Genres/Scenes Dominated By One Band?

First Post August 28, 2022 08:10 AM

I've been delving back into my roots a bit the last couple of days and listening to some NWOBHM albums I haven't heard in years. The NWOBHM was a scene that was dominated by one band in particular. Most top albums lists covering it will almost certainly be dominated by Iron Maiden, with good reason I might add, but they do overshadow pretty much every other band from the time. I would bet they have sold more units than every other NWOBHM act combined, or pretty close anyway.

Is there any other scene or genre that is so completely dominated by one band that anyone can think of?

August 28, 2022 09:12 AM

Interesting thread Sonny. Here's a few off the top of my head:


Viking metal - Bathory

Gorenoise - Phyllomedusa

Rap metal - Rage Against The Machine

Neue Deutsche Härte - Rammstein

Djent - Meshuggah

August 28, 2022 09:32 AM

Here are some for my clans' genres/subgenres:

Nu metal - Linkin Park's first two albums (Korn is the founding band of nu metal and has been active even during that genre's downfall, but I chose Linkin Park's nu metal era that pretty much everyone in the world knows)

Melodic progressive metal - Dream Theater

Extreme progressive metal/djent - Meshuggah

Standard metalcore - Converge

Melodic metalcore - Trivium (move over, Killswitch Engage, Trivium is the real deal in melodic metalcore's popularity)

Industrial metal - Godflesh (for the experimental side, anyway, showing more of the cold bleakness that the genre is about than the mainstream of Ministry)

August 28, 2022 12:18 PM


Interesting thread Sonny. Here's a few off the top of my head:


Viking metal - Bathory

Gorenoise - Phyllomedusa

Rap metal - Rage Against The Machine

Neue Deutsche Härte - Rammstein

Djent - Meshuggah

Quoted Daniel

Yes, Rammstein was the one other I could think of off the top of my head but Bathory and RATM are both good calls too. I know zilch about gorenoise and care even less about djent so have no evidence about either to judge.


August 28, 2022 12:34 PM


Here are some for my clans' genres/subgenres:

Nu metal - Linkin Park's first two albums (Korn is the founding band of nu metal and has been active even during that genre's downfall, but I chose Linkin Park's nu metal era that pretty much everyone in the world knows)

Melodic progressive metal - Dream Theater

Extreme progressive metal/djent - Meshuggah

Standard metalcore - Converge

Melodic metalcore - Trivium (move over, Killswitch Engage, Trivium is the real deal in melodic metalcore's popularity)

Industrial metal - Godflesh (for the experimental side, anyway, showing more of the cold bleakness that the genre is about than the mainstream of Ministry)

Quoted Shadowdoom9 (Andi)

I don't think you can say that Linkin Park dominated Nu Metal to the extent Maiden did the NWOBHM Andi. I remember Korn and Slipknot both being massive and Slipknot still are to some extent. If you generate charts in RYM by popularity Linkin Park are #2 & #3 behind Deftones' Around the Fur album with Slipknot and Korn close behind, whereas a NWOBHM chart with the same criteria returns all the Maiden albums that qualify as NWOBHM (the debut through to Piece of Mind) in the top four places with the fourth best (Killers) still having twice the ratings of the next best, Venom's Black Metal. I don't know enough about the others you mention to comment I'm afraid.

Similarly for Viking metal their chart seems to share between Bathory and Moonsorrow, but tellingly Hammerheart has more than twice the ratings of any other album, so I think it's fair to say that Viking Metal is dominated by one album.

The Neue Deutsche Harte chart is even more skewed - Rammstein occupy the first EIGHT places and number eleven is Til Lindemann's Lindemann project F&M album. I think we may have a winner here!


August 29, 2022 12:02 PM

Korn have sold over 40 million records so I think saying that Linkin Park have one-way traffic is a major overstatement even though Linkin Park have sold over 70 million.

Although Godflesh are clearly the best industrial metal act of all time in my opinion, surely Fear Factory sell more records than them by a significant margin, don't they?

And also, I don't know how up to date Wikipedia is but it says that Queensryche have sold over 20 million records to Dream Theater's 12  million.

August 29, 2022 03:11 PM
Queenwryche aren't that proggy, though, except for a few songs.  I really don't understand where the prog tag comes from.