The new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) was a musical movement that started in the late 1970s. The music of the NWOBHM is best remembered for drawing on the heavy metal of the 1970s and infusing it with the intensity of punk rock to produce fast and aggressive songs. The movement spawned perhaps a thousand heavy metal bands, but only a few survived the advent of MTV and the rise of the more commercial glam metal in the second half of the 1980s.
About New wave of British heavy metal in brief
The new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) was a musical movement that started in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music of the NWOBHM is best remembered for drawing on the heavy metal of the 1970s and infusing it with the intensity of punk rock to produce fast and aggressive songs. The movement spawned perhaps a thousand heavy metal bands, but only a few survived the advent of MTV and the rise of the more commercial glam metal in the second half of the 1980s. Among them, Iron Maiden and Def Leppard became international stars, and Motörhead and Saxon had considerable success. Other groups, such as Diamond Head, Venom and Raven, remained underground, but were a major influence on the successful extreme metal subgenres of the late 1980s and 1990s. Many bands from the NW OBHM reunited in the 2000s and remained active through live performances and new studio albums. The genre, usually called heavy rock at the time, generated a strong community of UK fans with strong ties to hippie doctrines and biker subculture. The UK was a cradle of heavy metal, which was born at the end of the 1960s. Of the many British bands that came to prominence during that period, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple achieved worldwide success and critical acclaim. The success of the genre was plagued by discord and personal tragedies and had drastically reduced their activities. Each of these bands was finally fired in the mid-to-late 1970s in the crisis in which they were plagued by charismatic frontman Ozzy Osbourne and unreliable frontman Black Sabbath. The explosion of new bands and new musical styles coming from the UK in theLate 1970s was a result of their efforts to make a living in the economic depression that hit the country before the governments of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
As a consequence of deindustrialization, the unemployment rate was exceptionally high, especially among working class youth. The discontent of so many people caused social unrest with frequent strikes, and culminated in a series of riots. During this period, the mass of young people, deprived of the prospect of even relatively low-skill jobs that were available to the previous generations, searched for different ways to earn money in the music and entertainment businesses. They created a community separate from mainstream society to enjoy each other’s company and their favourite loud music. They wore short and spiked hairstyles or shaved heads, often with safety pins and ripped clothes, and considered musical prowess unimportant as long as the music was simple and loud. Some preferred to escape from their grim reality in heavy metal. The DIY attitude of the new metal bands led to the spread of raw-sounding, self-produced recordings and a proliferation of independent record labels. Song lyrics were usually about escapist themes such as mythology, fantasy, horror and the rock lifestyle. The NWOB HM was heavily criticised for the excessive hype generated by local media in favour of mostly talentless musicians. It generated a renewal in the genre ofheavy metal music and furthered the progress of the metal subculture, whose updated behavioural and visual codes were quickly adopted.
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