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Map of Metal

mapofmetal.com

449 pointsrobin_reala192 comments

Didn't expect to see something I made on HN while my wife is trying to find something to watch on TV.

So about the site in case anyone is interested. I made it with a friend who was studying multimedia. He helped with the data and I did the coding. Took about a week or two.

The site was originally Flash (remember that). But I ported it to HTML5 a few years ago. It still has those Flash vibes I think. Posted the code to GitHub when I ported it. I did this mostly to keep it alive for old times sake.

So about the mobile support. I planned to do it but got sidetracked building a custom WebGL map renderer because phone performance was poor. However I never finished, life finds a way to get in the way and all that... I have some mobile designs lying around.

The other issue was when I first built the site YouTube didn't really play ads much at all, just those little text ads, and you could embed the player really tiny. So it worked better. In the original flash version I actually hid the video player. But that got the site blacklisted from YouTube, I asked a Google engineer on a dev forum to put a word in and they removed the block, very different times, this was back when Google was a different beast, and you could chat to real people online and the dev communities were much smaller.

I have a illustration of a much bigger map in my sketchbook. It has a lot more subgenres and interconnected things like historical events and so on. But it's huge unfolded, like 2x1.5m or something ridiculous.

I miss those days when the web was full of weird and experimental stuff. I grew up with Newgrounds and Geocities, I'm sure it's all still out there buried under a giant pile of SEO optimised refuse.

Absolutely fantastic project! I completely understand you've got other things going on, but for me on Firefox mobile, I'm seeing a YouTube pop-up window for Black Sabbath and I don't see any obvious way to close it.

Sorry about that. Its definitely a desktop kinda experience anyway.

If you switch to the desktop version in the menu it works fine

Thanks so much for this write up. It’s not often thought of that when you put something weird and experimental online just for fun that you’re signing up for years of careing and feeding. But that’s also kind of nice, it makes you go engage with your cool thing long after your impulse drove you to make it.

This is a cool thing. I hope you enjoyed remembering about it again today.

Very nice! As soon as I saw the landing page and the loading/start button I immediately thought of Flash.

Very awesome. Thanks for sharing and for making this. Reminds me of the Metal Evolution documentary by BangerTV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmiqVYZHTIQ&list=PLgzW3ulw6T...

Any chance to get a high resolution photo of the sketchbook version? Would love to also have a look at that :)

Source code repository: https://github.com/patrickgalbraith/mapofmetal.

> It still has those Flash vibes I think.

I can say I noticed. I wondered if the site had been Flash.

I see you chose the superior version of 43% Burnt by Dillinger. It blows my mind that he never became the new vocalist.

Younger people would never understand how amazing the internet was back in the 90s. Particularly before ads and SEO became an industry.

Also Flash, most people don't realize what we lost with Flash. The amount of non-professional multimedia content available was so great. It was a cooking ground for people to experiment with animation ideas. Very low hanging fruit.

HTML5/Canvas/CSS just don't have that accessibility.

Now the internet is a complete different beast. There are 10 main websites that everyone sees only, and everyone wants to monetize. All content is full of "antipatterns" to maximize monetization. It's very very sad.

Aaaanyway, sorry for the rant. I love your website. I'm a Metalhead myself, and this year I'll go back to Wacken for a 2nd time after 15 years!!

You can sort of get that old-internet vibe today from the I2P network.

> Younger people would never understand how amazing the internet was back in the 90s. Particularly before ads and SEO became an industry.

I don’t even think they’d value it to be honest. The culture of putting stuff out online now is to view everything as a potential revenue stream. If you can’t monetize it, why do it?

Amen! The only things that made the early web bad by comparison were popup ads and the lack of tabbed browsing. Popup windows that didn't rely on user interaction were always a bad idea and should never have existed. But besides that, yeah, I miss those days. I miss the days when I was a kid and I could stick some HTML on a server and people would actually find it. No SEO, ads, or shameless self promotion required.

> popup ads

Have you open any US news website in 5 years? Usually there are 2 or 3 layers of popups: subscribe!, cookies box, and news video stream playing on top of everything.

Modals rendered in the DOM are less bad than full blown windows that clutter up your taskbar and automatically play audio.

Lack of tabbed browsing? Opera begs to differ.

With LLM's, I wonder how far away we are from "a cooking ground for people to experiment with ideas"

Getting further all the time; with LLMs you're offloading all of your experimenting to VC jerks

Let's go back to a websiiiiite!

https://homestarrunner.com/toons/backtoawebsite

Seriously. EVERY game style that is now on the app store with ads between levels was completely free and hosted on sites like kongregate, ebaumsworld, or other flash game sites. Incremental games specifically were available in droves. It was a pretty cool time.

You’re the man now, dog!

> Now the internet is a complete different beast. There are 10 main websites that everyone sees only, and everyone wants to monetize. All content is full of "antipatterns" to maximize monetization. It's very very sad.

This was going to happen regardless of if we had Flash or not

Creativity is still there, it's just on other platforms and / or through other media besides the web - tiktok, youtube, roblox, podcasts, fanfiction, art sites, etc.

It's still there, but you have to look AND be interested in it. Many of us were only interested in e.g. newgrounds and ignored deviantart. Many of a younger generation are only interested in e.g. tiktok and ignore tumblr.

Overall, I think it's fine, and / or the kids are alright.

Very cool. Explored a lot of nodes, rekindled some old bands. I was wondering how this was vibe coded, since it was done so well, art wise. Then I read your post. This has such a different feel for whatever is usually made today, I really enjoyed it. Cheers

So glad you took the time to keep the site alive!

