Groove Metal

Groove metal keeps thrash’s heavy, downtuned riffing but slows it down and locks it into hypnotic, syncopated, mid-paced grooves built for headbanging. Pantera pioneered it in the early 1990s with brutal precision and hoarse, shouted vocals, and Machine Head, Sepultura, and White Zombie expanded it through the decade. The riffs are chunky and rhythmic, the tempo bouncing rather than blasting. It became one of the defining metal sounds of the 90s.