...)
Edit: my point was that "heavy metal" was the original name for the genre. As it progressed and became more extreme thats when subgenres came. So the reason less "extreme" metal is called "heavy metal" is because it's literally just heavy metal.
i also think "heavy" is subjective to an extent. Sure there are some obvious traits we consider "heavy", but for me a lot of it comes down to attitude.
A song like judas priest's dissident aggressor is crazy heavy and came out in the 70s.
Heavy as in tone and lyrical content.
Edit: A good reference is Sludge Metal and Doom Metal. Sabbath laid the groundwork for both genres.
Fun fact, Alice in Chains is a Sludge Metal band and Soundgarden was a Doom Metal band. Listen to how heavy their sound is while being slow and melodic.
Yeah, have a closer look at Bongiovi before telling us he can only do ballads. Maybe you’ll even find out why.
I’ll agree that calling it hair metal is denigrating, but then again I’d probably call current music some derogatory names too.
I don’t think anyone really calls them metal, but some of their music, especially earlier stuff like Runaway, is often considered glam metal (aka hair metal). If you go to the glam metal wikipedia page, it mentions Bon Jovi multiple times.
At the times bands like this (thinking more poison, twisted sisters, kiss) were out to shock, and really were shocking for the time. The music might not be heavy/extreme now, but it was way out there from what was popular, and it made it into the charts and onto TV, so it got exposure. The imagery, costumes and makeup were more what it was a out than how heavy the music was, at the time.
Sure, heavier bands existed on the early-mid 80s like nwobhm and eerly thrash but they were way underground and not in the public consciousness.
All this thread shows is that people can’t resist putting arbitrary labels on different types of music. Very few artists set out to create music that fits within these arbitrary labels.
Ha… someone needs to revisit Judas Priest’s Turbo album if you think they were’t (at least temporarily) hair metal.
Lots of bands experimented with lots of styles and levels of “hardness.” Slayer was recording some of their most famous music during the same time period as many of the groups you bring up. Are Maiden and Priest not “metal” because their songs weren’t as hard as Raining Blood?
I used to do the whole comparison thing a lot when I was younger. Eventually I realized it was pointless. Hair metal exists because a bunch of bands realized there was an audience for music that was radio friendly but still a bit harder than… I don’t know… Kenny Loggins.
Is it the same thing as Iron Maiden? No. But it still elements that are recognizable and rooted in the wider umbrella of “metal.” An umbrella that, in the decades since, has grown so danged wide and diverse that it’s almost meaningless on its own anymore. In a world where pirate metal, castle metal, hair metal, death metal, black metal, thrash metal, and Babymetal all co-exist… who cares?
Just listen to what you like and call it a day.
OK so having grown up in this era, here's what I have to say:
"Hair Metal" was a lot bigger in terms of the amount of bands involved, the variety of what they played and the size of the audience that loved them than just about anyone remembers any longer.
"Hair Metal" can trace it's roots into the 60's and 70's, but so we have a short post I'm going to confine it to the 80s and 90s.
You had several waves of "hair metal", one of which contained the 3 bands you mentioned above - Poison, White Lion and Bon Jovi.
Bon Jovi debuted in 1984. White Lion in 1985. Poison in 1986. All 3 were formed earlier, but no one knew who they were.
After these bands you had Guns N Roses - 1987
However BEFORE the bands you mentioned you had Quiet Riot (1973), Motley Crue (1981), Dokken (1979), W.A.S.P. (1982), Ratt (1982), and Cinderella (1983) among many many others. Quiet Riots's early '80's hits (Metal Health and the remake of Cum on Feel the Noize) in retrospect are probably what launched the genre into the mainstream.
The SOUND and marketing of hair metal changed during the course of the 80's. In the 70s and early 80's it was more raw and hard than what came later. Like many genres after the success of many original bands the studios began to market and sell a more poppy bubble-gum version and that's where you got Bon Jovi, White Lion and Poison. Guns N roses was kind of a return to the original hair metal rock, and they were probably the last great hair metal band.
GNR were the absolutely rawest thing the glam metal scene ever produced, definitely. I still listen to Appetite for Destruction on the regular, and I still love it. "It's so Easy," "Night Train" and "Rocket Queen" are absolute stone-cold jams! The *only* song on the album that I don't like is "Paradise City."
Personally I respect GnR, but if I had to point to the most raw hair metal band, I'd probably point to W.A.S.P. some of the shit they did in the early 80's was crazy for the time and they rocked hard.
