If I had to write a musical parody of the metal genre, it would incorporate these features:
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An obviously gratuitous ambient/acoustic introduction to create a false aura of meaning or mysticism.
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A sudden break from that into a simple and cheesy guitar riff that sustains for the majority of the song.
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Grandiose lyrics that come at the crossroads between adolescent poetry and really bad mythological fantasy novels. I would invoke blood, knives, tigers, the moon, warriors, dragons, and (of course!) mythological figures a fair number of people have not heard of.
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An over-the-top guitar solo.
In general, a parody of a something - a musical genre, a literary genre, a single author, etc - achieves its effect by exaggerating the most laughable features of that genre to comical effect. But it seems to me that the number of metal tracks that would actually serve as a good parody of metal is not small. Some huge percentage of the metal tracks I listen to sound as though they are meant to mock the metal genre - but they’re not. So to me, it often sounds like metal is mocking itself. A few examples…
That’s eighty seconds of eerie sound for an intro. Eighty seconds of it. Then the cheesy riff comes in, and you get lyrics about a “midnight sea” and the stripes of a tiger. They always gotta talk about tigers, don’t they?
How about this track, by progressive metal group Dream Theater:
Dream Theater - Under a Glass Moon
(much apologies for the fact that it’s a Guitar Hero video, I couldn’t find the album cut anywhere else)
Here, the lyrics speak for themselves:
How exactly could someone write lyrics like these? “Nervous flashlights scan my dreams / Liquid shadows silence their screams” Wow!!!
For an apocalypse song, let’s try this track by Def Leppard:
Def Leppard - When the Walls Came Tumbling Down
Listen to that Spinal Tap introduction - it’s like “Stonehenge”! It’s like “Atlantis” by Donovan! Listen to those guitar riffs! But most of all, listen to the lyrics:
I think the song speaks for itself.
My point is that it’s not hard to find metal like this. This isn’t, like, three percent of metal. If I listen to ten metal tracks, at least three of them are going to seem like a parody of metal - that is, they will seem like something I would write if I wanted to make fun of metal. There is basically nothing I can do to further exaggerate the features of metal because they’re so often carried to their own natural extremes.
I have to admit, however, that listening to this sort of stuff can be fun in its own way.
