Encyclopaedia Metallum
metal-archives.com
metal-archives.com
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
This doesn’t look like a bad thing to me.
+grim and necro
To this day I use that last one sarcastically to describe people taking themselves waay too seriously.
> A good reminder of how bad forums were
It really is still like that, only this time on Discord.
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".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeal_%26_Ardor
[1]: https://forum.metal-archives.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=129411
[0]: https://www.angrymetalguy.com/zeal-ardor-zeal-ardor-things-y...
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.
[0] https://zealandardor.bandcamp.com/track/feed-the-machine
I've spent a lot of time on MA, but boy, they can be so childishly opinionated.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even spread over 20 years, that's a lot of bands to vet!
It is fitting they ended up with Mike Portnoy.
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 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.
0 results = sad Les Claypool face.
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.
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.
Disclaimers: I love Jethro Tull, and love Dio, refuse to give Metallica any money, and am a nearly full-spectrum metalhead.
Love the site, I use it a lot.