I second what Azmodes said.

Also, if that single is not valid, nuke it, reviews or not. Sorry, but people should expect invalid releases to not stay long...

Contributing a bit to discussion here...I thought the main purpose of the lyrical themes was to allow people to search for bands with lyrics they're interested in - honestly they don't serve much of a real purpose just sitting there on the band page like they do when you go directly to a band's page. By that logic, including bands who don't use lyrical themes would basically be messing up that entire function of the lyrical themes field, since it'd be clogged up with bands who were only gory or religious in imagery rather than lyrics.

It's also worth noting that the band's themes beyond lyrics (i.e. their song titles and album covers) are usually quite obvious, so taking this into account when naming lyrical themes seems silly. The meaning of a song title alone, especially with no accompanying lyrics, is usually extremely obvious - there's no possible way you could interpret "Pee on Me, Amputee" to be about anything other than "fetishes, urophilia". It'd be like having a number at the top of the page saying "number of band members" or "artists who have contributed to album artwork": a quick reference, sure, but an absolutely necessary one? No, of course not - in the absence of written lyrics, a lyrical field does not provide any extra information which could not be ascertained with a minute's worth of effort.

And what about a case where a band has a song title completely unrelated to the lyrical content within? In this case, it would technically only be conjecture to base the lyrical theme off of the titles, since (for example) The Red Chord's "Black Santa" is neither about African-Americans nor Santa Claus, but it's not about "nonsense" either. Would it really be worth the risk to simply jump to conclusions as to what the song was about without having the lyrics available?

If you want to document the "themes" of bands beyond their lyrics, rename the field to simply "themes" or something. But it seems silly to me, personally, to assign lyrical themes to bands which literally don't have lyrics. And I'm not suggesting that we go on a witch hunt for all the goregrind bands who neglect to use lyrics, obviously - only the ones who are explicitly confirmed by the artist themselves not to use them. You wouldn't tag a band as such simply because their album booklet lacked lyrics, of course; you can't assume that because they're not there, they don't exist, and I recognise that. However, I would possibly suggest encouraging people not to add lyrical themes unless they have an explicit statement from the artist confirming them, or if they have access to the lyrics. To me, basing lyrical themes off of song titles just seems like you're begging for potentially incorrect information.

(Sorry if this rambles a bit, I'm tired.)

As it stands now, what Az said is the valid and most reasonable way to go about it: lyrical themes for lyrics only. The problem is that the field is, rather, not one which is held to any specific standard nor one which we tend to view as full of imperative or relevant information. It tends to exist more as a loosely managed "keyword" search for the additional search. Beyond that, it simply seems that it is often used by bands and their fans to give a general idea about what the band is about... whether that follows with our policy of it being strictly for describing a style evident in the lyrics or not. And, I suppose, in other cases it's just used as a marketing tool ("my band is DARK and KULT") and that jazz.

Personally, given its use as a keyword search, I'd be inclined to suggest that perhaps we should drop the pretext of it being strictly for "lyrical content" and make it about "general themes." But then again, that would just make it more unruly, as users would complain about what makes a theme.

I asked Alhadis about this, but he wasn't sure either: this band was active for a certain number of years and then disbanded; some years later they performed a single show under a different name (but wasn't exactly a name change, apparently) ... Should the "Years active" field accommodate this? (1991-1996, 2003 (as Kemöth)) or perhaps (1991-1996, 2003) and then add to the additional notes (or rather leave in) that in 2003 the band was known as Kemöth? Also, would this apply to the artist pages for the band members as well (add it to them)?

Tell it like it is.

Should be (1991-1996, 2003 (as Kemöth)). In the additional notes, explain how the band split-up in 1996, and then performed a single show in 2003 as Kemöth... pretty much what you just said.

Looks like tons of promo CDs have been removed as invalid releases. Andreass (http://www.metal-archives.com/users/AndreasS) has added a lot of them, and I see a few of his most recent adds have been deleted already.

Should this type of releases be removed? I'm pretty sure they should, but it seems like a lot of them have gotten out to the public. However, they tend to purely be intended as marketing tools of proper albums, without unique artwork or any unique material, but not sold like singles are. Is the artwork/sale differentiation a good guideline when they are promoting a proper album release? (obviously bands self-promoting this way it's basically a demo).

http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Ch ... dom/303611
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Ch ... ter/303613

Is it preferable to have (bandname cover) in the tracklist or should it be mentioned in the additional notes? Seeing a bunch of reports of this and I'm not sure if there's an official preference.

In the tracklist. If it's a cover, but with a different name, add the () thing regardless but also explain in the additional notes.

Hmm, afaik neither of these are promos... Was there some other reason for their removal?

