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| Blutraum | October 9, 12:44 |
| Dismal Fate | October 8, 20:00 |
| Punish | October 8, 19:54 |
| Phantasos | October 8, 12:29 |
| Caregah | October 8, 06:51 |
| Crisis | October 8, 06:13 |
| Morbidity | October 8, 06:13 |
| Green Chapel | October 8, 06:08 |
| Адепт Хорc | October 8, 03:08 |
| Odium | October 8, 03:05 |
| Eye of Judgement | October 9, 13:22 |
| Ossyris | October 9, 13:17 |
| Darkdayrising | October 9, 13:07 |
| Metal Shack | October 9, 13:04 |
| Nucleus | October 9, 13:03 |
| Serpent Antique | October 9, 13:03 |
| Blutraum | October 9, 12:59 |
| Existench | October 9, 12:55 |
| Breeding Fear | October 9, 12:53 |
| Baekdoosan | October 9, 12:53 |
| Parlag | Parlag | Oct 8th |
| Tempest | Point of No Return | Oct 7th |
| Sumerlands | Dreamkiller | Oct 7th |
| Caïnan Dawn | Lagu | Oct 7th |
| Orphaned Land | Sahara | Oct 7th |
| Ruinas | Resurrekzión | Oct 7th |
| Boris | Heavy Rocks | Oct 7th |
| Eternal Suffering | Drowning in Tragedy | Oct 6th |
| Toundra | Toundra (IV) | Oct 6th |
| Behemoth | Opvs Contra Natvram | Oct 6th |
| 200 Stab Wounds | Slave to the Scalpel | Oct 6th |
| Messa | Belfry | Oct 6th |
| Ghost | Opus Eponymous | Oct 6th |
| Drowning the Light | Drowned | Oct 5th |
| Circle of Ouroborus | Thurisa | Oct 5th |
| Mumakil | Behold the Failure | Oct 4th |
| Spectral Voice | Necrotic Demos | Oct 4th |
| Sacrilegia | Sold Under Sin | Oct 4th |
| Autopsy | Morbidity Triumphant | Oct 4th |
| Cabinet | Pt. III: Get in... | October 9th |
| Invernal | L.I.E.S.P... | October 9th |
| Malign Entity | Plague | October 9th |
| Futurism | Degenerative | October 9th |
| Salna | Zalktis, Krupītis... | October 9th |
| OwlCraft | Belial | October 9th |
| Redlord | Redlord II | October 9th |
| Immortal Forest | The Marching of... | October 9th |
| Iluna Perpetua | Heart-Shaped Box | October 9th |
| Catalyst | Paragon of... | October 9th |
| Metal Shack | Memoriam | October 9th |
| Thy Tongue | Odes to Chaos | October 9th |
| Æþelruna | Risci Bita Wudu | October 10th |
| Embrace of Thorns | Entropy Dynamics | October 10th |
| Congenital Anomalies | Systematic Violence | October 10th |
| Sympuls-e | Immensity | October 10th |
| Infiltration | Extinct | October 10th |
| Ius | Das graue Heer | October 10th |
| Dorchadas | Aon | October 10th |
| Abhor / Nuclear Anticristo | Sadomasoquismo... | October 10th |
20 years!

That's how long this site has been around. Do you feel old yet? Or are you among those of our users who were not even born then?
In early July of 2002, HellBlazer and I put this site online on the public Internet, but almost no one knew about it yet. With the help of a few friends (and some of their own friends), we went about to test the platform and started adding data, with the first band page being Amorphis, added on July 7th. Why Amorphis, we are often asked? I have no idea. I was probably listening to Elegy at the time or something. Or I looked around and saw an Amorphis CD lying around. Or maybe not, I honestly can't remember!
Then, on July 14th we bought the metal-archives.com domain name. Yes that's right, in the earliest, pre-launch days, the site ran on a... Tripod.co.uk URL, seeing as it was one of the rare web hosts that offered free PHP/MySQL hosting at the time. And a few days later - band addition records suggests this would be July 17th 2002 - one of our staff members decided to plug the site on a (sadly now defunct) public metal forum, and thus opened the floodgates. The contributions came pouring in quickly, the early “big push” needed towards building what quickly became the definitive heavy metal database on the Internet.
Never would I have imagined, two decades ago, that one day we would be hosting a staggering ~160k bands, or that there were even that many metal bands in existence. HellBlazer and I are constantly awed and humbled by the wealth of knowledge and information our community has gathered over the years, not to mention the wonderful attention to detail and work ethic of our tireless contributors and staff members. We could not have done it without you all, and we sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to this site, both in big and small ways.
Now, the 20 year anniversary of Metal Archiving ought to be celebrated and commemorated in some ways, and we do have some plans for that, which we will disclose shortly. Stay tuned…
For our users old and new, feel free to share your memories, anecdotes, thoughts, or other comments here or on social media.
Here’s to, I hope, several more decades!
You've probably noticed that on every band page we list the band's status. There are six options: active, on hold, split-up, unknown, changed name, and disputed. Typically, it's our policy that a band is listed as "active" unless proven otherwise (i.e. there's an official statement from the band saying that they're taking a break (thus, on hold), have changed their name (self-explanatory), or have decided to call it quits (and therefore split-up)). The "unknown" status is a placeholder, intended only to be used when there hasn't been activity from a band - even in the form of gigs and communication with fans - for a long time. The "disputed" status is for special cases involving band members claiming ownership of a band and deciding to take it in different directions - think Batushka or English Dogs.
