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Yeah, I think it's a little more accurate personally but would throw Nintendocore in under the Electronicore banner too if I was them as it's simply too specific.

I think nintendocore used to be under trancecore but they removed it a couple years ago.

Personally, I'll downrate anything that feels too monotone.  Length itself is only a common factor in this, but even a 20 minute album can feel samey and unimaginative.  This is part of why I consider Reign in Blood inferior to South of Heaven, and more appropriately, Pleasure to Kill under several Kreator albums.  Of course, length itself is an element that can be used properly, if the musician is good enough, like on many slower metal genres such as doom.  My favorite example of this would be The Dreadful Hours.  Or course, the absolute best I can think of is William Basinski's Disintegration Loops.

My favorite last time I listened to it is Hell - Curse and Chapter, while something that reflects more of what I listen to is Doom - Human Noise. Well-crafted technical, often veering into controlled chaos is more my forte than something that's just a perfectly crafted album of metal.

Different Hell than the one I've heard.  Classic heavy metal from the modern day is always welcome.

Oh, totally Ben. I was gonna raise that one too.

To be fair, I'd listen to his death metal opinions above mine. We often disagree, but then I find myself coming around to his way of thinking more often than I'd like to admit (ssshhhh... don't tell him I said that).

I'd suggest that people make an exception with melodic death metal Ben. I think we both know that I can't be trusted to provide a fair judgement in that space.

Slam death metal is never usually my thing, as I tend to avoid the more brutal death metal subgenres, but Fanguine takes on a strong diverse direction in both the music and lyrical themes, instead of just gore, gore, and more gore. The music sounds quite good despite still sounding brutal, with several other metal genres thrown into their main technical/slam death metal sound. A couple highlights for me are the final two tracks; "Let Me Explain" with its "broken transmission" deathcore, and "Genocidal Genesis", a decently long progressive epic that still stands by their usual sound. I can definitely imagine the latter track making history in the extreme metal scene, and that final verse with "Angel of Death"-esque Nazi lyrics would definitely be making headlines. Lots of great moments in the album! Still too brutal for me, but highly recommendable for the more extreme metalheads. I give that album a personal rating of 3/5, or a percentage rating of 64%.

Emotional Suffering - Nocturnal Solitude

Primary genres: deathcore, melodic death metal

Secondary genres: dark folk, symphonic black metal, gothic metal

In November 19, 2027, an album is released to continue the rising scene of epic deathcore popularized by bands like Shadow of Intent, Lorna Shore, and Mental Cruelty. This is... Nocturnal Solitude by Emotional Suffering, a deathcore/melodic death metal band from Wisconsin. They expand on the dark lyrical themes mostly of death, depression, and loss, close to the lyrical themes that many doom metal bands have, but of course in a different sound. While sticking firmly in melodic deathcore, elements of genres like dark folk, symphonic black metal, and gothic metal are added into the mix. The ethereal yet spooky cover art is by a young artist inspired by the late Mariusz Lewandowski, a tree being blown heavily by a dark lightning storm, with a background mirage of a Grim Reaper. After the short symphonic blackened deathcore introductory title track that starts with a one-minute intro, you can expect a solid run of diverse melodic deathcore. Background female vocals can be found in the tracks "Darkness and Sorrow", "It's All We've Loved", and "Beyond the Killing End". The latter track is the 3-part 16-minute final epic, in a similar vein to the title suites of Shadow of Intent's Elegy and Lorna Shore's Pain Remains, though indexed as a full track. The second part is a 4-minute dark folk/ambient interlude, sandwiched between the two other 6-minute parts that have the usual melodic deathcore sound with symphonic black metal elements. The third part has less emphasis on deathcore, but it unleashes one final deathcore breakdown that, despite not being a single, can surpass that of Lorna Shore's "To the Hellfire", and a one-minute dark folk outro to end the album. Or at least the standard edition of the album. The edition released in Japan has a bonus track, a cover of Lorna Shore's "Immortal" released on YouTube the prior year, so popular upon upload, that's how they have gained a record label. The album sells well in a steady pace, and the aforementioned final breakdown and folk outro is often played at the end of concerts.

