That was educational, thanks. It always comes back to Black Sabbath in the end, doesn't it? But a lot of great examples there. Pantera, jazz, disco, bands like Bad Brains and so on. I think the lesson here, essentially, is that everybody steals. Artists steal from other artists and then create something new from that. That's just the name of the game.

Thanks for the Abominable Putridity rec also, I'm liking that.

edit; word fix

Whats the most recent genre to be added to the archives?

Any bands whose most well known album is not their best rated in the archives?

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Acid Bath: WTKSP is rated one point lower than Paegan Terrorist Tactics, though I guess there's even more surprising ones out there.

Metallica is an easy one. The Black Album followed by Puppets would be their most well known I think and neither is in the top spot.

Slayer - Reign In Blood would be their most well known I think but its behind the first two on this site.

Is there any musicians or singers you think would have been amazing in other genres/subgenres? I'm not really talking about artists who actually excel in more than one genres, but more in some kind of what if?

I think Matt Barlow, formally of Iced Earth fame, would have been a great singer for a traditional/epic doom band. Dude got pipes, he can wail like a banshee and be emotional (and cheesy) and it would have been interesting to see him front a band in the vein of Candlemass, Solitude Aeternus or whatever.

Keeping a 94% average across 19 reviews is more impressive then a 95% across 11 reviews, I would say. Both are impressive though, and both are great albums.

And you'll find similar cases of figure with albums like Reign in Blood, which is arguably Slayer's most well-known album, but the average rating for it is well below Hell Awaits and South of Heaven. But RiB has A LOT MORE reviews, so again, it's harder to keep a higher average rating across more reviews. And of course, albums that are very popular will also attract their detractors and motivate them to make more negative reviews.

A somewhat similar but still different phenomenon happens for bands with a "controversial" album that's actually the best album (or one of the best albums) of the band. Like how Souvenirs d'un autre monde by Alcest has this stupidly low 69% average, while it is an amazing album, and arguably the best album of the band. But a lot of trve kvlt black metallers had to review bomb it because it's that offensive to them that post-black/blackgaze even exists, and because they were angry with the popularity of the album. But after that, they didn't bother reviewing the following releases of the band.

Are there any metal bands with two or more keyboard players? How does it work?

I recall Naglfar's "Vittra" listing two of the band members to play the keys. I think more than one player becomes useful or necessary if you acutally play everything in real time and without a safety net - just by the abilities of your hands instead of pre-programming and playbacking parts or entire secondary tracks.

What is the earliest known example of gravity blasts in metal/grindcore? At the moment, I gravitate towards WBI on their "Alcoholic birth" EP from '95, but I haven't listened to this in a long time and those may as well just be two-handed snare rolls instead of "gravities".

The way genres work here is an absolute mess. There is no canon list of genres on the archives, no notice is given when new genres/subgenres are added, users are free to make up genres when submitting a band, and mods are free to edit band genres at any time as they see fit. There aren't even set conventions; the mods readily admit things like "death/doom" and "doom/death" are used interchangeably and arbitrarily.

It's probably my biggest gripe with the archives. Imagine wanting to explore extreme metal for the first time and ending up on a site that doesn't even bother to define or list out the genres. It should be like wikipedia where you can click on a genre, see a description and list of origin/popular bands in the style, and explore its subgenre hierarchy and history.

Part of the problem with the genre categorization in the MA is that they're not album-specific. For example, Within Temptation is labeled as "symphonic metal (early);symphonic/alternative rock (later)," but that doesn't really reflect well on which albums are symphonic metal and which ones are radio rock, particularly if we consider their works from The Silent Force to The Unforgiving, which are somewhat in the middle. Same problem with Blind Guardian labeled as "speed metal (early); power metal (later)." You said this before, but the other problem is that trying to search up certain genres with two labels aren't very consistent; for example, filtering "melodic death" can result in bands labeled as "melodic black (early); death metal (later);" not exactly what you're looking for. I think I prefer RYM's genre categorization these days, even if they have their share of flaws.

