During the 1990s, bands began to mix the experimental nature of progressive rock with the idioms of metal, creating a new subgenre: progressive metal. With this came an increase in the use of forms outside of compound AABA (Covach 2005), which has been the most heavily employed song form in Western popular music since the mid-1960s (Temperley 2018, Chapter 8). The most prominent of these new forms was the Terminally Climactic Form, or TCF (Osborn 2010 and 2013). However, other forms rose to prominence alongside TCF which have garnered little scholarly research. Seeking to codify these underexplored forms, I began a corpus study consisting of all songs (excluding covers and instrumental works) within the post-1990 studio albums of five progressive metal bands. While compiling this 446-song corpus, six distinct formal structures emerged. The third largest of these follows the structure of TCF but ends without climaxing due to the terminal material’s inability to supplant the chorus.

I argue that these forms presenting new terminal material that fails to supersede the chorus should be considered a form divergent from TCF I have labeled Terminally Anti-Climactic (TAC). This label, together with TCF, allows analyses to easily illustrate similarities and differences in the function of terminal material between songs. To demonstrate this utility, I compare the structures of “Who is Gonna Be the One” by Ukrainian metal band Jinjer and “Sugar” by Armenian/American metal band System of a Down, showing how tempo, instrumentation, distortion, and energy can be used as both climactic and anti-climactic devices depending on context. I also discuss the statistical prevalence of TCFs and TACs within this corpus, showing the existence of the TAC form and its common use within the genre. Through the demonstration of this form’s analytical uses, I establish the utility this form brings to the analysis of progressive metal songs that forgo the climactic chorus rotation and provide a tool capable of accounting for similar terminal material structures within popular music more generally.

The recapitulation of musical material throughout a song can be an effective songwriting technique. Sometimes musical material is repeated but after a certain juncture in the song, it never comes back, effectively dividing the song into two or more parts. Such formal structures are defined in this paper to be mutually exclusive part forms (MEPFs). The focus of this paper is on heavy metal songs that exhibit this form, from Black Sabbath in 1970 and into the twenty-first century. In determining the formal structure, the analyses presented in this paper consider many musical elements, including harmony, lyrics, melody, rhythm, tempo, and timbre. Some songs mark the beginning of a new part with a significant musical event, such as a sustained chord or a change in tempo. Other songs obfuscate new sections by retaining the tempo or key. Also included are heavy metal songs that closely resemble this form but are not ideal examples of mutually exclusive form because material returns in a later part. This chapter shows how MEPFs relate to compound AABA forms, terminally climactic forms (TCFs), and through-composed forms. In some cases, alternate interpretations of the analyses are provided to offer a better understanding of the music.

This paper includes analyses of songs by metal bands such as Anthrax, Avenged Sevenfold, Black Sabbath, Fates Warning, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Mercyful Fate, Metallica, Pantera, and Slayer. Tables summarizing these analyses illuminate how these bands either make the separations between the song parts very clear or obfuscate the transition from one song part to another. Songs with a MEPF have unifying factors, likely so that the song does not sound like separate songs arbitrarily combined as one. Unifying factors such as key, tempo, and lyrical content contribute to a song’s cohesion. To conclude, a question is posed for research: were these songs originally separate songs that were then joined together in the compositional process?

Analyzing the formal structure of heavy metal compositions in the rock theoretical and analytical literature relies on riff identification, but the literature broadly and imprecisely defines riffs. Broad definitions create analytical problems, especially when riffs function as the generative material of formal structure. While many scholars define riffs as repeating guitar patterns with distinct melodic/rhythmic identities, they never discusses the distinct melodic/rhythmic properties that parse the music into discrete riffs. Repetition appears to be sole the property defining riffs for many scholars. Moreover, they often claim heavy metal compositions consists of repeating and replaceable modules with no integration between the modules because repeating riffs modules are autonomous. In this paper, I present a structural and functional riff definition based on Schoenberg’s Grundgestalt concept that establishes a basis for alternative interpretations of formal design in heavy metal compositions. In other words, Grundgestalt- or Generative-riffs function as basic shapes that influences the development of a composition. In many heavy metal compositions, Riff transformations related to the generative-riff will reveal integrated formal designs creating a unified process of developing variations not autonomous riff modules.