S I T E . T O O L S

THE HEAVY METAL TIMELINE
I wanted was a nice visual representation of the history of heavy metal/hard rock because I was tired of straining my eyes reading long documents with tiny fonts and since I couldn't find one, I came up with this tree-style diagram representing 30+ years of hard rock and metal with some of its outside influences. There's no way in hell I was going to try and make this all-inclusive with the thousands of bands that have been around, so I chose the bigger names, some influential bands and even threw in some of my favorites; indulgence is acceptable when you create.

Some bands are shown when they started and others are listed when they really started getting some press. A few bands are under two sections given their influence on the genres. Some bands changed their style over time, of course. There are lines showing close descent, but in order to keep it from looking overly sloppy many were kept off--like punk to hardcore to grunge.

We could further divide genres into greater depths--sub-genres further into sub-sub-genres and those into sub-sub-sub-genres based on subject matter and whatnot, but this Timeline is meant to generally include the most major groupings of heavy metal and there is a point we reach where the door is already open wide enough and opening it more becomes a process of deliniation that is arguably boring and for scholarly study only.  I think it also leaves enough room in here for some debate.

Also, special thanks has to go to metal writer Martin Popoff for some editing changes when this was in its early stage. His books rule, so go pick them up at martinpopoff.com

Just click to view the whole thing or right-click to save it for printing. --Nailer

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