Transcending Time (Feels): Riff Types, Timekeeping Cymbals, and Time Feels in Contemporary Metal Music

Abstract

Over the past fifteen years, much of the music-theoretical scholarship on heavy metal has addressed metric processes (Lucas 2019, Capuzzo 2018, Hannan 2018, Lucas 2018, Lennard 2016, Smialek 2008, Pieslak 2007) and the use of the voice (Smialek 2017, Young 2018). A significant portion of the literature deals with the band Meshuggah, but the music of countless artists scattered across manifold subgenres remains unexplored. Widening the focus on such a large repertoire not only helps remedy this issue, but serves to inform one recent music-theoretical topic that relies on a broad stylistic understanding: time feels. To date, scholars have mainly limited the discussion of time feels to the kick and snare drums (e.g., de Clercq 2016), and indeed, these instruments ultimately determine a feel. I argue, however, that different uses of guitar, bass, and cymbals can reinforce, clarify, or contradict the feel laid down by the kick and snare. In this article, describe several categories of guitar and bass riff types and timekeeping cymbals. I then discuss how their associations with certain time-feel contexts inform further analyses. To this end, I draw from post-millennial metal music in various subgenres including black metal, death metal, doom metal, grindcore, metalcore, progressive metal, sludge metal, and thrash metal.