What is the best HEAVY METAL speaker?

I spend time over at AVSforum. There is a long thread in the speaker forum devoted to a company called JTR. There are quite a few metal heads using his speakers over there. Perhaps, you might take a look. His latest model is the Noesis 215HT. With frequency stats of 18z to 24kh, can handle 2000 watts rms and and has a usable output of 128 dB. I think they would do the job quite nicely. Do a little reading on his line of speakers as well as a company called Seaton.

I think there are metal speakers out there, you just need to shop around. I listen to mostly death metal as I said before. Let me add some more to the Revel and Axiom suggestions I made before.

Tyler accoustics, legacy, vandersteen, von schweikert, swan, usher.

I have personally tried Zu speakers (which like tekton are often suggested for metal/rock), and was not satisfied at all. Full range drivers like that should be avoided at all costs. They don't move enough air/have enough driver displacement to have adequate dynamics for metal.

As others have said, a powerful SS amp is a must, but I for me, adding a tube preamp upstream of my amp made a huge improvement.

Also in my experience, subwoofers are not a must if you have at least 2-3 6.5" woofers or a 1-2 8" woofers.

Lizzard-

back in the 1980's into early 1990's I used Cerwin vega AT-12.
Very nice speaker for Rock/Hard Rock- not quite audiophile though. In addition to my suggestions previously, from CV I moved up to B&W 805 w/ small sub. Still retained the "rock" factor- not a bad speaker for your application at all.
Keep me posted & Happy New Year!

"... if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too."

I kinda disagree. IMHO classical is very a forgiving music genre (from a tonal perspective). I've heard classical well-reproduced on Quads and Maggies and Martin Logans. I've never heard metal well-reproduced on any of those speaker brands.

However, Fields of Nephilim is a good reference. Same with early Husker Du (or any Husker Du, really). Awful engineering. Awful production. But a great metal system will allow those "awful" qualities make sense and not detract from the musical genus.

Call me crazy, but I listen to mostly rock and heavy music on Martin Logan ascents. They sound great to me, and 95db is no problem. That's more then loud enough for me.