Clan challenge progress

So how are you guys' clan challenges so far? The challenges can range from easy to difficult, mostly depending on how often you listen to the albums or if you have or have not listened to them before. That's how I think of the difficulty of the bands of the clan challenges that I'm doing:

Easy - bands I listen to in my current Horde/Infinite/Revolution taste - all of those bands' albums

Medium - bands I used to listen to in my earlier epic metal era - those bands' albums in each of their clan's challenges, plus one or two others

Hard - bands I never listened to or briefly tried by listening to one song or a few from them - just each of those band's albums in each of their clan's Modern Era challenges

So far, I've done the Easy and Medium part of my strategy in The Infinite progressive metal challenge, but starting tomorrow (as of writing this thread), I'm gonna take a 10-day break because of two special Saturday real-world events, and the second Saturday is my birthday! I'm turning 21!! Other than that, I get to take a break from working hard on those reviews and use that opportunity to chill out and look for new bands to listen to. Then I will spend the last 6 days of January working on the hard part of the Modern Era Infinite progressive metal challenge, and spend the next month or two working on the Horde death metal and Revolution (melodic) metalcore challenges with my strategy (though the medium part of my Revolution strategy is non-existent because I've never listened to any metalcore in my epic metal era). Now about the challenge for a possible 4th clan, I'm torn between The Fallen (because of the excessive amount of gothic metal bands I listen to) and The Pit (a little closer in sound to my 3 clans), but I will decide around the time that I finish the 3 clan challenges.

But that's enough about me. How about you guys? How are you doing in your clan challenges? Do you have a special strategy or do you prefer to keep your strategy secret? Or are you just working on an individual challenge one by one? Discuss!

I'm leaving the clan challenges to the rest of our members at the moment because my free time to write reviews is simply so limited these days due to work & family commitments along with the ongoing social media marketing campaign & forum activity management for the website. I also don't know if I really need an additional clan to be honest. I already dropped the fourth one I had (The North) simply because it seemed like the right thing to do given that I could see that my ratings were indicating that my heart wasn't in it as consistently as it should be. At the moment I can't see that I'd benefit the site by joining any others either. I'm enjoying managing the monthly feature releases though as I don't necessarily have to review the releases to have an opinion & I'm hoping that we'll see an increased engagement in the features over time. I love chatting & sharing my thoughts with all you people on the forums every day too.

Just completed The Fallen's Doom Metal - The Modern Era challenge and am exhausted!

I have given a bit of thought to what I would choose as my fourth clan, in addition to my current Fallen, North  and Pit lineup and I may well be with Daniel on this one. I would probably choose between The Guardians or The Horde, but I'm not sure if my contributions would help because, although I love a lot of bands that fall under either clans auspices, there are sub-genres I struggle with in both. In The Guardians I've made no secret of my dislike of power metal and bands like Manowar I find a bit embarrasing, to be honest. Under The Horde umbrella I can't take to brutal death metal and it's often ridiculous violence-worship and technical dm leaves me cold in most cases.

Still, I've got two more monster challenges to complete before we cross that bridge, so here's to a challenging 2020...

Congratulations, that was incredibly quick work. Not enough hours in the day for me, I'm currently still chipping away at the 1st Decade Black Metal one.

Big congratulations Sonny92! You've locked in The Fallen clan.

I think it's fitting that you're the first one to complete a Doom Metal challenge, as you're clearly the best equipped to do it. Really enjoying all of your reviews. I'm particularly stoked to see that you've rated so many of my favourite albums similar scores to me. A kindred spirit!

I'm currently in the middle of the 2nd decade of Black Metal as I had to rely on youtube for too many of the 1st decade albums. Really enjoying it so far though, but wow it's a beast of a challenge to get through. Glad everyone else is enjoying it and actually working on them as well. This really puts into perspective for me how varied black metal is. I've never been the biggest fan (I chose the North mainly for folk metal) and some of it is the best music i've heard so far. Other albums are those that I will never go back to again, and wonder why they're called black and/or metal. 