I was looking through this, seeing the years radius and having my expectations validated/refuted was really fun! Lots of yeah but no, or no way but yeah? The curation of it is really respectable no matter my own taste and that is something that is in real low stock. Thanks for making my day and I'll add a few respectful issues when I can

i haven't seen this since the flash days. so cool. glad you ported it so it's still accessible!

Maps, a great way to present music. Congrats for the work, brought back fond memories.

This is an awesome visualization. I have always enjoyed 'structural taxonomies' as a way of visualizing data relationships. I appreciate you keeping it alive.

This was hugely influential on a younger me! I remember tracing forward and backwards from the bands I liked, finding and checking out new bands at every stop. Thank you!

Your map was very formative for me when I was exploring metal, thanks a lot !

I would love for this Map to be expanded to modern subgenres. There are lot's of subgenres that completely changed in the last decades (notably, the *cores and the tech* ...)

And it's definitely missing Thall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtV9pcHh8vM). :D

Do you disagree with hardcore punk influence as being one of the key disambiguation between thrash from speed metal? Personally at least that's what I feel. I do understand this means for example a lot of Metallica won't count as thrash but I like to say if you slow down Metallica it sounds more like Black Sabbath while slowed down Slayer or Anthrax sounds quite different, so I feel there may be a hard physical evidence for my theory. I found it a bit odd you didn't have this aspect written in the statements about differences between speed metal and thrash metal.

I do like and agree that you put Slayer - Necrophiliac under the development of death metal. Though by those same accounts I'd have moved Kreator - Ripping Corpse from the thrash column to the death metal column, but that's just a personal line.

I also feel your tech death is biased too much toward 2000s rather than stuff like Sadus, Demilich or Disciples of Power.

Absolutely loved the inclusion of death n roll, one of my favorite substyles.

Well, sped-up Cathedral sounds like Bathory so... I don't know what that's physical evidence of? But I accept your theory as a valid theory, just because there's a test for it, even though I don't understand what the test shows.

I think Cathedral is closer to death metal structure in my personal view compared to classic Black Sabbath, so that should not be too surprising. My test is simple, the history of thrash itself shows a lot of it coming from combining hardcore punk influence directly to metal, a lot of old thrash feels to me having mild to overt hardcore sections or riffs at points. And I think that's the aspect that gives thrash its political themes and more direct lyrics compared to the more fantasy or generic bragging style of older metal.

That's the theory I know, too, but there are counter-examples. Quorthon for one always maintained that his influences were rock and glam. He may well have been taking the piss, but while most people insist he ripped-off Venom, his early stuff (Bathory, The Return, Under the Sign Of the Black mark) sounds nothing like Venom, it's just the titles, and the lyrics that are clearly ripped off.

But Bathory is Black, so a bit by-the-by. Venom (whom I count as an early thrash band; they have nothing to do with Black Metal except for that one song title), seem to have been more influenced by Motörhead, Motörhead, Motörhead, and Judas Priest. I believe Venom were a major influence for all European Thrash bands.

Speaking of Motörhead, they were also a major influence to at least Sodom and possibly other early Thrash bands too. So I personally think Motörhead are a more likely Thrash influence than hardcore.

Then again Metallica do have their Garage Days Revisited album which is probably a good catalogue of their influences. Maybe. Tbh I don't hear Sabbath in Metallica. And I've listened to oodles of both religiously as a teenager.

Back to European Thrash, Kreator and Destruction that I also listened to as a teenager, don't sound very hardcore-influenced at all. They are just harder, dirtier, Speed Metal bands with more violent lyrics.

Come to think of it, maybe there is an American vs. European Thrash divide. American bands more influenced by hardcore, and/like Metallica; European bands more influenced by Speed Metal. And Motörhead.

Honestly. A lot of European Thrash sounds to me like Motörhead. For example:

https://youtu.be/-qmbiw38o2I?si=z35EZG1X07p4uUe5

But, well, that's a bit on the nose.

We could trade examples all day of course, here are some of mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8C3Tez3iAY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOa5p0FVhko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XphUURIAx5g

and for my "cheat" example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAD870Lx-o

I suppose its my bias speaking but at the end of the day there has to be something that distinguishes thrash metal from speed metal or heavy metal of course. Its in our "guts" so to speak but it needs teasing out exactly what the difference is. In the branch of thrash or partition perhaps that I gave the distinction is clear: hardcore of some sort or scene as the influence. For German thrash, I can see clearly there is a difference, as Sodom and Kreator in their early era feels like black/death metal structurally so it isn't just sped up Motorhead. While a lot of Metallica sounds like thrash, there is an element of rock music to Metallica's sound. Your example with that Sodom song is a good one. In my view a band that considered itself thrash when doing the "odd one out" song for an album, would never write something like For whom the bell tolls, they'd do a Discharge cover instead or a east coast hc style short song. Perhaps its my finding rock music grating that biases me to leaning toward some of Metallica's work not being thrash. For German, we can see it by asking what is the difference between Rage or Angel Dust and Kreator/Destruction (here of course even Rage and Angel Dust are already absent of any rock feeling even though they are supposed to be the older so called "speed metal" style). In both my examples and much of German thrash I think for me, if I look back and see, I think its that whatever path they took the rock aspects have completely gone from them by that time.

Yeah, you catch me out here, I think I know Violence and I obviously know Anthrax but the rest I'll have to listen to a bit to see what you mean.