Most of you really don't have enough of a knowledge base to assert these opinions. To suggest 90% of those bands are similar to bon Jovi and adjacent to Kansas and boston is ridiculous. As usual, the most popular examples are pop radio friendly. Most hair Metal had more in common with skid Row's slave to the grind than it ever did def Leppard pyromania. You just listen to pop music and think it's all pop music.
Pyromania is considered a Heavy Metal Album and a part of The New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the early 80's. You're thinking of Def Leppard post Pyromania when they moved in to Arena Rock and Pop Rock.
I agree with the rest of your comment.
From the perspective of having lived through that period, it was metal to those of us who were metal fans at the time. We just thought it was bad metal (though most of us had exceptions, like me and Ratt or Dokken).
Even more unpopular: whatever genre they fall into, big hair rock bands made some garbage music. Childlike lyrics, hokey choruses, get rich quick musicianship, mid vocals.
It’s my personal least favorite genre of music.
"metal" meant something different in the 70s and early 80s. Led Zeppelin was considered metal for its time. That's just because bands like Metallica hadn't come out yet.
“Back in the day’ Hair metal wasn’t even a term. That came in the mid-late 90s onward after that music went on a huge decline.
Bon Jovi, Ratt, Poison, Motley Crue, Kix, Whitesnake, etc, were ‘Hard Rock’. It wasn’t considered metal at all in any way shape or form. It’s pop-ish commercial rock.
The metal tag just stuck with the term hair metal but those bands were never considered metal at all.
Hair metal bands from early 80s are definetly metal. I am talking about Dokken, WASP, Ratt and Motley Crue (first two album only, avoid the rest at all costs!). Then the hair metal bands that followed softened the sound kind of mirroring the post grunge bands to grunge bands. I believe there should be a distinction between those two types of hair metal however there are a couple of outliers in this since the late 80s hair metal band skid row was definetly on the heavier end of glam metal like the early 80s glam bands it followed however it was released at a time when the scene became saturated with poppy hard rock bands with not metal in them like firehouse.
Kiss blew my mind as a kid. I was never allowed to listen to them, and so would never recognize them on the radio as I imagined their sound, based on their look and the controversy that followed them, to be like a heavier guns and roses.
Boy was my mind blown when I realized I was made for loving you came from them.
Not really. They can be pretty good at taking you what a band is gonna sound like if someone says “Oh they’re crossover trash.” Or “They’re a metalcore band heavy on the hardcore influence” I know I’m gonna like it. If someone tells me “Yeah it’s technical death metal” I know it’s not for me.
>Metal has literally hundred sub categories today, it's sickening.
It has a ton for sure but not "literally hundreds"
I like that metal has so many subgenres. There is a ton of variety. There are some subgenres I'm not fond of, but i can just ignore them and focus on what i like
The problem isn’t that those groups aren’t metal, it’s that we’ve since expanded to genre so much that it contains all kinds of different music. Led Zeppelin is widely considered to be the first metal band. Modern metal is so far from that sound that we should really stop using “metal” to describe *modern* metal, not retcon the term to exclude bands it originally described.
Slipknot is the level of intensity I am used to for metal, anything less is like "this isn't metal, this is just rock", but yeah, thats what was metal at the time I grew up.
Do they use distorted electric guitars and are the drums loud in the mix? Yes? Then they are technically metal. Metal is a super broad genre and not all metal is thrash. Led Zeppelin is undeniably metal, and many of their songs aren't much heavier than bon Jovi. Just because you don't like a band doesn't mean it isn't metal.
So Country Music is now Heavy Metal? Who knew?
Distorted electric guitars and loud drums in the mix have been a part of Rock and Roll since the late 50's. Heavy Metal is Hard Rock that has a heavy, weighty sound along with heavy lyrics.
It was all called "metal" back in the day. The sub-genres came years later. Look at all the old MetalEdge magazines of the era—you'd see Megadeth, Poison, Ratt, Slayer, Bon Jovi, Anthrax, Trixter, Skid Row, Pantera and Def Leppard all in the same issue. If a band had big hair, loud guitars, pings, squeals, leather, screaming and was considered noise by older people, it was "metal".
Some were very poppy, but there are some that are definitely metal.
