- What fundamentally separates metal from hard rock?
- Harmonic language and tone. Hard rock keeps its blues roots, a warmer sound and a singable chorus. Metal builds dark harmony from chromatic and modal material, keeps its tone cold and tight, and allows the vocal to abandon melody entirely. Hard rock is rock at its extreme; metal has become its own system.
- How do I get heavy without turning to mud?
- Prompt "down-tuned guitars double-tracked and panned wide, bass following the riff, double-kick clearly audible, midrange left for the vocal." Frequency division is the point — repeatedly asking for "heavier" usually returns a smeared low end where the riff disappears.
- There are so many metal subgenres — how do I choose?
- Settle three things first: tempo (doom slow versus thrash fast), vocal approach (melodic singing versus screaming), and harmonic color (epic and grand versus dark and oppressive). Those three axes locate almost any subgenre more reliably than naming one directly.
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