Lately I have seen changes of many famous bands' genres like Dying Fetus or Fleshgod Apocalypse (I especially listen to Death Metal). I noticed that there are many differents in choosing genres compared to other archives about metal on the net. Indeed it is very difficult to choose the kind attributed to a single band, especially if he has made ​​several albums of different genres. What I propose is to assign genre to the individual full length, demos, EPs, singles, etc. etc.. It could seem a rather difficult task, but it would serve to be more precise. The utents might initially give permission to all to enter the genre of the album and, if there are discussions, they could be referted on the Forum

First of all, that would be very redundant for a good portion of bands here. Second of all, this is already reasonably covered by the "(early), (later)" / "(1990-1995), (1995-2000)" / "(*album title 1*), (*album title 2*)" approach in the genre field, not to mention more detailed descriptions in the additional notes/info. Third of all, considering points one and two, the potential advantages of this, which I would describe as being nebulous at best, are far outweighed by the huge effort we'd have to put into it. I'd also imagine the already much dreaded "wrong genre" reports (especially those of a more pedantic nature) would only grow in number with this system.

The current system is fine.

That's how things are done on RYM, the band has all the genres they've covered as descriptors and each individual album has their own. I don't think it suits the Archives that much since this has never been like that, and when bands have albums that are radically different the genre has stuff like "death metal (early) or "death metal (91-94)" describing the different periods.

You can always cross-check with RYM as genre tagging is a cumbersome task. How do you even categorize a band like Neurosis? Genre tags are more often than not guidelines and not rulings.

PS: Azmodes beat me to it.

Genre tags (multiple) with votes (by users) on it per album (with moderator interference option thingy) [band sites have a summary of them]... a chance to see that implemented? I do not see this happen here.
Kongregate has such on the games ...

The problem could be that a band may have been 4 changes of genres in his carrieer, and you must write 1991-1995/1995-1998/1998-2003/2003-2008, and it is ununderstandable. In my opinion bands don't have to be catolaged by a genre, because every single band has his own genre. This one could approache approximately to a "big" genre (heavy, thrash, death etc etc), but it isn't his own genre. A genre is composed by few of elements (example: in death metal the voice is growl) , right? In a total carrieer of a band there are too elements from variuos genres to can assigne one to a band, but it isn't the same in a single album. This because almost always in an album all the songs have very much in common, but can have many differents elements with next album. Maybe this thing can be maid for the major bands in the world, but I can't know how select these ones

We've considered it once, but agreed that it's not feasible and not worth the effort.
Genre descriptions are vague pretty much on purpose, so as to avoid endless nitpicking debates, and also since it's impossible to capture all nuances of a band's style in 4 or 5 words.

I fail to get your point. What is more easy than such a thing. The basic elements exist already with the band similarity vote thing.

This is also a good things

I agree. Tables and votes for genres seem like a bad idea. It's one thing to vote for similar bands, and even there sometimes it fails to work due to each person's perception, now imagine that with musical genres! Mods would have nothing else to do other than checking out the scores. I prefer it the way it is, I don't always agree with some descriptions but that can be discussed here in the boards.

How many bands with four or more mentionable genre changes are there, really?

I still think this is overkill. There are countless bands which would just have the same tag over and over again for their albums because they never really shifted styles. For bands with more complex histories, there's also reviews for you to read, if you want a more detailed look on their evolution. Reviews are not covering all pages, of course, but bands with the kind of lengthy histories and the genre shifts you mention would profit from such a system are more likely to have reviews anyway.

I admit that a system for genre tags sounds tempting in theory, if thought through correctly AND if we were able to moderate the damn thing properly so that it doesn't become like the one last.fm has. Then again, I don't see a problem with the current system. It's capable of summing up a band's style(s) for those who want a quick summary.

You know, if you want a more detailed idea of a band's genre, you could *gasp* actually listen to the band's music, but heaven forbid that you listen to music created like a band, oh, no...

and time is available at unlimited levels ... sure.


and if you are not familiar with English or do not speak it on a high enough level, then you are excluded.