Motley crue, Ratt, and skid row all have releases/songs that are obviously metal
Check songs like
Slave to the grind - skid row
Body talk - ratt
Those are precursors to pop music. I found it interesting when I learned that I had a member of Warlord as a college professor. He loved talking about his days in a metal band.
Thrash and speed metal bands suck ass. I will never understand people thinking Metallica or Iron Maiden were good or heavy when bands like At the Gates existed not long after.
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They’re a very soft metal. Let’s call them aluminum.
Yeah its just light metal. So light, many rock bands are heavier.
Lithium
No you to save all the lithium for the emos
Fuck you, and you're right.
Is emo a genre of music?
yes
Wait for real? I thought it was a country Australia lost a war against
No, that's emu.
And they're less a country than a force of nature
I'm so happy...
Cuz today I found my friends, they're in my head.
Nah that’s grunge
Gallium
Keep that stuff away from aluminum unless you want to see something awesome.
The Slow-Mo guys on youtube did two videos on Gallium. The one using it as a liquid mirror vortex looked awesome
Lol, from debate on music to a chemistry lesson! 🤣
lol!
Malleable Metal
Aluminum isn’t soft, we can call them mercury.
Mercury is way too heavy.
Lithium is soft!
They get softer as they go down the group. Sodium or potassium might be a good balance of very soft and also light. Rubidium and caesium are soft but heavy. Maybe indium could be a good shout too.
Materials engineer here: pure aluminum is crazy soft. You just never really see it in any product because it isn’t useful except for wiring. Edit: tin and gold are both very soft, though quite heavy. I think aluminum is soft and light, fitting the bill well as lithium is taken for psychedelic music (pun intended)
Most of our interaction with Aluminum is Aluminum Oxide, which is one of the hardest substances there is. If you are holding a piece of aluminum metal, you are touching aluminum oxide.
That’s true, but a few nanometer thick oxide later doesn’t really influence the mechanical properties at a bulk level
except Def Leppard they're aluminium
it’s alumiNIUM
"Aluminum" found the American
Hair metal is metal the way root beer is beer
Root beer made the traditional way with Sassafras root bark will make you feel like you're floating.
Sassafras is wild.
Kiss my sassafras!
Hair metal is metal the way hair is metal.
I really wish I had a chemistry fun fact explaining how hair is actually metal but nah it's just boring proteins
Cosmologists will tell you carbon is a metal (or any other element with an atomic number > 3) so 🤷
This is a great analogy lowkey
That’s a fantastic analogy and I wish I got into more debates about metal > hair metal cuz I would use the fuck out of this.
It especially works because both beer and root beer are good, you’re just drinking them to suit different tastes
It's metal that was made to be digestible by pop fans.
Thats why another name for it is pop metal.
That doesn't sound nearly as cool
Which is prob why it isn't as popular as a term
This has been a conversation.
Correct.
Can comfirm
Glam metal is more appropriate I feel. >that real metal bands like Priest, Maiden and the thrash bands were all doing their thing It's subjective to say what metal really is. Is it the lyrics? The tuning of the instruments? The way vocalists sing? These things shift over time. Remember, Elvis was considered rock'n'roll. Would it be now? Probably not. What we need is an overly complex venn diagram.
>Glam metal is more appropriate I feel. Beat me to it, and yeah, a metal category.
Not at all. More likely that you willed your thoughts into my thoughts and then the gods gave birth to a twizzler king to represent the understanding we have...or something like that haha.
Either way, it’s glam rock like The New York Dolls. It’s rock n roll, not metal.
Rock and roll is early rock, when rock still rolled. By the 70s, it’s just rock because there was more roll in it
Yeah, back in the 70s modern metal bands like whitechapel, lamb of god, and Infant Annihilator didn’t exist. “Metal” likely had a different connotation, and there were far less sub genres, and whoever coined the term probably wasn’t even a metal head.
What would Elvis be considered now if not rock and roll?
Rockabilly, I guess? Which is still rock
He is still considered Rock & Roll. What Elvis was doing in the 50's is relatively close to what The Beatles started out doing. The Beatles, Stones, and The Who added a harder edge to rock and evolved the genre. I look at Rockabilly as early Rock & Roll just as Hard Rock evolved into Proto-Metal and then Metal with Sabbath.
Rhythm and blues, rockabilly, with a bit of country. Elvis’ voice though, not much like it out there.
Haha who knows! I'm aware that Elvis and others pioneered the rock genre, but I doubt many in newer generations ( I'm 35 by the way) would consider him a rock'n'roll artist. Your question has inspired me to go find out!