For some reason, i've stumbled across a lot of artist roles as "Vocals (female)" lately. Seems kind of silly to put the "female" part on there as if your telling then apart fron the women who sing the male vocals. Is this something that should be removed? Or is that actually preferred?

Azmodes and myself feel that it's a bit redundant when you can easily tell the vocalist is female by her name or by the gender listed on her artist page, and very rarely do you see "Vocals (male)". He recommends to use "Vocals (female)" in rare cases such as when Fenriz did the "feminine" vocals on Goatlord. Things like that.

Artists with unlisted bands. If the unlisted band is on hiatus or status unknown, should the band be listed in the past bands section?

(Also, you guys should sticky this somewhere, or link to it so users know where to ask questions. Perhaps it can join the rejected bands, point whores, etc. threads stickied in the main forum.)

No, leave them in the "active/last-known" tab.

"Vocals (female)" can be used when there is more than one vocalist, like both a male and a female or with a female guest (such as here, if the vocals are "female-sounding" (e.g. not standard death growls that happened to be performed by a woman) and/or the names are ambiguous. Not every female vocalist has an obviously female name (especially those using nicknames) , and it can be helpful to know the various styles of singing on the album. It's not mandatory to note, but it can be useful.

What should be done with Facebook links that work for some people but not for others? There's one of those at the moment. Should they be deleted or kept or even have a note added?
http://www.metal-archives.com/report/view/id/425136

Keep it.

It works fine for me too, btw. Might be a privacy settings thing.

Do companies get artist pages? Hipgnosis was a British design company that made album covers for a ton of big name artists in the 70s and 80s, including a few artists on our site. Should this group, and others like it, have artist pages to catalogue their work, or should this info be listed in the additional notes section?

Yep, that's partially what the "unknown/other" value for gender is for. Such entities can be given their own entries. Another comparable thing would be orchestras.

http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/8_Trak_Mind/4603

If a band featured on the site changes their name, or were known by a different name prior to being accepted to the site, should we be covering their line-ups for incarnations not on the site? The above link is a prime example; the band's only period of activity that qualifies for the site is the 2000-2002 period, but we have member line-ups all the way thru 2007, the end of their third incarnation.

Only for 2000-2002.

Funny that you should bring up 8 Trak Mind, they were a local band and I'm pretty sure they should be removed as they're an alt rock/hardcore-ish band, not metal. It's 2am here so I'll get the opinion of a moderator in another timezone.

I mentioned this in IRC with Zodi, but I'll elaborate.

We go by the version that's in the Archive only; therefore, the line-up for the 2000-2002 period should be the only one on the site. That's usually the case with significant enough name changes/band changes, as this one. In which case, if the other incarnation(s) deserve band pages, they will have the line-ups on those pages... hypothetically speaking.

I went ahead and edited the line-up for now.



If that's the case, then these guys have escaped judgement for quite some time. They landed here way back in '02.

Yeah, they've been on the site for a long time, but they escaped judgment because they haven't been noted in any way since then, likely because they sucked and were only notable because their frontman soon after joined Scar Culture, who Century Media promoted and helped out for a few years after they released "Inscribe" even though the band sucked. I recall them as being sort of death metal/hardcore that was dumbed down as much as mallcore.

http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Je ... _Use/77098

Should artists and misc staff featured only on re-issues of releases be credited on the release page? As an example on the above link, two of the misc staff from the 2010 FOAD Records re-issue were added to the line-up, when they had nothing to do with the original release. Should they be in the line-up, or is that something for the additional notes?

Leave them in the misc staff line-up (with "reissue" or whatever mentioned in brackets after the respective roles). It's not the most elegant solution, but it'll work until such time as when we have a feature for implementing rereleases/reissues.

I noticed when viewing reports that I've moved from Veteran to Metal Freak. What exactly does that allow me to do, other than change report categories?

I have a question, don't know where else to put it. I think its a glitch. I submitted a band yesterday to the queue, today I went to check up on its progress on the queue list but couldn't find it so I checked "my bands" and it was still a draft but all the info I put on it was erased except for submission notes, logo and band pic. Has this happened to anybody else?

So I happened across another release by this band http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Bla ... 3540346268 but it has absolutely no dates on it any where and all the info that I could find about it (or the band for that matter other than here on MA) online was a copy for sale on ebay, a website that says they played a show back in 2000, and the website of the now defunct Spinrecords whom they listed on this release. So my question is can it be added without any sort of release date? Also here's a link to the couple of their CD's available on ebay (the one I'm wondering about is Devil), http://stores.ebay.com/DaisyRocksMusic- ... arch+Store if that helps for proof of the album actually existing.

Without at least a year, no. It can however be added to the notes as an additional release. Sure it's the same band? Logo of the two records are completely different.

Yeah it's the same band, the members are the same and they're both from Freeport, Il.