Lyrical themes: sadness (1, 5, 6, 7), death (2, 3, 4, 8, 9), loss (2, 4, 5, 6, 7), sorrow (3, 4, 8, 9), depression (3, 5, 7, 8)

1. Nocturnal Solitude (2:53, dark folk, deathcore, symphonic black metal)

2. Cut Up Alone (4:42, deathcore, melodic death metal)

3. Darkness and Sorrow (3:25, deathcore, gothic metal, melodic death metal)

4. Dead Tomorrow After Living Today (6:15, deathcore, melodic death metal, technical death metal)

5. Coma Eclipse (4:43, deathcore, folk metal, dark folk)

6. The Blackened Path of Silence (4:13, deathcore, melodic death metal)

7. Distant Calling (5:27, deathcore, melodic death metal, gothic metal)

8. It's All We've Loved (5:27, deathcore, gothic metal)

9. Beyond the Killing End (16:07, deathcore, melodic death metal, symphonic black metal, dark folk, dark ambient)

I. The Dwelling of Death (deathcore, melodic death metal, symphonic black metal)

II. Sun Without a New Year (dark folk, dark ambient)

III. It Ends Forever (melodic death metal, symphonic black metal, deathcore, dark folk)

10. Immortal (Lorna Shore cover) (Japanese edition bonus track) (6:48, deathcore, symphonic black metal, technical death metal)

I got a few of the very early issues of ZT and found it suited my taste better than Terrorizer (which was still going at the time). It was a decent mag, but suffered the same problems as all printed media that has to attract readers to keep afloat in that it tended to cover the better known acts and didn't really delve into the underground.

While it could hardly be said I'm the biggest fan of death/black metal, I find that my distaste these days stems less from the vocals and more how everyone seems to have this habit of going full one note aggression. It irks me less in black metal since that tends to be the whole point, and thus bands tend to work it to their advantage, but death metal seems to have it bad. I have especially come to loathe any song in which the drummer just hammers the drumkit, regardless of genre. Funny thing, I wouldn't describe this endless aggression as exclusive to metal or punk, I heard some Mexican music not too long ago as I was in a Mexican fast food place, which basically just consisted of a dude singing fast over some fast acoustic guitar. Basically, have some variety.

Vocalists trying to sink outside of their range hits me pretty big too. I'm not talking like King Diamond, I'm talking like someone singing at the top of their range and you can hear their voice, and possibly your windows, cracking.

Death is the most obvious one but I'd also nominate Converge & Gorguts.

Gorguts would be my major call on this thread.  A band that not only consistently puts out quality material but actually improves with every release also.  Likewise, I would agree with Death being on the list, obviously.  BAN are another great call.  There are some golden runs that I cannot get away without mentioning - first 4 Metallica records and first 4 Sepultura also.  Both more or less went to shit afterwards unfortunately so would not qualify for the whole discography sphere of this thread.

Couple of others from me:

Nordicwinter, one man Canadian bm artist who can do no wrong in my book.

Sargeist, consistency is key in this accolade and this guys are as solid as they come.

Autopsy, I can't think of anyone else who produces such consistently sloppy and ugly death metal, release after release.  They pretend to be nothing other than what they are and make no apologies for being so.

I was also going to ask about the Iron Maiden, but there's obviously too much passion emanating from Daniel that I'll leave it to my imagination. 

It did make me curious though, as this is probably easier than the Best 10 Albums Of All Time. Encenathrakh is easily #1, but the rest isn't in any order, and the De Magia Veterum album may be a bit of a stretch since I'm more used to Black Metal than I was a few years ago.

1. Encenathrakh - Ithate Thngth Oceate
2. Delusional Parasitosis / Ecchymosis / Dissevered / Bleeding - Scaphism 4-Way Split (2017)
3. Machine Head - Catharsis (2018)
4. The Devil Wears Prada - The Act (2019)
5. Combichrist - One Fire (2019)
6. Body Count - Carnivore (2020)
7. De Magia Veterum - Naked Swords Into the Wombs of the Enemy (2017)
8. Ada Rook - UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU (2022)
9. Phyllomedusa - Desiccation in Progress (Version II) (2011)
10. Antediluvian - The Divine Punishment (2021)

I have actually listened to Wintaar a bit and have rated two or three of his albums, the best of which is Nordic Glares Bless the Dead which I described at the time as "Rabid-sounding, blasting, russian black metal that will strip the paint off your car at fifty paces!" Not bad, but not great either. I guess it's easier for a lone wolf outfit to keep going in the face of massive indifference than it is a full band. You have got to admire artist's like these tenacity in a way. Might check a couple more of his albums out now you've reminded me of him, Ben, as I haven't listened to him for a while.