This is a great way for me to kick off my year as I really want to get into more regularly listening and reviewing all sorts of music. Helps with the typing and writing skills when you don't do this too often. 

Thanks everyone and good luck on all your own clan challenges!

Really looking forward to seeing how everyone  gets on.

I definitely want to do them eventually, as I love the thought of getting access to a 4th clan (which would probably be The Sphere for me. Most of the others I have some taste for, but they're not big favourites as a whole. The only other real contender for me would be The Infinite, but Sphere has so few members, I like the idea of contributing to that more). I'm trying to set some time aside in my daily schedule for revisiting some of those challenge albums, and trying out others for the first time.

With some of them, there's an element of intimidation in reviewing them. The albums I feel most strongly about are the ones I really want to do well.

We'd absolutely love you to contribute to The Sphere Tymell as it's easily our least active clan.

Congratulations mate! That's a big effort.

I'm stoked that a bunch of you are picking up these challenges and running with them.

I DID IT AGAIN!! I completed The Horde Death Metal Modern Era Clan Challenge! Once again, it was tiring and I managed to survive the obscene blasphemy of some albums without getting attached to them. After all that hard work, I plan on taking another short break throughout just tomorrow for a bit of rest. Then I will start doing The Revolution Melodic Metalcore Clan Challenge strategy. I'm still so torn about deciding between The Fallen, The Guardians, and The Pit as my 4th clan to complete a challenge and lock in, that I feel like starting a month-long poll thread where site members can vote which of those 3 clans is the most suitable one for me to lock in. And there's plenty of time as I do one more challenge before the big 4th....

PS: Daniel, if you're reading this, please alert Ben about it when he's back from his 4-day weekend break so he can confirm my lock-in.

I DID IT (again, again)!! I completed The Revolution Melodic Metalcore Clan Challenge. Once again, it was quite some tiring hard work. After finishing those challenges for my 3 main clans, I'm gonna think about my decision for my ideal 4th clan and what I'm gonna do next. Then tomorrow morning, I'll tell you all what my decision is, whether that would be either starting to lock in The Fallen or The Guardians, or doing my own unofficial challenge to ultimately prove my place in a clan that I think better suits me now than a few years ago. I got one hail of a choice to make before i do the big 4th! Stay tuned for tomorrow's decision....

Congratulations (again, again)!! 

We all look forward to seeing which clan you'll go for.

Thanks Ben!

I DID IT (again, again)!! I completed The Revolution Melodic Metalcore Clan Challenge. Once again, it was quite some tiring hard work. After finishing those challenges for my 3 main clans, I'm gonna think about my decision for my ideal 4th clan and what I'm gonna do next. Then tomorrow morning, I'll tell you all what my decision is, whether that would be either starting to lock in The Fallen or The Guardians, or doing my own unofficial challenge to ultimately prove my place in a clan that I think better suits me now than a few years ago. I got one hail of a choice to make before i do the big 4th! Stay tuned for tomorrow's decision....

Well done.

I toiled with The Fallen but my background into metal was from the more traditional end (Maiden, Saxon etc) so The Guardians was my natural choice in the end.

I DID IT (again, again)!! I completed The Revolution Melodic Metalcore Clan Challenge. Once again, it was quite some tiring hard work. After finishing those challenges for my 3 main clans, I'm gonna think about my decision for my ideal 4th clan and what I'm gonna do next. Then tomorrow morning, I'll tell you all what my decision is, whether that would be either starting to lock in The Fallen or The Guardians, or doing my own unofficial challenge to ultimately prove my place in a clan that I think better suits me now than a few years ago. I got one hail of a choice to make before i do the big 4th! Stay tuned for tomorrow's decision....

Well done.

I toiled with The Fallen but my background into metal was from the more traditional end (Maiden, Saxon etc) so The Guardians was my natural choice in the end.

