New Wave of British Heavy Metal
or NWOBHM is used to indicate a list of bands rather than a genre. It's simply the collection of bands making up the wave of British Hard Rock and Heavy Metal bands of the early eighties, of which Iron Maiden and Def Leppard are probably the best known. The NWOBHM period lasted to about 1985. Oddly enough some non-British bands, such as the Scandinavian EF-Band, were concidered to be NWOBHM bands as well whereas other British Metal bands of the eighties such as Motörhead and Judas Priest never pop up in the lists circulating the Internet (probably because they started out a few years earlier). Musically speaking the NWOBHM bands play quite varied types of Heavy Rock. The music ranges from somewhat retro sounding Hard Rock played by bands like Praying Mantis, over the Neo-progressive Rock from Twelfth Night and Pallas, to Hard Boogie Rock (Spider), classic Heavy Metal (Iron Maiden, Holocaust,...), rather sweet sounding FM Rock or Melodic Hard Rock (Shy, Shiva, Valhalla,...) and some early versions of Speed Metal (Jaguar, Tysondog,...). The most important British NWOBHM labels were Ebony, Neat and Heavy Metal Records. Other labels, such as the Belgian Mausoleum Records and Roadrunner from The Netherlands, also released a lot of NWOBHM-bands. Bands: Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang, Girlschool, Angel Witch, Avenger, Black Rose, Limelight, Sledgehammer, Tank, Witchfynde, A2Z, Samson, Battle Axe, Holocaust, Jaguar, Rock Goddess, Legend, Raven, Shiva, Tysondog, Crucifixion, Demon, Diamond Head, E.F. Band, Tokyo Blade,... A more complete list can be found on the NWOBHM website.
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