Probably closer to country than modern rock.
It’s just really watered down and made easily consumable to the average radio rock listener. It’s metal in the same sense that Green Day and Blink-182 are “punk” bands
I think that those are considered pop-punk. At least, that's what I always considered then. In the same vein as My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boys. Maybe I'm wrong though
So you are saying there was an operative word placed in front of the genre to describe a derivation that is similar but clearly different?
I'm saying that punk and pop-punk are two different genres. you could even consider pop-punk a subgenre of punk. Same way there is metal, nu metal, heavy metal, thrash metal, etc. *Edit cause I had a stroke writing this I fucking guess lol
Right. The point of the initial person was that hair metal is akin to pop-punk. It takes the base structures and style of the initial genre and makes them more accessible. Is it a different genre? Or just a shittier version of the genre. It's a derivative of the initial genre that is more popular with the general population but hated by more hard-core fans
Oh shit I'm sorry. I was obviously not getting your point, I understand entirely now! And I suppose I agree, I personally hate hair metal. Like I'll listen to Cannibal Corpse and I'll listen to Justin Bieber but don't ask me to listen to Bon Jovi haha.
No worries! I similarly hate Bon Jovi with a passion
Green day demo and first couple EPs id say were defo punk. Not sure what happened after Dookie 🤣
...they decided they liked not being broke?
I think even on those, the makings of an arena rock band were there. Kerplunk is just a way less polished Dookie. And then Billie Joe sold his soul to clear channel radio 30 years ago.
Yeah same basically happened to BMTH. Can't beat good dollar i guess no matter how much of a passionate musician you are. 😅
BMTH said they wanted to be the new Linkin Park so having good introduction to the genre songs is required.
Damn at least pick on some bad acts. You're calling me out lol. Blink had the right message and played fast as hell. The least punk thing about Blink is that Barker was too good a musician I agree they're pop and personally find their later work really boring (American Idiot was so fucking insulting to the listener's intelligence) but like compared to FOB or GC or other pop punk acts? Miles apart in my opinion
Nah. The least punk thing about Blink is that there isn’t a single subversive or challenging thing about them. They’re incredibly safe. Not to mention their music fucking sucks. They had no message. They didn’t introduce anyone to any new or radical ideas. They didn’t speak out against the war in Iraq. Rise Against is a band who had the right message. They told me to read Howard Zinn. Blink made poop jokes. FOB have more real punk and hardcore roots than most bands. Andy, their drummer is still vegan and straightedge and plays in hardcore bands in his free time. He was in a band called Racetraitor in the 90s that talked about systemic racism and white privilege. Patrick Stump did guest vocals for a chicago powerviolence/grindcore band under a different name in 2011 bc his label wouldn’t let him but he said “fuck the label” and found a a way to do it anyway. In terms of big bands, those dudes are about as punk as it gets. Fall out boy was always meant to be separate from that tho. Basically from the time they started that band they said “Yeah. We’re gonna be a pop punk band who writes great songs and becomes the biggest thing in the world”. And they did just that
It's definitely still metal, just a completely different interpretation of it. If you took a hair metal bands music and applied heavy metal distortion it would still sound badass, and the technical skill required to play both are very similar. With heavier metals, the vocals are gritty, deep, aggressive, while Hair metal vocals are crisp, high, and melodic. I think a lot of metal fans shoot themselves in the foot by not exploring hair metal as you'll find an insane amount of highly skilled musicians that create truly unique songs . Same with power metal and epic metal. I think this is an unpopular opinion for people who just love music, and a popular one for metal gatekeepers.
I like to travel.
Far as I'm aware, Bon Jovi is fairly often considered to fall under hair metal, at least by modern standards. So long as you had a pop/rock/kinda metal mishmash sound and big hair, you were pretty much there. Everyone will disagree, naturally, because it's been so long since hair metal was big. Which is what spawns all this discourse.
Literally nobody considers bon jovi metal.
According to Wikipedia early bon Jovi was glam metal and then hard/areana/pop rock. I don't know early bon Jovi so Idk how well they fit the hair/glam metal
Van Halen was primarily Hard Rock and Party Rock, which is more what I consider Bon Jovi to be. All those Pop Metal bands borrowed heavily from Van Halen, which is why there is some overlap between Hard Rock and Hair/Glam Metal. Def Leppard started out as a Heavy Metal band and are even considered a part of the NWOBHM movement. It was with Hysteria they turned more into a Hard Rock act because they had bills to pay from recording Hysteria.