But I do see what you mean in many places, e.g. the structural similarity of Sodom and Kreator with early Black. Including Bathory again! It isn't just sped up Motorhead, and the Sodom track is indeed a bit out of the ordinary, but they're still a big influence I think.

I don't know if I agree Metallica have a rock element. Hmm. Can you point to a track more specifically where you hear that? I can't think of any. Unless it's in the Black Album or later?

>> I suppose its my bias speaking but at the end of the day there has to be something that distinguishes thrash metal from speed metal or heavy metal of course. Its in our "guts" so to speak but it needs teasing out exactly what the difference is.

Well, yes, and then, maybe it's a bit of an affectation. It's only something you do once you've listened to a bit more metal than the ordinary person (which is not much: AC/DC, Metallica, maybe Slayer, end of). I of course had endless debates with my friends as a teenager and I may or may not have written angry letters to the editors of the only Greek language Metal magazine when I was growing up (and I think the only one still?) to protest the clandestine placing of a band in the absolutely wrong category in this or that article of theirs.

Maybe kids these days will get over that sort of thing. Maybe not. It's all good.

>> and for my "cheat" example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAD870Lx-o

Yeah without even listening to that I can tell it's cheating XD

I meant for whom the bell tolls itself as an example, while it uses thrash metal chugs, something about how its laid out feels a bit off like its trying to be written like a rock song.

One thing I just realized is that compared to early thrash metal, some speed metal bands had already gotten far more militant, stripped down and free of any remaining rock feelings. Think of Exciter, Rage, early Helloween or Agent Steel.

Again speaking to my bias of course but for me thrash starts getting truly exciting when it started growing toward death metal, its the most "fun" form of metal to me in a way nothing else gets, its in some ways the most spiritually "hardcore punk" like form of metal in the sense of instead of just including this or that hardcore guitar phrase or drum beat in a song, their approach of writing and playing was very pure, heart worn on sleeves and egging each other on fun. The complexity level was increasing rapidly but I feel due to this hardcore sensibility it doesn't just start sounding like prog rock as this hardcore like minimalist thinking keeps the melodies elegant and flowing, its probably one of more legato leaning genres of metal.

But yes, genres are not mathematical structures, trying to find a really hard scientific dividing line would keep leading to moving in circles forever. I have my preferences of course, death thrash and OSDM mainly.

>> I meant for whom the bell tolls itself as an example, while it uses thrash metal chugs, something about how its laid out feels a bit off like its trying to be written like a rock song.

Hm. OK, maybe. I haven't ever thought of it that way tbh. It does kind of Deep Purple though, in its general rythm so maybe.

I think I agree with your point about Thrash moving away from Rock, very much, despite my feeling that Motorhead was a major influence. I don't know if there's a contradiction there. On the other hand, one of my favourite bands is Entombed (though I can't say I like everything they ever recorded) and I like them exactly because they have this kind of boogie groove in their death-thrash. Then again I think that is one reason some people just don't like them.

I'd say some Thrash bands definitely veered too close to prog. Annihilator? Over Kill? Megadeath... Some Death bands too. I remember reading reviews about this or that Death record and the journo would write about the sudden changes of tempo and the complex riffs and so on and I'd always be like, I don't care about that. I like my Metal simple tbh. Give me one riff that will blow me away and I don't care how technically accomplished you are.

Now, I remember a friend of mine who distinguished Metal from non-Metal based on whether a song had a guitar solo, or not. If it did, it was Metal. If not, it was something else, probably that sus hardcore stuff that our common friends liked. I guess that goes to your point about the similarities and therefore at least cross-pollination, if not outright influence, between thrash and hardcore.

>> But yes, genres are not mathematical structures, trying to find a really hard scientific dividing line would keep leading to moving in circles forever. I have my preferences of course, death thrash and OSDM mainly.

Yeah, mostly classic Metal, Doom, Black, Thrash, and a bit of NWOTHM here. OSDM is cool too, I need to dig more into it.

Death, I'm kind of 50/50. I like some Death bands a lot, like I played the first two Death albums to er death. It's a bit hit and miss for me though. I like Grind bands more consistently, Cannibal Corpse and Last Days of Humanity.

When I was a kid, adults told me Metal was a passing fad, it would go away in a few years, and I'd grow out of it.

Any moment now...!

I would like to clarify if you meant Entombed as in the Left Hand Path era or Entombed as in Wolverine Blues. I believe boogie has a very specific meaning and the LHP era pages crustpunk and hardcore rhythms which to me is precisely one of the main antiboogie elements that metal learned from hardcore. Its a continuous flowing "square" beat that enables the guitar to center stage rather than a swinging beat that needs the drum to make room for guitars like in a lot of rock.

By prog I meant just classic prog. Complexity in metal is a bit orthogonal to being prog, I think simply "normal" death metal like Morbid Angel is far more "prog" that prog due to death metal's own native sensibilities which in part as I said tie in to the hardcore lineage. I haven't yet given it proper thought, but it's my theory that the hardcore beat and the different way punk/hardcore uses power chords from general rock music is what enabled thrash and ultimately death metal. I love Sadus and Atheist, and you will see people call them "technical" death metal not "prog" death metal, it may hint that subconsciously or consciously people are aware that death metal achieves "prog" goals without actually necessarily using classic prog techniques.