Thanks guys.  I'll check them out.

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.

As long as it's clearly stated, I'm not going to be pedantic about how or where. I understand that including the text in the image itself might be too intrusive. In the description if there is one, or as a directly associated comment etc. is fine.

Thanks for explaining.  Btw, I've got the outline for the first pic half done.  I'm gonna do one for each clan first in order of their appearance on the clans section of MA, so the first to get a poster is The Fallen.

Hey there, Rexorcist. I saw your complete list in Metalforum, and it looks awesome! A solid list of metal classics and favorites. Do you plan on sharing it here, whether it's the full list or just the links?

Thanks a bunch for checking out the list.  I want to make it, but there's still one album missing from the database.  It's really difficult to get this one added, and I don't wanna replace it with number #101.  But I honestly believe that it's one of the very first "metal" albums.

Trance Metal has now been completely removed from the database with each release now sitting under the most significant alternative primary/secondary genre/subgenre.

I would very much be the one who called it, it's just so epic for me! Also in that article, there's a motivational Facebook post from Will Ramos in 2014 (long before he joined Lorna Shore) that basically combats Nergal's suggestion. While there are consequences such as relentless amounts of touring and recording and how much money to make, it's a good dream. I might not be able to accomplish such a feat today, but I might in the future if I can practice doing what I can when I can. You just gotta not put yourself down and instead believe in yourself. There's never too many bands or too much music, there just needs to be a balance in everything. No standstills and no overloads.

Bands from the Every Noise metal map I've listened to in the past and still listen to today (might also keep traveling through the industrial metal "north" with bands like Pain and Fear Factory):

The revenue is now coming from streaming - a digital world that was nonexistent back in the day.

From everything I've read & heard, bands actually make bugger-all off streaming their music unless they're at the extreme top level. I have several friends that produce music that's sold on streaming platforms & they're always complaining that they make next to nothing from it. All but the absolute elite metal bands make most of their money from touring & merchandise sales these days. The importance of producing their own music is so that they can get people to book them for live shows.

Yes, that is my understanding of the situation too. Artists want their music streamed by as many people as possible in the hope that those people will then buy tickets to shows, t-shirts and hoodies etc. This is the only real explanantion for streaming services being so cheap (or even free if you're not bothered by advertising) and the price of merchandise and physical copies of music are so high. I pay a tenner a month for Spotify and can (and often do) listen to dozens of albums in a month, yet to buy a single CD from a local record shop or off Bandcamp costs more than a month of Spotify and for my preferred format of vinyl records, two or three months. You can buy a t-shirt from Primark for three ot four quid, but stick a Maiden or Judas Priest transfer on it and it'll set you back £20+.

Not to sound parental, but if it's a small genre, you should at least listen to the highest rated albums in the genre (minimum saaaay 10?) before that level of certainty can be justified.

I guess I'll take the fourth Pit slot.  I can always hold off on the Pit challenge a little longer.

Cool. As above, we'll make that draft out of 6.

Sure. Paid on completion of the work though!

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a plea to include demos.  The first music site I joined wouldn't allow EP's or bootlegs.  But this makes for a decent discussion since there are so many.

I'm talking about albums that take you into new worlds visually and audibly, albums that do things to you that other albums can't do.

The first thing that comes to mind right now is Hallucinogen by Blut Aus Nord for its extremely psychedelic behavior, as well as anything by Oranssi Pazuzu.

Thank you for the apology.

To be fair, the system is all about walking fine lines because of the overlap in genres becoming unpredictable.  For example, take Hell II's incredible usage of sludge, doom and drone with hints of death and black.  With its major genres, it's the perfect album for The Fallen.  And then we have a mix of power metal and thrash metal on Burnt Offerings, boasting mild symphonic, prog and doom and death influences.  It likely fits in both the Guardians and The Pit (no way Dante's Inferno is power instead of thrash), but it also takes atmospheric influence from key genres of the Horde and the Fallen.  When a band like Fleshgod comes around, that's when things get technical and the discussions begin.

