New Feature: More Gallery Improvements

I've added a bunch of filters to The Gallery, being Genre, Subgenre and Year(s).

So now you can view the best covers for any given style of metal, or discover all the covers you haven't rated for that style.

Given we will be announcing the Metal Academy Awards for 2020 very soon, the new filters allow you to easily find the covers for 2020 that you haven't yet rated. There's still time to get your ratings in!

That's great, thanks Ben! Can you please implement these filters to the charts, so members don't miss out on some of the highest-rated releases of their favorite subgenre?

I'm not even sure the Charts bring much value these days. You can do everything you need on the Releases page.

• Sort by Average Rating? - check
• Filter by clans? - check
• Minimum rating? - check
• Exclude releases you've rated? - check
• Display by Site Rating or Clan Rating? - check

Given you can do all of these things on the Releases page plus so much more, I'm a little reluctant to keep pumping resources into the Charts. The only difference is the view.

Thoughts?

I understand, Ben. Still a great new feature!

You haven't listened to that Exodus debut Bonded by Blood!? I haven't because I'm currently not into the classic thrash as much as the technical kind, but that album is what many thrash listeners and metal sites consider one of greatest thrash albums NOT released by those other 3 bands (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth). The Exodus album is so g****mn essential! Please, give it a listen!

Don’t worry about that Andi. Ben has a very long & stormy relationship with “Bonded By Blood”. It’s a real shame that his opinion is wrong about it too.

You're exaggerating my position. Bonded by Blood is a good album. I just don't believe it deserves it's classic status, for the simple reason that Paul Baloff's vocals sounds like they were performed by an untalented, over-excited muppet that hasn't had its meds. I'm pretty sure that's why you like them too, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. I haven't heard it for a while, but it would definitely get a 3.5 to 4 stars, cause the music is awesome.

I don't rate everything I listen to Andi. I like to actually sit down and give an album a final focussed listen before settling on a score, which unfortunately isn't something I find time to do much these days. I've heard many thousands of metal albums, as has Daniel, but I'm always doing 2 or 3 things at any given time. It's just how I function. I don't think Metal Academy would exist otherwise!

I'm the same actually Andi. I won't rate anything unless I've actively listened to it a minimum of three times. That means that I'm consciously thinking about the music & how it makes me feel for the entire duration rather than reading something on the internet or working or playing with the kids at the same time. I feel like I owe it to the musicians in a way.

And for the record, when "Bonded By Blood" was released in 1985 it was the best metal album ever recorded as far as I'm concerned.

I won’t rate an album without giving it at least three listens too, often a lot more.

As for that last comment, I can only assume you’re excluding all of the better albums that came before it, such as Powerslave, Paranoid and Ride the Lightning. If you exclude all the clearly better albums, then I totally 100% agree with your opinion.