From what prog I have heard, I think its amazing, and an admirable development for the time. It's a big part of why metal is metal, early metal sensibility in my view is very strongly derived from prog. The prog bands were already using less "swingy" beats and more guitar centric writing. It's just that hardcore had to finally put the final piece of the puzzle that enabled these tendencies to achieve their full fruition. Direct prog had a tendency to sometimes wander too much. Hardcore firstly checked this by being hyper minimalist, and secondly that undeveloped theory of mine regarding hardcore having innovated a very different way of playing guitar and the drumming technique letting guitars room to breathe achieving a much more naturalistic and flowing method of creating hallways of riffs.

>When I was a kid, adults told me Metal was a passing fad, it would go away in a few years, and I'd grow out of it.

Partly imo this again ties in to the influence of hardcore culture on metal. Punk groups I think were doing xeroxed art and fliers and garage recorded and dubbed tapes quite early. A punk musician named Paul Halmshaw was irritated at the lack of infra for punk and hardcore music due to mainstream infra not deeming it worth it, so he fielded his own infra. Most people know of Peaceville as a famous metal record label today.

edit: >Cannibal Corpse

I am not aware they had any grindcore/deathgrind albums. I haven't listened to their entire discography so I could be wrong.

Oh and yes I'd say Entombed and a lot of that branch of swedish death metal comes mostly from crust and hardcore rather than thrash. For thrashy swedish death, you could try this for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNTJ7n5LeCI

Cheers! I'll have a listen.

>> I would like to clarify if you meant Entombed as in the Left Hand Path era or Entombed as in Wolverine Blues. I believe boogie has a very specific meaning and the LHP era pages crustpunk and hardcore rhythms which to me is precisely one of the main antiboogie elements that metal learned from hardcore. Its a continuous flowing "square" beat that enables the guitar to center stage rather than a swinging beat that needs the drum to make room for guitars like in a lot of rock.

Wolverine Blues and even more To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak The Truth. They've gone back a bit since then I find.

>> By prog I meant just classic prog.

Oh, right. I actually haven't heard a lot of the. Blue Öyster Cult and Rush etc? I of course acknowledge the immense influence of those bands on Metal, but that's the part of Metal I don't like that much. I think the influence was the focus on guitar technique and general musical quality which is something that's not really there in crusty punk and hardcore bands, I guess it's even anathema to some. You could even argue that a lot of Metal bands play the same music as hardcore bands but take the craft of music-making more seriously. This of course goes against my argument that thrash/death/black aren't descendants of hardcore/punk.

>> I am not aware they had any grindcore/deathgrind albums. I haven't listened to their entire discography so I could be wrong.

Oh, I see. Wikipedia calls them straight Death Metal. For me and my friends they were always either splatter/gore or grind. Different definitions I guess.

What I was saying is that it's both. Before thrash, and especially for early nwobhm there is a lot of prog to it. Prog was actually trying to remove the rock/blues earlier than nwobhm, and even if such and such nwobhm band said they hated prog, their structure is much more like prog than hard rock. No swing, square beats, linear and through composed songwriting, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHHHePJtK40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpL5htneI-c

NWOBHM tried to streamline it of course and they succeeded to an extent but as I theorized before, it took hardcore to actually invent the tools to finally achieve that goal completely and result in chromatic labyrinths. Ie its not hardcore alone, nor prog alone, both had to be part of metal's dna to result in death metal in my view personally.

>Now, I remember a friend of mine who distinguished Metal from non-Metal based on whether a song had a guitar solo, or not. If it did, it was Metal. If not, it was something else, probably that sus hardcore stuff that our common friends liked. I guess that goes to your point about the similarities and therefore at least cross-pollination, if not outright influence, between thrash and hardcore.

Have you ever asked what he thinks of black metal?

Yeah, it wasn't his cup of tea. He listened to some of the bands we did with us but at home I don't reckon he had any Black albums.

Quorthon of course like most artists is a diva and notorious liar, for example having never heard of Manowar before, so any statement made by him can be dispensed with.

Eeeh, one should never speak ill of the dead, unless it's the desecrated body of Christ. Anyway yeah he was a bit peculiar.

I really don't think he copied Manowar though. People point to Hammerheart, but I think they forget Blood Fire Death, which is the true first Viking Metal album and sounds nothing like Manowar. Hammerheart also sounds nothing like Manowar to my ears although one reason for that could be that I haven't listening to a lot Manowar post-Hail to England. Maybe it sounds more like epic-Bathory after that?

The Viking theme of cousre is neither Quorthon's nor Manowar's invention.

Wow! I didn't expect to see mapofmetal on HN, and I *definitely* didn't expect to see the author's response.

I just wanted to say thank you for making it, it was really important for me when exploring music back in 2010s. It was also great to see the "big picture" of metal genres, and start the long journey down the rabbit hole.

In a fun turn of events, I showed this to my wife just a few days ago, to show what I was up to when I was younger. And now less than a week later this is submitted to HN. Fun coincidence.

I love it! Was the inability to turn down the volume on the mini player intentional? This had me laughing. I'm at work, but that's metal AF.

Mate, this is really cool. Definitely a throw back to a different time.

Incredible work and yes, it really captures a Flash vibe.

My only note would be that I'm surprised that Order from Chaos isn't featured anywhere; I feel like they are kind of a Rosetta stone for so much of what happened in the 90s/00s with black and death metal converging on each other.

This is absolutely incredible. I've gotten much more into metal this year; unfortunately this only further enables that!

One disagreement: punk rock island should be a lot bigger in my opinion!

