Prog / Blackened Death

Some of us know that RYM has been foolhardy and allowed Blackened Death and Progressive Death to not be represented as genres in their system, currently. By virtue of using their genre make up, this also excludes it from Metal Academy, which is a situation I would love to remedy. This would also give you something they have not. Anyone who followed that fiasco over there knows what a frowned upon happening that turned out to be, and I feel that they should definitely be represented as subgenres unto themselves rather than hybrid tags. Is this something that has been discussed? Thanks. 

Some of us know that RYM has been foolhardy and allowed Blackened Death and Progressive Death to not be represented as genres in their system, currently. By virtue of using their genre make up, this also excludes it from Metal Academy, which is a situation I would love to remedy. This would also give you something they have not. Anyone who followed that fiasco over there knows what a frowned upon happening that turned out to be, and I feel that they should definitely be represented as subgenres unto themselves rather than hybrid tags. Is this something that has been discussed? Thanks. 

As it turns out, I was part of the initial conversations (I'm The Trickster on RYM). I strongly believed that Progressive Death Metal should be a genre, and I know that Daniel feels the same way. Not having it results in albums being categorised as Technical Death Metal when they're clearly just Death Metal with Progressive leanings. The same thing happens with Thrash Metal, with the Technical Thrash Metal term being misused due to there not being any other way  to differentiate standard Thrash from Thrash / Progressive hybrids. It all results in the Progressive Metal charts containing loads of bands that really have nothing to do with real Progressive Metal.

These arguments are actually part of the reason why I decided to remove low-level sub-genres from Metal Academy altogether. Death Metal is categorised as Death Metal here, regardless of whether it has melodic, technical, blackened, brutal or progressive leanings. I think fans that enjoy one of those "sub-genres" will likely enjoy all of them. Also, unless I was to introduce a genre voting system here, I would only be able to go off what Rate Your Music has listed when adding releases, as I want to avoid enforcing my own subjective opinions on the site. I can't possibly listen to every album that I add anyway, so we'd end up in the same place, concentrating on labels and sub-labels, rather than just enjoying the music and bonding with like-minded metal fans.

All this said, I'm open to anything that will make this site more useful. If there's a way to introduce lower level sub-genres without it becoming the focal point of discussion or over-complicating the Clan aspect of the site, I'd like to hear it.

Cheers!

Yes, i know we were both long timers in the queue. I think at one point I had added about 45 genres and descriptions myself, before they were slowly updated for this n that and my name bumped. I guess the only thing that comes to mind would be some sort of button where raters could indicate a 'style' addendum without directly affecting the genre tag itself. Similar to what RYM is doing with descriptors, but instead of all the (often not very helpful and too subjective) clutter, just some simple ones like Progressive / Technical / Melodic / a few more that could be discussed.

It would especially help people who are newer to the scenes, and I feel like any database should strive to point its users at what they seek as quickly and efficiently as able. I am confident that the vast majority of users on a Metal oriented site such as this would have similar viewpoints as to what needs what style tag. All of that may be more complex than you crave, or is something for down the road, but I think it's at least worth stuffing into your noggin for later consideration as the site grows. 

Thanks much!

If we're to implement some more precise genre tagging then perhaps we limit the functional use of it to filtering on the releases page. We've already got the full list of genres there rather than just the clans so it wouldn't change things too much to have that expanded to include an additional layer of subgenre tagging. I agree that it would definitely be good to be able to filter by brutal death metal or pagan black metal in a chart situation but still limit the rating to those from the existing clans i.e. The Horde or The North respectively.

Agreed, perfectly fitting for a release page function, and limited to clan I can understand; although someone like myself would be itching to get at things I couldn't stand seeing unspecified. But that's just me. Thanks, guys. 

Thanks for the feedback Shezma. I'll have a think about how I might make genre coverage clearer during the registration process. It's wrong of me to assume that everyone has complete knowledge of RYM's branching genre tree.

Hmmmm...I think I have an idea...