older version:
http://www.metal-archives.com/board/vie ... hp?t=54760

1968-2009







Changes:
especially the thrash scene had a lot of newly added stuff in the early days.
a doom trend?

data: (2010-01-01)
-> releases per year; just in case someone was wondering.
terms: black, death, thrash etc. (kept it very minimalist and especially the thrash genre benefited from this)


Please keep in mind that this are no exact results, but merely some sort of evolution based on the MA-database. There are double entries etc... so, it is nothing you could use for a scientific analyses; at least not in the current state.

Nevertheless, the results are interesting and reflect the evolution of the metal genre quite well. Remember, the 2009 results are those with the highest inaccuracies!

bands per month:


The major metal countries:
http://i45.tinypic.com/x0o9c1.png

I just got out of a boardroom meeting a couple days ago with charts and graphs and I didn't think I'd see one about metal. If you look in the Recommendation Central forum, about 7 out of every 10 threads regard black metal so that lead me to believe that genre is the most popular or becoming so among real metalheads. death metal is dying because it's being supplanted by a movement with "real teeth" i.e. tangible notoreity with politics and church burnings. More extreme.

Heavy metal is the most popular genre and yet it doesn't have too many bands.

Oh well. I can flatter my tastes and say it's because it requires more skill.

Seriously though, it is a bit weird and interesting. I'm also surprised power has so much. Singers capable of pulling off the style are hard to come by.

Someone needs to resuscitate the NWOBHM!

That's actually a flaw in this graph. All the NWOBHM should go under heavy.

I split the graphs up into two. Yes, heavy metal appears twice ... I just saw this as well ... :/

and Heavy Metal is the evil genre:
1996 - 666 releases

Actually, it's nice having it in both, so as to "size up" how much smaller the gothic, folk, power metal etc genres are compared to the bigger ones - plus, since pure heavy metal is where it all started, it's nice to use it as the "base line" of everything else in the graphs.

----------------
Now playing: Thrawsunblat - Slake the Earth

^ you have a point there.

This is the country graph:


Again ... the 2009 data are the ones most uncertain and they are most likely to show a significant increase.

hmm the difference from last year is actually tiny.

The downward trend is visible, someone said that was due to by far most bands not having been added but this makes me doubt that.

What i do notice is a doom trend, there are shitloads of new doom bands forming.

http://www.metal-archives.com/board/vie ... hp?t=44366
I once did this hypothesis, but people tried to convince me otherwise. The trend is clear and becomes more and more visible, which is a shame, but this is the data we can extract from the database.
The doom genre has, compared to the other genres, only a small decrease; which is not bad.

I hope that the V2-version of the software comes with a better database access, so that we are able to calculate the rise and fall of the scenes per country.

No Australia there? We do exist, you know.
I thought in terms of bands, we'd at least come close to Italy.

According to the database Italy has 3850 bands, Australia being stuck at 1287. There are a couple of countries in between too.

yeah, we ain't shit compared to a lot of european countries.

Incidentally, would it be possible for some xcel wiz to get, say, the top 20 countries in terms of bands and do a "bands per capita" sort of graph? Would be interesting to see just how much Finland beats the rest of the world...

Barely.



When in Rome...

Based on this post and the OzzyApu imitating name, you just know Mr.Lemmy here is going to be a "great" contributor to the MA forum

LemmyApu??
I can imagine Ozzy with an extremely smug look on his face right now.
Who knew he had so many fans?

I can't imagine him with any other sort of expression...

exactly ... I tried to focus on the major scenes, because otherwise it would have been impossible -- left a lone a very time consuming task -- to cover all scenes.


The ideal thing would be a progression of per capita per year, but where to get the data? This way you would be able to see the penetration of a music scene with the metal virus.

Yeah. Surprised (just had a look then) that there's no "year formed" thing for bands. There is for releases though.. Which might give just as good an indication.

Country löist with Australia:

well, the bottom part looks less abandoned now

On the bright side, we've got nowhere to go but up

Yeah but it's going to be a good number of years before you do.

i dont believe this graphs , there is aloot of paradox there and makes no logic comparing with the real status !!
why france , italy and brazil are up than finland ?? this is quesonable
norway ??? cant see norway out there ... half of fans are fans of black , black is norwegian and still dosent show up in top 7 ..weird

about genres , should pagan metal get more attention ...i dont think is a sub genre anymore ... progressive dosent show up ? ...i dont see this as a real trustful status to be a guide ..makes no logic

maybe the reason is that in previous year most bands hadnt been signed yet thus they released demos and as demos do get released more frequently.

I wonder what the result would be without demo's, comp's etc and just full lengths and ep's.

Thanks for sharing the data.

