I was thinking Delirium Veil off Twilightning’s debut. Maybe it’s just because it’s the title track, but I’ve always felt that it brings off more of a vigor than the actual opener.


Nine out of ten cases they’re useless, especially pointless ones like Lucifer in Love. But I’ll always make an exception for concept albums that use intros and outros to add to the content.

Oh here's a gripe I have with pointless intros..... Axel Rudi Pell does a hella cool ~1 minute long symphonic intro on like every single album, and there is never any music like that at all throughout the entire album, every album. I really wish he'd make these symphonic intros into full songs.

let the battle commence is track #6 on hell's human remains - the album starts off fine as it is, but this always felt weird to me; at least they had the good sense to open gigs with it

I can see where you're coming from it's got that big kind of "Welcome motherfuckers!" energy at the start. But where would you then put 'Anywhere in the Galaxy' on the album? That seems like an extremely attention-grabbing opener to me too. I remember when reviewing Power Plant that I was struggling to put my finger on why that album isn't as good as some of Gamma Ray's other releases from a similar time, and I basically thought it came down to the tracks being somewhat interchangeable. Except for maybe 'Short as Hell', you could just shuffle that tracklist and end up with a similar result.

Actually, this can be quite a broad question with different opinions+many examples, and there were even a few threads about it on MA
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=105440&hilit=intros
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=128797&hilit=intros

I think some intros are good and can work quite well, but for me, it always works better when the "intro" is integrated into a longer opening song (especially if it's a concept album that creates a certain atmosphere) - for example, softer and more atmospheric or mostly/fully instrumental first parts of the songs like "Yearning the Seeds of a New Dimension" by In the Woods..., or "Akva" by Kauan, or "Shores in Flames" by Bathory are one of my favorites and work perfectly as 'intros' on those albums for me.
I think the beginning of Esoteric's ''Creation (Through destruction)'' can also be a good example of it.

Here's another one: does metal truly cover Nordic mythology/themes more than others, or does that just show I'm listening to the wrong bands?

Intros and outros work best when they have a thematic purpose on the album. Absu's Tara has the bagpipes as bookends. Summoning's Stronghold begins with Rhûn, the melody of which is reprised in the end of the last song. Urfaust's Compilation of Intoxications compilation (how's that for tautology?) has an exclusive intro which is actually the synth part of the end of the final track. Love it when intros and outros tie the whole thing together like the rug in The Dude's room.

I mean... That acoustic intro on Annihilation of the Wicked is pretty freaking awesome. Gets you prepared for the impending brutality. One of my favorite albums anyways, so I could be biased.

My favorite intros are the ones that are essentially extensions of the *real* opening song in the Hellion/Electric Eye, Gothic Stone/Well of Souls, etc. sorta mold. That's what we were aiming for with the intro on the last Lavaborne album. Going along with DoomMetalAlchemist's comment, intros/outros that are a different genre than the actual songs just trip me up more often than not.

Could be because I don’t listen to too many albums with them, but I’ve never had a problem with intros, outros, or even interludes. Exceptions that come to mind are the bass solos on Manowar’s first, third, and fourth albums. “Sting of the Bumblebee” is retarded enough to work imo. Carnivore’s “Jack Daniels and Pizza” is another one I always skip, brings back too many horrible memories!

Generally speaking, though, if a band is competent enough to record a good album, the intros or whatever the put in with it tend to follow suit.

Intros, outros and interludes are very much "hit or miss" for me. There's hardly ever anything that falls in-between. It either fits very well with the music, or is just distracting and superfluous.

They are pretty much the only tracks I ever skip on an album that I otherwise enjoy. A good example of an intro track I almost systematically skip is Death to Birth on the otherwise perfect album Altered Genesis by Blood Red Throne. It's a full 2 minutes and 41 seconds of people "screaming in agony" with babies crying and whatnot. It's edgy teenage stuff that doesn't add anything to the music, as the music itself is brutal enough with a production that already conveys the tone. Strangely enough, I love the Le chant des anges de la mort, intro to Balrog's album Ars Talionis. Which is made up of screaming, but this time by the band's vocalist, and it's supposed to represent the "chanting" of death angels. And here, it actually works very well for me.

Others have said that intros work well when they are basically an extension of the first actual songs, and I also agree with this. Candlemass on Nightfall actually does that well.

I also like the more symphonic intros when they are done for conceptual albums, like Symphony X did on The New Mythology Suite.

Intros, outros and especially interludes can become quite annoying when they are used in excess. Pestilence on Testimony of the Ancients is a prime example of overdoing it. The album has no less then 7 of them. When I first got into the record, and through my maybe 10 to 20 first listens, I didn't mind them. But nowadays I find them mostly tiring and useless.

Probably the worst for perfunctory intros is thrash imo. Very rarely do those add anything to the albums they're on. I feel like Metallica was basically the only band to do them well.

Honestly, I skip all intros.

Most intro tracks don't really bother me unless they're excessively long, though albums with lots of interludes can get annoying. One of my favourite albums ever, Operation: Mindcrime, is filled with interludes though and it still rules.

I tend to hate interludes but I ended up loving Necros Christos, they would not be the same without them.

Interludes and intros are very case-by-case for me. Sometimes they add a lot, sometimes they're just filler that feels pointless. I prefer the kind of intro that segues into the first track in a way that makes sense.

