“Heaviness is in the ear of the beholder, and you and I just know heavy when we hear it. To me, Devourment is rather heavy; to someone whose understanding of metal begins and ends with Disturbed, Devourment is just noise, and is therefore not heavy. Even this may prove contentious, because some people think “noise” as a genre is legitimately extreme and heavy. Slayer gets ridiculously heavy, both in their old stuff (“At Dawn They Sleep”) and new material (“Catatonic”). I’ve never found sludge to be all that heavy, despite sounding weighty and lacking in treble as it often does. Despite playing guitar in a metalcore band years ago, my younger sibling doesn’t pass muster on this scale; he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother. I cannot produce a definition of heavy in extreme metal, nor can you. We can merely tell people what is and isn’t heavy through bands and songs.” The heaviest matter of the universe.
