What makes heavy metal 'heavy'?
academic.oup.com
academic.oup.com
> As a metalhead, I've been calling things "heavy" for most of my life, but I never really stopped to think about what I meant. It's such an intuitive label to me, with such a clear meaning that neatly translates to the music I'm describing. But these days, stopping to think about what I mean when I talk about music is pretty much my entire job, so I think it's finally time to ask that question: When a metalhead calls a piece of music heavy, what are they actually saying?
I remember when War Pigs seemed impossibly heavy. But even my own band 30 years ago was far heavier. And there's a lot of music far heavier than that was.
I don't think music has gotten heavier since the 90's though. The heaviest stuff I know is, for example Swedish or Finnish heavy metal. Seriously brutal stuff. Even with modern distortion, today's heaviest bands are not heavier than that.
But eventually something will come up, and heavy will go up another notch.