Of course, I can't speak for Apocalyptica, but I was thikning along the lines of the high-energy music of Dawn of the Dragonstar by Twilight Force and the symphonic power sounds of Galneryus.  The heaviness of death metal mixed with the high symphonic focus brought the same feeling somewhat to life, thus through heaviness the similarities are found where they likely shouldn't be found.

This reminds me of a movie I saw which surprised me with how well it handled two completely different genres and combined them so seamlessly: gritty film noir and children's cartoons.  Roger Rabbit.  The key factor in combining the two was violence.  The scene explaining Bob Hoskin's disdain for cartoons in the bar said it all.

Yeah, that's pretty fuckin' punk.

Alright I'm wrong - Hell III is heavier.

One of my all-time favourites right there.

I figured the answer would be something along those lines.

I think Ben's point is that he adds every release to Metal Academy himself.

... I did not know that.  Lemme know when you get a second guy on board so I can bug someone else about all my favorite indie bands. :P

I don't see any reason to remove these releases to be honest. They've obviously been deemed to be pretty close to metal or metal-related by some people & we've always intended the site to be very much against the "gatekeeper" style approach of some of our competitors. As long as these releases are marked as Non-Metal then I don't see that they cause any harm unless they're an obvious piss-take.

Hey Morpheus, I have used mp3 players extensively over the years and have found Sandisk players to be of really good quality. I have two of them and the first one is more than fifteen years old and still works perfectly. I used to use them at work and they took a bit of hammer there and still survived. The micro-SD slots also work fine. My problem was always trying to find headphones that would last. I don't have a smartphone, so I do sometimes get some use out of them, although I tend to use my Amazon Fire tablet and download off Spotify when away from home. I do however use USB drives in the car as the car stereo has a USB port. I know, what a Luddite, eh?!

These aren't ordered but it was real interesting going through my ratings and seeing how many bands had their breakout album on their 2nd or 3rd instead of their debut. Way more than I imagined, these were some of the most interesting ones I could find without listing any duplicates, since Devin Townsend, Emperor, Ne Obliviscaris, and Ahab would have made the list for me.

1. Neptunian Maximalism - Éons (2020)
2. Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine (1992)
3. Blood Incantation - Starspawn (2016)
4. Opeth - Orchid (1995)
5. Cryptic Shift - Visitations From Enceladus (2020)
6. Stormkeep - Tales of Othertime (2021)
7. Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye (2003)
8. Altesia - Paragon Circus (2019)
9. Epiphanic Truth - Dark Triad: Bitter Psalms to a Sordid Species (2021)
10. Herzel - Le dernier rempart (2021)

The content of the list is fairly irrelevant as any list compiled by a corporate entity means FA to me. If I'm going to read a list of greatest metal albums I would much rather read one compiled by someone who actually gives a shit about metal in the first place - at least it's gonna be honest. The point I was trying to make is that metal was originally derided and scorned, when not just ignored, by the established music commentators. Compare this to the advent of punk rock when everyone in the music press wet themselves over it from the get-go because it was controversial and would sell copies -  which is the only thing that ever matters to these cultural vampires. 

In fact, here in the UK, metal and hard rock (that wasn't The Stooges or the New York Dolls) got even more of a hard time and was mercilessly derided. That is unti the advent of the NWOBHM when suddenly everyone in the music press - surprise, surprise - were smelling money and were suddenly lifelong mealheads. This was all in pre-internet days obviously when the only alternative to these charlatans was our friends and peers who helped each other to form and pollinate their own metal taste and so form bonds within a scene that no amount of corporate bullshit could penetrate.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I view Metal Academy as very much akin to that clique of friends and peers who helped shape my metal world in the face of outside derision and hostility, as represented not only by the corporate media, but also clickbait-addicted hipsters on other sites (hello RYM) who's sole purpose seems to be to deride metal and metalheads. So let's all keep on doing what we're doing and fuck those assholes who just don't "get it" because we don't need their scorn and we don't need their approval.

Sorry - rant over.

Interesting way of doing it; an easy way to pull random albums definitely keeps it exciting. I'm sure I can speak for the rest of the frequent posters here that it's great to hear that the feature releases have been making their way into your collection, good luck!

Radio station meetings in a nutshell:

Here's the link to a story I've made based on both the Metal Academy clan map and my metal journey so far (along with hinting at the reasons for me to completely leave most of The Fallen genres next month) (press CLICK TO PLAY): https://starwarsintrocreator.kassellabs.io/#!/DMk4q6nTu7rfvl4xOyk-

Now available on YouTube!

