Hey Everyone <3

I figured I'd go ahead and introduce myself. You guys can call me Scarecrow (they/them pls); I'm 25 years old and I've been into metal ever since I was about 13. I'm mostly a symphonic metal nerd but I enjoy p much every type of metal to some extent or another, but especially prog, doom, and black metal. Here are a few of my favorite albums from each clan:

Guardians:

-While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose (also my favorite album of all time)

-Nightwish - Wishmaster

- X Japan - Art of life

-Kamelot - The Black Halo

-Dio - Holy Diver

Infinite:

-Protest the Hero - Palimpsest

-Mutuymu - I l y a

-Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

-Pain of Salvation - In The Passing Light of Day

-Scardust - Strangers

Fallen:

-Warning - Watching From a Distance (I especially love the recent live release)

-Battle of Mice - A Day of Nights

-Estatic Fear - A Sombre Dance

-King Witch - Body of Light

-40 Watt Sun - The Inside Room

North:

-Panopticon - Roads to the North

-Summoning - Stronghold

-Aquilus - Griseus

-Violet Cold - Noir Kid

-Malvery - Mortal Entrenchment in Requiem

Revolution:

-Frontierer - Oxidized

-Brand of Sacrifice - Lifeblood

-Slice the Cake - Odyssey to the West

-Metalite - Biomechanicals

-The Chariot - Long Live

Horde:

-Fleshgod Apocalypse - Labyrinth

-Liberteer - Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees

-Infernal Coil - Within a World Forgotten

-Genus Ordinis Dei - Glare of Deliverance

-Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation - Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation

Gateway:

-Poppy - I Disagree

-Bring Me the Horizon - Post Human: Survival Horror

-Slipknot - Iowa

-Devin Townsend Project - Epicloud

-Black Veil Brides - The Phantom Tomorrow

Sphere:

-Strapping Young Lad - City

-The Axis of Perdition - Deleted Scenes From the Transition Hospital

-The CNK - L'hymne à la joie

-Killing Joke - Hosannas From the Basements of Hell

-Strapping Young Lad - Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing

Pit (prolly my least listened to clan tho):

-Believer - Dimensions

-Celtic Frost - Into the Pandemonium

-Metallica - ...And Justice for All

-Thought Industry - Songs for Insects

-Anthrax - Among the Living

I'm also a musician myself and am looking to start writing my own music soon. I hope to remain active around here cause this seems like a pretty friendly place :)

Guardians:

-While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose (also my favorite album of all time)

-Nightwish - Wishmaster

- X Japan - Art of life

-Kamelot - The Black Halo

-Dio - Holy Diver

Infinite:

-Protest the Hero - Palimpsest

-Mutuymu - I l y a

-Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

-Pain of Salvation - In The Passing Light of Day

-Scardust - Strangers

The Nightwish, X Japan, Kamelot, Protest the Hero, Seventh Wonder, and Pain of Salvation albums are some of my favorite releases from their respective clans as well, so we might just get on really well and be able to share each other's favorite metal bands, possibly discovering different bands that one of us has listened to but not yet the other. While Heaven Wept, Mutuymu, Scardust, I haven't heard of before, but I might give them a try at some point. Of course, most people already know Dio's album and song. ("Holy Diver! You've been down too long in the midnight sea...")

I see you also like some of Devin Townsend's works including albums from his former band Strapping Young Lad, along with Bring Me the Horizon's latest alt-metal EP. Good stuff too! If you're looking for some more melodic bands for your metalcore interest, may I suggest Trivium? They're one of my favorite bands of all time and a great metal starter!

Anyway, that's all I gotta say for now. Enjoy your time here, Scarecrow!

Hello.  Nice to see some new blood around here.  Good to see you have already started a couple of new threads also.