Nice username lol

What thing from your younger years you regret not doing because you were "metal"?

Haha, this will definitely be useful material for me. Looking forward to the responses.

Honestly, um... nothing. I have no real regrets about missing out on things other kids were doing, and I highly suspect that even if I weren't into metal I wouldn't have any interest in the stuff they were doing either. Even now, people will show me stuff and bring me to places (clubs, parties, etc.) and it's like "damn, was this really what I was missing out on?" and feel even more vindication for my past choices. Weirdly enough, it's the same feeling I get at metal shows, which is why I don't go to them much.

I wish I'd been more open-minded to what my family and girlfriends were listening to back in the mid-2000s. I obviously still wouldn't have liked everything from that era but it would've been nice if I had let myself have those connections and not dismissed them outright. I mean, My Chemical Romance held up surprisingly well for starters.

There were also a bunch of bands that I either didn't give a proper chance or avoided checking out due to perceptions of them playing "hipster metal" or being otherwise "ironic" about things that I took way too goddamn personally at the time. I certainly came around on bands like The Sword and 3 Inches of Blood in adulthood, but it would've been nice to have made those moments in their prime.

Basically I just needed to stop drinking the mid-2000s Metal Archives Kool Aid and ask myself who the hell I was trying to impress.

Can someone please direct me to a place where all of the lore behind Iron Savior's work is written down?

What does "double bass" mean?

When you have two pedals, hitting the one bass drum, or two bass drums. Pretty much any beat with quadruple time on the bass drums(1/16th notes). Dave Lombardo says that you should always have two bass drums, even when you’re not playing at really insane speeds, because the drum is still vibrating, when the other pedal hits it, and he says it doesn’t sound as good, because it hits it differently.

Besides double bass drums, "double bass" can also refer to the large string instrument.

Nothing I can think of. I did plenty of un-metal things when I was younger, from occasionally going to clubs and dance parties to singing in a choir and frequently performing in churches. If anything, I am arguably more "metal" now at 42 than I was at 22, since I don't do any of the aforementioned things anymore. If there are some things I regret not doing, being "metal" was not the reason in the least for those.

One random ass band no one knows about and... Mastodon?

On a serious note; the problem with progressive metal that it's a tag that has become associated with way too many different bands and whatnot. Personally, I'm fine with my 90's style of prog (think of the bands that were, to a certain extend, a bit easier to connect with USPM) and most importantly: were clearly about riffs.

Dating.

Showering, mostly.

Listening to other types of music, for sure.

I accidentally posted this in the Unpopular Opinions megathread, but here it is anyways:

I wonder why despite being one of the main subgenres, there are so few folk metal bands in the Archives; only 2,260 registered bands (about 3,400 if you count viking and pagan metal). Stoner metal, gothic metal, and metalcore all have between 4,000 and 5,000 in this site. I wonder if it's because it's a rather specific gimmick, or if it's because the MA definitions have disregarded several bands for lack of riffs.

Also I just want to follow up on my previous post here regarding Florida's relatively low concentration of metal bands compared to other US states.

Demos. In this day and age, what does "demo" actually mean?

In the past, demo meant "demonstration" and thus they were usually comprised of songs that would later - upon label signing or gaining funds or bandmembers - be recorded again in better versions. Sometimes they were "unproduced" or certainly unmastered tapes only designed to be sent out for promotional purposes.

But now, you can make a reasonable sounding album using software, probably by yourself. Artists don't require a label for promotion. So how do we distinguish between a demo and other kinds of recording, especially when they are released (usually online, but also on various formats) just as officially as EPs or albums?

Both guesses are true, but the bolded part is probably more pertinent because a lot of bands of this ilk that were submitted in the very early days of the site did get purged several years ago. I know there's an actual term but I think it's German and I can never remember it, but I call it "Wacken Metal". Subway to Sally, In Extremo, that sort of sound. There were a few dozen bands with huge discographies that poor Azmodes had to listen to in full over the course of what probably felt like a lifetime to determine if they were actually eligible and a lot of them didn't make the cut.

Obviously those few dozen bands wouldn't have bridged the gap between folk metal and metalcore but it does highlight how it's also a hybrid genre which means almost by definition it's going to have half the amount of possible bands logged here.

I remember Slough Feg used to have a genre tag of like, folk/power/doom or something, until I told them to change it to just straight heavy metal which was way more accurate. Genres can be fickle things...

Maybe someone who was in the scene back in the 80s thinks differently, but I'm not sure there's much of a functional difference between a demo and an EP released before the first full-length, just that they tended to be more raw originally, but even that distinction didn't last all that long.

There is this "Mittelalter Metal" (Medieval metal) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_metal - term. Is this it? Or was it something even more specific? Something in the vein of that strange term "Neue Deutsche Härte"?

Does anyone know where to find the demo for the band Morbicus (Death/Doom from the United Kingdom)?

I just rembered one such thing yesterday: not moving further away from the amplifiers at an Overkill gig. Resulted in a minor yet permanent damage in my right ear.

Definitely this. I wouldn't permit myself even dark alternative rock until 17 or so.

About the album "Necrotism: Descanting the Insalubrious" by Carcass. Do you guys think it is correct to label it as progressive death metal? I've had this doubt many times because of the way the songs use odd structures and atypical rhythm changes to make songs longer than usual and that are quite far away from the classic songwriting canon.