Why something simple, when you can have it complex, ey?

There is that, yes, but I mentioned reviews more as an optional way for those who really want to dig deeper, rather than a necessary part of understand a band's general style/direction. If you're looking up a band here with a more complex genre résumé and can't decipher the genre field and/or few additional notes describing it then I frankly don't know what you're doing on the Internet. I won't presume that every user has a good grasp of the English language, but there is a certain level of awareness I think is reasonable to expect from the average visitor. We already expect the same when it comes to reports and submissions. Feel free to contradict me, but that's how I see it.


I don't really see how the current system is complex. If needed, there is the "(early), (later)", etc. thing which can be elaborated in the additional notes or the albums themselves if a band had a major style shift with one album. A tagging system for albums may seem simple and tidy in theory, but I'm not sure how bands that would benefit from it (as opposed to the numerous bands for which it would simply be superfluous) would, well, benefit from it in practise. Would we limit the possible tags to pre-defined terms as we use them now (which would kinda defeat the purpose of giving albums more detailed assessments; in cases where genre shifts are more subtle and not as stark as from heavy metal to death metal; the number of votes could be a distinctive factor, but who knows how that would crystallize)? Or would anyone be able to tag anything with anything (which would open the doors for every conceivable kind of nonsense)? I'm not against it per se, it looks good on paper, but I have my doubts about it being worth the effort/not being rendered borderline pointless by user input/providing a better/more accurate look at band's histories in the first place.

I am surprised that a mod writes this ... really. I have so many e-mails from bands in which you can see how they struggle with the language or they are unable to express themselves properly in the so-called lingua franca. Sometimes I have forwarded stuff to other mods, because I was unable to help the bands; Piotr and Fulgurius for instance.


It is extremely complex. To write a good review which would do the work of the artist justice and which would present the general concept in such a light as to make the reader not only aware of the depth but also the potpourri of facets of the art, is something reviews are often not the best choice to direct the attention to; see the intellectual grandeur on Metallica's latest output; it is futile to go into details. Or take the bashing of some well-known black metal (better put this into italics) bands: Cradle of Filth or Dimmu Borgir. It is not even necessary to discuss this. You recommend to someone to take a look at those in order to get some impression and insight? This would be one aspect: the blatant lack of accuracy and whatnot; the list would long.

The other would be the general issue of expressing yourself. Napero might give a better comment on the overall quality of the submissions to the review queue, but from what I remember such had not been the best. Someone, whose first language would not be English, might find it difficult to express him/herself in a review. How many writers from South/East-Asia do we have here? What about South-America? How do you deal with them? The nice thing about a tag is that through this they are able to express themselves and do not have to go through the tedious and time-consuming work of writing a review; I know what I am talking about. I am also much better in German than in English ... naturally.

Surely, some kind of misuse can happen, but this is something that can never be prevented. Moreover, the mods can interfere and the fans can work as a control function, too. It might even be possible to add something like a grade to the albums in order to balance the elements out: main factors like the top-genre descriptors (black, death, thrash ...) and also characteristics (symphonic, noisiness, rawness) and the like. It would help a lot to get a better impression of the work in question, without having to go through the reviews and trying to understand what this person is blattering about.

Personally, I like the idea in which Kongregate has implemented it and it seems to work ... in limits that is. Maybe M & H are willing to consider this as well ...

Long thread...
I notice one thing. Voting for genre?
It's completly stupid idea.
Democracy is the rule of morons.
There is always more idiots...

I've had a lot of correspondence with non-native-English-speaking band members, label owners, people in general, etc... about stuff here (though probably not nearly as much as you, I concede) and I've never encountered anyone whose English was so garbled that I didn't get what he was trying to say. Not that I can remember now, at least. That doesn't mean that "they" aren't "out there", of course, apparently rule-ignorant band submissions are proof enough for that alone. Yet the fact remains that we as an English-speaking site expect a minimal level from our users. Also, expressing can be quite different from understanding. I don't want to argue here about the coverage of English as a cyber-lingua franca, though.


