They tend to be distinct styles, similar to how bands within a genre can sound really different to each other. Now imagine that a couple of other bands says that one band’s style is the bee’s knees and starts doing similar music.

It does get a bit too opaque and subtle at times, but I still think it’s usually helpful. e.g. “increasing level of angriness and decreasing level of clarity” is a big deal, many people don’t like listening to the extremely aggressive/unclear stuff and thus might say something like “I don’t like death metal, but power metal is great”.