Traditional Heavy Metal

Traditional heavy metal denotes the original form of heavy metal as codified between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, above all by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) and its international peers. Its markers are twin-guitar harmonies and galloping riffs, high, clear singing rather than growls, verse-chorus songcraft and tempos below thrash's threshold. *Iron Maiden*, *Judas Priest*, *Saxon*, *Diamond Head* and *Accept* fixed the template that later subgenres — thrash, power, doom and extreme metal — each developed by isolating one of its elements. The term is retrospective, applied once those offshoots made the root style one branch among many.