Heaviest Metal Subgenres

The Top Ten
1 Death Metal

I don't know why Black Metal is second. It just hasn't ever seemed heavy to me. Death metal is an easy first followed by either Thrash or Gore honestly, or maybe Deathcore. Black Metal is kittens compared to those.

I don't listen to death metal, but I know it's basically all about the cymbals.

Yeah, basically it's just screams and loud as hell instruments.

2 Black Metal

While I don't listen to it that much, I do have to say that it is very heavy. Some of the experimental stuff borders on just being noise. If you want some of that stuff, listen to Torture and Havohej.

Thrash metal is heavy. In one way, it's heavier than black metal, but ultimately black metal sounds heavier because it's a lot faster than thrash metal.

Black metal is "heavier" than death metal. Really, I can't find brutal death metal songs as heavy as Marduk, Anaal Nathrakh, Archgoat, Mayhem, Beherit, etc. Cannibal Corpse isn't even the heaviest brutal death metal band.

3 Thrash Metal Thrash Metal is a Heavy Metal subgenre developed during the early 1980s and an early precursor of Extreme Metal. Thrash Metal features a faster and more aggressive guitar work than Traditional Metal with shredding and double-bass drums and can range from melodic singing to loud shouts... read more

Thrash is definitely heavier than black metal. Master of Puppets isn't that thrashy. Try their first two albums and other old-school Thrash bands, especially Slayer. Then you will find the answer.

Listen to Raining Blood or Fight Fire With Fire and you'll agree that this is the heaviest or the second heaviest genre.

Fight Fire With Fire is the heaviest song in the world!

4 Brutal Death Metal
5 Deathcore

Deathcore for sure. Lorna Shore, for example. It combines high bpm, ridiculously deep guttural vocals, breakdowns that feel like Earth's gravity suddenly increases, and don't forget the bass that sounds like a cannon killing off gods. I cannot think of anything heavier than Deathcore. It combines the already heavy feeling of death metal with the already ridiculous breakdowns of core. To me, this is the heaviest of them all.

Since it mixes hardcore and death metal, you get the best of both worlds. You can hear the aggressiveness of hardcore and the sheer heaviness of death metal. There are plenty of breakdowns in this genre, so if that's up your alley, go listen to bands like Suicide Silence.

6 Grindcore

Userguy44, Grindcore is the combination of Death Metal and Punk. That makes it Metal. It also usually leans more to the Death Metal side. It's rare as hell to see a band that leans more to the punk side.

7 Doom Metal
8 Blackened Death Metal

Blackened death metal fuses the death style with Satan and anti-Christ speaking text. This topic is really crazy because thrash metal is too light compared to this or other metal subgenres that contain screams, growls, and pig squeals with fast rhythm and heavier guitars. People only know Metallica and other famous bands, and they do not know what they are voting for.

This is number 1. It fuses black metal with death metal. Behemoth is a great example of heavy music and metal in general. Top 3 heaviest bands for sure.

9 Slamming Brutal Death Metal

Come on, what's more heavy than this genre? Look at the title - it even sounds heavy. The songs tend to have insanely fast tempos, very heavy-sounding riffs, lots of double bass drum, and the vocals are so damn brutal that you can't even understand them.

Listen to Devourment. Enough said.

10 Technical Death Metal

Technical Death Metal has two sub-groups:

1. Brutal Technical Death Metal: This is really heavy (Cryptopsy, Gorguts, Nile). Technical Death Metal is on this list mostly for this sub-group and should be higher. It's much heavier than death metal and thrash.

2. Ordinary Technical Death Metal: This is less heavy than the first group and is more melodic (Necrophagist, Obscura, Quo Vadis).

Technical death metal is heavy, but I can listen to it more comfortably than death metal. Maybe because it's technical.

Go listen to Gojira. They're the best technical death metal band out there.

The Contenders
11 Extreme Metal

Extreme metal is an umbrella term that covers thrash, death, black, grind, and doom metal. So this list doesn't make sense.

Extreme metal means heavy genres of metal. It isn't a subgenre.

Extreme metal is the heaviest metal!

12 Groove Metal
13 Brutal Technical Death Metal
14 Slam Metal

Slam is a genre that is based on two things in its most basic form: extremely guttural vocals and lots of chug riffs. It is generally agreed upon that it started when people listened to the album "Effigy of the Forgotten" by Suffocation. There was specifically this one riff in the song "Liege of Inveracity" that really defined the sound of the genre. The timestamp for that riff is at 2:51 if you were wondering.

Some bands I recommend are Epicardiectomy, Cerebral Incubation, and Devourment. I think that Devourment is probably the most entry-level band out of these three, so give them a shot, but don't think it's going to be baby stuff either. If you want even more info about the genre itself, watch the Punk Rock MBA's video called "What Killed Slam?"

15 Melodic Death Metal (Melo-Death)
16 Drone Metal

There's nothing heavier than the sound of eternal darkness and suffering that feels like a cold wind blasting on your face during the cold blizzard of the nuclear winter. You could as well eat raw flesh and sacrifice your own eyes to Satan and scream in agony while blood drips all over your face from your eye sockets while listening to Drone Metal.

17 Gorenoise
18 Metalcore

The riffs in metalcore make it feel heavy, but it is more of an extreme rock with metallic elements.

19 Technical Thrash Metal
20 Progressive Metal

There are so many different kinds that there's bound to be something really heavy in there.

21 Nu Metal

To the comments saying it is tame in comparison to some genres, most of the genres in the top are too noisy to distinguish any notes, and they are a wall of noise with little dynamics. Nu metal is heavier than a lot of genres. It is definitely heavier than black metal and death metal since it can be more experimental as well.

Not that heavy, but needs to be higher. It's got Slipknot, Soulfly, and (referring to old-school now) Linkin Park.

As much as I love nu metal, this genre has to be the least heavy subgenre.

22 Heavy Metal Heavy Metal music is a sub-genre of rock music that originated in the late 1960s-70s, featuring more distorted and heavier instrumental work and darker lyrical themes. Heavy Metal broke into mainstream success with bands such as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica... read more

Just because heavy metal has the name "heavy" doesn't mean it's the heaviest metal genre. Rather, I'd choose heavy metal as a soft metal genre. Heavy metal is very soft compared to Black, Death, or Thrash metal.

23 Avant Garde
24 Deathgrind

Heaviest, hardest, fastest, and most brutal elements of death and grind put together.

25 Goregrind
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