I've updated my Best of my Post-Sludge Elemental Star Spotify playlist to make sure all 7 bands I've chosen are post-sludge. If any of you have the time, please check it out and see which of these tracks are more suitable for The Fallen and/or The Infinite: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/59Sf6o9TJg2z7sjVzQkMcp

Jesu's Infinity has more drone, but I think there's some post-sludge potential in that 50-minute track.

As if we still had more to celebrate after a couple special Metal Academy milestones yesterday, two bands I thought would be gone forever have returned to play live or release a new album, both announced today!

God Forbid is one of my favorite metalcore bands, but they split up in 2013. They've just announced their first concert in 9 years, the upcoming September 2022 Blue Ridge Rock Festival. Since another American metalcore band Shadows Fall plan to make their first album since their reunion concert, I hope God Forbid would do the same as well. However, we don't know how guitarist Doc Coyle would keep up with his current band Bad Wolves.

The Gathering is a band that I've once enjoyed 5 years ago. They started as gothic death-doom but switched to alt-prog rock. After a hiatus, a surprise compilation, and a few years of live performances, they're all set to release their first album in 9 years, Beautiful Distortion. Sadly, I think their alt-prog-rock sound will remain...

Any thoughts on those two bands' comebacks or any bands you wish would reform? Discuss!

In truth, you won't really get an accurate polling of the most popular bands from internet music websites as most participants are likely to be music nerds to a greater or lesser degree and popularity is overwhelmingly determined by the undedicated. I just thought it might make for an interesting talking point is all.

Honestly, there are way better things to spend your time than to listen to this sh*tter from Underoath's poor alt-rock excuse of a comeback:

I guess I'll end with this: don't ostracize new metal fans because they like the popular metal trend. In my experience, hipster culture is the one factor above all else that has distanced me from popular trends. Acceptance is what leads newbies to expand their listening experience beyond their comfort zone. You never know; the next giant in heavy metal might not even listen to metal at this moment. Just give them time to get there.

Great point there, Saxy. It would be unrealistic to expect new fans to dive immediately into Deathspell Omega, Hell or Esoteric. I doubt any of us jumped straight into the deep end with extreme metal and for us older fans (from the 80s or earlier) it was something that developed along with us as we aged with it. Now there is a bewildering amount of stuff that is termed as metal just sitting right there and I'm sure it can be daunting to get into. Hopefully this is where a website like Metal Academy can help out the newer, less informed fans, but let them walk before they can run and then we won't scare them away.

If the music is good enough and we help to get it heard - the clan playlists are a great vehicle for this if we can get people outside our admittedly small circle to listen - then I'm sure the next generation of metal fan will jump onboard and secure it's future.

Oh yeah, well here's what I think is probably the most poppy alt-metalcore song I've heard:

Finally made my draft a public post! It's right here: https://www.reddit.com/user/shadowdoom9/comments/rw8mvq/my_thoughts_on_loudwires_big_4_bands_of_17_metal/

RYM seems to be completely down again right now. It's definitely been down a lot lately.

Makes it difficult for me to add new bands / releases to the site.

For me, The Infinite provided the most pleasant of surprises with a couple of absolute belters in Ne Obliviscaris' Portal of I and Altesia's Paragon Circus. The Lucid Planet album was another very good release that I enjoyed immensely.

The North's releases I was much more familiar with generally, but both Nehëmah's Requiem Tenebrae and Cultes des Ghoules' Henbane were superb and both new to me.

In The Pit, Grip Inc's Nemesis was the one that caught my attention of those I was unfamiliar with.

Helmet and Alice in Chains provided great enjoyment from The Gateway and I even discovered a Revolution album that I didn't hate - Trivium's In Waves.

So all in all it was quite a profitable year as far as interesting fresh stuff from the features was concerned.

I actually don't ever plan to write a review any more as I simply don't have the time. What eventuates is that I start to write a short synopsis in the forums & sometimes find that I end up writing so much that it organically becomes a review, at which point I'll cut & paste it into the release page. I like it that way because it essentially means that I'm never under pressure to write a review. I just end up writing them when a) I have the time & b) I have a lot to say. I don't even need to make a decision on whether or not I'll do it. It just happens naturally.