Garage and heavy metal definitely inspired the OG British punk rock scene, but they also inspired NY Dolls and Ramones (who formed specifically in response to the rising popularity of heavy metal, if memory serves), two massively influential bands that progenated several subgenres (pop-punk, which created Descendents, Green Day, Blink 182, etc; Ramones-core; melodic punk). DOA and Black Flag, both of whom are mentioned on the map, also helped inspire the whole Nardcore/West Coast thrash scene (RKL, DI, etc), which was happening, almost rebelliously, at the same time in the East Coast (Gang Green/Jerry's Kids, Proletariat, basically everyone on the "This is Boston, Not LA" album, which is fantastic and still holds up IMO).

I'm going to stop there because if I go any deeper, I'll have to start talking about emo, and that will for sure crash your map.

Anyway, metal is helping cleanse that part of my life; going to spend a lot of time going through the playlists in this map. :)

Thank you for making it!

I interpret each of those outlying islands as representing an external influence to metal that is not elaborated further. Of course that island needs to be bigger, but so should the hard rock and psychedelic rock islands -- and they should extend into the 70s and 80s as well.

But this is a map of metal, not a map of music. If one were to draw a map of punk, metal would also just feature as a few small islands I gather, along with islands not mentioned here such as surf, reggae and hip hop.

Fair enough! I guess you'd just recreate the universe if each genre were expanded upon further.

Ah man, thanks so much for making this. Metal is not my main favourite genre, but this site definitely helped grew my understanding and admiration for it a lot. I come back to this site every now and then for years since the flash version. So cool that you ported it! Was it a big task?

I am very sad to see NSBM and bands with problematic members being promoted here. We have so many problems with right-wing structures and people (mostly male band members) who think they can do whatever they want in this world. Giving them a platform and advertising them will show that metal communities are more exclusive than they are promoting. This is especially concerning given that the metal community seems to be very tolerant, but I think 'ignorant' is a more accurate description of accepting murderers, racist and molester. Yes, a significant proportion of the metal history is problematic persons and bands, but I cannot find any warnings, FAQs or contextualisations. It's a shame. As a result, the metal community will remain old, white and male.

Very nice map.

Historical comment only. I first listened to this music in the late 1970s. One big change in the story, over time, is how few people trace the sound to Hendrix now. (Not this map in particular. Metal fans I know would agree with the map.) I think (?) a common current viewpoint is that Led Zep [!?] was foundational but the genre really started with Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.

Which, definitions change. But in 1977 I listened to Purple Haze and, sure, it was "Psychedelic Rock" as indicated on the map. 100%! But it was also almost definitionally metal. Forty-nine years ago, I mean, not today.

[!?] I love Zeppelin. But I would have been laughed out of high school if I'd compared them to metal, or claimed they were even hard rock.

I started learning guitar in 2006 and my guitar teacher pointed out how metal originated from Hendrix's sound. I always thought that was common knowledge

I think it's more like metal originated from Tony Iommi's sound. Was Hendrix a significant influence on Iommi, no idea.

Yes Hendrix strongly influenced Iommi: https://rockandrollgarage.com/what-are-dio-and-tony-iommi-fa...

That’s interesting. Somehow my brain never really put that together. He was obviously ripping heavy blues and innovated more than anyone before and arguably since. Thanks for adding him into my mental Metal flow chart.

For me I would always say that somewhere between 68-71 metal was being cooked up by Black Sabbath in Birmingham, Motörhead in London, Pentagram in Virginia, and Blue Cheer in San Francisco. Obviously Hendrix’s influence would be most obvious with the latter.

I’d like to squeeze in the stooges there too, maybe mc5

Definitely. Stooges were more proto-punk but their influence on metal and everything else is undeniable. Like the others, Iggy is a god as well.

In my opinion Hendrix is to electric guitar what Beethoven was to (Western) harmony. All contemporary lines go through him.

One thing to note though is that Hendrix had a very short career in which he lived/performed in Nashville, the Chitlin' Circuit, Greenwich Village, and London. On top of being an incredibly proficient/creative guitar player he also had an incredible ear and picked up sounds/techniques/songs from everywhere he lived and with everyone he played with.

Part of why you can trace the evolution of guitar playing through Hendrix is that on top of his records being popular and everyone learning those tunes as a first/second year student, his own musicological background was a fusion of the major songwriting movements of the 1960s that spawned modern blues, pop, funk, fusion, rock, and metal. It's easy to see Hendrix as an influence on modern music because he was a magnet for players of all those genres.

What's interesting about Hendrix is that he is "an artist you listen to" instead of "an artist who an artist you listen to, listens to" from the same era like Albert King or Joe Pass.

Reminds me very much of https://music.ishkur.com/ which is the same kind of thing but for electronic music.

Wow thanks for sharing, went straight to Eurotrash and it didn't dissapoint

The descriptions are a bit more tongue-in-cheek, though. I love it.

The original Ishkur's Guide is even more similar, here's a modern recreation of it: https://igorbrigadir.github.io/ishkurs-guide-dataset/

I'd love of this showed me the spiritual successors of a band / sub-genre even if they're not mainstream or well known. For example, I really love Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and a number of other "classic" Heavy Metal bands with a slow, hard but not sludgy brooding sound and amazing vocals. But it's hard finding modern acts with a similar sound. What tends to happen when I search for modern metal is I end up finding stuff that is more a descendant of speed metal, or thrash, or black metal... and none of that really strikes the right chord for me.

There used to be a thing like 20-ish years ago called Musicovery that could sort of do this if you clicked around.

You ever heard of Every Noise at Once? You can search for an artist, see the genres they belong to, and then look for artists nearby in 2D musical space (oversimplified a bit to be fair) within that genre. I've found it's generally pretty accurate, and I've found plenty of new artists this way.