My gibberish:
Doom metal should remain one of the least inactive genres, or it will loose its luster.

Since when is death metal more associated with church burnings and notoriety than black metal?

*raises eyebrow* Are you indeed suggesting that Doom Metal ought to be shiny? lol

Graphs are interesting. Since I like funeral doom more than most genres, I figured I would try to see what its graph would look like, starting from 1991... only I was too lazy to fire up Windows Paint and make a graph, so here are the numbers (of genres with the word "funeral" in it):

1991: 4 Debut of Thergothon, Mordor, Voj and Funeral Doom genre
1992: 3 Debut of Skepticism, Unburied
1993: 5 Debut of Funeral (Nor), Esoteric, Ysigim
1994: 10 Debut of Evoken, Mournful Congregation, Rigor Sardonicus
1995: 7 Debut of Zaraza
1996: 3 Debut of Despond, predecessor to Monolithe
1997: 8 Debut of Nortt and the Black / Funeral Doom genre
1998: 11 Debut of pre-Shape of Despair band Raven
1999: 15 Debut of Worship
2000: 11 Debut of Asunder, Stijn Van Cauter (UDOM)
2001: 16 Debut of Pantheist, Stabat Mater, Wormphlegm
2002: 25 Point of logarithmic explosion of Funeral Doom
2003: 43 Debut of a large number of bands
2004: 79 Debut of Remembrance, Mistress of the Dead
2005: 81 The Monad of Creation is released, best funeral doom album
2006: 100 Peak of Funeral Doom, debut of more bands
2007: 90 Debut of even more bands
2008: 98 Debut of still more bands
2009: 93 Funeral Doom still going strong

----

So, now, I was curious about a related genre, drone doom, and how the numbers would compare with funeral doom.

1990: 1 Debut of Earth
1991: 4
1992: 0
1993: 2 Debut of Boris
1994: 1
1995: 2 Debut of Stephen O'Malley's work (as Thorr's Hammer)
1996: 7 Debut of Burning Witch
1997: 6
1998: 8
1999: 14 Debut of 5/5/2000 and Sunn O)))
2000: 13 Debut of Stijn Van Cauter
2001: 20 Debut of 5ive, Khanate, Moss, Pelican, Ox
2002: 28 Debut of Bunkur, Nadja, Otesanek
2003: 49 Debut of Black Boned Angel
2004: 83 Caspian joins the Metal Archives, starts reviewing drone bands
2005: 135 Nadja and Boris release a ton of releases in same year.
2006: 102 Drone drops because Nadja doesn't release anything
2007: 105 Nadja is back, Nadja fans are happy
2008: 128 Nadja pleases fans more by releasing more than last year.
2009: 133

So drone bands, recently, beat funeral doom because they tend to release a lot of stuff per year. Also, it seems drone is a genre that avoids the 2009 dip that seems to be ubiquitous with all of oneyoudontknow's graphs.

Now, I wonder what these graphs will look like in say, 5 years. More bands will be added, padding up the past few years... will there still be a noticable dip? Will the peak still be 2006 or 2007?

What about 100 years? Will there be several peaks and valleys of metal?

Read it again. I was referring to bm, genius.

because it is this way ... feel free to check the data. And you are wrong in your perception. Usa, Germany, Italy, Finland ... at least in 2009. There is a lot of fluctuation in these data over time. Finland has a high ratio of releases per capita, but over the whole period by no means a dominating role; they are/were on a higher level, but so are/were others.


Norway is in terms of the data even below Australia. Around 200 releases per year at max.
Pagan is below speed and above NWoBHM... [s]but progressive might be something I should add[/s].

Ah ... I forgot about this thing ... drone, well, it is a genre I do not care about much here, so it skipped a bit my notice. Well, these graphs are not exact, because you have split albums included, which push the graphs up a bit, then there is the problem of inaccuracies of the genre itself; they are assigned to a band and not a release.
I started this thing in 2008 and the progression since has not been reversed, so there seems to be at least some sort of a 'settling'... the rush after the rise of the internet seems to have calmed down a bit.
Certainly ... a bit far off in the future, but something like that should be likely.

On a second thought:
What progressive? prog metal? prog death? prog grind? Prog black? Prog metalcore? Would be interesting for a separate graph, but a lot of work to get this done right. This stuff is included in the other graphs already in some respect.

France, Italy and Brazil are higher than Finland because of one simple fact: All three have a lot more people in them and at least the latter two are almost as crazy about metal as we are. Norway, while a big source for black metal way back when, is not a big metal country these days anymore. And there's the population question again, theirs is even smaller than ours.

I'd take this graph as a lot more trustful source than one man's own conclusions.

they give some interesting insights, especially on the progression of the scenes. Genres per release would result is better graphs and make these more exact.