I am a fan of Panopticon but have yet to get to Roads to the North, there's a couple of us here who enjoy Austin Lunn's work.  Also interested to see love for that Summoning record.  Stronghold was my intro to the band a few years back but I find it hasn't aged well but in terms of that combination of fanfare and medieval minimalism you can't deny it is interesting still.

I am not familiar with most of those Horde releases you list so I have some new listens to check out, thanks.  You have my favourite Metallica album in your Pit list though and that Anthrax album is a good choice also.

You seem to have a good handle on most genres of metal which is really good to see.  What turned you on to metal back in the day, had you experimented with other music genres?

Hi Scarecrow.

Anyone who loves Panopticon AND Watching from A Distance (the greatest album ever released in my book) is a friend of mine!

Welcome to Metal Academy Scarecrow! You seem to have a fairly wide ranging interest in metal, so I imagine choosing your three clans might have been a bit challenging. Speaking of challenges, if you want to add a fourth clan, you can do so by working your way through some of our clan challenges (you can find them in the Lists section).

Anyway, we hope you find the site valuable and enjoy our unique features and very friendly community. Plus it's great to have another Summoning fan here. We need as many as we can get to counter Daniel's vitriol towards what is one of my favourite bands. 

Guardians:

-While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose (also my favorite album of all time)

-Nightwish - Wishmaster

- X Japan - Art of life

-Kamelot - The Black Halo

-Dio - Holy Diver

Infinite:

-Protest the Hero - Palimpsest

-Mutuymu - I l y a

-Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

-Pain of Salvation - In The Passing Light of Day

-Scardust - Strangers

The Nightwish, X Japan, Kamelot, Protest the Hero, Seventh Wonder, and Pain of Salvation albums are some of my favorite releases from their respective clans as well, so we might just get on really well and be able to share each other's favorite metal bands, possibly discovering different bands that one of us has listened to but not yet the other. While Heaven Wept, Mutuymu, Scardust, I haven't heard of before, but I might give them a try at some point. Of course, most people already know Dio's album and song. ("Holy Diver! You've been down too long in the midnight sea...")

I see you also like some of Devin Townsend's works including albums from his former band Strapping Young Lad, along with Bring Me the Horizon's latest alt-metal EP. Good stuff too! If you're looking for some more melodic bands for your metalcore interest, may I suggest Trivium? They're one of my favorite bands of all time and a great metal starter!

Anyway, that's all I gotta say for now. Enjoy your time here, Scarecrow!

Omg! Yeah no it sounds like our tastes really align. I will sing the praises of While Heaven Wept forever, and Vast Oceans is 100% worth checking out if you have even a passing interest in heavy, doom, power, or progressive metal (yeah, it kinda does all of that). Also, if you like Nightwish you'll definitely love Scardust. They do vaudevillian symphonic prog metal that's just an absolute blast. 

I'm listening to Shogun by Trivium now on your suggestion. I've been on a black metal binge for the past 3 days so this is a pretty refreshing changeup. So far so good! I actually recognize a few of these songs. I think Down From the Sky and Into the Mouth of Hell We March were both in one of my brother's football video games. Thanks for the rec 

Hello.  Nice to see some new blood around here.  Good to see you have already started a couple of new threads also.

I am a fan of Panopticon but have yet to get to Roads to the North, there's a couple of us here who enjoy Austin Lunn's work.  Also interested to see love for that Summoning record.  Stronghold was my intro to the band a few years back but I find it hasn't aged well but in terms of that combination of fanfare and medieval minimalism you can't deny it is interesting still.

I am not familiar with most of those Horde releases you list so I have some new listens to check out, thanks.  You have my favourite Metallica album in your Pit list though and that Anthrax album is a good choice also.

You seem to have a good handle on most genres of metal which is really good to see.  What turned you on to metal back in the day, had you experimented with other music genres?

I definitely recognize Summoning sounds a bit dated, but I think that's part of the charm for me; that dungeon synthy sound can be a nice break from the soundtrack-esque orchestrals found in my usual symphonic metal rotation. Plus, I really love their approach to black metal in general; the lack of standard conventions like tremolo picking give it a different vibe from the usual stuff.

