How Drums Affect How You Hear Genre

Maybe I just continually gloss over it, but it seems like drumming styles are frequently neglected in discussions of genres in rock music. I've realized more and more over the years how much I rely on drum style as a genre marker, just for my own ear and tastes. It's something I still have a lot to learn about, so I've been trying to build my vocabulary.

I've read a lot of books on metal this year, and in all of the many excellent stylistic descriptions of genre and subgenre, drumming seems to be left out. An author might say "the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) was influenced by punk's speed" without elaborating much on what was faster, or how. I think that drumming is a useful criterion in any genre definition, but it's particularly on my mind with metal, at the moment.

Case in point, I recently saw Behemoth, who I'm a little bit obsessed with right now. (I was briefly introduced to their singer, Nergal, when he suddenly appeared next to me at a gallery. It was like, "Oh, hi, meet my friend": Nergal appears, hand extended. Totally routine, no big deal. I didn't even tell him how pretty his eyes were. That's how cool I am.) I referred to Behemoth as death metal, and a friend offered a correction that they're black metal. We're both right (they're a fusion), but I always call them death metal, because of one element: blast beats. (Need a definition of blast beats?) The death growl style of singing is maybe the most recognizable element of death metal, but you'll never find a death metal album without any blast beats. On the other hand, even though blast beats exist in black metal, you could have a career as a black metal band without ever playing a single blast beat. [1]

That's my line and I'm sticking to it. Don't @ me.

Nergal's eyes aside, the exact thing that's been on my mind is how early hard/heavy rock turns into what we know as metal. Early bands such as Black Sabbath are hard rock; after the mid-70s, you start to get what we more commonly think of as heavy metal. There are a bunch of factors in the stylistic shift, but drumming is a big one, for my ear. I like to use Motörhead as an example here, because as a proto-NWOBHM band, they bridge the gap. 

In '60s to mid '70s rock, you hear a lot of the typical 4-square rock beat. However it's jazzed up, the basic emphasis is ONE-two-THREE-four. Kick-snare-kick-snare. That's what you hear in a heavy psych rock song like Cream's "White Room" (1968). We hear this same basic beat at play in Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" (1970) or Deep Purple's "Highway Star" (1972). So, we might say this represents classic rock, the old guard of hard rock.

Motörhead formed in 1975 after singer and bassist Lemmy was kicked out of the band Hawkwind "for doing the wrong drugs" (as he put it). Hawkwind had its innovations, but they're still working from a late '60s psychedelic idiom. Listen to the drums in their song "Magnu" (1975). Basic 4/4, right? Motorhead's self-titled debut album (1977) still reflects this classic rock legacy. In most of the tracks, you hear the old style of drumming. You can pick almost any song at random from the album for an example [click each word].

Almost any song. The year was 1977. In England. A little thing called punk rock had exploded. And Motorhead was listening. The opening title track is basically a cute little punk song. 

Aww. They're trying. 

As it happens, Hawkwind recorded the song "Motorhead" first, in 1975—the year before punk. There are several stylistic changes in the '77 version, but compare the drums to the original below:

Same song, but one sounds modern and the other sounds dated, doesn't it? One reason is the adoption of a punk rock beat. The drumming in the '77 version isn't in another galaxy, yet, but it has new character. In the classic 4/4 rock beat, you get the snare on beats 2 and 4, but to my ear, the bar is balanced, distributed. Beats 1 and 3 aren't overwhelmed. Also important, cymbals are only used as accents, helping to preserve the structure of the pattern. But in punk, beats 2 and 4 always stand out, to my ear. It can feel like an off beat when played fast enough, because of the lack of commensurate emphasis on the downbeat. This is owed in part to the constant cymbals, paired with "buzzsaw" guitars, which create a steady, driving backdrop of noise. Here are a few typical examples [click each word]. The shift to the off beat gets really extreme as we get into hardcore; original punk is sometimes still just a standard beat, sped up, but in hardcore, the goal is a complete onslaught of noise, and to that end, what we call a skank beat (after reggae) becomes standard. In this beat, the kick is always on the beat and the snare is on the off beat. Play it incredibly fast and you have a blast beat. (Incidentally, a skank beat is the same as a polka beat—illustrating why you can't use a single feature to define a genre.)

This is the influence that metal is assimilating as it rises in the late '70s and early '80s. With their early start, Motörhead's albums are like a tree's growth rings, recording how hard rock changes from punk's influence. Compare their first album to their 1979 release Overkill.

This is light years away! The nascent influence we heard in the re-recorded "Motorhead" has matured into a whole new style, one that defined the band and influenced a whole new generation. But it's not just the constant open hi-hat and faster snare that are new. What's the first thing you hear in the song? Double kick drumming. Ladies and germs, the metal big bang has happened. (Pun fully intended.)

Double kick drums change everything. It's what separates metal drumming from hardcore punk drumming. The use of a double bass drum actually originates in jazz and is adopted by some of the more virtuosic psych and prog drummers, to allow them greater rhythmic intricacy. But the first time we really hear double kick drums played like in "Overkill" is in 1977, on Judas Priest's song "Dissident Aggressor."

This style of double kick drumming is born of metal. It is the titan that gives birth to the rest of the metal pantheon, and it's one of its single most defining features. You can hear double kick drumming throughout subgenres of metal.

To wrap things up, Youtuber 66Samus has a great video demonstrating the styles of influential metal drummers. Listen even to just the first few examples, and you should instantly see how drum styles differ between metal subgenres.

Here are the first handful of bands and genres represented in the video: Fleshgod Apocalypse, death metal (Francesco Paoli); Lamb of God, groove metal (Chris Adler); Slayer, thrash (Dave Lombardo); Tool, progressive metal (Danny Carey); Slipknot, nu-metal (Joey Jordison); Dream Theater, progressive metal (Mike Portnoy); Suicide Silence, deathcore (Alex Lopez); Suffocation, death metal (Mike Smith)...

Everything that I've discussed here is something that most any metalhead is aware of (but will probably argue about), yet for some reason, it's neglected in scholarly writing, even when the author is a fan of metal. Perhaps it's too obvious to them to merit note? Maybe it's beyond the scope of whatever musicological ax they're grinding? Who knows. But these are the kinds of details I'm into.

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[1] Unless you're Norwegian. Norwegian black metal is its own thing and it shares a lot with death metal.