While this is a great resource as many have said, god were the forums such a fucking groupthinking, insular scene. The same goes for being so particular about what is metal and what isn't, with long debates (at the time) for who was tr00 or kvlt or not with mods who were on a powertrip.
A good reminder of how bad forums were and how there were things about them that were better than the current web, it's not like it was all perfect.
I disagree. They were such a great door into escapism and friendship for me, a standard guy from a small town in Italy with no metal friends at all until the internet came about.
Forums in particular provided the opportunity of meeting people with very different backgrounds sharing similar music tastes, and it was also fun to argue about silly things like what is true and not true metal and getting banned by mods.
I built amazing memories of road trips together, motorcycles, seeing bands and meeting each other somewhere basically every weekend.
Not to say that what you experienced is not true, but it’s not the case for every forum out there for sure.
Also, what made metalheads special was their status as a total outcasts of society, of course we were very much an insular culture. I miss the group spirit, the “family” side of all of this amazing subculture.
May be a good rule for what determines how someone can enjoy things like small groups is how physical it is. For me, MA was an online-only thing I found through my love of metal, almost no one I knew loved metal, most who listened to rock-ish music at all loved the *-core brand of music (which was popular in the late 00s) which I specifically didn't like. In terms of chances to actually branch out and see bands (and perhaps meet other metal heads at the time) I couldn't as I a) couldn't drive and b) lived in America in the bible belt.
Finding randoms who become actual meatspace friends probably makes it a little better, if anything, it lessens how insular you are when you have to be actually outside with others who aren't part of your group.
Id say that the well-kept gates of forums was a feature and the thing I miss most. The current web is like, "oh a communication platform, everyone should be here, how can we optimize for everyone (no-one)"
Fora on the old web tended to be nominally devoted to a topic, but each had a massively thriving "Off-Topic", "General Discussion", or "Random" board where the overarching theme of the forum served more as a background ambience.
The userbase was small enough that one "knew" the different personalities, and membership in a forum felt more substantial than on big platforms like Reddit or Twitter, where you either become a microceleb or you're just a fly on the wall of the dead internet (maybe even both). Moderation was less formal, and since mods got to know users fairly well, even an egregious rule violation could be forgiven if you emailed them to apologize. You'd even have high-quality trolls who became accepted as court jesters. And since there was a lot more fragmentation and a lot less overlap in moderation, you'd be more comfortable holding your tongue in a particular setting since you had other outlets for speaking your mind on verboten topics (and usually those topics were better-defined, though power-tripping mods would still interpret and apply the rules creatively).
I like a lot about the fediverse, but I don't think it can recapture that experience. I might just be old and curmudgeonly though.
Reddit's /r/punk subreddit is a good example of this - it has almost nothing to do with music and is instead just a general Redditor meme dump that vaguely links to "alt" viewpoints.
I like to think of it as a finely curated list. Their tastes have always aligned well with mine. Is that insular? Oh well. There's still far too much excellent music already available and being produced than I can ever hope to listen to.
I have no idea about the forums. Never ventured there. It's not the true value of the site but if it encourages maintaining the database then great!
That's fair. The list, as it is, is great. While they are a bit too stringent on their dividing lines, the content itself is great. My issue was with the forums which I posted on a lot in the late 00s.
Insular, sure - everything is an island if you zoom out far enough though.
I don't know about groupthinking though - there's plenty of subgenres within metal. Old school heavy metal (e.g. Iron Maiden) is very different from black metal for example, and the fanbases are far from completely overlapping.
I remember a guy freaking out in the forums when his band got some integer id that he did not want, he tried to remove his band completely. It was hilarious.
curiosity... did the guy who freaked out learn about what was happening on the site?
I mean: did he freak out in the forum of the site or in real life? (without knowing what was happening on the site)
Good reminder that modern social networks being hivemind groupthink breeding grounds is hardly a new thing, and basically how all these message boards operate as people have always sought out like minded individuals for validation.
I have no problema with the riffing argument they have.
I do weekly updates yo muy library finding new albums and bands all the time that are just forgettable "guitar-noise".
Metal has come through some dark periods where every new band seemed like a rip-off of another well established band, and for some, innovating in metal is just making noise.
Some of it is quite creative, actually, like Igorrr, but other Like Z&A is too varied.
Sometimes it annoys me not finding some pseudo-metal band I discover but I don't have a grudge with them even though I've been called out for being a corpse meddler in the forums (reviving very old posts).
There's another database, Spirit of Metal, I think, that isn't that picky. But for what MA is, I salute their stand, especially through times where we might see Miley Cyrus or any other pseudo-artist identify as a metal act and to be "included".
It is so painful to be reminded of a bygone era and how awesome it was. It didn’t matter if it was metal, cars, photography, whatever - there was a niche community for you. And it was amazing. Most that still exist are ghost towns. It’s like driving through a gutted midsize midwestern town that used to have manufacturing and industry, and now all they have is walmart and meth.
As someone who's used Metallic for ~15 years now it's one of those rare gems on the web — stable, basically unchanged technically and full of invaluable information for the loyal audience it's accumulated.
Metalium is really a fantastic resource and this is despite how gatekeep-y the people that run/maintain that site can be. The laundry list of bands they exclude because they deem them "not metal enough" is regularly baffling.
Totally crazy. Zeal&Ardor is metal, the mental aerobics of the mods are very impressive. I guess like all mods - with few exceptions - they are on a power trip.