Thanks! Both The Fallen and The Guardians are clans with genres I naturally expanded in my taste range, but even though I have a bigger background history with power metal and symphonic metal (DragonForce, Blind Guardian, Sonata Arctica, etc.), I've forced myself out of those genres a couple years ago because I've lost passion for them and wanted to move my metal taste to this current more modern direction (Horde/Infinite/Revolution). But I think my Guardians flashbacks (ratings, reviews, tracks of the day, etc.) are starting to be too many to the point where it looks like I still have the mind of a Guardian. Well whichever clan I choose or if I have a plan for a clan, we'll see...

Wow! You didn't muck around with the Revolution challenge Andi. Some interesting reviews there that gave a good insight into your musical journey too. Well done!

I've just finished the Easy part of my strategy in The Fallen gothic metal challenge! But starting tomorrow (as of writing this thread), I'm gonna take a small week-long break from working hard on those reviews and use that opportunity to chill out and look for new bands to listen to. Then I will review a couple Lacuna Coil albums (as the only part of the Medium part of my Fallen strategy) and the new Paradise Lost album Obsidian, then spend the last week of May working on the hard part of the Modern Era Fallen gothic metal challenge. I'll soon enter the very last section of my journey to lock in and earn my 4th clan! However, my review challenging won't end there. I actually have one more bigger band challenge to more properly test my interests in all metal genres I've enjoyed, past and present. I'll make and post that challenge in June for anyone to try, but I won't start doing it myself until July because I've worked so hard throughout 2020 so far doing all these official and unofficial challenges and I feel like taking a break through June from reviewing groups of albums. Single-album reviewing recommendations would still be welcome. A new part of my Metal Academy era shall begin when this month ends....

OMG I DID IT YAY!!! I finished The Fallen Gothic Metal Modern Era Clan Challenge, and completed my Clan Challenge quest for the 4th clan! It was quite a lot of hard work throughout these first 5 months of 2020, but it was a real pleasure. Of course I'm still in the "review challenge" zone with another short unofficial band challenge that I'm gonna do starting tomorrow (https://metal.academy/forum/23/thread/318?page=1#topic_3054). Afterwards, I'll take a well-deserved break from the review challenging action during the remainder of June. Then in July, I actually have one more bigger band challenge to more properly test my interests in all metal genres I've enjoyed, past and present. I'll make and post that challenge about a week from now for anyone to try, but I won't starting doing it myself until July because of my break throughout the rest of June. Anyway, I'll take the moment to write a little list of acknowledgements for my metal journey so far:

Thanks to Daniel and Ben, the founding brothers of Metal Academy whom I really appreciate all this hard work and dedication in making this site for the metal community.

Thanks to all fellow members of this site for their improving contributions and, along with Ben and Daniel, supporting my metal taste and bringing back pieces of my past.

Thanks to my YouTube mate Danny Ultrawiz (https://metal.academy/forum/23/thread/402) for helping me expand my metal horizons to add more heaviness to my melody.

Thanks to my brother who started my entire metal interest. Seriously, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been interested in metal, nor would I know this site, and instead I would probably be trapped in the radio-pop hole by now. Thank greatness my brother came to get me into metal, the place in the music world where I really am today.

Once again I'm glad and grateful for my metal interest to take me this far and lead me to a website where I can do stuff like share my metal tastes, do metal-related ice-breaking forum activities, rate releases from my favorite metal bands, discover different bands I might like, and push myself to the limit to do reviewing challenges with the founders and other site members supporting me from the sides. This is so f***ing amazing!! So yeah, recapping what I'm gonna do next: short unofficial challenge, break throughout most of June, ultimate unofficial band challenge in July. Thanks again all my fellow metalheads! Peace - shadowdoom9/Andi

PS: Daniel, if you're reading this, please alert Ben about it when he's back from his few-day family holiday so he can confirm my lock-in and reward me that 4th clan. Thanks!