These Gravely Digs of Mine

So lately I've had a bunch of people ask me, for various unrelated reasons, "What is heavy metal? What is thrash? What is prog? What's Power Metal and why is it better than Death Metal? Where do babies come from? Why are you so handsome?"

The answer to that middle question about power metal, of course, is that OTHER BANDS PLAY, MANOWAR KILLS! But if you'd like to hear, in very rough and basic forms, the differences between several kinds of metal, this video ain't half bad:

Any of you that knew about this before but didn't tell me about it are hereby ON NOTICE. Oh my god. So good.





ETA: Extra points if you recognize the voice of the lead singer without looking it up. Give up? OMG THIS IS GOING TO BLOW YOUR MIND PEOPLE.

It's HAMBURGER TIME!!!*



(thanks to saltedpin for the reminder)

*despite the tag, this is metal strictly by association. I guess it's... synthpop? Electronica? I have no idea.

Apparently there's this thing called "retro-metal" now, which to my ear sounds just like heavy metal that I still listen to. I think what "retro-metal" really means is that "I am a hipster douchebag music critic who likes to pretend that heavy metal disappeared for thirty years because it stopped being cool, but now that some members of my skinny-jeans wearing, PBR-swilling hipster hivemind have started listening to it again, it once more exists so I'm going to dub it 'retro'", but what do I know?*

Anyhow, here's a selection from The Sword, which is an old-school, ever so slightly doom-tinged heavy metal band that cites "George R. R. Martin, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur C. Clarke" and norse/pagan mythology as their major inspirations (though personally, I would hesitate to dub them full-fledged fantasy metal or pagan metal, at least as compared to exemplars of those particular genres.)




* a lot.**

** about metal, anyway.