Metal: Okay, we know what this one is. This is where guys with long hair wail like tone-deaf banshees and play jerk-off guitar solos for arenas full of sleazy heshers with flimsy mustaches, dragon t-shirts, and 14-year-old girlfriends. I thought it died out in the late Eighties, but I guess some sorry souls are still clinging to its corpse.

Black Metal and Death Metal: This is that awful tomfoolery with the big pretentious song structures and “BWAAARGHHH” vocals and Scandinavian guys who burn down orphanages and eat each others’ brains, right? The best part of this stuff is the band names, which sound like ten-year-olds trying to name their secret no-girls-allowed clubs.

Brutal Death Metal: I assume this is like death metal but with slightly more intense band names. Like, for example, instead of a pedestrian death metal name like “Festering Corpse,” maybe a brutal death metal band would be called “Grotesque Festering Corpse.”

[80’s] Hair Metal: Shh, we’re trying to forget.

Fantasy Metal: Well, all metal fans play Dungeons and Dragons and read shitty fantasy novels. That’s just a given. But some of them are so nerdy that they can’t even enjoy their metal without explicit references to elves and swords and dragon-slaying. Hence this crap.

Fantasy Death Metal: Same as above, I’d imagine, but probably deals with mercilessly slaughtering elves for Satan.

Metalcore: Adding “core” to the end of a type of music is functionally the same as adding “for morons in white belts.” So, take all the awfulness of hardcore and add some bitchin’ guitar riffs. Or, alternatively, take metal and remove anything that might be mistaken for music.

Grind: How does one even go about distinguishing a good grind band from a bad one? I posit that it’s impossible, and I don’t think I can be proven wrong.

Light Metal: I’ve never heard of it. Is it like light rock? Is it metal for sissies? Somewhere out there is there the metal equivalent of Christopher Cross? “When you get caught between the moon and Satan’s fiery maw…”

Heaby Metal: What the fuck does “heaby” mean? Is this heavy metal for guys with sinus problems?

Rap Metal: I’d say that rap metal is music for stupid people, but that’s not really fair. Everyone who listens to rap metal is stupid, but not all stupid people listen to rap metal.

Rap-Black-Metal: Rap metal with creepy Scandinavian guys?

Rap-Death-Black-Nu-Metalcore: Rap metal with creepy Scandanavian guys and scarier names and white belts?

Pop-Punk: The opposite of punk.

Nu-Metal: The opposite of… music.

Goth Metal: Stay away from this stuff, kids, it’s bad news and you don’t need it (writing that gives me credit toward my state-mandated community service hours).

Whatever The Fuck The Cure Is: I already did post-punk, but I guess later The Cure turned into sort of a warbling sad-sack goth-pop band. So, uh, am I telling you about warbling sad-sack goth-pop? It’s sort of like what the Cure does.