Feeling Different Heavinesses in Different Song Forms and Subgenres

Abstract In addition to creating a sense of coherence, tradition, and ritual return, the conventional song-form patterns of metal music also enable a diverse range of style distinctions, each with its own characteristic qualities of heaviness and time. This chapter documents some common trends in metal song form, and discusses their affordances for participatory dance and the resulting experiences of heaviness and temporality, within several subgenres: hard rock, thrash metal, death metal, metalcore, doom metal, and black metal. We often think of genres or subgenres as “imagined communities” that correspond to a specific group of people with a particular identity or attitude, so as fans listen to these styles and move in style-appropriate ways, they are “trying on” that style and its qualities of experience, or in other words, “posing” as a member of that style’s community.