What is the best HEAVY METAL speaker?

I listen to a lot of metal. Some conventional speakers do metal ok, but I think there's a reason they use big horns at rock concerts. The best sounding metal I've ever heard was recorded music (Alice In Chains) coming out of big JBL Horns before an Ozzy concert. Outdoors!

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.