Besides the vocals, what's the real difference between Death and Thrash Metal?
 

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Well, death metal grew out of thrash so there's certainly a lot of overlap in sound, especially with early death metal bands, but I'd say death metal is generally heavier and faster with more going on with the drums and less of that patented thrash sweeping going on with the guitar.

Like Janszoon said, they're very similar and especially as you get closer to the origins of death metal. A lot of the same qualities can be found in almost all early forms of extreme metal. What sets them apart, I think, is thrash's foundations being rooted in NWOBHM style metal, or power metal, which is typically more melodic. Thrash was a heavier variety of "speed metal" (a more sped up version of power metal), usually with more controversial/violent lyrical content and with faster/heavier (more distorted) musicianship.

Death metal basically takes the heaviest thrash and does the same thing with it that thrash metal did with power metal. Lyrics are typically very graphic, musicianship is even faster and heavier, etc.

zzzz

Well, it's only early death metal that sounds similar to thrash. Maybe those people are fans of later death metal.

Probably because a lot of metalheads only like one kind of music. They have their own subcultures, some of them more extreme than others. If you ever have time, read up on black metal and the following that they have in Scandinavia. It'll illustrate the kind of dogma that I'm talking about, and it'll basically answer any question you have as to why so many metalheads hate a lot of good music that you'd think they would embrace.

Similar is relative. These may sound alike...

Thrash Metal


Death Metal



But these most certainly do not...

Thrash Metal


Death Metal

Please don't beat me up.

Most metal sub-genres display such a level of similarity in rhythmic, timbral, melodic, instrumentational, harmonic, and lyrical content that, in almost any other style of music, it would all be lumped together.

Please don't beat me up.

I love the quirky, silly, barely distinct plethora of Metal sub-genres, some with only a handful of bands in them, but it IS kind of silly how we sub-divide.

Please don't beat me up.

For Example, look at contemporary "classical" music. That's some of the most varied stuff out there. 70 years ago, you had everything from guys trying to sound like Bach with just a few changes; you had guys applying mathematical formulas to their music to ensure that no note, rhythm, or harmony was repeated; you had guys composing music with nothing but the sounds of passing trains; you had guys letting the randomizing principles of various fortune-telling devices write for them; and you had guys composing nothing but silence. You had guys starting to not even use the notes you're all used to.

From there, "classical" music has only expanded and gotten weirder and more varied, but it's still usually only broken into a very few sub-genres.

Same with contemporary Jazz...

Please don't beat me up.

However, Metal is almost always in one of a few simple time-signatures, almost always has very similar instrumentation, uses the same very simple harmonies, the same musical concepts, similar melodies, the same playing styles, the same dynamic, etc, but still somehow has tons of very similar subgenres...

Please don't beat me up.

I think a lot of it comes from Metal-fans being very exclusive, and often (in my experience) really not listening to much other than Metal, and maybe one or two other genres that have some reasonably related aspects.

That isolation from other musics, I think, leads to a desire to create variety within the genre, without really expanding it's musical borders too much.

Please don't beat me up.

That said, Death and Thrash are pretty dissimilar, as mainstream metal genres go. Listen a bit more, I'm sure you'll hear the difference!

:wavey:

You do light upon a very important point. Today, it is en vogue for a music fan to sit you down and tell you how they enjoy Einsturzende Neubauten and Nujabes and Emperor and Merzbow and Kanye and Mongolian Throat Singing and.....

The idea being that people who listen to one or a few genres are narrow minded, as opposed to the wordly cosmopolitanism exhibited above.

zzzzz

Well, like I said before, that's because it grew out of thrash. And not surprisingly only the heavier thrash bands resemble deah metal. Other thrash bands, like Overkill, do not resemble death metal:

Definitely. And then most of those guys seem to have listened to, like ONE Throat singer on Youtube, and only know John Coltrane and Miles Davis for Jazz, and think Classical music died out with Brahms, and...

But yeah. There's something to be said for breadth of musical taste. It's pretty cool to be a little familiar with music from across the globe, from several centuries.

It's also cool to know one genre so extremely well that something like the timbre of the distorted guitar, or the pace of the vocals, or the rhythmic activity in the drums makes it seem like a completely different genre to you.

A lot of people listen to metal and literally, just hear noise. They can't tell what's going on, aside from distortion, thumping, and cymbals crashing.


It's the old Depth versus Breadth question. A great deal of metal heads fall into the Depth area, I think. My wife and most of my friends are like that.

I'm probably more of a breadth guy, but I do get VERY into classical music, and get really confused how someone can think Beethoven sounds like Mozart sounds like Wagner, or how someone could possibly NOT love the vast array of 20th and 21st century music out there...

Like Janz said, they evolved from the same sources. Around the mid-eighties I don't imagine there was much distinction between thrash metal, death metal, and black metal, since most of the bands probably saw themselves as all part of the same wider movement. Distinctions between whether early Death was a thrash metal or a death metal band, or whether Sarcofago, was a thrash or a death or a black metal band, can be kind of vague, and not necessarily even important to make, but they became much more evident and defined as those genres developed and splintered into their own movements. Even someone who doesn't listen to any metal could make the distinction between Slayer and Dying Fetus.

I'm sort of an inbetweener at times. I'll listen to just metal for weeks, then decide I've had enough and bring out the alternative or the punk or the hip hop, and every once in a while I'll just need to cut myself off from metal entirely. I love really getting in depth into things like thrash metal and black metal, but if I didn't have something like Dead Prez or Iggy Pop or Townes Van Zandt to turn to I'd get pretty sick and tired of metal.

And I certainly know that modern classical exists. It's not something I listen but every once in a while, and not in much depth, but in the right mood I'd totally take Stravinsky or Philip Glass over Mozart.