Genre Specialists Vs The World

I have been running a series of builders and polls on RYM over the last few weeks and months to come up with a top 200 releases for the 2010s decade and I have become interested in the dynamic between what hardcore metalheads rate highly versus what the more general music fan does. The main observation is that the more general populace is likely to vote up something either well-known or with more crossover appeal, so most likely stuff that would reside in MA's Gateway Clan, or maybe The Infinite or even The Revolution. What has fared very poorly in this project is extreme metal, such as death, black and the more extreme versions of doom metal (funeral and death doom).

So, I decided to have a look at the Academy charts and compare the results for site ratings versus clan ratings to see if there was any correlation between these and what I have observed elsewhere. I have only looked at The Fallen chart yet, but it does seem to confirm this trend.

Here is the top 10 Fallen releases by site rating:

1. Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus

2. Candlemass - Nightfall

3. Neurosis - The Eye of Every Storm

4. MSW - Obliviosus

5. Messa - Close

6. Dystopia - Human = Garbage

7. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

8. Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood

9. Cult of Luna / Julie Christmas - Mariner

10. Neptunian Maximalism - Éons

And here is the top 10 by clan rating with each release's position in the site rating chart in square brackets:

1. [4] MSW - Obliviosus

2. [18] Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

3. [33] Boris - Feedbacker

4. [50] Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions

5. [1] Candlemass - EDM

6. [15] Celtic Frost - Monotheist

7. [3] Neurosis - The Eye of Every Storm

8. [34] Ahab - Call of the Wretched Sea

9. [16]Triptykon - Melana Chasmata

10. [32] Bell Witch - Four Phantoms

It is immediately apparent that the more extreme funeral doom and drone metal releases present in the clan rating chart are completely absent from the site rating top 10, whilst albums by bands with significant crossover appeal, such as Messa, Neptunian Maximalism and the atmospheric sludge titans fare much better.

I guess it is stating the obvious somewhat, but I think it is interesting to see it borne out in the data. The final 25 in my RYM game is dominated by bands like Opeth, Iron Maiden, System of A Down, Mastodon and Tool with a complete absence of death and black metal and only a handful of well-known doom metal releases from big names like Candlemass, Electric Wizard and Celtic Frost. 

I thought I would just share this with you. Any comments?

It's interesting because you're right, it's very obvious, but it's still neat in how consistent it is across most things. Not just music. 

I don't drink a whole lot of whiskey but this sort of experiment reminds me of some videos I've watched comparing the "Most Popular" bottles to the "Best" bottles. "Best" obviously being a consensus between the Whiskey Nerds of the world, I guess; much like the Fallen Clan specific rating! What you tend to find in the whiskey/spirit world is that there is an invisible threshold between 'This tastes good!" and "This tastes interesting!". Most people just want it to taste good, a small select people want it to taste interesting to extend/challenge their palettes, and somewhere in the middle there's a common ground between the two. People who are into whiskey may tell you to go grab an Islay Scotch and enjoy the complexity of smoking, rotting peat moss and salty sea rocks, and your average dude will say he likes Jack Daniels because it goes down smooth, mixes with Coke, and vaguely tastes like peanuts to him. So, the most acclaimed bottles for people on the spectrum who care about rating stuff tends to be not the lowest hanging fruit, but just up the ladder enough that the diehards will have good things to say about it but it still offers something palatable to the average person. 

Pretty much the same thing is shown here, even with a smaller sample size, which is really cool as it's pretty much working as intended. The entry-level and well-known Doom albums are still obviously strong as they've stood the test of time, but for people who have researched past those, they've found stronger albums for them that push more boundaries. The Site Ratings also, like you said, contain more well known albums that are generally more tossed around in recommendations as albums that someone just has to listen to if they haven't. The Clan Rating is zeroed in on longer, more atmospheric, and in generally "doomier" releases that exemplify the subgrenre itself. 

As for your overall experiment with Opeth and the like dominating, it's 100% more of a popularity contest between historically strong albums and bands. People who post on RYM are an extremely small percentage of listeners, and even they care tenfold more than your average person about what they're listening to. The percentage of people who listen to full albums in the first place is probably astronomically low, so for better or worse, those bands you listed are pretty much always going to surface until the culture slowly shifts to something else. It always surprises me to find out what's actually popular in Metal, since it usually doesn't even line up with what's popular on RYM and especially not here at MA. Obviously all these bands have massive appeal for a reason, but it's still unfortunate that it's harder and harder to put lesser known but fantastic albums in the spotlight since there's less and less room for recommendations from people (such as yourself) to the masses about what crazy stuff certain subgenres are up to. 

