NWO*HM, its variations and meanings

[Keir]

Here is something I've been thinking about lately. You often see the acronyms like NWOBHM, NWOAHM, FWOSHM, etc. being thrown about and while it's easy to know what they stand for, it would be interesting to take a deeper look at their meanings.

NWOBHM is of course the original and as we all know is the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. The first wave would be bands from the late 60s/early 70s such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc.

NWOAHM (New Wave Of American Heavy Metal) actually had a new meaning in the 90s, referring to many of the American metal/core bands. However, I refer to the spaceship on the cover of Virgin Steele's debut (which actually omits the O) as evidence that the real NWOAHM was contemporary with the NWOBHM. In this case, the first wave I guess would refer to bands such as Kiss, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, BOC, etc. Not metal by today's definition but back then they certainly were, and even into the 80s.

FWOSHM gets used a lot on this forum and refers to the First Wave Of Swedish Heavy Metal which was more or less contemporary with the NWOBHM. I can only assume that there were no earlier heavy metal bands from Sweden (or at least not enough to constitute a "wave").

Now, what about other countries such as Germany? In the early 70s you had Scorpions, Lucifer's Friend and... what else? You do have a bunch of heavy prog bands in Germany at this time, but even the heaviest among them (Night Sun?) come across as outliers of the krautrock scene, and not part of any "heavy metal wave". So that brings us to the 1979-1982 period. Accept would be the obvious analogy to Iron Maiden. I suppose Cacumen could be the equivalent of Def Leppard, going all American hard rock/AOR later in the decade as Bonfire. Gravestone were around but they were a prog band until 1983. Then you've got Bullet, Hand Of Doom, Maggie's Madness, Railway, Rampage, Sinner, Trance, Viva... OK, when I started this list I was thinking that the German metal movement didn't really take off until later but I guess you really could call this the FWOGHM.

Anyone want to take a stab at other countries?

[nightsblood]

Just to clarify some things from your post:

You're using 'FWOBHM' to refer to Sabbath, Purple, Zeppelin, etc, and NWOBHM to refer to the bands that cropped up around '79-80, like Girlschool, Saxon, Angel Witch, Diamond Head, etc, correct?

I suppose the same divisions can be applied to the USA (FW = 70s, NW = early 80s), though to be honest I'm not sure that bands like Aerosmith, Nugent, etc were ever really considered Metal rather than Rock/Hard Rock. This genre isn't my area of interest, so I may be mistaken. It may be that they were initially considered metal retroactively. Keep in mind that while the term 'heavy metal' was used as early as 1973, I don't think it was widely used until several years later, once Judas Priest started doing albums like 'Stained Class' and 'Hell bent for Leather'.

Personally I use 'FWOAHM' to refer to early 80s US bands (ca 1980-1983), particularly those playing the style that predated the dominance of thrash and glam that overtook the US scene by '83. Examples would be Virgin Steele, Queensryche, Manowar, black Diamond, early Riot, The Rods, etc.

I've never heard any FW/NW tags applied to countries other than the US, UK, and Sweden. I have heard them used for certain subgenres, like 'New Wave of Death Metal'.

Labels are slippery things in music; what qualifies today may be recategorized into new divisions tomorrow.

[Black Axe]

FWOSHM gets used a lot on this forum and refers to the First Wave Of Swedish Heavy Metal which was more or less contemporary with the NWOBHM. I can only assume that there were no earlier heavy metal bands from Sweden (or at least not enough to constitute a "wave").

There bands like November, Trettioåriga Kriget, Neon Rose and such around which could be considered a wave. But since most Swedish heavy bands seemed to form around the mid 70s and the NWOSHM started two years earlier than the NWOBHM, you might also argue the first wave started in 1974/5 instead of second/new wave later in the 70s.

[lynx]

I read somewhere that NWOBHM was a pun based on the New Wave, you know, Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow and all those groups.

[DaN]

I'd like to promote the very simple and sensible acronym "NWOHM" - meaning basically the oldest examples of embryonic 80's (as in NOT 70's-sounding) Heavy Metal from anywhere in the world. Everyone with an ear or 2 can surely see the kinship between such geographically distant bands like BLEAK HOUSE, ARKANGEL, BERSERKS, JONAH QUIZZ, TURBO(pol), CRYSYS, SARCOFAGUS, 99%, early LOUDNESS, MASS and right back to BITCHES SIN.

About the FWOSHM/NWOSHM confusion, I'd say the proper expression is probably FWOSHM, since unlike the UK or the US we never had much of a 'proper' proto-Metal scene in Sweden before the late 70's. Sure, there were a few great oddities around like NOVEMBER, ZANE, RHAPSODY, SOLID GROUND + some more, but they hardly constituted a Scene.

[DeathMetalWeenie]

I only use the NWOBHM acronym. Since it was around in usage in 1979 and 1980. When I got into stuff like Iron Maiden, Tygers of Pan Tang, Saxon, and Angel Witch.

I only acknowleged terms like Speed Metal, Doom Metal, Power Metal, thrash metal, death metal and black metal. To describe a bands style. Which came years later and appeared in legeimate heavy metal publications.

TO me the other acronoyms styled bands are just heavy metal, and nothing else.

[Nightcrawler]

I also do use just the NWOBHM term. But I´m not a fan of that either, because it includes too many different styles. It seems that any UK band with distorted guitars from that period is labelled as NWOBHM today...
I don´t know much about NWOBHM, but to me it is a short period, in which many bands came up and behaved in a similiar way, releasing their stuff independently (mostly singles). That´s why I personally would not use that term for the German scene. There were some bands like Accept, Scorpions, Piledriver, Blizzard, Revenge, Hand Of Doom and a few more, but I don´t think that there were enough bands who released an album to categorize them as a special movement. In the end, I´m almost sure that any band that got quite big in their country (like Baron Rojo in Spain, Aria in Russia, Arkangel in Venezuela, Divlje Jagode in Yugoslavia,Karthago in Hungary, ...) caused many bands, who imitated that band, and who ended up releaseing nothing or a demo. So a lot of countries had their little "new wave" from that aspect....