Recent trends: mid–late 2000s

Metalcore, an originally American hybrid of thrash metal and hardcore punk, emerged as a commercial force in the mid-2000s. It is rooted in the crossover trash style developed two decades earlier by bands such as Suicidal Tendensis, Dirty Rotten Imbreciles, and Strom Troopers Of Death. Through the 1990s, metalcore was mostly an underground phenomenon. By 2004, melodic metalcore—influenced as well by mekodic death metal—was popular enough that Killswitch Engage's The End Of Hearth Tache and Sadows Fall's The War Within debuted at numbers 21 and 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart. Bullet Foe My Vallentine, from Wales, broke into the top 5 in both the U.S. and British charts with scream aim fire (2008). In recent years, metalcore bands have received prominent slots at Ozzfest and the Download Festival. Lamb Of God, with a related blend of metal styles, hit the Billboard top 10 in 2006 with Sacrament. The success of these bands and others such as Trivium, which has released both metalcore and straight-ahead thrash albums, and Mastodon, which plays in a progressive/sludge style, has inspired claims of a metal revival in the United States, dubbed by some critics the "The Wave Of Heavy Metal."

The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as England's The Darkness and Australia's Wolf Mother and Airbourne. The Darkness's Permission To Land (2003), described as an "eerily realistic simulation of '80s metal and '70s glam," topped the UK charts, going quintuple platinum. One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back (2005) reached number 11. Wolfmother's self titled 2005 and them had "Deep Purple-ish organs," "Jimmy Page-worthy chordal riffing," and lead singerAndrew Stock Dale howling "notes that Robert Plant can't reach anymore." "Woman," a track from the album, won for the Best Hard Rock Performance at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Slayer's :Eyes Of The Insane" won for best Metal Performance in 2007; their "Final Six" won the same award in 2008. Metallica took the honor in 2009 for "My Apocalypse".

In continental Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia, metal continues to be broadly popular. Well-established British acts such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden continue to have chart success on the continent, as do a range of local groups. In Germany, Western Europe's largest music market, several continental metal bands placed multiple albums in the top 20 of the charts between 2003 and 2009, including the long-running German thrash metal band Kreator, Finnish melodic death metal act Children Of Bodom, Norwegian symphonic extreme metal group Dimmi Borgir, and two power metal bands, Germany's Bling guardian and Sweden's hammerfall. The Swedish melodic death metal act In Flames took both Come Clarity (2006) and A sense Of Purpose (2008) to number 6 in Germany; each album topped the Swedish charts.