[net.music] what heavy metal may be about

stevans (11/22/82)

I would say the primary image of heavy metal is not technology, as
in Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" and Judas Priest's "British Steel", but
rather sex, as in The Beatle's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)".

Most definitive heavy metal, such as Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog", is
strongly rhythmic in 4/4 time, a kind of in-out-in-out pattern.  Heavy
metal guitars play the same chords simultaneously, and the bass exactly
follows the guitars in pitch and the drums in rhythm, a sexually unified
musical motion.  Of course, they may be singing about Godzilla or Satan
throughout the song, but we know what they *really* mean.

Mark Stevans