Label consistency is also a huge issue in the Archives; Kamelot and Trans-Siberian Orchestra are not "symphonic metal" in the Archives, even though they literally are symphonic metal (with TSO they are called "orchestral," but I don't think people would search that up as often as they'd search up "symphonic"). I know there could be a blurred line on when keyboard synths are prevalent enough to be qualified as "symphonic" or if they just serve atmospheric purposes, particularly for power and prog metal, but I don't necessarily think it's the case here. Some non genre-based descriptors can be a problem; "melodic" is in particular a controversial label here; I know melodic death is relevant due to its prevalent scene and historic significance, and it could be useful for other abrasive genres like grindcore, but not so much if you apply it to every genre, particularly already melodic genres like trad or power metal.

And finally, spelling errors can be a problem if we don't have a preset of genres to choose from. I found a band with a misspelling on "technical," but luckily they were able to fix.

Excellent points. It is indeed really wild that there are no release-level genres when that's standard on literally every single other music service and website. Even Metal Storm does it.

Count Raven - Destruction of the Void is pretty fun!

Not really a whole genre, but I remember when 'Slam' was added a few years back. Before then, I just assumed most Brutal Death Metal was slam or slam-adjacent.

Is slam so far gone that its basically caveman metalcore?

Would the album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath count as "heavy prog"?

Not really metal, but.....

Are Super Nintendo era JRPG soundtracks (particularly of the Final Fantasy / Chrono Trigger variety) examples of Dungeon Synth?

They're not dungeon synth themselves, but are important to the genre since it's those 16 bit soundfonts that most often get emulated.

Who was the first to do the wailing type of black metal vocals, it can't be Varg?

What do you good people think, how influential were the early 2000s albums by Sodom, Kreator and Destruction for a) retro thrash revival and some well-known American thrash getting back into this business down the pike? Seem to recall too that Kreator and Destruction had a US tour in 2002 I think; could it be that this too was a spark of sorts?

I never gave it much thought, but, now that you mention it, there could be some influence for sure. Both Destruction and kreator toured a lot in North America in the 2000s, and often paired with death metal bands. Sodom even made it over here once. Considering that most of the metalheads I knew didn't care about whatever Slayer was doing and most other American thrash bands were on hiatus or swimming in different waters, yeah, it seems like the german bands picked up the torch there. In particular, Violent Revolution from Kreator and The Antichrist from Destruction seemed to have quite an impact at the time.

They all had stellar comeback albums in 2001 which might have contributed to it, but there was also this benefit concert held in the same year which (at least for the Bay Area) was a big milestone and led directly to Exodus, Heathen and Death Angel reuniting.

Yup, absolutely.

Can anyone tell me: What was the deal with the archives user "Bitterman"? I was just reading Gorguts' Colored Sands reviews and, upon seeing his, was reminded of all his (or her) reviews. Guy wrote 55 reviews in just under a year (from Sept. 2013 to August 2014) and gave every single album he rated a 0% and explained why each of these generally well-liked albums was, actually, a worthless pieces of shit. Sometimes he makes a pretty compelling case

Anyhow, I've stumbled across his zero percent reviews many times over the years and was just curious if anyone knew the story there. Seems interesting to me to come on the site for a year, completely bash a bunch of good albums and declare (basically) "metal is dead", and then just disappear.

Just skimming through the review titles I could tell right away he was connected to the old ANUS site. Sure enough there's a link in his bio to one of its newer manifestations.

Anyway he gave a live Kataklysm album a 50% which is a shame.

A 50%? That must be one of his favorite albums!