Unfortunately no longer being updated, but still has a fantastic backlog of new-ish artists.

The Sword might be what you're looking for - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL7ndxWgW5A

FWIW, There's a lot of new bands sounding like the old classic Metal bands, they are `tagged` as NWOTHM (New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal), such as:

- White Wizzard

- Tailgunner

- Skull Fist

- Wolf

- Enforcer

- 3 Inches of Blood

- Lucifer

- and many others

Witchcraft (especially their earlier albums) really scratches this itch for me

Absolutely love Lucifer and Tailgunner. Wouldn’t put them in the same category, but highly recommended for fans of Iron Maiden or anyone who listened to Deep Purple growing up.

Tailgunner seems to sound just enough like Iron Maiden to satisfy Maiden fans but not so much to be a clone band or a tribute act who does “originals.” Tough line to find.

Doom, stoner doom, stoner sludge.

Bands like Sleep, OM, Electric Wizard, Weedeater, Dopesmoker, Satans Satyrs, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Salems Pot, Acid Witch… there’s so so many.

Also heavier bands that are more stoner/psych than metal like All Them Witches, Mars Red Sky, Dead Meadow, Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin, all rip too.

You can maybe checkout https://hate5six.com/sage this lets you pick what you like and also what you don't like and tries to categories by percentage.

Bands that you are saying. Maybe Hangman's Chair, Pallbearer, Faetooth, Rezn, Conan, and Monolord.

Very curious the conspicuously absent genre in your list, especially given how much of modern doom is death metal. I can't help much with traditional doom however as I don't listen to it much, I just found it a bit funny you never encountered modern death metal during your searches for slow metal.

I've got a particular itch that's difficult to scratch, and I'm not seeing anything on this site that reflects the genre.

I've heard it as 'metalstep' but I'm sure there are other names for it. Very aggressive cross between metal and EDM. More of a metal sensibility than hardcore EDM; more of an EDM / trance sensibility than, say, Fear Factory. The drum tracks have more of a death metal vibe to them. It's probably easy to blend into other genres.

I'm thinking stuff like Invocation Array, Rave The Requivm, Follow the Cipher, even stuff like The Algorithm and Neurotech. I suppose Fear Factory would count here as well.

electro-industrial?

Check out the band smash stereo, and check out the doom (2016) and doom the dark ages sound tracks.

Didn't know I enjoyed this kind of metal, but itls great. You got some more, friend?

There's another band called The Algorithm which is somewhat similar. Also try this playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7JbQnrznEs458ehyRr7d0L?si=...

Holy shit, this is great. VAND3ST is beastly. Finishing Move too. Thank you so much.

“System Overload” is a banger. If that had some Nile-style double bass drum programming, that’s where my head is heading.

Oh, that kind of metal and EDM.

I clicked into this thread expecting hobbyist/hacker machining with steel and brass and aluminum, and was surprised to see someone getting into electrical discharge machining. Those hair-fine wires, milled graphite electrodes, and ultrapure water baths can achieve incredible precision but are challenging even in an industrial context, though I know a few have made it work in their garage.

But you meant electronic dance music.

I kind of always considered that Industrial Metal, but looking at the examples on the site, they don't really match with what's in my head.

For concrete examples of what I'm thinking, something like Crossbreed[1], or more recently Electric Callboy[2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS2zMciGHBE [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NdGBldg3w

A friend at work got me into EC recently. I’m into it, they’ve got good sensibilities. Celldweller, is another group I have in mind. Less purely mechanical than Ministry or Fear Factory.

You might like Sullivan King. Matches the description of "aggressive cross between metal and EDM" imo.

Thanks! ‘Die By My Hand’ is close to what I have in mind.

Thanks for posting this comment. I have the very same itch and now a bunch of music to check out!

Try out MASTER BOOT RECORD and Amaranthe.

Just in case you're still following this thread: I just came across "Rabbit Junk" and they're exactly what I was looking for

Thanks! And in case anyone ELSE is still following this thread, I should have mentioned these guys from the outset. They're from Finland, naturally...

Turmion Katilot

Great map. There might be some categories missing, couldn't find any Katatonia, Agalloch, Alcest nor Tiamat. Alcest and some Deftones are considered blackgaze and Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room fall more into grey metal.

It's interesting because some of these bands are older than these terms. Alcest wasn't considered blackgaze until albums inspired by their own sound became popular, for example.

Metal also has history where a genre is aesthetically defined as well as sonically, which complicates things.

Black Sabbath, the consensus originators of metal as a whole, weren’t considered metal until albums inspired by their sound became popular, either.

They (Black Sabbath) were booked as a blues band by Jazz Bilzen in 1970. People just didn't know where to bucket sort them at the time.

I see Tiamat at Goth Metal.

I can't thank you enough for mentioning Agalloch! I used to listen to them so much in university but somehow completely forgot about them until I read this comment!

I'm going to lose myself to "The Mantle" this weekend (best part is that I can now learn to play these songs on guitar). Thank you so much again - you made my day!

Wolves in the Throne Room are RABM not grey. Their are clearly political and clearly anti NSBM and anarchists. And very clear that the musical genre is black metal.

Ya'll should checkout https://everynoise.com/. Similar in spirit.

Just read the update:

> 2024-01-05 status update: With my 2023-12-04 layoff from Spotify I lost the internal data-access required for ongoing updates to many parts of this site. Most of this, as a result, is now a static snapshot of what, for now, will be the final state from the site's 10-year history and evolution..

what a shame. I didn't realize the author worked for Spotify. Guess it makes sense. Spotify should've acquired it from the author or made a deal with him to keep it live since all the links lead to Spotify anyway.