I was only recently introduced to them by this song [0] and I was like 'hmm, yeah, maybe not really my thing'. Until the 9 second mark where I was proven completely wrong because that stuff is a prime example of this overwhelming 'it felt like satan came to me'-style which I really like and makes me smile like a posessed maniac, claws raised towards the dark heavens. Moreover it is also so well-executed, riffs/drums/lyrics all fit, and it's done quite a lot better than a myriad of other bands which try to do this but simply pale in comparison to Z&A.
So, to then read comments where people are debating whether there's enough metal elements to be included is some list, just makes one realize that the common trap of black&white for many aspects in life just isn't worth it.
I think there were some arguments to be made based on Z&A's first two albums, but the third is unquestionably a mostly-metal album. The dismissal with no details beyond "this ain't it chief" is particularly maddening.
Their first album also includes guest vocals from hardcore punk musicians.
The general EM argument is that they are adding black metal elements to music that is fundamentally hard rock and/or punk.
It ends up being arbitrary, but I think the underlying desire makes sense - at some point, things go from being metal to being something else with metal elements. They aren't an encyclopaedia for music with metal elements, they're an encyclopaedia for metal music.
They exclude pretty much every industrial metal band because industrial metal is ostensibly not metal enough.
No Rob Zombie. No Rammstein.
Meanwhile, they added psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and their whole discography (now up to 24 albums) solely because their 15th album was metal.
I love King Gizz, but Metal Archives are disappointingly inconsistent.
I dunno. There's a lot of stuff I would put on EM that they have decided not to allow, but I think Rob Zombie and Rammstein very clearly fall into the 'not metal' camp. I like both, but neither of them sound anything like metal to me, or to anyone I know that listens to metal in significant quantities.
It's not like industrial is an instant deny, either - Fear Factory, Blut Aus Nord, Strapping Young Lad, etc etc etc are included.
As for King Gizz, their rules are quite clear that one predominantly metal album is enough for inclusion.
That's weird, I don't know anyone who wouldn't call Rammstein and Rob Zombie metal. Are they really not considered metal in some circles?
Just curious, if they don't sound anything like metal to you, what kind of metal do you like to listen to? I mostly listen to doom metal, plus a little bit of death metal, industrial metal, and black metal.
I still remember when they got to 10k bands. I think this must have been around 2003-2004. And people were speculating about whether there where another 10k metal bands in the world. Crazy.
The exclusions such as Avenged Sevenfold are indeed baffling, but some of the asterisks are so hilarious, I think there was a facebook page collecting them at one point. Stuff like "Meshuggah is Djent which isn't metal (???), but the band will be included based on their earlier work which we consider to be technical thrash/groove metal".
> gatekeep-y the people that run/maintain that site can be
I think it is just because people are getting old and tastes stop changing after a certain age.
I'm getting up there in age and I think my taste in music ended somewhere in the mid-2000s. Everything past that point sounds like screamo, djent, Hatebreed copy cats, or screechy noise core.
> I think it is just because people are getting old and tastes stop changing after a certain age.
I started with 70s-80s British heavy metal when I was 14, and in the past 20 years my music tastes have only been expanding. Most people I hang out with also tend to be curious about new (unfamiliar to them) music.
I was enjoying the idea until I got to the rules. This gatekeeping is too much for my taste. There are so many good metal sub-genres, who are they to draw a line?
>There are so many good metal sub-genres, who are they to draw a line?
They explicitly state they are not the ultimate arbiters of what is and isn't metal, but they have a mission for the site and have to draw the line somewhere, and that's what they picked.
But as for who they are to draw the line... they're the team that has built one of the largest and most informative databases of metal acts of all time. It's incomplete, it's arbitrary, it's subjective and biased, but even with all of that, it's indisputably something they should be monumentally proud of building.
Man, all these comments from folks who've discovered this site in their youth many many years ago makes me feel old... because I remember when that site was first started.
I was a member of the metal-rules.com forums (RIP) and the founders of Metal Archives came from there. Many hours of my misspent youth were wasted arguing with the people on those forums, now all gone. Back then metal-rules was THE place to talk about metal on the internet, and MA was an upstart who almost nobody knew about.
Probably the most important research resource for any underground metal fan. The settler of many arguments. The ability to follow links from band members to their other projects is incredible, like an internet version of looking at the shout-outs in album liner notes for mentioned bands as hints at who to check out next.
This is how many people have used Discogs.com . You can drill-down into the individual artists which make up a band/collective and see who else they work with or share a label with.
I love this site. I first browsed it ~15 years ago and it has barely changed ever since. It's a good example of how far a simple design can get you if your data model is good.
I have used Metallum for years, and love how intuitive and user-friendly it feels. The design is oddly cozy, has no ads (I guess?), and gives you the feeling of being in an infinitely deep library of dark magic and forgotten knowledge
Amazing to see M-A posted here. Spent way too many hours in my youth scouring the internet for things I could add and correct. I still have an ancient account with full edit access, frequently make changes on behalf of people in my local scene because "request a change" as become fairly unresponsive on account on the insane size of the site.
I was amazed it hadn't been posted here before this. Also amazed I hadn't run across it until yesterday, when I was rabbit-holing a graphic design meme. I lean prog, post, math and psychedelic, so I guess this was always just off the edge of my radar.
While I agree that they're not terribly encyclopedic, I don't know if we should use the Academy for their categorical skills, considering the first Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance was awarded to Jethro Tull, who beat out Metallica.
Disclaimers: I love Jethro Tull, and love Dio, refuse to give Metallica any money, and am a nearly full-spectrum metalhead.
This site is indispensable. I only wish the mobile experience were better. I need to look up bands comfortably on the go! There was a 3rd party Android app but it stopped working about 10 years ago..
A good reminder of how bad forums were and how there were things about them that were better than the current web, it's not like it was all perfect.