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Changes
Rock
,→Sub-Genres
* Alternative - Alternative came around in the early 1990's as an attempt to move away from the technicality, pop-influence, "cheesiness", and synthetic "perfection" of the 80's. It featured a return towards folk and classic rock styles, yet the sound had a more modern edge due to more advanced production and playback technology. Vocal ranges returned to the normal range of most humans compared to the high-pitched vocals popular in the 80's. Guitar riffs were made simpler and less prominent. Guitar timbre features more clean and slightly broken up tones - heavy distortion was often nasty and rough instead of smooth and searing like the 80's. Examples: Nirvana, Better than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Alanis Morisette
* Alternative or Nu Metal - Appeared in the late 90's as an outgrowth of alternative rock, particularly grunge. It incorporates the more downtrodden vocal stylings and modern sound of alternative rock with the riffing and rhythms of heavy metal. Yet it goes further by favoring down-tuned guitars and frequent usage of completely screamed vocals. Many groups also incorporated rapped vocals. While starting out as an underground movement, it eventually became mainstream and lost much of its identity in the process. Examples: Korn, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Disturbed
* Black Metal - Incorporates the blast beats and extreme sound of death metal with synth/symphonic elements and neoclassical songwriting. Guitars are distorted and provide thick textures such as in doom metal, but without any emphasis on down-tuning. Vocals are often screamed and snarled. Examples: Cradle of Filth
* Blues-Rock - Although all rock and roll is strongly influenced by (and in fact an outgrowth of) blues, blues-rock is a term that came about to describe artists whose compositions were structurally based solidly in blues but used rock instrumentation and rhythms. Examples: B.B. King, George Thorogood, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Beck, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Gary Moore
* Classic Rock - With rock and roll expanding into a number of sub-genres as early as the late 60's, the term classic rock was created to describe rock groups of the 60's, 70's, and even some 80's. It generally refers to the more popular and mainstream artists
* Death Metal - A more modern subgenre of heavy metal, death metal features a very extreme sound and style employing fast dissonant guitars usually playing in diminished scales, gutteral vocals, disjointed rhythms, and blast beat drumming. Examples: Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus
* Doom Metal - Another sub-genre of heavy metal, doom uses slower tempos and large distorted chords on downtuned guitars to create a dissonant, dark atmospheric tone, combined with simple, chant-like melodies or sustained screamed vocals. Rhythms are rather straight-forward, signaling an unending march towards oblivion. Examples: Allogoch, Opeth, Eyehategod, Exhorder, Crowbar
* Emo - A sub-genre of alternative that focused on deeply emotional themes such as loss of innocense, death, and failed relationships. Quirky and silly elements from alternative were dropped, while the simpler songwriting and punk-styled vocals were kept. Musically, focus was given to harmony and melody over rhythm. Drums were used to keep simple time and emphasize sections rather than provide dance-able grooves. Examples: Dashboard Confessional, Brand New
* Grunge - A sub-genre of alternative, this was almost a protest of 80's music, having a kind of punk element. It replaced 80's cheesiness with quirkiness, featuring uncomfortable screaming, crying, whining, noise, or other unsettling soundscapes. Rather than focus on poppy one-line hooks in choruses, grunge would focus on depressing or brooding melodies, often with double-tracked or processed vocals. Guitars and bass were often distorted using a raucous fuzz distortion. Examples: Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Veruca Salt
* Hair Metal (80's Metal) - Continuing the popularity of 70's Heavy Metal, Hair Metal focused on making the extremes of heavy metal more extreme: heavier distortion on guitars, larger and more intricate riffs, heavily technical and swift guitar solo's, high-pitched shrieking vocals, and cutting edge production techniques involving tape delays, rich simulated reverb, and synthesized drums. Examples: Extreme, Def Leppard, Poison, Warrant, Motley Crue
* Power Metal - Examples: Iron Maiden, Dragonforce
* Raggae - Examples: Bob Marley and the Whalers
* Screamo - Essentially a mixture of emo with Alt-metal and Hardcore, screamo is basically emo's angrier brother. Retaining the same lyrical themes as emo, screamo embellished the depression of emo with rage. Musically, screamo heavily resembles alt metal, with the main difference being a lack of quirky sections or dance-able beats. Another common staple is contrasting sections of calm and chaos, with vocals going from clean to extreme screams, guitars going from clean or quasi-clean to fully distorted, and drums going from light and soft to thick and aggressive. Many groups used 2 vocalists, one singing in a grunge/alternative/emo clean style and the other dedicated to screaming. Examples: Thursday, Poison the Well, Alexisonfire
* Ska - Examples: Mighty Mighty Bosstones
* Soft Rock - Examples: Rod Stewart, Bruno Mars, Billy Joel
* Thrash Metal - While Hair Metal took a pop-direction in the 80's, Thrash Metal took an underground direction, with less focus on catchy vocal hooks or even recognizable chorus sections. Thrash focused on speed, screamed vocals (sometimes even without pitch), and unsettling lyrical topics such as nuclear war and black magic. Guitar riffs were fast and often focused on chugging open string palm mutes. Examples: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Exodus, Pantera