Traditional heavy metal, also known as classic metal or simply heavy metal, is the seminal genre of heavy metal music before the genre "evolved and splintered into many different styles and subgenres."
The short, original, and proper term for this genre is "heavy metal", but as Michka Assayas notes in his Dictionary of Rock, the term "heavy metal" may sometimes be used in different senses. While the term can refer to the seminal style, it also ca...
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Traditional heavy metal, also known as classic metal or simply heavy metal, is the seminal genre of heavy metal music before the genre "evolved and splintered into many different styles and subgenres."
The short, original, and proper term for this genre is "heavy metal", but as Michka Assayas notes in his Dictionary of Rock, the term "heavy metal" may sometimes be used in different senses. While the term can refer to the seminal style, it also can be used as a large umbrella term for any derivative subgenres. Hence the term "traditional heavy metal" or "classic heavy metal" may be employed to avoid confusion with the larger sense. In order to avoid the potential ambiguity others, like Sharpe Young, use the term "heavy metal" exclusively to refer to original genre and use the term "metal" instead to refer to the global genre including subgenres. Similarly, Paul Du Noyer also uses the term heavy metal to refer to the original style exclusively.
Assayas points out another ambiguity of...
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