One of the "I'm trying to find it" ... Fantasy metal. I was wondering where I'd find Blind Guardian ( https://youtu.be/n63UbX5kzAc https://youtu.be/uOMfsywQgY0?si=7N9hcXJcqbZtJ1jC&t=953 ) or the newly emerging dwarfish metal genre with Windrose (best known for their rendition of Diggy Diggy Hole https://youtu.be/34CZjsEI1yU but they've got other music that celebrates fantasy dwarf culture - https://lnk.to/WindRose-Trollslayer )

I get the thematic connection but I feel like Blind Guardian is an institution whereas the Diggy Diggy Hole band is perhaps in a different league with a more selective core fan base and a song that has novelty appeal.

No offense to dwarf metal fans intended.

Their rendition of Diggy Diggy Hole made it to dwarvish rock anthem... but they've got a lot of other material that is dwarf themed.

They do speak to more of the gamer culture... for example Rock and Stone https://youtu.be/8ZXBm1NXBaI - there's a lot of other dwarf rock.

Consider "The Breed of Durin" - who preformed it? https://youtu.be/dV51_xsV4uI

Other than seeing "Wind Rose" and knowing Blind Guardian discography, you'd likely have to listen carefully to identify if this was Blind Guardian or Windrose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIhpnUMTxak&list=OLAK5uy_m3G...

Blind Guardian is under "Melodic Power Metal", which is exactly where I'd expect to find it, alongside Helloween, Rhapsody, Dragonforce and Angra.

Has anyone made something like this for jazz, classical, or hip-hop? The closest I know of are:

- https://www.music-map.com/ - https://everynoise.com/ - https://chartmetric.com/ - https://musicroamer.com/ - http://davidmckinney.com/app

But they're all kind of generic, I would love to see something more genre-specific with additional historic context and personality.

Given this is Hacker News, this easily could have been some re-vamped "table" of metal elements or what the linked site ultimately is ... LOL. Personally, I am more happy with the actual site than metallurgy.

I was hoping it was a metallurgical table myself but was pleasantly surprised with a map of my favorite music genre. Win either way.

This website has instantly more relevance than 50% of the online news outlets out there.

i also made something like this. it cover 17M entities across tracks albums artists and labels. posted on show hn a few times but it went unnoticed (hate u (joking))

https://toposonico.com/#lon=14.4313&lat=-1.0200&z=9.10&entit...

that's pretty cool, thanks!

thank you! :)

The song "Ten Ton Hammer" from Machine Head is not right: it's showing another song. Besides that, fun experience!

Reminds me of the Ishkur's guide to electronic music

https://music.ishkur.com/

Both these maps of styles have most of their richness in the past. Modern era is mostly stagnation. I suppose it would be different if I had a map of hip-hop?

There's a really great map of electronic music here that I've always loved

https://music.ishkur.com/

I was enjoying this until I started reading the descriptions of the genres. The person that made this is very opinionated and not afraid to say what they think about certain genres they do not like!

really nice! For the inclined, there's also

https://www.metal-archives.com/

In case you haven't seen it, Metal Evolution is a great documentary by a sociologist tracing the different ages of Metal.

Some have mentioned Sabbath, mc5, Stooges etc as origins.

Sam Dunn (documentary producer) says Paganini has a big influence in the guitar solo, demonstrations of virtuosity by the players etc. interviews this crazy swedish guy can't remember his name.

Took awhile to figure out clicking the skull is the interactive element, I kept clicking the text label and nothing was happening

Reminds me of the works of Ward Shelley. Especially his History of Science Fiction.

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/ward-shelley-history-of-scienc...

Where can I find a full resolution version of that image?

Nevermind, I found this thing called Google that found it for me <g>

https://websites.umich.edu/~esrabkin/sf/HistoryOfSFVisualize...

This is amazing! But I need SEARCH feature :)

Btw, the map interface is very well implemented, what is it based on?

Looking at the source, it seems to be using OpenSeadragon[0].

[0] https://openseadragon.github.io/

Where is the "Purchase Print" button so I can tack this poster to my wall?

Snap! Cloth, too. https://www.zazzle.com/map_of_metal_second_edition_colossal_...

I see Judas Priest, I upvote.

I see Yngwie, I also upvote.

I see Mercyful Fate or King Diamond and I also upvote!

Oh yeah. Totally agree. What a character Petersen is. Used to marvel at him on Headbanger's Ball.

Very nice work of art. (I don't really like the bullets though, they don't seem very metal-y to me. Scythes maybe, or flensing knives.)

It might be fun to have a sort of gazetteer for the map so we can find bands.

It's common enough that they are sold as an accessory. Search for "metal bullet belt".

OK fair enough.

Love it, though it looks like the website got the HN hug of death.

One of my favorite documentaries to learn the history of metal is "metal: a headbanger's journey" (available on YouTube).

Ahh yes, the origin of this classic clip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkl4Yeh-BTo

Reminded me a bit on the design space of Metal logos: https://renecutura.eu/metalvis/

Not sure why there is Swedish death metal when Melodic Death exists.

Swedish death is a specific sound like Entombed, which is fairly different than melo-death bands like In Flames.

I'm not entirely sure why those specific song choices for the Swedish Death category. The older At The Gates albums are more like the original Swedish sound but Slaughter of the Soul (included in Swedish Death) is essentially THE Melo-death album.