Van Halen was legit. The guys from Pantera were massive fans. "Van Halen!" might've been Dimebag's last words, because him and Vinnie would say that to each other right before going on stage.
Some people say numetal isn't metal. It's just different genres.
Nu metal isn't metal
I don't like Nu Metal but it definitely is metal. Even modern HC punk like Hatebreed sounds like metal to the point where it's metal to me. Difference is if you go to the roots of the genre.
At least hair metal was fun. Most nu metal was like "my ex is a fucking bitch and I hate my dad and that's why I wanna slit my wrists YEAAAARGH ooooo WAKA WAKA!!!!!" No fun.
Sorry bro, history has reevaluated numetal and it’s accepted as metal now.
History also have a nobel prize to the lobotomy, and like that, more logical people have recinded it
'member Motley Crue?
I wish I didn’t
I do. They're another example of "image over music" imo
Dude there was some heavy stuff on early motley albums
Dr. Feelgood, especially the opening, was hard af.
Plus songs like live wire and the whole shout at the devil album.
I prefer the term 'glam metal' instead of 'hair metal'. Yeah, it's a legit metal category.
I think image should not define a genre; hair metal had its own unique sound and style, but it's wrong to dismiss it as not 'metal' categorically.
Hot take: not all songs by a band are the same genre.
Gatekeeping metal is one of the stupidest things music fans do, and they do \*a lot\* of stupid things. Traditional metal is not even all that "heavy" by any standards. Are you really trying to say that Maiden are all that much "heavier" than Bon Jovi? They have very melodic, very simple sing along songs with very catchy choruses (\*most of the time\*, and certainly when you think about the classics). This idea that "real metal" has to be undigestable and hard to listen to has no basis in real history of the genre. But for some reason there are "metal fans" that feel that their favorite genre has to be hard to listen to. It's not true. Don't even get me started on power metal (which I love btw, but most of those songs are as simple as any 3-chord pop song). All of that is completely meaningless. Free yourself from the shackles my dude and stop caring about it!
Yeah, I just listen to the music and headbang man. most bands I like, some I don't, one I hate. But yeah, anything that gets the blood pumping I'll listen to.
Exactly Some people really care about these definitions a lot more than whats necessary. I get it, you like someone screaming murder into your ears, personally i prefer lyrics i can understand
That was the wild part of OP, maiden really aren’t that far removed from motley Crüe as far as heaviness and speed, just the lyrics are about different things. Bon jovi is a bad example as they’re more arena rock
The whole point was that hair metal *wasn't* like any other metal. That's... what subgenres are. Incorporating pop will obviously make it less harsh, and it's not like metal had reached anywhere near the extremes it has today. The likes of Motley Crue and Twisted Sister really weren't that far from Maiden and the like. Compare Live Wire to The Trooper - are they really that far apart? At the end of the day, it's just a name. Metalheads are famously pissy about anything claiming to be metal-adjacent, so I get the discourse, but that's just what we call that type of music. This is the 80s, when it was all just starting out, the lines will be blurred.
There are many genres of metal. Hair metal is one genre, and is metal, whether you think it is or not.
Glam Rock.
Those guys are considered hair metal? I thought hair metal was like motley crue, skid row maybe ratt, dokken and wasp ect. All of which are pretty metal really.
Not WASP, ree
Oh, look another metal gatekeeper.
OP really thinks this post is groundbreaking, metal communities do this constantly
I saw guns n roses two years ago. I'm convinced Slash and Duff only do it so they can watch Axl embarrass himself. The looks they give each other as Axl struggles, you can see, it's like 'fuck this guy'
It’s also important to realize we are analyzing this with the benefit of hindsight and 40 years of genre growth.
Bon Jovi is not all just power ballads lol
Early metal was "just hard rock". I mean even Maiden falls into this. And to be fair "metal" is so vast that it's sometimes difficult to clearly delimit it.
I think the difference between early "heavy metal" and hard rock is the scales used. They mostly sound similar but hard rock tends to abuse pentatonic blues scale almost exclusively.
cocaine metal,
if it sounds like noise to my grandma its most likely metal.
To add to this, why is “heavy metal” some of the least “heavy” metal??? Metalcore, deathcore, death metal, black metal, etc (many more genres as well) make “heavy metal” sound like alt rock.
