Conventions of Metal.

Genre:
Reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, and camera and editing styles.
The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist.
Music videos are dominantly performance based with cuts of narrative; the performance is either live where the crowd can be seen head-banging, moshing or sporting the corna or recorded in a derelict space.
Many metal musicians when performing live engage in head-banging, which involves rhythmically beating time with the head, often emphasized by long hair. The corna, or devil horns which is a hand gesture.
The classic uniform of heavy metal fans consists of "blue jeans, black T-shirts, boots and black leather or jeans jackets... T-shirts are generally emblazoned with the logos or other visual representations of favourite metal bands." Metal fans also "appropriated elements from the S&M community (chains, metal studs, skulls, leather and crosses)."

Lyrics:
Establish a general feeling/mood/sense of subject rather than a meaning.
Heavy metal's main subject matter is simple and virtually universal. With grunts, moans and sub literary lyrics...
Romantic tragedy is a standard theme, where teenage angst is another central topic. Heavy metal songs often feature outlandish, fantasy-inspired lyrics, lending them an escapist quality.

Camerawork:
Has an impact on meaning. Tracking the movement of the singer and/or instruments, multiple angles and jumping between shot distances all play a part in the representation of the artist/band. Close-ups on the lead singer and instruments dominate.

Music:
Tempo often drives the editing.
Metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals.
Brief, abrupt, and detached rhythmic cells are joined into rhythmic phrases with a distinctive, often jerky texture.

Editing:
Fast pace editing. The most common form is fast-cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. Often digital effects enhance the editing.

Intertextuality:
Not all audiences will spot a reference, which would not significantly detract from their pleasure in the text itself, but greater pleasure might be derived by those who recognise the reference and feel flattered by this. It also increases the audience’s engagement with, and attentiveness to the product.

Exhibitionism:
The apparently more powerful independent female artists of recent years have added to the complexity of the politics of looking and gender/cultural debates, by being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control of, and inviting, a sexualised gaze.