Sure, there are always reviews with less than what might be called a minimum of objectivity for people unfamiliar with the band. As an inherently subjective type of text that's not really in doubt. Still, through the review queue the ones being accepted have (ideally/generally) a certain level of descriptive substance which can (or consequently must) contain insights into the sound the band had on one particular record. You're saying that reviews here in general don't reflect on a band's sound, but are mostly content-less rants? I'm not a "review mod", but I've read my share of reviews here and that's not the case. Ideal texts describing a band's sound on one album seen in the context of their discography and pinpointing every musical nuance surely exist. Not as a majority though, that's a no-brainer. Then again, genre tags for albums could theoretically streamline "getting a picture", but they wouldn't necessarily achieve that level of depth either. As user-based content they would potentially just be as prone to "blatant lack of accuracy".

Anyway, I wasn't proposing reviews as a fixated part of a band's genre description. Their function can be to elaborate on that, apart from providing an analysis (to whatever degree) of the album and measure of quality (let's not get started there). As I said, the current more or less broad time system we have in the genre field seems adequate to me (read: a good compromise) and with there also being the occasional further elaboration like "Started out as a goregrind band, but then played a more death metal-influenced style beginning with their second full-length." I think it can give people a good, concise idea of a band's genre "werdegang". There can't be much of a language barrier here. Probably not as good and accurate as (ideally functioning) tags, but there's the theory/reality issue again...


Well yeah, I wouldn't be strictly opposing this. The few methods and parameters you briefly outlined wouldn't be a bad start, certainly. Maybe the owners say it's worth a shot sometime in the indefinite future. If it sees the light of day I'd do my best to make it work. My wall-of-post-ish responses notwithstanding a tagging system is not evil incarnate for me, it's just that I think (here we go again) that, all things considered, the methods we have and use now are a good balancing act between ideal and practical, while what you're proposing may be a step in the ideal direction, but a few steps away from the practical one.

Considering the site as a reference, adding any more complexity to genre labels would be confusing. The only time I need to refer to genre labels, as listed on the site, are when I search for bands, and the search shows multiple results based on country and genre. Beyond that, there's no need for the arbitrary labels, as the site has reviews to describe the music if you need words to describe it. Genre labels can be quite subjective - the Encyclopedia contains objective information, and the subjective information is confined to reviews/recommended bands.

Yes, but objective information was given only for the most famous band and only from few members. But it needs to take in account that not all moderators (or who can modify the genre) know all the bands on metal archives, so many unknown bands may have wrong genre.
Most of people aren't stupid, but they haven't the necessary tools to distinguish a genre from an other one. This because metal isn't generally a music with strict structures, so these genre's decisions are however uncertantly given. If we can make a list of every elements of all genres (and their frequency in them), the genres have their own structure and so it is more easier to decide.

That, my friend, is the root of our disagreement. You'd understand if you saw the crap people submit.
Take a look at this: http://www.last.fm/tag/metal/artists?setlang=en
7 out of the Top Ten "metal" artists by popular vote aren't even allowed here.

Only mods can modify genres. I try to verify a genre tag before accepting a band and I'm sure other mods do too. If something incorrect or inaccurate slips through, we have the "wrong genre" reports and the appropriate thread for that, keeping nonsense at bay. Of course there are left-overs from the earlier days of this site with some skewed genres, but we (and more so a number of users) are doing our best to rectify those. This problem is not as rampant as you may think.


Like MMisantropo I have to disagree there. The band queue, for instance, has shown me time and again that this is not the case.


Last.fm is a really good example for what happens when a genre tagging system is left unchecked.