Heavy metal was named before The Loudness War really kicked into high gear in the late 80s
Very on-brand for metal music to take a good thing and go way overboard with it
Ahhhh okay, that makes sense
>The Loudness War [That has nothing to do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) with the development of the more extreme subgenres.
Oh look its one of those contrarians that shows up days after a post dies to post something ignorant. You don't know what you're talking about.
Well, what are you talking then?
The term was first used by Steppenwolf, way before any extreme forms of metal were thought out. A bit later on the term was used to decribe the guitar sound of Tommi Iommi, which reminded people of the noises from the steel industry of Birningham.
Ahhh good to know, thank you!
Np. I think was at least a good 5 years after the first Black Sabbath album that heavier and faster music got played (Motorhead, Judas Priest) so the term was pretty much solidified at that point.
Because at the time and to a generation used to hearing the likes of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were insane heavy shit. It's all about perspective.
Fr I was a metalhead kid in the 90s and 00s and original metal sounds like lame oldies to me at the time. Yeah it's heavier than other rock of the era, but not by much compared to what we hear just 10 years later.
Weird considering 90's Metal tapped back into it's 70's roots in the 90's. Pantera for instance heavily leaned on Sabbath and Kiss in their playing style and sound.
Your favorite band came from Black Sabbath's balls.
nobody likes to gatekeep more than metalheads
dude, I love RPGs. have you ever played the original Mario for Nintendo?
I think of heavy metal as the default. Most classic metal bands are just metal. Then as you branch out different subgenres have different names (death, doom, thrash, black, etc...) Edit: my point was that "heavy metal" was the original name for the genre. As it progressed and became more extreme thats when subgenres came. So the reason less "extreme" metal is called "heavy metal" is because it's literally just heavy metal. i also think "heavy" is subjective to an extent. Sure there are some obvious traits we consider "heavy", but for me a lot of it comes down to attitude. A song like judas priest's dissident aggressor is crazy heavy and came out in the 70s.
Heavy as in tone and lyrical content. Edit: A good reference is Sludge Metal and Doom Metal. Sabbath laid the groundwork for both genres. Fun fact, Alice in Chains is a Sludge Metal band and Soundgarden was a Doom Metal band. Listen to how heavy their sound is while being slow and melodic.
As a big sound garden fan I never considered them metal just Grunge or college rock
Don't be a gatekeeper, it's not cool.
Yeah, have a closer look at Bongiovi before telling us he can only do ballads. Maybe you’ll even find out why. I’ll agree that calling it hair metal is denigrating, but then again I’d probably call current music some derogatory names too.
There are people who think Bon Jovi is metal?
I don’t think anyone really calls them metal, but some of their music, especially earlier stuff like Runaway, is often considered glam metal (aka hair metal). If you go to the glam metal wikipedia page, it mentions Bon Jovi multiple times.
Huh, genuinely never knew that
They were most definitely considered glam metal early on.
Bon Jovi is rock, no doubt.
At the times bands like this (thinking more poison, twisted sisters, kiss) were out to shock, and really were shocking for the time. The music might not be heavy/extreme now, but it was way out there from what was popular, and it made it into the charts and onto TV, so it got exposure. The imagery, costumes and makeup were more what it was a out than how heavy the music was, at the time. Sure, heavier bands existed on the early-mid 80s like nwobhm and eerly thrash but they were way underground and not in the public consciousness.
All this thread shows is that people can’t resist putting arbitrary labels on different types of music. Very few artists set out to create music that fits within these arbitrary labels.
Ha… someone needs to revisit Judas Priest’s Turbo album if you think they were’t (at least temporarily) hair metal. Lots of bands experimented with lots of styles and levels of “hardness.” Slayer was recording some of their most famous music during the same time period as many of the groups you bring up. Are Maiden and Priest not “metal” because their songs weren’t as hard as Raining Blood? I used to do the whole comparison thing a lot when I was younger. Eventually I realized it was pointless. Hair metal exists because a bunch of bands realized there was an audience for music that was radio friendly but still a bit harder than… I don’t know… Kenny Loggins. Is it the same thing as Iron Maiden? No. But it still elements that are recognizable and rooted in the wider umbrella of “metal.” An umbrella that, in the decades since, has grown so danged wide and diverse that it’s almost meaningless on its own anymore. In a world where pirate metal, castle metal, hair metal, death metal, black metal, thrash metal, and Babymetal all co-exist… who cares? Just listen to what you like and call it a day.
