More clan challenges?
Hey there, Ben! It's been quite a long time since you last made the Metal Academy Clan Challenges, and there's still only 5 more genres you haven't done clan challenges for yet. So when you have the chance, could you please make some clan challenges for the remaining 5 genres? Thanks! Those genres are:
Sludge Metal
Neoclassical Metal
Post-Metal
Viking Metal
Trance Metal
It has been a while! I actually attempted to make a Viking Metal one a while back, but was shocked to find that there really aren't enough quality albums to do it. There are very few Viking Metal releases than don't have a more dominant primary such as Black Metal or Folk Metal. I'm pretty sure that will be the case for Neoclassical Metal and Trance Metal too, but I can definitely make one for Sludge and Post.
The question is...what do I do with Atmospheric Sludge?! I'm thinking that it will lock in The Infinite rather than The Fallen as both Daniel and I agree that Atmospheric Sludge is more Post-Metal than it is Sludge Metal. Anyone have an opinion on that?
Ben, can I suggest that you still make up those more niche challenges but just choose the most relevant releases that have a healthy amount of votes for the subgenre regardless of whether they're the most numerous or not (as long as the release's most popular subgenre is still within the same clan of course)? The intention is to give people into each specific subgenre some releases that fit the taste requirements of the clan & I think this approach will work out more often than not for subgenres like Viking metal & Neoclassical metal. Thoughts?
Sludge Metal and Post-Metal are exactly what I had in mind as the starting genres for when you continue making clan challenges, Ben. With over thousands of releases in those genres primarily voted by a great amount of RYM users, there should be no trouble for you making clan challenges for those two genres. As for the other genres; Viking Metal, Neoclassical Metal, and Trance Metal, yeah it can be pretty hard finding releases that qualify in any of those genres in RYM, but there are still hundreds of releases in those genres (the lowest one, Trance Metal has 369 primarily voted releases). I might be able to help try to find enough release to qualify for at least one challenge per genre, so I say, never say nevermore!
Good question about Atmospheric Sludge. While it makes sense for Sludge Metal to be a Fallen genre because it's basically a more hardcore doom metal, Atmospheric Sludge is quite different as it focuses more on the experimental atmosphere of Post-Metal. It's a bit like our Symphonic Metal issue where Horde bands like Fleshgod Apocalypse and Septicflesh are placed in The Guardians even though Symphonic Death Metal is emphasized more on Death than Symphonic. With that, I'm gonna submit one or a few The Ocean albums into the Hall of Judgement with the proposal of removing them from The Fallen while keeping them in The Infinite, and see if there are enough Metal Academy members who agree with the idea for you to push all the Atmospheric Sludge releases through.
Seems like now I got a couple big Metal Academy plans going on throughout the rest of my week-long break from reviewing. You agree with them?
In all honesty, RYM is the only place you'll see the term "atmospheric sludge metal". They're really just referring to the post-metal genre which they added only relatively recently & now have competing against atmospheric sludge in a pointless trade-off between two subgenres that are essentially the same thing. There are very few releases that are labelled as post-metal that aren't also tagged as atmospheric sludge. I think it should all fall under post-metal & reside in The Infinite.