I wonder where that comes from:
Let us take Marilyn Manson for example:
[url]http://www.rockhard.de/megazine/reviewarchiv/review-anzeigen.html?tx_rxsearch_pi1[review]=1066[/url]

He does have a point. If the majority of the visitors of this site got their way, Pantera would probably be labeled as thrash metal. Same for all the metalcore bands.

how about requesting (requiring?) a certain amount of precision when varying genres apply to a certain band

so that rather than saying "brutal death metal (early) / gangsta rap (later)" it would more often (always?) specify a year or album of a change in style

of course this is also very subjective, but it would mean getting that bit more info on which albums by a certain band you might want to check out

Tagging/genre voting is NOT gonna happen. Forget it.

As for album genres, I also don't think it's a good idea, and I don't see it happening, certainly not in the immediate future.

Album genres would be tricky beans for sure.

There are bands that stay the same style, so album genres in this case is pointless.

There are bands that shift in styles over time - i.e. Anathema. Album genres could help in showing where the shift is:

Serenades & The Silent Enigma = Death/Doom ; Eternity = Melodic/Atmospheric Doom ; Alternative 4 = Melodic Doom/Atmospheric Rock ; Judgment = Depressive/Atmospheric Rock with sparse doom influences; A Fine Day to Exit & A Natural Disaster = Atmospheric/Depressive Rock ; We're Here Because We're Here & Weather Systems = Atmospheric Rock

But all of that is still accomplished through the band genre field: Doom/Death Metal (early) Atmospheric Rock (later)

Would album genre tags really be that helpful in this case? Not really, in my opinion.

---

But there are two bands that an implementation of album genres in some form (the easiest being through just the additional notes) would be helpful.

First is Gwar. Having a "various" genre tag is as ambiguous as it can get. But it seems that this band has two general styles going on - punk on one hand and thrash metal on the other. Early albums were punk, there was a later album that was punk rock oriented as well.

Then there is Boris. Also "various", and this band has had more genre changes than possibly any other band on the archives.

Those two bands are the exception rather than the norm. If a band's genre truly varies that much between releases, it can simply be explained in the additional notes of the band (or at least the albums). Furthermore, there's always reviews to further detail a band's musical diversity.

What about using dividers to visually highlight the various periods in a band's discography? For instance, with In Flames, there might be a thick line between 'The Tokyo Showdown' and '4 Track Teaser EP.' Above this line is their Melodic Death Metal period, and below would be the Modern Metal period (on a side note, since when is 'Modern Metal' an actual genre? )

That's all well and good for In Flames (Well, maybe not...) but what about bands whose 'style' changes from album to album? Should there be such dividers between each album? That sounds horribly messy, really.

This is why I am glad we have an administration who know what they are doing and why I think 'best of' lists are completely useless as it highlights popular mainstream bands that metalheads who know the genre well would only put them as an enjoyable band at best. Even when I listened to Nu metal years ago Drowning Pool was merely average to me.

I don't mean to implement a new, more precise categorization. We'd use the old system but have an easier way to identify the different eras.

In Flames' change in style was a longer transition rather than a change from one album to the next. Their later style hasn't been as precisely defined, in retrospect, especially since they are normally one of the three bands who are mentioned when "melodic death metal" is defined.

Hmm, I see your point Zodijackyl. I guess my idea would also imply Clayman was a purely Melodeath release...logic gets in the way of so many good ideas

One thing I sense is overlooked here is the problem of over labeling. People - mods and users alike - struggle enough in trying to conceptualize the overall music of a band. There's plenty of significant disagreement even in those cases where you might think the music genre is generally agreed on. By adopting album genres, you'd be making a complex issue an even more complex and complicated issue; especially as you would have all sorts of users disagreeing on the nature of X album, perhaps in comparison to the earlier Y album or later Z album. For the sake of simplicity, having a standard umbrella genre for a band is normally enough to get a general sense of a band's music without leading into a convoluted argument on the minutiae of every song in every album. It grudgingly placates both those who want to be specific in labeling a band's music, and those who want to avoid being too narrow and ridiculous in that label.

It certainly isn't the most exact route, but it is the way to go to be less of a headache (both as a mod and user).

Metal is metal.

Power is power.