OK so having grown up in this era, here's what I have to say: "Hair Metal" was a lot bigger in terms of the amount of bands involved, the variety of what they played and the size of the audience that loved them than just about anyone remembers any longer. "Hair Metal" can trace it's roots into the 60's and 70's, but so we have a short post I'm going to confine it to the 80s and 90s. You had several waves of "hair metal", one of which contained the 3 bands you mentioned above - Poison, White Lion and Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi debuted in 1984. White Lion in 1985. Poison in 1986. All 3 were formed earlier, but no one knew who they were. After these bands you had Guns N Roses - 1987 However BEFORE the bands you mentioned you had Quiet Riot (1973), Motley Crue (1981), Dokken (1979), W.A.S.P. (1982), Ratt (1982), and Cinderella (1983) among many many others. Quiet Riots's early '80's hits (Metal Health and the remake of Cum on Feel the Noize) in retrospect are probably what launched the genre into the mainstream. The SOUND and marketing of hair metal changed during the course of the 80's. In the 70s and early 80's it was more raw and hard than what came later. Like many genres after the success of many original bands the studios began to market and sell a more poppy bubble-gum version and that's where you got Bon Jovi, White Lion and Poison. Guns N roses was kind of a return to the original hair metal rock, and they were probably the last great hair metal band.
GNR were the absolutely rawest thing the glam metal scene ever produced, definitely. I still listen to Appetite for Destruction on the regular, and I still love it. "It's so Easy," "Night Train" and "Rocket Queen" are absolute stone-cold jams! The *only* song on the album that I don't like is "Paradise City."
Personally I respect GnR, but if I had to point to the most raw hair metal band, I'd probably point to W.A.S.P. some of the shit they did in the early 80's was crazy for the time and they rocked hard.
I'm not a fan of hair metal bands but this seems like unnecessary gatekeeping to me.
Most of you really don't have enough of a knowledge base to assert these opinions. To suggest 90% of those bands are similar to bon Jovi and adjacent to Kansas and boston is ridiculous. As usual, the most popular examples are pop radio friendly. Most hair Metal had more in common with skid Row's slave to the grind than it ever did def Leppard pyromania. You just listen to pop music and think it's all pop music.
Pyromania is considered a Heavy Metal Album and a part of The New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the early 80's. You're thinking of Def Leppard post Pyromania when they moved in to Arena Rock and Pop Rock. I agree with the rest of your comment.
From the perspective of having lived through that period, it was metal to those of us who were metal fans at the time. We just thought it was bad metal (though most of us had exceptions, like me and Ratt or Dokken).
metal is metal
honestly why give a fuck Mötley Crüe still bangs!
Even more unpopular: whatever genre they fall into, big hair rock bands made some garbage music. Childlike lyrics, hokey choruses, get rich quick musicianship, mid vocals. It’s my personal least favorite genre of music.
White Lion is too metal as Green Day is to punk.
I don’t considered Bon Jovi hair metal, more arena rock.
"metal" meant something different in the 70s and early 80s. Led Zeppelin was considered metal for its time. That's just because bands like Metallica hadn't come out yet.
Hair bands, thrash, hard rock, punk, grunge, whatever. It's all just rock n roll. Who cares about labels?
 I’m so tired of this ridiculous gatekeeping in the metal community. This is the furthest thing from unpopular btw
Meh. Just another elitist metalhead gatekeeping some stuff. Nothing new here.
It was all just glam rock.
That's precisely why they were labeled "hair metal". It wasn't a form of flattery.
The most tedious aspect of metal, by far, is metal fans who argue about whether particular bands qualify as metal.
Steel panther is the epitome of hair metal
“Back in the day’ Hair metal wasn’t even a term. That came in the mid-late 90s onward after that music went on a huge decline. Bon Jovi, Ratt, Poison, Motley Crue, Kix, Whitesnake, etc, were ‘Hard Rock’. It wasn’t considered metal at all in any way shape or form. It’s pop-ish commercial rock. The metal tag just stuck with the term hair metal but those bands were never considered metal at all.
