The Routledge Handbook of Metal Music Composition: Evolution of Structure, Expression, and Production examines metal music composition as a distinct practice that combines a complex array of formal musical, expressive, and technological elements.
The Routledge Handbook to Metal Music Composition: Evolution of Structure, Expression, and Production examines metal music composition as a distinct practice that combines a complex array of formal musical, expressive, and technological elements. Reaching beyond the limitations of applying common-practice theories of tonality to metal, this volume brings together a wide range of established and emerging scholars to address the building blocks of metal composition in the context of metals subgenres and evolution over time. Together, the chapters provide a holistic theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive compositional features of metal.
With contributions from an international group of experts, the handbook is organized into four parts around major themes:
Structures, including form, riff, harmony, rhythm, and meter
Expressions and Techniques: Instruments
Expressions and Techniques: Voices
Productions, addressing the role of gear, capturing, processing, and mixing technologies.
The contributors examine and discuss these elements with the goal of building an understanding of metal music composition that can also function as a manual for composing metal music. Providing a comprehensive overview of the unique musical elements of metal, this handbook is an essential resource for scholars and students across popular music studies, musicology, creative music performance and composition, songwriting, and production studies, as well as for anyone interested in understanding metal from the perspective of composition.
List of Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction: Appreciating, Understanding, and Interpreting Metal Music
Composition
Lori Burns and Ciro Scotto
Part I. Structures
1. Perspectives on Harmony in Early Heavy Metal: Chords, Modes, Functions,
and Texture
Esa Lilja
2. Recognizing Tonal Momentum and Echoes of Past Styles in Riff Turnarounds
Stephen S. Hudson
3.What is a Riff? A Structural Definition and its Analytical Consequences for
Process and Form in Heavy Metal
Ciro Scotto
4. Mutually Exclusive Two- and Three-Part Forms in Heavy Metal Songs
Nolan Stolz
5. Compound Bridge Sections in Rock and Metal
Michael Dekovich
6. Unfulfilled Expectations: Theorizing on Terminally Anti-Climactic Form
Zach Simonds
7. Conceived Through an Act of Catharsis: The Phenomenological Allure of the
Breakdown
Owen Morawitz
8. More than Moshing: Structure, Convention, and Innovation in Extreme Metal
Breakdowns
John Muniz
9. Half-Time, Standard-Time, and Double-Time Feels in 1980s Crossover Thrash
David Easley
10. Systematic Onslaught: The Aesthetics and Functions of Blast Beats in
Contemporary Extreme Metal
Dennis William Lee
11. Blackened Textures: Black Metals Sonic Complexity During the Second and
Third Waves
Wolf-Georg Zaddach
Part II. Expressions and Techniques: Instruments
12. Traditional Instruments in Global Folk Metal
Olivia R. Lucas
13. Primordial Percussion: Drumming in Six Influential Metal Albums
Jose M. Garza, Jr.
14. Paradigms of Guitar Performance Practice and the Language of Metal Music
Mark Marrington
15. Metal Guitar Techniques as Timbre, Form, and Speed
Calder Hannan
16. The Evolution of the Bass Guitar in Metal Music: Its Function in
Performance and Compositional Structure
Shvan Kaban
17. Keys to Hell: Synthesizers from Early Death Metal to Deathcore
Tyler Osborne
Part III. Expressions and Techniques: Voices
18. All Shall Scream: Transposable Lessons from Pierre-Luc Senécals
Hate.Machine for Growlers Choir
Eric Smialek
19. Song of the Siren, Cry of the Warrior: An Exploration of Song Structures
and Female Vocal Techniques in Power Metal
Suzanne Strauss
20. Thine Voice is Oh So Sweet: Gothic Metal and Vocal Timbre Diversity
Vik Squires Donnelly
21. Nu Metals Influential Vocal Composition: Tension and Release in the
Music of Korn, Incubus, and Machine Head
Clare King
22. Beyond Beauty and the Beast: The Evolution of Gendered Clean-Harsh
Vocal Pairings in Metal Music
Lori Burns
Part IV. Productions
23. Imagining Future Extremes on the Record Player: Time Axis Manipulation as
a Theory of Extreme Metal Creativity and History
Florian Walch
24. Masters of Reality: The (De)construction of Reality in the Production of
Metal Music
Niall Thomas
25. Fragmented and Distributed Production Practices in 21st Century Metal
Music: From the Studio to the Bedroom (and Back Again?)
Steven Gamble and Lewis Kennedy
26. Electronic Drums in Industrial Metal and Continuing Practices in
Contemporary Metal Music
Neyssensas Manuel
27. Guitar Pro or DAW-based Software for Metal Composition
Fulya Celikel
28. Black Metal and the Sonic Search for Nature
David Hemery
29. Contemporary Approaches to Metal Music Production: Traditional Heavy
Metal, Death Metal, and Metalcore
Jan Herbst and Mark Mynett
Lori Burns is Professor of Music at the University of Ottawa. Her interdisciplinary research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, merges musical analysis and cultural theory to explore representations of gender and sexuality in the lyrical, musical, and visual texts of popular music. She co-edited The Pop Palimpsest (2018), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis (2019), Analyzing Recorded Music (2022), and the Routledge Handbook of Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination (2025).
Ciro Scotto is Professor of Music Theory and Chair of the Music Theory Department at Ohio University. His research in music theory includes creating compositional systems, producing analyses and theoretical models of the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, and rock music, especially in the area of timbre studies. He edited The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches (2019). Besides his theoretical work, he is an active composer, and is currently composing a series of works titled Between the Hammer and Anvil for electric guitar and percussion, to be released by Ravello Records.
