Metal music is one of the most diversified genres of music we can listen to today. It’s by no means the most popular genre of music thanks to its characteristics but it is certainly very popular all over the world.

There are a lot of metal genres which can be different from other metal genres due to its drumming style or guitar playing, lyrics, the structure of the song or even the tempo of the song.

Melodic Death Metal: Characterized by its melodic guitar riffs with distorted guitars, fast double-bass drums as well as a mix of harsh screams and clean vocals. This music style was popularized by bands such as In Flames,At The Gates and Dark Tranquillity which led to something bigger later on.

Power Metal: This particular genre of metal combines certain characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal and has usually a more happy and uplifting sound. The songs are usually related to fantasy themes with an epic chorus, creating a powerful and emotional sound. Bands like Edguy, Manowar and Helloween are popular bands in the genre that was massively influenced by Ronnie James Dio.

Folk Metal: A mix of metal music with traditional folk music developed in Europe. More than just the usual instruments used in metal music such as guitars, bass and drums, Folk Metal is characterized by the use of folk instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy, Celtic harp or bagpipes. This genre has popular bands such as Eluveitie, Týr, Turisas and Finntroll.

Trash Metal: Trash metal is a genre identified by its aggression and fast tempo, palm muted guitar riffs and aggressive singing. Arguably the three biggest names in trash metal are Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax.

Metalcore: this genre emerged as some bands were mixing elements of hardcore , punk and trash together. It got incredibly popular in the 90’s with bands such as Unearth, All That Remains and Killswitch Engage. Metalcore is characterized mostly by its heavy riffing during verses, heavy double bass drums and more melodic choruses.

Progressive Metal: characterized by it’s high difficulty to perform, progressive metal is one of the most complex metal genres. Many progressive metal bands combine multiple elements and more intricate themes in their songs. Bands such as Dream Theater, Mastodon, Symphony X and Opeth.

Djent: What was once just a way to describe palm-muted guitar riffs quickly turned into something much larger. Periphery’s guitarist Misha Mansoor is known to be the responsible for turning said guitar technique into an actual metal genre. Mansoor’s band took off in 2008 and started touring with massive bands such as Dream Theater. Other than Periphery, bands like Tesseract, Animals as Leaders and Vildhjarta are popular names in the djent scene.