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should speed metal be considered extreme metal.

agamerwholovesmetal

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agamerwholovesmetal Community Regular

agamerwholovesmetal

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According to this Wikipedia article speed metal is apparently under the umbrella of extreme metal and i don't get it. thrash is one thing but speed? when i think of that genre i think of motorhead who doesn't sound anything like extreme metal. the most I could see is possibly anvils second album but even that's a stretch.

Extreme metal - Wikipedia

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MacabreEternal Veteran

MacabreEternal

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First off, Wikipedia is a terrible source in my experience full of nonsense usually and I avoid it like the plague because anyone can contribute and cite any amount of untold drivel as being "factual" reference.  Secondly, speed metal is simply put "heavy metal, sped up" and therefore is far removed from extreme metal if we compare to say death metal or grind.

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RelentlessOblivion Grand Master

RelentlessOblivion

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Ah Wikipedia, go to source of high school students the world wide, I certainly wouldn’t be trusting everything I read on there. IMO thrash is borderline for extreme metal as bands like Dark Angel, Morbid Saint, and Kreator fit the bill, while I don’t think there is an argument to be made for Artillery, Whiplash, or Voivod being extreme.

 

Speed metal is, to me at least, even further removed from the extreme sub genres. Admittedly though I’ve hardly explored the genre, so often, I confuse it with traditional metal or power metal.

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GoatmasterGeneral Grand Master

GoatmasterGeneral

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There was a fair bit of disagreement and confusion over what to call things back in '83 and '84 when these sub-genres were first getting started. Before 1983 heavy metal really didn't have any sub-genres to describe bands that sounded slightly different from one another, it was all just heavy metal. I heard the terms power metal and power thrash both being used for thrash before what we now call power metal even existed, and before we settled on calling thrash just plain "thrash metal." The terms speed metal and thrash metal were often used basically interchagably way back in the day, let's say up til 1986. And then at some point the metal community decided speed metal was going to mean traditional heavy metal that was maybe a bit faster and heavier than your average run of the mill heavy metal, but didn't quite rise to the aggression level of thrash or use palm muted thrash riffs. Thrash metal of course was the original "extreme" metal before anyone knew such extreme things as black and death metal would be coming along to join the metal party in just a few more years. Of course as my boy Blivvie points out some thrash bands were more extreme than others. Extremity in metal typically seems to go by the vocals. So even something that's musically really heavy like Nevermore or Exciter has really clean or high pitched vocals then it usually won't be considered very extreme by most metalheads. Lots of thrash bands who were generally hailing from places other than California's Bay Area were using much rougher vocals in the mid 80's and were clearly "extreme" for their day, even if by today's standards they don't really sound all that extreme when compared to subsequent extreme sub-genres like black and death metal and grindcore and such.

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