As I said in my first post, I'm not super well-versed in The Pit. Even within those 5, only 2 of them are just straight up thrash and the other 3 are more proggy/avant-garde/symphonic compared to to the standard fare, and I think I have less than 15 total thrash/groove/speed metal albums rated on rym. The Pit and The Sphere are by far my two biggest blind spots.

I started off listening to classic rock/metal because of my dad, and I used to play games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band which helped me discover more metal artists. I listened to a little bit of everything you'd expect a late 00s/early 10s teenager to listen to, but metal was the first genre I heard that encouraged me to scratch past the surface of the genre. Eventually, I just spent every day after school on youtube looking up metal compilations (primarily for power/heavy metal and then eventually symphonic metal, as those were the ones that really stuck to me back then. I didn't branch out much past them until I was older. My only exceptions to this were While Heaven Wept, which had the advantage of having heavy/power influences in their later stuff to ease me into their doom metal early material, and Warning which I only brought out when I was incredibly sad. I also knew of Summoning but only listened to one of their songs) to find new music to listen to. The first bands I fell in absolute love with were Nightwish and While Heaven Wept, the former sparking my still-ongoing love for symphonic metal. Pretty much all of my Guardians material and some of my Infinite material comes from this time period. When I got older, after having a phase where I stopped listening to most metal and only listened to top 40 stuff shudders, I came back around to metal and over the past 2-3 years or so have been branching out even further than I did when I first got into metal. Now, I listen to a wide array of metal, and I'm way more open to extreme metal, but I still reserve my love for symphonic metal and channel that into discovering unique off-kilter combinations of orchestral music and metal (such as Mutuymu - I l y a).

Hi Scarecrow.

Anyone who loves Panopticon AND Watching from A Distance (the greatest album ever released in my book) is a friend of mine!

Hello friend! 

Welcome to Metal Academy Scarecrow! You seem to have a fairly wide ranging interest in metal, so I imagine choosing your three clans might have been a bit challenging. Speaking of challenges, if you want to add a fourth clan, you can do so by working your way through some of our clan challenges (you can find them in the Lists section).

Anyway, we hope you find the site valuable and enjoy our unique features and very friendly community. Plus it's great to have another Summoning fan here. We need as many as we can get to counter Daniel's vitriol towards what is one of my favourite bands. 

Yeah, it was lmao. I just chose the 3 that I felt I have the most experience in. The Guardians was the only immediately obvious one because of what I talked about in my response to Vinny,. I then chose Infinite and Fallen because out of all the other clans those were the ones where I had the most artists I could list off the top of my head as being important to me.

I just checked out the clan challenges page. Looks super interesting! Because I've been on a black metal binge the past few days, I kinda wanted to see about completing one for The North... The only issue for me is that, looking at all of The North lists, I don't think I'll be able to listen to any of the lists in their entirely. Too much sketch and I wouldn't feel comfortable writing reviews for some of those bands. Maybe I'll get Revolution or Gateway instead

Guardians:

-While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose (also my favorite album of all time)

-Nightwish - Wishmaster

- X Japan - Art of life

-Kamelot - The Black Halo

-Dio - Holy Diver

Infinite:

-Protest the Hero - Palimpsest

-Mutuymu - I l y a

-Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

-Pain of Salvation - In The Passing Light of Day

-Scardust - Strangers

The Nightwish, X Japan, Kamelot, Protest the Hero, Seventh Wonder, and Pain of Salvation albums are some of my favorite releases from their respective clans as well, so we might just get on really well and be able to share each other's favorite metal bands, possibly discovering different bands that one of us has listened to but not yet the other. While Heaven Wept, Mutuymu, Scardust, I haven't heard of before, but I might give them a try at some point. Of course, most people already know Dio's album and song. ("Holy Diver! You've been down too long in the midnight sea...")

