What is “true metal”?

The way people see the term “true” in metal depends awfully on what they have heard till that point. They may either feel disdain for those who use it, or they may find it quaint and irrelevant. But if you decide to take a serious look at metal as art, you will bring yourself to see eye-to-eye with us by calling some metal “true” and another “false”.

That is not to say Judas Priest and Iron maiden are false. Let us be crystal clear about the picture we are painting about these commercially-oriented stadium metal bands. And let us not forget how much they matter as sonic gateways to deeper art inaccessible to the average person.

Culturally, the term “true” came to signify an attitude toward life and music. Musically, a band was true if their music drove deep and punched aggressively. True metal clutched at your throat and held you at attention.  

Music-wise, trueness translates to not fucking around and instead going straight for the kill. 

Later on, in the early black metal community, in particular, trueness takes on spiritual connotations. Today, whether this spirituality remains a nameless form of monist apprehension of the cosmos or the murky chaos of slime and exploding stars boils down to personal taste. 

Back then, “black metal” crawled in a larval state and had yet to blossom into the great Ouroboros of ‘92-’94. Musical vestiges of progressive rock sipping into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal carved sorcerous signs on the wall that vibrated with dark potentialities. The “true” artist would extract the core of those potentialities and manifest them through the filter of a unique personality.

The egregore of trueness took on a more definite shape. What started out as a wandering shadow assumed a concrete shape. You could now recognize trueness by paying attention to the music as a revelation of the personality behind it.

By relating musical content to the artist, you arrived at the crux of the matter. Grasping the object of art firmly between your hands and examining it gave you the power to better observe your emotional, psychical, and physical reactions to it. 

A simple logic ruled over deliberations of trueness: a unique personality expressing itself authentically will produce art that differentiates itself, that steps off from the crowd. One that takes repeated visits and even journeying into it before you feel capable of making out its contours, let alone its details.

The black metal viewpoint on the matter of “trueness” amounted to an uncompromising deliberation. Simply put, music that appeals quickly and easily to a large number of people makes a weak case for its own authenticity. 

And while we may level perfectly valid objections by going outside of logic and taking into consideration societal and cultural factors, the above statements give us a useful guideline by which to weigh and balance our current views on trueness.

Comparing Mercyful Fate, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden

Seeing that you can only weigh trueness by a long-standing acquaintance with the genre and its musical codes puts things into perspective. We can remove from the table any proposition to place Priest or Maiden above Mercyful Fate based on popularity or commercial success.

Furthermore, arguments from mass approval fall flat on their faces within the metal community because the one who puts them forth would then need to acknowledge that the basest, most superficial pop music is somehow superior to any metal music.

Mercyful Fate’s short output consists of two albums released in ‘83 and ‘84, both of them being thought of as absolute masterpieces of the heavy metal genre. Their pre-eminence is accepted by everyone that has ever heard these two albums at length and with the full attention Mercyful Fate’s music deserves.

The first of these two, Melissa, is the most laid back of the two. Beyond the veneer of standard heavy metal that places them on the same level as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate constantly piles up musical details and developments more akin to “progressive rock” in condensed form. The progressive aspect applies equally to variations in arrangements as it does to complex song structures.

Early Maiden made such incursions into adventurous territories in about half of the songs they wrote before their absolute creative peak in ‘85. Nevertheless, it wasn’t part of how they wrote songs regularly, their central M.O. focused on writing short catchy melodies to be repeated ad nauseam throughout the songs. Hyperfocus on a catchy guitar melody absorbed Priest almost entirely.

Judas Priest up to ‘84 with Defenders of the Faith capitalized on writing little catchy riffs that spun in and out of melodies, giving them a very effective hook that caught anyone’s attention, metalhead or not. What Priest and Maiden share up to this point are blinding guitar solos that pierce the sonic spectrum, carrying the listener up clouds and atmospheres in a blur of passing emotions.

The climaxes that such guitar solo passages left listeners dumbstruck by the use of a simple songwriting technique: create a constant and engaging flow of repetition and then add a peak followed by a valley, to finally bring us back to the catchy riff and melody. 

Mercyful would adopt this approach in only some of their songs, notably in their second album (see “Desecration of Souls”). In contrast, the majority of Maiden songs and virtually all Priest songs resorted to this pop songwriting technique. 

What later passes off as “epic” in Maiden’s music are longer versions of the same technique that cannot be called “progressive” in any real sense. Priest sometimes appears to try something similar but shies away from abusing song length.

Mercyful Fate alone stands out for its relatively compact application of variable song structure, variating rhythms and speeds within the same song, and unprecedented use of colorings that would single-handedly give way to shades in extreme underground metal. By ‘85 Morbid Angel, true progenitors of the most depurated death metal art, already had a clear conception of differentiated musical style & are on record covering Mercyful Fate and early Slayer.

The extent of the influence exerted by Judas Priest & Iron Maiden, on the other hand, lies in being able to pull in more listeners that might later fall down the rabbit hole that is extreme metal. Their ambassadorial function in the world has its place and we enjoy them both. We enjoy them both as products of pop and rock n’ roll. 

However, it is in Mercyful Fate that the foundational potentialities of fully-fledged death and black metal. They can be found as art forms that attend to developing compositional intricacy. Beyond heavy metal, they grow in the relationships between instruments and long-range structures that build closer to classical music than pop music.

Where Priest and Maiden Shine

Not everyone can jump right into death and black metal. Not even from the harsh precursors of the genres in Bathory. The strident nature of the genre, the shock to the senses it produces, blocks the conscious mind and plants a seed of terror in the mind of the listener.

Priest and Maiden shine in the act of serving as gateways. They both allow people to experience the full volume and energy of metal without threatening standard worldviews or notions regarding what music should be. At least not in 2023 and beyond.

Judas Priest in particular serves as good party music, with particularly danceable rhythms and enthusiastic openness in its delivery that welcomes everyone to take part in it. Priest creates a common ground between metalheads and the rest of society. It allows normies to enjoy and contemplate the world in a different way without leaving the confines of safety they cling to desperately. And it allows metalheads to be understood and to share in something with the rest of society.

Iron Maiden takes a more mythic and historical approach, allowing its general sound to fall more heavily than Judas Priest. We’re talking early Maiden and Priest here. The Priest that rock n’ rolled, and the Maiden that scared way normies. The Maiden that has now become a staple of stadium rock and that has alongside Metallica told the whole world heaviness can be profitable and should be accepted as a mode of being.

We respect and give Priest and Maiden their place as the great plains of solace that set the stage for more mature and adventurous music to be found. They, alongside bands like Metallica, are channels through which most of us walked to discover there was a world beyond what authorities dictate. It is thanks to them that we know it is human to be different, and it is human to want to experience more.

Forty years later, it is through Priest and Maiden that we re-discover Mercyful Fate and Hellhammer, and how metal reached its occult apex in death and black metal. A metaphysical apex enabled solely by the popularity and profitability of Black Sabbath first of all, but then also Judas Priest and the whole explosion of punk and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

The collision, mashing up, and experimenting between the lines saw the rise of the nightmares and monsters that came later. The vortexes open here and there, down North and South America, and across Europe. Metal music develops as a result of the rise of the underground movements themselves, and they would exist even without stadium metal bands, but most of us would never have found them were it not for the popularity and accessibility of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.