Looks great! However I'm not sure how it is supposed to work. Like, should it play doom when I click doom? For me it started with Black Sabbath, and it doesn't change

this being HN, from the title i genuinely had no idea whether this link would be about music, the apple graphics acceleration framework, or ore deposits.

And here I was thinking it would be a materials science map

Me too. Maybe someone can find a data source and vibe up a mapofmetals.com in the same style.

There is no need for anything else, on the Internet.

I wish this was about actual metals. Such an important group of materials that aren't very accessible to the layperson.

Do you mean reference material for individual metals and alloys or an overview of materials science/metallurgy as a whole?

Trying to validate my favorite band, 6061, but I can't find its genre.

Went through a phase of listening to Beryllium and Fortal.

Seeing as this is HN, I was expecting something on chemical properties of iron etc, but was pleasantly surprised

Grateful it's not an agentic start-up.

Very cool visual representation of metal history. I'm working on something similar for basketball history.

For some reason, I was actually expecting a map of metals - tungsten, uranium and such. Not sure why.

Nice idea! love it, reminds me of the Metal Archives. btw Deathgrind should really be called Grindcore!!

That live version of War Pigs is INSANE

Where would Mastodon be on this?

Sludge metal, where else...

Mastodon isn't sludge in any way, mate... sludge is hardcore punk + (proto) doom metal. It's what the Melvins, the B-side of Black Flags's My War and early Flippers spawned, so mostly the NOLA scene (Eyehategod, Crowbar, Down, Acid Bath, Buzzoven, etc...) and "others" (Grief, Floor, 16).

Perhaps we need a word to disambiguate "atmosludge" from actual sludge, for the same reason "skramz" was invented.

If there’s no bug infested dreadlocks then it ain’t sludge!

Except Dixie Dave. Eyes crossed from Jim beam and cough syrup works too.

Progressive sludge I think

Love it. gonna be listening yardbirds all day today. The map also feels like a jeans.

Where would theatrical art metal like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum fit on this?

\m/

To be excapt: This is a Mäp of Metäl, no hair was cut in making the map.

As a German, metal umlauts look so confusing

m̈ëẗäl̈ üm̈l̈äüẗs̈ (awww, you can't put an umlaut on a space) (oh wow the HM font does not like what I just did. It looks fine in the monospace font)

Isn't the ¨ (U+00A8) character equivalent to an umlaut on a space?

I suppose you used ◌̈ (U+0308).

I'll be honest, I used a slightly crappy website instead of manually doing it

Metal music. Not chemical elements. Not Apple’s graphics API.

why when i click the different links does new music representing that period not play? I expected to hear 1960's progenitors to metal when I clicked that section

I liked the anti-establishment, Anarchist/socialist vibes of the Hardcore punk rock island. Don't like all of the macho posing and shrieking (neither in punk and especially not in the more "black" part); and double dislike the crass commercialization of so much of it.

Yeah very good song choices there.

Punk is for politics and Metal is for Partying.

Saying you are privileged without actually saying it. Everything is political, even partying.

Anarchist/socialist are such funny words to put a slash between. They seem like such polar opposite political structures

Consult "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell. In the Spanish Civil War, Orwell soldiered with anarchists and socialists and the rest of the worker's parties, against the fascists.. until the inevitable purge.

Anarchism has historically been a current within the larger Socialist movement. Socialism is not just establishment sheep-herding rhetoric like Bernie Sanders' or the French Parti Socialiste; nor just the centrlized-state authoritarianism of the USSR. In fact, the labor movement in the US once had more prominent Anarchist leaders than state-socialists - the struggle for the 8-hour workday and May 1st, the Industrial Workers of the World, etc. And there are Anarchist traditions in the workers' movements of Latin America and Europe of course, and to a much lesser extent in Asia early 20th century Asia.

It depends. In their original political and philosophical roots, socialists pursued the same goals as anarchists: a political order without top-down hierarchical structures, but one that is self-managed from within. Workers for workers. No hierarchies constructed by things like patriarchy or capitalism. Communism, which is supposed to lead to socialism (?), can be diametrically opposed to anarchism, as it incorporates the idea of imperialism, a doctrine of order and authoritarianism. People who are called socialists today, such as Bernie Sanders, are not socialists in that sense, but rather liberals in the guise of socialism who subordinate themselves to the order of capitalism and thus have very, very little to do with anarchism. But also little to do with socialism. For reformist approaches pursue the treatment of symptoms rather than systemic changes that tackle the actual problems at their root. Anarchist structures, on the other hand, are also called “root movements,” as they aim to address fundamental changes—even if only on a small scale—at their very roots.

I'm blown away by the things people think to create.

No Parkway Drive in the Metalcore section is a sin

Most awesome site ever created.

Seems to bug hard on Firefox.

PRIEST! ( oh, exucse me... )

Great map!

No Opeth?

Nu Metal not having any Linkin Park songs is a crime.

Mike Shinoda is fine with not being classified as Nu Metal https://blabbermouth.net/news/linkin-parks-mike-shinoda-says...

Let me quote Wikipedia:

> The popularity of nu metal came to a peak in 2001 with Linkin Park's diamond-selling debut album, Hybrid Theory.

Holy crap, someone recognizes Neue Deutsch Härte as the legit metal genre it is! And the playlist includes 5 März by the Alexx-era Megaherz! Excellent work!!!

beautifully done!

not to be confused with Metal the Apple's GPU language or metals as in constituents of alloys

Now that is a great map!

Where is Sleep Token?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com