You wouldn't think of New York's Knitting Factory club as a venue for a metal show. The times they are a changin'. One result of that change is art metal.

From the NYT story:

The particularly dark and aggressive strain of rock called heavy metal has been around for more than three decades. In that time, it has spawned a range of offshoots, but none have been as unlikely as the recent wave of bands using metal as a jumping-off point for a range of experimental styles, dabbling in free jazz, minimalist post-rock, noise and even modern classical music.

This is art-metal, a curious scene populated by a new generation of metal acolytes onstage and younger fans often unfamiliar with metal's headbanger heritage.

"Metal in general has long been unjustly maligned as solely the province of knuckle-dragging meatheads," said Aaron Turner, a founder of the influential Hydra Head Records, which has released three CD's by Pelican, including, recently, "The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw." "That said, there's never been a group of musicians like there is now, who are helping to advance the form."

Heavy metal reached a commercial apex with the hair-metal bands of the 80's, but those spandex-and-lipstick aficionados were often maligned within the greater heavy metal scene. Metal, many argued, should be punishing and morbid, not garish. So while the flashy acts caught on in the pop arena, the metal mainstream focused on technique and form, honing a high degree of technical complexity. By the outset of the 90's, eccentrics like the Melvins and the Flying Luttenbachers were acting on the belief that heavy music was compatible with an avant-garde sensibility. Their peers didn't all agree.

"For years, I felt we didn't have any common ground with anyone - I felt like I was on the inside of it, but not always a welcome visitor," said Justin Broadrick, a member of the pioneering experimental metal bands Napalm Death and Godflesh, who this year released an album with his new band, Jesu, on Hydra Head.

A decade later, those early acts have given rise to others. "Those bands laid the groundwork for us," said Mr. Turner, who also plays in the highly digressive post-metal band Isis. "We're part of a recognizable lineage."