What do you think of when you think of metal? For many, it remains a 1980’s punchline: Spinal Tap, big hair, and leather pants. Others with a slightly more recent frame of reference may instead imagine barely comprehensible noise. Both are correct descriptions, but only partially so.
Like its punk and hardcore cousins, the term ‘metal’ encompasses a multitude of sub-genres and micro-genres, some of them ludicrously specific, and many of them sounding nothing like each other. In an attempt to bring some order to the chaos, I have combined my encyclopedic knowledge of metal with the graphical skills of the wonderfully talented tomqvaxy to bring you this genealogical chart:
When I say “partial,” I do mean partial; there were subgenres that were not included for various reasons: doom metal because it has paradoxically existed longer than metal itself and developed somewhat independently, folk metal because it is more of a flavor added to existing genres than a subgenre in its own right, and nu metal because it’s just awful and the less said about it the better. This chart will also not tell you what each genre sounds like: for that, this article has you covered.
The Metal Flowchart is copyrighted material and cannot be reproduced without permission.