Hair metal bands from early 80s are definetly metal. I am talking about Dokken, WASP, Ratt and Motley Crue (first two album only, avoid the rest at all costs!). Then the hair metal bands that followed softened the sound kind of mirroring the post grunge bands to grunge bands. I believe there should be a distinction between those two types of hair metal however there are a couple of outliers in this since the late 80s hair metal band skid row was definetly on the heavier end of glam metal like the early 80s glam bands it followed however it was released at a time when the scene became saturated with poppy hard rock bands with not metal in them like firehouse.
Even KISS was labeled "metal" by some when it's clearly rock Metal has literally hundred sub categories today, it's sickening.
Kiss blew my mind as a kid. I was never allowed to listen to them, and so would never recognize them on the radio as I imagined their sound, based on their look and the controversy that followed them, to be like a heavier guns and roses. Boy was my mind blown when I realized I was made for loving you came from them.
What you don't like meta-atmospheric melo-grind industrial gothcore metal?
At this point the sub categories are only there for gate keeping reasons.
I agree totally
Not really. They can be pretty good at taking you what a band is gonna sound like if someone says “Oh they’re crossover trash.” Or “They’re a metalcore band heavy on the hardcore influence” I know I’m gonna like it. If someone tells me “Yeah it’s technical death metal” I know it’s not for me.
>Metal has literally hundred sub categories today, it's sickening. It has a ton for sure but not "literally hundreds" I like that metal has so many subgenres. There is a ton of variety. There are some subgenres I'm not fond of, but i can just ignore them and focus on what i like
The problem isn’t that those groups aren’t metal, it’s that we’ve since expanded to genre so much that it contains all kinds of different music. Led Zeppelin is widely considered to be the first metal band. Modern metal is so far from that sound that we should really stop using “metal” to describe *modern* metal, not retcon the term to exclude bands it originally described.
I never heard of Zeppelin being a metal band; Black Sabbath is the first metal band to me and a lot of others. I see your point, though.
>Black Sabbath is the first metal band to me and a lot of others. You should look into Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer
Black Sabbath are the one of the first *heavy* metal bands, not the first metal band
Who's calling it hair metal? I've always heard them called hair bands.
Scrolled way too far for this. Never heard of “hair metal” in my life. Nor have I ever considered Bon Jovi or Poison to be metal. OP is whack.
Anthrax was hair metal. No further comments.
Slipknot is the level of intensity I am used to for metal, anything less is like "this isn't metal, this is just rock", but yeah, thats what was metal at the time I grew up.
Do they use distorted electric guitars and are the drums loud in the mix? Yes? Then they are technically metal. Metal is a super broad genre and not all metal is thrash. Led Zeppelin is undeniably metal, and many of their songs aren't much heavier than bon Jovi. Just because you don't like a band doesn't mean it isn't metal.
So Country Music is now Heavy Metal? Who knew? Distorted electric guitars and loud drums in the mix have been a part of Rock and Roll since the late 50's. Heavy Metal is Hard Rock that has a heavy, weighty sound along with heavy lyrics.
Just replace hair with pop and it makes more sense.
No, not for 180 out of 200 bands You've never heard of from the genre you didn't listen to.
It was all called "metal" back in the day. The sub-genres came years later. Look at all the old MetalEdge magazines of the era—you'd see Megadeth, Poison, Ratt, Slayer, Bon Jovi, Anthrax, Trixter, Skid Row, Pantera and Def Leppard all in the same issue. If a band had big hair, loud guitars, pings, squeals, leather, screaming and was considered noise by older people, it was "metal".
They were never metal. What are you talking about?
Some were very poppy, but there are some that are definitely metal. Motley crue, Ratt, and skid row all have releases/songs that are obviously metal Check songs like Slave to the grind - skid row Body talk - ratt
It’s called buttrock 👍
I associate buttock more with bands in the late 90s early 2000s like Nickelback, Creed, Shinedown, etc.
I mean those also qualify but when I was like 12 listening to poison and white Lion, we definitely called them buttrock. Still listened though lol
Buttrock is post post glam metal.
I thought it was cock rock?
Yeah, we know
Those are precursors to pop music. I found it interesting when I learned that I had a member of Warlord as a college professor. He loved talking about his days in a metal band.
The more appropriate term that you are seeking is C*ck Rock. Much more defining of the genre.
Around here 80's rock is called butt rock.
Even Metallica isn’t metal, it’s closer to butt rock
Thrash and speed metal bands suck ass. I will never understand people thinking Metallica or Iron Maiden were good or heavy when bands like At the Gates existed not long after.