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midhir

Noticed a bug. Murderdolls and The Black Dahlia Murder are included as 'metal'.

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Metal has 1000 genres, blah blah blah, blah blah. blah.

Bug criteria: is the band awesome? do they have a brutal logo? not a bug.

What else would you call BDM?

Wikipedia says:

Black Dahlia Murder is melodic death metal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Dahlia_Murder_%28ban...

and Murderdolls are horror punk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murderdolls

More accurately called Gothenburg metal to differentiate it from old school melodeath, which is a somewhat murkily defined and now lost genre.

I first read this as satire of the complexity of musical sub-genres ("How do I find things like this song I like? Is there a name for it? ... wait, it's really just five people posting things on youtube?"). Then I realized that it might not be satire. Brilliantly played, if the former, and also if the latter. ;)

I'm entirely serious. It's much like metalcore. People associate it with melodic stuff like Killswitch Engage, but in reality the first generation of metalcore bands were more like crossover thrash, bands like Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front. This subgenre has since been posthumously renamed to "metallic metalcore" (seriously) in order to differentiate it from the melodic metalcore everyone now associates with the term.

Same is with Gothenburg and melodeath, but that one is much less known.

Melodic death metal? WTF?

I'm actually more of an electronic music fan, but they both suffer from the same disease: hundreds of sub-genres with less than 10 producers/bands that can accurately represent them.

I hate sub-genres of music.

I actually like sub-genres, especially metal sub-genres.

Death metal, melodic death metal, math metal, black metal, doom metal, death suicidal black metal, funeral metal, funeral doom, drone, heavy metal, power metal, viking metal, pagan metal, folk metal, vampire metal, gothic metal, catholic metal, brutal death metal, technical death metal, trash metal, sludge metal, all of them have more than 10 bands, can you imagine? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_subgenres

I think there is a similar core issue (not problem) in both mega-genres, that they tend towards extremity - so anything that represents a particular extremity (e.g. slow despair - Doom, guttural aggression - Death, shrieking hatred - Black) is obviously going to be identifiable. But then since they are defined by extremity, anything less than the most extreme examples or with more competing influences than the purest examples has to be classified in a different way. Hence melodic death metal, DSBM, post-black metal, sludge, grindcore, etc...

Extremity also breeds community, so you get definitions influenced by the kinds of people who listen to them. Would you want a ton of people expecting gabber turning up to a generic hardcore night? It's a very different feel. Similarly you wouldn't want people who were expecting Depressive Suicidal Black Metal (DSBM) turning up to a second wave black metal gig.

Personally I like sub-genres, I think they're useful for people.

I've been a fan of metal for so long that I get such a kick out of seeing how non-fans react to it [0]. As far as metal sub-genres go, "melodic death metal" is about as standard as it gets. I could see why it seems ridiculous to outsiders, but in my brain it's processed just as normal as describing a sandwich as "peanut butter and jelly".

I don't hate sub-genres as much as some people. I think they're useful and it can be fun to debate the merits of why one band fits into one or the other. It's no longer interesting and fun when people get elitist, exclusionary or militant about it though.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYCiTx7TwEI

Wimps and posers. Leave the hall!

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