Thanks. I remember that site being decent early on but then going way downhill over time.

bitterman was an ANUS/DMU guy who initially just gave exclusively low scores (that Colored Sands review was initially a 40%) but apparently realized that he could get more attention by only giving out 0%s instead, and retroactively went back and changed everything before that moment to a zero. He eventually got bored and nuked his own account. DMU tried using this in their one-sided feud with MA trying to say that he was banned for speaking the truth/being unpopular when really he just deleted himself. He even popped up in their thread to explain that and they just ignored it lol. As if we wouldn't just delete them if that's why he disappeared.

DMU is just stormfront 2.0. It really should have been nuked from orbit years ago.

Jeez, what some people won't do for attention.

Alestorm is the only one I can think of, and they just seem to double up what they're playing

Sonata Arctica have had 2 keyboardists at different points in their existence.

Well... sadly... it works. We are still talking about his shitty reviews more then a decade later.

^ I know, the irony. (maiden)

I believe this question is about bands having two keyboardists in the band playing on stage at the same time, like bands have two guitarists, right? Like Toto.

Any particular reasons why blast beats aren't very common in power metal? I know there are some in Rhapsody's Reign of Terror and I think Dragonforce also has some, but you'd think for a genre that often emphasizes 16th notes and double bass drumming they'd be more prevalent?

I guess it's because there isn't a precedent from the earliest bands in the genre or their influences. Power metal bands will usually draw from classic heavy metal like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and speed metal, and neither of those genres had blast beats; mainly, because blasts weren't really a thing/weren't that popular at the time. It's basically for the same reasons that more traditional thrash or heavy metal doesn't have blasts: they came to popularity after those genres became established and so there isn't much of a push for subsequent bands to adopt them.

Yeah, I guess that may be the reason. For all the ongoing innovations and unique identities among bands, power metal does seem to be a relatively conservative subgenre retaining many of the traditional heavy metal elements even in the newer bands.

Speaking of power metal, I noticed that there is relatively a smaller count of bands in the MA (like 9,500) with this label compared to some of the other major subgenres (death and black both have around 48,000 respectively, thrash has like 33,000, trad has 26,000, doom has 14,000, melodeath has like 10,000). You could argue that power metal is still relatively lacking in diversity compared to the other bigger subgenres, but thrash is arguably just as stagnant as power metal yet it still has a large count. You could say that you can't get away with weak vocals in pm as much as you can with thrash, and you also need some recognizable songwriting. I think the idea that thrash is more recognized as a metal genre, as well as the inconsistent labeling in the MA may play a role as well, but what do you guys think?

I don't at all buy the argument that power metal bands don't blast because that's not how people in the 80s played metal. Blast beats are extremely aggressive and that's just not what power metal is about. Power metal is mostly about melody of the keys, guitar, vocals, and the general "epic" feeling of the songwriting; all of which are conveyed much better by double bass runs than constant snare hits. The same goes for heavy metal. And thrash with blast beats is essentially just grindcore, so it makes sense thrash bands don't blast much either; it completely changes the vibe.

For the other question, there are two main reasons power metal bands are less common. The first is skill: to play even entry-level power metal, everyone in the band needs to be a near expert at their instrument. It's possible to play competently in a black/death/doom/heavy/thrash band within a year of starting out. Power metal, with its insistence on theatrics, speed, and solos... you're looking at closer to five years of regular practice to get there.

Second is popularity. Although power metal is popular in Europe and Japan, that's about as far as it goes. Despite a recent minor resurgence in popularity in North America, the audience is just comically small. Unleash The Archers are unequivocally the biggest North American power metal band at the moment and even they play 200-300 person clubs.

I thought you'd also need to be a bit of an expert to play death and black metal given the highly complex musicianship.



Japan especially; almost 25% of the bands in MA are labeled as power metal, which is higher than every country that isn't Monaco (which is a microstate with five bands). For comparison, Finland is like 5%, Italy is 7%, Germany is 6%, and Spain is 10%. Might be from X Japan's influence and the prevalence of idol metal, and I guess a country that makes epic cartoons and video games may also want to make some epic music to go along with it.



I thought Kamelot was still the biggest power metal band from North America.