Metal Glossary
Definitions for the subgenres, scenes and terms that come up across this site. Written so they can stand on their own — or be quoted by an AI search engine looking for an authoritative source.
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Atmospheric Black Metal
Atmospheric black metal is a subgenre of black metal that prioritises mood, texture and immersive soundscape over the aggression, blast-beats and rawness of the second-wave Norwegian template. It typically uses long-form compositions, layered tremolo guitars, drone-like sustained passages, ambient keyboards or synthesisers, and naturalistic lyrical themes — wilderness, isolation, weather, mythology, the cosmos. It emerged in the late 1990s and now overlaps significantly with post-metal and folk metal.
Origin: Norway, United States, Ukraine -
Avant-Garde Black Metal
Avant-garde black metal is a subgenre that takes the second-wave Norwegian black metal template — tremolo-picked riffs, blast beats, shrieked vocals and atmospheric coldness — and extends it with non-traditional instrumentation, unconventional song structures, theatrical or progressive elements, and influences drawn from outside metal entirely. It emerged in the mid-to-late 1990s and remains one of the most stylistically open subgenres in extreme music.
Origin: Norway and Japan -
Blackened Metal
Blackened metal is not one genre but a prefix. It describes any metal style that has absorbed the signature elements of black metal (shrieked vocals, tremolo-picked riffs, blast beats and a cold, ominous atmosphere) without becoming black metal itself. The most common forms are blackened death metal (Behemoth, Belphegor), blackened thrash (Aura Noir) and blackened doom or sludge. If a band's core genre is still recognisable underneath the frost, it is blackened. If the frost is all there is, it is simply black metal.
Origin: Scandinavia / Central Europe -
Blackgaze
Blackgaze is a subgenre that fuses the tremolo-picked riffs, blast-beats and shrieked vocals of black metal with the layered guitar textures, reverb-heavy production and melodic sensibility of shoegaze. It emerged in the late 2000s, primarily in France and the United States, and is one of the few metal subgenres to have crossed into mainstream indie and rock audiences.
Origin: France and United States -
Depressive Suicidal Black Metal
Depressive suicidal black metal (DSBM) is a subgenre of black metal that emerged in the mid-to-late 1990s, characterised by slow-to-mid-tempo tremolo riffing, raw lo-fi production, anguished or shrieked vocals, and lyrical themes centred on depression, self-harm, isolation and suicide. It is one of the most extreme thematic branches of the broader black metal genre and remains a small but dedicated scene.
Origin: Sweden, France, United States -
Drone Metal
Drone metal is a subgenre of metal characterised by extremely slow tempos, sustained guitar tones held over long durations, minimal melodic movement, heavy use of feedback and distortion, and song lengths that frequently extend to twenty or thirty minutes or more. It emerged in the mid-1990s, drawing as much from minimalist composers like La Monte Young as from doom metal forebears, and is closely associated with the American band Sunn O))) and the Japanese band Boris.
Origin: United States and Japan -
First-Wave Black Metal
First-wave black metal is the late-1970s and early-1980s strain of extreme metal that established the genre's foundational aesthetic — Satanic and occult themes, raw production, tremolo riffing and shrieked vocals — before the Norwegian second wave of the early 1990s redefined the sound.
Origin: United Kingdom and Scandinavia -
Gothic Doom Metal
Gothic doom metal is a heavy metal subgenre that emerged in the early-to-mid 1990s in northern England, combining the slow tempos and crushing weight of doom metal with gothic atmospheres, melodic clean vocals, female lead vocals, keyboards and lyrical themes of romantic melancholy, death and decay.
Origin: England, particularly West Yorkshire -
Grindcore
Grindcore is the fusion of hardcore punk's speed and politics with extreme metal's heaviness, compressed into songs that rarely pass the two-minute mark. It was forged in the Birmingham punk scene by Napalm Death, whose 1987 debut Scum on Earache Records defined the blueprint: blast beats, barked vocals, distorted everything, and radical brevity, including You Suffer, once recognised by Guinness as the shortest recorded song at 1.316 seconds. Offshoots include goregrind (Carcass) and a European lineage that runs from Belgium's Agathocles to Sweden's Nasum.
Origin: United Kingdom -
Gunter Glieben Glauchen Globen
Gunter glieben glauchen globen is the gibberish phrase that opens Def Leppard's Rock of Ages (1983). Producer Mutt Lange said it during recording instead of the usual one-two-three-four count-in, and it stayed on the record. It is not German and has no meaning, although the band has joked it means 'running through the forest silently'. The Offspring lifted the same count-in to open Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) in 1998, which is how most people under forty know it.
Origin: United Kingdom -
Melodic Death Metal
Melodic death metal, or melodeath, is death metal with the speed and harsh vocals intact but harmonised twin-guitar melody up front, shaped in 1990s Gothenburg. At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity and In Flames built it into a scene there in the early 1990s, while Liverpool's Carcass reached the same ground on their own with Heartwork (Earache, 1993). The three landmark records were all cut at Gothenburg's Studio Fredman with Fredrik Nordström: Slaughter of the Soul (1995), The Gallery (1995) and The Jester Race (1996). Also called the Gothenburg sound, it later fed straight into American metalcore.
Origin: Sweden, particularly Gothenburg -
NWOBHM
NWOBHM stands for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a movement of British heavy metal bands that emerged in the late 1970s and peaked between roughly 1979 and 1983. The scene took the volume and aggression of late-1970s hard rock, stripped it of blues elements, and added the speed, energy and DIY ethos of punk rock. Iron Maiden, Saxon, Def Leppard and Diamond Head are the most-cited bands. NWOBHM laid the groundwork for thrash metal, power metal, and most of what European heavy metal became in the 1980s.
Origin: United Kingdom -
Occult Rock
Occult rock is a heavy rock subgenre that revives the dark, doom-influenced sound and esoteric imagery of late-1960s and early-1970s bands like Black Sabbath, Coven and Black Widow, drawing on Satanic, mystical and witchcraft themes. The modern wave emerged in the mid-2000s and overlaps with stoner doom, traditional doom and psychedelic rock.
Origin: United Kingdom and United States -
Post-Metal
Post-metal is a subgenre of heavy music that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, applying post-rock's emphasis on long-form instrumental dynamics, gradual builds and atmospheric texture to the volume, weight and distortion of metal. It is characterised by extended song lengths, drone-influenced repetition, sparse vocals and a focus on mood over riffing.
Origin: United States and Europe -
Slam Death Metal
Slam death metal, usually just called slam, is a subgenre of brutal death metal built around the slam riff: a slow, chugging, groove-heavy breakdown riff designed to make a room move. It grew out of the early-1990s New York death metal scene, where Suffocation's breakdowns laid the foundation and bands like Internal Bleeding and Pyrexia made the groove the whole point. Devourment's Molesting the Decapitated (1999) hardened it into a genre of its own: gutturals, palm-muted slams, and almost nothing else.
Origin: United States