I've invested a great deal of time lately to the careful study of the 20-volume strong Metal Museum compilations currently available thanks to the largesse of this guy what calls himself MenegoSoft. Each represents a different HM sub-genre and taken as a whole the set serves as a comprehensive introduction to the extreme metal world. For the past week it's been the soundtrack of my life, apart from attending a Pillow Army show a few days back (who sounded downright twee in comparison, believe it or not) ... my hours have been spent examining the often subtle but always certain differences between the various styles of metal, differentiating between Black and Pagan, Viking and Folk, Death and Brutal Death.

As heavy as I may be, most of this material flew beneath my radar ... as a rule, metal musically concerns itself with instrumental dexterity and compositional virtuosity, while I tend to seek out crude simplicity and improvisational inspiration. I'm moved more by the repetition of the groove, and metal has progressed so far beyond the building blocks of Sabbath and Motorhead that it's essentially bluesless, owing more to European classical traditions despite the brutal sensuality of its approach and the Afro-American origins of its basic instrumentation.

I also appreciate that metal is one of the rare popular musics that routinely addresses religion as a theme. Perhaps most would imagine HM to be a godless world, but a denial of god is still a religious argument, and embracing an alternative belief system like Satanism is still a search for meaning through a higher power. Most fascinating to me is how a trio of stooges like Venom, with their ludicrous Z-grade horror histrionics and amateur riffsmithery, can inspire a generation of new bands to turn fanciful devil-worship fantasies into actual church burnings, and then take the rejection of Christianity further into a celebration of ancient pagan values and their pre-Christian heritage. From drunken Limeys snarling in spandex to Norwegian teenagers studying history books ... a long, strange trip indeed.

Some of the bands you'll enjoy if you explore this vast K-Tel of Metal ...

VIKING METAL: Thiasos Dionysos, Mnegarm, Folkearth, Borknagar and Moonsorrow

BLACK METAL: Burzum, Behemoth, Immortal, Gorgoroth and Lord Belial

CHRISTIAN METAL: Stryper, Jeruselam, Bloodgood, Barren Cross and Die Happy

PAGAN METAL: Rhymes of Destruction, Natural Spirit, Hel, User Ne and Butterfly Temple

DEATH METAL: Torture Killer, Decapitated, Nunslaughter, Pungent Stench and Blood Freak

BRUTAL DEATH METAL: Born Headless, Prostitute Disfigurement, Necrotorture, Goregasm and Amputated Genitals

Plus NWOBHM, Doom, Speed, Thrash, Glam, Avant Garde, Progessive and Folk Metal ... even Industrial and "NuMetal" if that's yer bag. They ain't mine -- I skipped those two and didn't have the energy for Symphonic Metal either, so let me know if I'm really missing anything.