Chords for A Brief History of Metal

[D] _ _ _ _ Okay ready on the ice blasted expanses of the hyperboreal wastelands heavy metal was forged from
Unrelenting mutality the blackest dark and the purest hatred the human mind can conceive
_ [N] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ A brief history of _ metal! _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Db] _ _ Metal _ [Ebm] _
[Db] _ [N] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
music basically started in the late 60s [E] when hippie acid rock bands began cranking
their amps up and stripping away psychedelic [C] flourishes to make [Dbm] their music leaner and
more physically punishing.
[G] _ While initially grouped with heavy blues bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin, within a few
years it was apparent that groups like Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, and Leaf Hound
constituted a distinctive new movement in rock and roll.
But if you want to
point to one particular album as the birthplace of heavy metal, it would be
the 1970s self-titled release by Birmingham England's mighty Black Sabbath,
where the band's odes to weed, the occult, and their hometown's grim industrial
atmosphere crystallized the emerging genre's aims.
Sabbath fucking rules! _
Still, even in its early years, the umbrella term
heavy metal encompassed a remarkably diverse range of sounds and styles.
Bands like Deep Purple and Mountain stayed relatively faithful to Acid Rock's
blues-based formula, while Motorhead and Budgie played stripped-down high-speed
rock that predicted the punk revolution still a few years away.
The term heavy
metal was thrown around so much that it was even applied to KISS, a band that
mostly played glam pop and disco.
KISS was never metal!
For its first decade of existence, metal existed largely outside of the mainstream. _
That changed when metal emerged as the de facto sound for rock in the 80s.
Metal's rise had two main causes.
The new wave of British heavy metal bands like
Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Death Leopard, who figured out how to make
metal slicker and more radio-friendly, and Van Halen, who pushed it all the way
over into pop.
Van Halen was never fucking metal!
Together, Van Halen and the new wave of British heavy metal inspired one of the
most profitable styles in rock history.
Epitomized by Guns N' Roses, the Sunset
Strip glam metal sound aimed for maximum accessibility while maintaining at least
a surface-level veneer of occultism and sexual transgression.
_ _ Gross!
While those posers were making records for normals, real metal lurked in the
murky depths of the underground.
_ _ There, dark elder gods like Venom, Merciful Fate, Celtic Frost, and Bathory
forged a template for extreme genres [E] like death metal, black metal, thrash metal,
child of [N] metal, and hardcore, which would define the underground scene
throughout the 80s.
And we cannot forget the almighty Slayer, who reigned in blood to this day and forever.
[Eb] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _
But by the early 90s, thrashers for big bands Metallica, [G] Megadeth, Slayer,
and Anthrax had attained arena-filling status.
During the 90s, metal branched out into a seemingly endless number of subgenres,
from deep underground styles like death grind and symphonic metal, to the
multi-platinum hip-hop-informed style termed new metal, which would give the
form its last bit of high-rotation MTV dominance. _ _ _ _
But there is one style in this era that sticks out for its extreme sound and
even more extreme lifestyle.
_ Norwegian [E] black. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[N] _ _ True cult black metal, forged in the shadowy lands of the frostbitten north
and constructed in blood and fire. _ _ _
Despite its severe aesthetic and often problematic political identity,
black metal emerges one of the defining sounds of the era, during which metal
retreated back underground.
Along the way, it cross-bred with styles across the metal spectrum and beyond,
creating subgenres like black and death metal, black and sludge, and black and roll.
It even found its way into indie rock thanks to so-called post-metal bands
like Death Heaven.
Along with black metal, doom metal has become one [Bbm] of the defining sounds [Eb] of the new millennium.
_ Interestingly, Doom's glacial [G] riffage and obsession with weed and the occult
bear a strong resemblance to some of metal's earliest bands. _
_ Like Ouroboros, [D] the eternally self-eating snake, metal is both creation and
destruction contained [N] in perfect unity.
_ _ Time is only an illusion.
Metal is everything. _
_ _ _ And _ _ _ _ _ _ that's _ [F] it.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
[Em] _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _