kalervon's profile

I don't have a metal collection; I just have a bunch of CDs and a few vinyls and cassettes which are from bands that are featured in the Metal Archives. The majority of music recordings which I own are definitely metal, and then there are some who are borderline metal. I used to own a bunch of tapes which I didn't necessarily all replace with CDs as tapes disappeared. Some of my favorite albums I never owned until recently or ever: I discovered them as copied tapes or CDs copied on tapes. A few even I discovered on MP3 only.. Generally speaking, if I like a band that I dscovered in a way that was completely free for me, I'll buy something off them online, usually rare tracks that I don't own, or better quality tracks as mp3s, or even a full CD. I feel like encouraging financially all bands that provide me some pleasure. And of course I'll go see bands live if they happen to come by.

I pretty much stopped listening to metal by 1999, for various reasons, but in short, I felt that nu-metal wasn't my thing and anything else that came out seemed repetitive to me. I gradually recovered, but mostly by catching up with bands of which I was already a fan (with some exceptions). I consider myself out of touch with metal and mostly a fan of mainstream metal. I can discuss on and on about Savatage, Helloween, Queensrÿche, and non-metal bands such as Scorpions, Deep Purple, Rainbow, etc.

I'm not as much into music as into bands and albums and songs. I like the holistic aspect of music, not just its musical component, though with years I started to have a better ear to break down what happens musically in a song. Until my twenties I mostly paid attention to the vocal melody and some outstanding guitar solos. It gradually changed. But it's usually the sum, the whole package, which gets me. I'm not into those talented avantgarde bands unless they create something that altogether moves me.

I contribute to this website because I feel that, generally, there should be databases about everything that happens, especially things that happened before the internet existed, in particular things that were published or crafted. I think the internet is great because it gives us access to things that existed before the internet existed but weren't readily accessible back then.

I see this website as the IMDB of metal. Discogs is way too loosely organised, too many free fields; whereas I liked MA's data model ever since I discovered it in 2012. It got even better since. I believe other music genres should have a website like this and eventually they should all be linked, but I'll content myself with metal for now.

Things aren't fun until they are serious, and nothing is ever tedious when it comes to entering data about stuff. I enjoy entering barcodes and different album versions when I own them (I'm not going to chase something on discogs that someone may have poorly entered); but my greatest level of satisfaction on this site is adding a band that is either new or that people overlooked, followed closely by identifying duplicates (artists mainly). The links between various bands in metal are very interesting and I get a kick to see that one guy mastered about 200 albums by different bands which otherwise have no link between each other. The less duplicates you have the more links you will see.

If I had to define myself I'd call myself a Data Grooming specialist.