How Balanced is Your Metal Listening between the Clans?
OK, so I had a bit of time on my hands tonight and thought I would compare how many releases from each clan I had listened to and rated. It made for interesting, albeit not unexpected, reading as two clans dominated my listening habits with The Fallen weighing in at a hefty 35.7% and The North at a respectable 27.7%. This means that doom and black metal have made up just under two-thirds of my total metal listening habits (of course, the proviso is that it doesn't allow for multiple listens of a single release, so all the hundreds of times I've listened to Reign in Blood, Sad Wings of Destiny or Paranoid still only count as one!) It is still an interesting, albeit imperfect exercise though.
I suspected that my listening would not be as broad as some members of Metal Academy and would like to see how others listening habits are spread. I attribute my narrower listening habits to the fact that I am a senior (as in old bastard) member of the site and so my taste was fully-formed long before the internet came along and as such I no longer feel the need to constantly test my own boundaries in metal appreciation. I have listened to truck-loads of albums that I can't even remember and so have never rated. Of course it could just be that I am not as adventurous a musical traveller as other members of the site and I would readily admit that I do have a somewhat conservative taste in metal, so there is that.
So just out of interest's sake and to spark some debate, how does your clan-based listening spread out?
For the record, my full results in percentage order:
Fallen - 35.7%
North - 27.7%
Guardians - 12.4%
Pit - 9.9%
Horde - 6.9%
Infinite - 4.6%
Gateway - 1.6%
Sphere - 0.9%
Revolution - 0.3%
Here' mine which is heavily impacted by the years that Ben & I spent doing the Metal Academy podcast (i.e. The Guardians being at the top):
The Guardians 20.5%
The Horde 18.9%
The Pit 15.8%
The North 13.6%
The Fallen 11.7%
The Infinite 10.1%
The Revolution 4.0%
The Gateway 3.2%
The Sphere 2.1%
If this was reflective of the reality across my life then my 90's tape trading years would see my four clans being much further out in front.
If I ignore the podcast (which was almost entirely The Guardians), I'd say mine would be something like...
- 30% The North
- 25% The Horde
- 20% The Fallen
- 15% The Pit
- 5% The Infinite
- 5% The Sphere
I rarely listen to The Guardians and basically never listen to The Revolution or The Gateway. I see this as a fault, as I really don't know whether or not I actually like the genres in those clans. I have next to no experience with them.
I have a plan to correct this situation in the coming years.
Here's mine throughout the previous year and this year so far (the years before that were different and all over the place for me):
The Revolution - 25%
The Sphere - 21%
The Infinite - 17%
The Gateway - 13%
The Guardians - 9%
The Pit - 9%
The Horde - 3%
The Fallen - 2%
The North - 1%
I find this breakout of my ratings to be quite interesting too:
5 star 1.9%
4.5 star 11.3%
4 star 26.8%
3.5 star 30.6%
3 star 18.2%
2.5 star 7.7%
2 star 3.3%
1.5 star 1.5%
1 star 0.5%
0.5 star 0.2%
I'm comfortable with that spread to be honest. It shows that I save the 5/5 ratings for the elite of the elite & it also shows that I don't consciously go looking for music that's clearly not gonna fall anywhere near my wheelhouse all that often either.
I find this breakout of my ratings to be quite interesting too:
5 star 1.9%
4.5 star 11.3%
4 star 26.8%
3.5 star 30.6%
3 star 18.2%
2.5 star 7.7%
2 star 3.3%
1.5 star 1.5%
1 star 0.5%
0.5 star 0.2%
I'm comfortable with that spread to be honest. It shows that I save the 5/5 ratings for the elite of the elite & it also shows that I don't consciously go looking for music that's clearly not gonna fall anywhere near my wheelhouse all that often either.
Although I have only 93 releases that I have at 5 stars that still seems too high for me and so I am slowly revisiting these - I suppose 93 albums over 35 years of listening to metal isn't that high but I think there are one or two that probably got overrated.
I find this breakout of my ratings to be quite interesting too:
5 star 1.9%
4.5 star 11.3%
4 star 26.8%
3.5 star 30.6%
3 star 18.2%
2.5 star 7.7%
2 star 3.3%
1.5 star 1.5%
1 star 0.5%
0.5 star 0.2%
I'm comfortable with that spread to be honest. It shows that I save the 5/5 ratings for the elite of the elite & it also shows that I don't consciously go looking for music that's clearly not gonna fall anywhere near my wheelhouse all that often either.
This is also something I have been pondering lately. Your rating spread looks very similar to my own Daniel, with 4 and 3.5 star ratings dominating. What I have been wondering is if maybe I should have a different rating scheme for a specialist website like Metal Academy where I am more predisposed to enjoying the material as opposed to a general site like RYM.
What I mean is that on an absolute scale where 0.5 is the shittest stuff going, on RYM that would mean the worst of novelty records or Justin Bieber, but here even the worst albums can't be that bad. I find with my ratings here a 3.5 is not bad, but isn't really one I would return to that much (same as I do on RYM) but I kind of feel that descriprion should merit a lower score here. My four star ratings mean a good album I would gladly return to again but this encompasses a huge swathe of albums and I tend to find that becomes my default, so a bit more precision around these ratings would be nice.
Trouble is I can't face re-rating almost 3000 albums, so it's kind of a moot point, although I may move this way going forward and lower scores from 4 stars down.
My rating breakdown:
5.0 - 4.1%
4.5 - 11.7%
4.0 - 38.0%
3.5 - 27.1%
3.0 - 11.9%
2.5 - 4.0%
2.0 - 1.6%
1.5 - 0.8%
1.0 - 0.5%
0.5 - 0.3%
Sorry for such excessive nerdishness, but I do have a lot of time on my hands now and the arbitrary assigning of a numerical value to multifarious pieces of art has become an abiding passion of mine!
I find this breakout of my ratings to be quite interesting too:
5 star 1.9%
4.5 star 11.3%
4 star 26.8%
3.5 star 30.6%
3 star 18.2%
2.5 star 7.7%
2 star 3.3%
1.5 star 1.5%
1 star 0.5%
0.5 star 0.2%
I'm comfortable with that spread to be honest. It shows that I save the 5/5 ratings for the elite of the elite & it also shows that I don't consciously go looking for music that's clearly not gonna fall anywhere near my wheelhouse all that often either.
Although I have only 93 releases that I have at 5 stars that still seems too high for me and so I am slowly revisiting these - I suppose 93 albums over 35 years of listening to metal isn't that high but I think there are one or two that probably got overrated.
I'm with you there Vinny, I have 120+ five star albums and that seems a lot, although when I have revisited them I find it very hard to downgrade them because, yes they do sound that good.