When a band member dies, so long as there are other band members, and it's not just a solo project, do not change the band's status from "active". Wait until the band has made a statement about their plans before doing so. Just because a band member has died - even the frontman of the band - it does not necessarily mean the band is immediately over. The remaining band members may choose to keep playing, or take a break, or quit, but give them time to grieve and figure that out first. Sometimes a statement may never be given, but context is important, and we'll have a better sense of the band's status at a later point in time.
This is also true for other circumstances that might impact the lives of band members. Just because a band member may be charged with a crime and/or is incarcerated does not necessarily mean the band is automatically "on hold" or "split-up". The same is true if everyone but one person leaves a band; the band could remain active, you don't know unless the band says otherwise.
In any case, tl;dr: ideally, wait until the band makes a statement on its status before changing its status on MA.
Thank you. \m/
Greetings, all! It's almost that time of the year again - time for our classic reviews challenge!
This challenge is a time-honored tradition among our reviewers here. Every spring and autumn, reviewers are encouraged to spend a week writing and submitting as many quality reviews as possible. The challenge is focused on virgin albums: those with no reviews so far.
Every day, the reviews submitted and accepted are tallied, so that participants can see how they compare with one another and whether or not, altogether, we've been able to surpass previous challenges' totals. There's no prizes or rewards except knowing that you've given a review to an album that didn't previously have one. There's also bragging rights for the most reviews, if that matters to you. Please read this thread for the rules and to discuss the challenge!
The challenge is named in memory of our friend Diamhea, a long-time contributor to the challenge and staff member here at Metal Archives, who sadly passed away on May 21st, 2018. He was the first person to have ever written 100 reviews for a single challenge!
The challenge will start one month from now at 12:00AM EST on Monday June 6th and will run until 11:59PM EST on Sunday June 12th.
Everyone is welcome to participate - all you have to do is submit reviews as usual during that week.
Looking forward to your participation! \m/
You know, every year I think nobody will be fooled by the joke, and yet... Some of you always provide some amusement. No, we're not really getting rid of genres, that would be really silly. Happy April Fools.
If you haven't been living under a rock for the past week, you probably already heard about the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.
In these dark times, please consider donating to help with the situation over there. Every little bit can help!
Based on what we keep seeing in the band queue, I'd like to remind our contributors that approving band submissions solely based on one digital (one-track) single release is still the exception rather than the norm. I know that a previous news post on the matter states that one single can be acceptable in certain contexts (ex. with such unusual length that one might as well call it an EP; in addition to other criteria such as cover art and downloadability being met), however as a rule of thumb and for the overwhelming majority of cases there should be at least two before we'll even begin to review the submission for any other requirements. This particularly holds true if the band is playing a borderline genre, since multiple singles can offer a better picture than one, even if it is comparably lengthy, although moderators may opt to reject a submission even so if the available music so far remains ambiguous.
Also, there is no 5-minute rule.
The end of the year is nearly upon us, which means it's time for the Album of the Year poll for 2021!
How does it work? Select your top ten metal albums of the year; they have to be metal, they have to be new, original material, they have to be on MA, and they have to have been released in 2021. Put your list in order, with #1 being the album you liked the most. Once you're certain you have your list, send it to BastardHead by private message (pm) on the forum. You have until 12:00AM EST on January 1st, 2022 to submit your list to him.
You get one ballot, and your account on MA must've been registered before November 30th, 2021 in order to participate. Please read the first post here for more details on the way the poll works.
The results of the poll will (ideally) be announced on January 1st, 2022 or shortly thereafter. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the poll in the thread located here.
EDIT: Results can be found here.
Have fun, and look forward to the results. \m/
Wow, that little joke blew up, huh? Cool to see so many people enjoying the feline band pictures. So much so that our traffic more than doubled, and the server had a hard time keeping up. Sorry about the slowness!
Thanks to Black Metal Cats Twitter, sadanduseless.com, various cat pic subreddits, and many, many other random sources from Google Image Search for the material.
Happy April Fools to all, and by general demand, if you want to keep browsing MA with cats instead of humans... Now you can!
Here's a few items regarding some largely unrelated things we've noticed during the last year or so of working on the site and which either (to my knowledge) aren't explicitly addressed in the rules or may need an explicit refresher here. Nothing really major, but I feel they warrant some clarification regardless.
Over the past few months, the staff has had another look at the site's policy in regard to what constitutes a valid digital release (specifically one needed for a band to be acceptable), attempting to further minimize the arguable special treatment of physical releases relative to digital ones. Some of you may already have noticed that certain requirements have seen some loosening again considering newly approved bands, in particular when it comes to digital singles and production quality in general. We would now like to make certain things explicitly clear in this news post, highlighting two major changes.
1) Streaming-only releases are now valid, if and only if they are available through an officially sanctioned reputable distributor. This most prominently includes Spotify, but also other big outlets such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer. The list is not exhaustive and subject to expansion over time as we see fit. Youtube/Youtube Music is NOT acceptable, unless of course a download link is included in the video description. Additionally, streaming-only releases on music-promotional sites that normally/potentially do come with a download option are also not acceptable, i.e. SoundCloud, Bandcamp, ReverbNation, VKontakte, etc. Of course, downloadable releases from such sites are still valid; nothing has changed in that regard, but when it comes to streams, we want to stick to the more prominent, dedicated sites for now.
2) We have decided to become more inclusive concerning bands with only digital singles, as opposed to the previous, restrictive approach where only exceptional and multiple single releases would qualify for a select few cases. The basic requirements and guidelines are as follows: