ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Berger’s virtuosic control of the voice in heavy metal could be used as a means to describe and analyze the formal structure of the compositions. As a musical style, heavy metal is based around riffs rather than chord progressions. The first riff highlights a dissonant tritone interval and starts with a power chord. A lot of heavy metal bands use song structures similar to Judas Priest’s metal song formula. According to Weinstein and Christie, the formalization of heavy metal started when it detached itself from British blues and progressive rock—and American psychedelic rock—at the beginning of the 1970s. A verse is a succession of at least one riff accompanied by a vocal melody with lyrics.
