The dark sound of metal?
 

Most metal bands and the music itself is centered around darker sounding elements and my question is where does this dark sound come from, what makes it dark?

Minor keys, drop tuning, heavy distortion....etc.

I thought it was from the little dark demon fairies that went around sprinking metal dust on us... LOL

like Perfection said, Metal obtains a "dark" or "frentic" sound from the use of minor or diminished keys, and use of phrygian, loquidian, mixolodian modes (and others whos name escape me).

Distortion also helps as the higher the gain, the harder it is to tell individual strums and it creates a "wall of sound" effect.

Well the dark sound, I believe, comes from blues.

and THE blues, as in personal suffering too!
heh.

so is that where goths come from:confused:

but as PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe said its comes from the drop tuning and heavy distortion, unless you mean the origin than im not sure

i dunno i suppose i was really wondering why that sounds dark but thats a very complicated question and i probly don't really want an answer to it

It goes back to the fricken blues. Rock music has always lived on the fringe of society and what makes it so appealling is it's edginess and conflict with the morality of the dominant culture. A little bit of evil, sex, drugs and you have rock n roll. Doom is nothing more that the blues retooled. Death Metal is nothing more than lyrical and musical content taken to the extreme in order to alienate the masses. Of course playing very fast and loud, as well as slow and distorted helps the cause.

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