What Defines Heavy Music for You?

I can't listen to "heavy music" but I like plenty of loud bands (Weedeater, Electric Wizard, Harvey Milk, Unwound, and so on...) but they all have moments when things chill out or they play things slow and leave space.

Meshuggagh for instance are a fine band I'm sure but there's too much going on, it's too (want for a better word) big and I find it hard to absorb what's going on. Also, as much as I love Sleep and OM I can't get into High on Fire because it's too "heavy"

So I guess for me...

Loud music = bands who change dynamics and while they play loud when needed they put the brakes on too, or Stoner/Doom bands who play heavy but keep it slow.

Heavy Music: fast and 99% of the time consistently loud, usually with too many notes and not enough space.

It's interesting that you drew classical music into the debate but I'm pretty ignorant of it so I didn't comment on it.

Im gonna try for a definition of 'heavy' from the properties of the sound itself. Maybe dissonance defines heavy music? Density of the harmonies/dissonances make it heavy?

Malice, you brought Wagner into this - definitely a heavy composer. He used lots of dissonance and started to break tonality in a big way, and used it all for great dramatic effect. Then Stravinsky went a bit further, around the same time Atonality started happening (Schoenberg and all those lads). Check out how dissonant the chords are here;



Then with metal and rock music, distorted guitars are almost always there and almost always contributing the riff or the solo or whatever. All the upper partials of the fundamental notes that the distortion boosts up ads to the dissonance, single notes are way fuller and even perfect fifths get dissonant - anything closer than that is noisey.

This is all supporting what I just realised Yesterday; the heaviest album I ever listened to is Venetians Snares' Winnipeg Is a Frozen ****hole



So much of it is just drums, but it's still so dissonant. Those huge distorted kicks have so many extra frequencies that get so close together, it all comes out as kinda difficult to take all at once, maybe as aggressive... Obviously it being really fast helps, but i don't think that's integral to it being heavy.

I'm typing this in a lecture, my mate next to me wrote "Heavy: Music that is not easily digestible by non-fanatics?". What do we reckon? :P

would people consider enter shikari heavy?

The Golden Miller wrote: »

would people consider enter shikari heavy?

Absolutely, yes. All the elements are there: use of the whole sonic space, hard beats, agression, energy. Especially songs like No Sssweat, Antwerpen and Return to Energiser.

Nailz wrote: »

Ah no mate, these are hard beats

They are indeed, but I think one of the points being raised in this thread is that there's more to "heavy" than pummelling double bass, incessant chugs and anguished screaming. While I myself enjoy all of the above, and they certainly do amount to a heavy sound, there are countless other musical combinations that can produce the same result.

Meshuggah is on the very heavy end of the spectrum, unless you go into uber death gore metal or whatever. I would classify heavy as being slammed in the face with crushing noise. Wagner would probably be a metal musician in the present day, but Ride of Valkryries soars and is stirring as opposed to being heavy, that's my take on it anyway. If it were performed by a power metal band I would say yeah that's heavy. For me, mentally heavy music should crush and quake, its more a modern phenomenon with older equivalents. Ride of the Valkryries makes me want to fly in my mind. But I can certainly see how you can call it heavy music, I don't strictly disagree with this interpretation but would just classify it as classical moreso than heavy music.

Of course there are gradations of heavy, some beatles songs are heavy on the scale of heavy, like Helter Skelter, actually Helter Skelter effectively sounds like a heavy metal song to me, there really isn't much difference imo in the execution, style of vocals and even the semi tonal increments to say its not a proto heavy metal song. Classical music though, I just can't say its heavy though I can go along with some pieces being on the heaviness scale or at least parallel to it, for example that piece which was used on the Apprentice advert sounds grim, angry and relentless, therefore heavy.

For me these types of music are on the really heavy end of the spectrum

This song for example brings out the relentless grimness of the original Burzum cover but expands on it, the guitars are crushing, the atmosphere is gloomy and frozen over, hence heavy.



This song is a cover of Gore Torture's Tactically Dangerous Cannibal Commando, apart from the Arnie interjection, its relentlessly aggressive and heavy, with unrelenting blast beats, shredding and growled guttaral vocals, heavy.


or this, it shoulds like 3000 tonnes of crushing German steel, the guitar sound is something which I think is very cool, it just sounds ridiculously heavy.



This song just sounds like 4.46 of rage, hence heavy.



Or this, it sounds like a controlled series of detonations



or this



Another band which I would mention as heavy are Esoteric, in fact they are so heavy I can't listen to them because I end up with their songs ruining my day, making me feel down or ill at ease.

Serious lack of breakcore in here.

And somehow I still dance to this stuff.

These two tracks from my favorite album of all time, especially Atrocity Exhibition: