METAL INFLUENCES

Heavy metal is not rock. It rose out of popular music as much as popular music rose from an amalgam of folk music, middle eastern music, and pop classical. Like the best thinkers in human history, metal got where it is by moving against the grain, by realizing that the crowd is always wrong and that most music is an aggregate of what failed not what succeeded by being distinct. There are some notable exceptions in mainstream music and here we list the acts, rock and otherwise, that both influenced heavy metal -- and were influenced by heavy metal, black metal, death metal, grindcore and dark metal.

ROCK

PUNK HARDCORE

INDUSTRIAL AND AMBIENT

CLASSICAL AND SOUNDTRACK