I see you also like some of Devin Townsend's works including albums from his former band Strapping Young Lad, along with Bring Me the Horizon's latest alt-metal EP. Good stuff too! If you're looking for some more melodic bands for your metalcore interest, may I suggest Trivium? They're one of my favorite bands of all time and a great metal starter!

Anyway, that's all I gotta say for now. Enjoy your time here, Scarecrow!

Omg! Yeah no it sounds like our tastes really align. I will sing the praises of While Heaven Wept forever, and Vast Oceans is 100% worth checking out if you have even a passing interest in heavy, doom, power, or progressive metal (yeah, it kinda does all of that). Also, if you like Nightwish you'll definitely love Scardust. They do vaudevillian symphonic prog metal that's just an absolute blast. 

I'm listening to Shogun by Trivium now on your suggestion. I've been on a black metal binge for the past 3 days so this is a pretty refreshing changeup. So far so good! I actually recognize a few of these songs. I think Down From the Sky and Into the Mouth of Hell We March were both in one of my brother's football video games. Thanks for the rec 

I'll put Scardust in my must-try list. Thanks for the rec! Shogun is very great, but my favorite album from Trivium (and one of my favorite metal albums ever) is In Waves, definitely worth checking out for anyone with even a slight interest in metalcore.

Welcome Scarecrow! It's always great to see well-informed new academics joining our ranks. We're a very accommodating bunch so don't be shy. Feel free to have as much or as little involvement with the site as you wish. Ben & I administer the site & would be more than happy to help you with any queries you may have.

Here are some of the cool site activities you have available to you if you choose to participate:

1. Clan Challenges - where you can work to secure a fourth clan.

2. Public Lists - where you can create your own release lists i.e. best-of, year-end, etc.

3. Monthly clan playlists - you'll find track submission threads in each clan forum where you can contribute tracks you've been digging throughout the previous month. Let me know if you'd like to contribute & I can adjust the time allocations for each member to accommodate you.

4. Feature releases - Clan members take turns in nominating the monthly feature release for each clan which we all listen to & discuss. This is probably my favourite part of the site to be honest. Let me know if you'd like to be added to the rosters to nominate the releases for your three clans.

Hey there, welcome! I currently run The Guardians playlist so if you want to add any songs for January check out the submissions thread by the end of the month. I've always enjoyed the more symphonic side of metal but I've found I'm extremely picky within the genre, so it's cool to see someone with a different Guardians taste check out the site. You'll definitely find a ton of stuff you would have never listened to otherwise if you stick around, especially through the monthly features. 

Oh yeah, the playlists and monthly features! Thanks for reminding me, Xephyr!

Scarecrow, you might just find a lot of metal suitable for your interest via the monthly features and Spotify clan playlists. If you ever feel like submitting feature releases for your clans, please ask Daniel so he can add you to the roster. As for the playlists, I run The Revolution playlist, so feel free to check out the submissions thread and request a good song for me to the playlist. One track per non-members, maximum 30 minutes total for Revolution members. However, please submit your suggestion by the 15th or 16th of each month if you wish to get your submission into next month's playlist on time. I'm standing by that old rule because I often get so excited about how a playlist turns out that I'd sent to Daniel when I'm ready around that time of month. If you'd like to assemble the playlist for one of your clans, please ask Daniel so he can give you that privilege. The Fallen and Guardians playlists are already reserved. Saxy S is in charge of both The Gateway and The Infinite playlists, and while assembling two clan playlists is a rare treat, it could be quite some tiring work. So if you're up to taking over The Infinite playlist, please check with both Saxy and Daniel. And finally, make sure to send your monthly feature submissions and playlists to Daniel via private message to add a bit of anticipation. Enjoy!

Also lately we've been discussing some ups and downs about our lives, so feel free to join in the conversation as well (unless you prefer to keep your outside life private). Our discussion is right here: https://metal.academy/forum/23/thread/1047