Yeah, I should have said "amongst fans nerdy enough to post about music on an internet site" rather than the average man in the street. From my own experience, most of my real life "friends" still listen to the same shit they were listening to back in the eighties. To them Nirvana and Oasis are pushing them out of their comfort zone! Either that or they just latch onto whatever overhyped shit headlined at Glastonbury that year along with the rest of the fucking sheep. If I played them 95% of the stuff I listen to nowadays I swear most of them would freak out, bury their heads in a pillow and hum Bob Dylan songs to themselves whilst trying not to cry.

Off topic, but I recently discovered that my group of friends have a Music League, where they all submit songs for certain topics every few weeks. Then everyone votes up and down all the submitted tracks, and points are attributed to the people whose songs get the most votes. They've never invited me to take part because in their minds I only listen to "shit metal stuff". They really believe that I have too narrow a view on what music is to partake in a music league, despite my tastes ranging from classical and ambient, through trip hop, IDM, big beat, downtempo, darkwave and synthwave, and then all the way through to extreme metal.

After I stated that I wouldn't mind being involved to see what it was all about, I've discovered that they literally only listen to the same tracks they were listening to in the 90s. Every single league they all submit the likes of Coldplay, The Beatles, Portishead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Massive Attack, Michael Jackson, Daft Punk,  Queen, AC/DC, Jeff Buckley etc. There's barely ever a track submitted that I don't know extremely well, and probably owned on CD at some point.

I've been adding tracks to actually fit the topic of each league (imagine that), and trying to introduce my mates to new bands that are very much in line with what they already know but would probably never naturally discover. Of course, none of them actually listen to any of them, and I get consistently downvoted for including tracks that they've never heard of.

But yes, I'm the narrow minded music listener, because I like metal.

I would say that anyone who listens to Coldplay and Red Hot Chilli Peppers has no right to pass judgement on anyone else's musical tastes, Ben!

Music is such a comfort thing for most people, whereas I think we're in agreement that we find some kind of fun in constantly discovering what else is out there and finding new sounds to keep us occupied instead of eternally going back to the same classic rock radio station playlist. I've always said that people who say that the Most Popular artists are their favorite of all time just haven't listened to enough music yet in order to find their specific taste. Sure, I'm guilty of having Opeth as one of my all-time bands, but that's stood the test of time after hundreds/thousands of other Metal albums, whereas it sometimes seems like you can't even get a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan to turn on a Deftones album to see what happens. Or even a Primus album to really get the low-hanging connection between two well-renowned bassists.

It's strange to think that there's always a period of.....10 or 15 years? That people are exposed to the music that's currently around them and one day it seems like it's a hard "Nope! That's it! This is what I like, this is what I grew up with, there's nothing else!". I'm definitely derailing this more but it's kind of a shame that the cycle is like this because the most interesting music of any generation that becomes "classic" generally comes from THE YOUTH that are in their late teens to late 20's? Maiden was on average 24 when their self titled came out, The Beatles were basically all 20 when they started their run, everyone but Bon Scott of AC/DC was around 20 when T.N.T. came out...the list goes on. There's some sort of disassociation where people think that THE YOUTH of their generation is the end-all-be-all and...people can't make good music anymore? Every one of their favorite bands started at the same point as all the other 20-somethings nowadays going on small tours at bars and trying to shill their newest nasty Tech Death album, why don't they still deserve the same chance with older listeners as they gave to their fledgling bands years ago? I guess I can only hope that I stay curious and don't end up like that, I don't think I'd enjoy it too much haha

I can't see you ending up like that Xephyr. I'm not presuming to know the inner you, but I recognise traits you display that I identify with and I think music discovery is too pivotal a part of who you are for it to just become a comfort blanket.

Sure, we all like to have those albums we know we can fall back on. Whenever I find myself in a bad place, there are certain records that can provide a familiar and emotionally calming oasis in a seeming desert of shit. But, even now in my sixties I still get a buzz from hearing something new (to me) that hits the spot and with metal now being more diverse than ever why would I want to abandon it when it has such an ability to surprise and delight? Good surprises get ever rarer at this age, so I'll be damned if I'll turn my back on such a good source.

This only half-surprises me.  From what I understand from my old days there, RYMer's on the forums were generally disdained with the amount of metal albums throughout each modern yearly chart.  But this also means the raters are generally metalheads themselves.  Taking a look now, the new Blood Incantation is number 5 for 2024 at this time, and the charts have been like this for years.

Straying from the original topic here, but I have been thinking about my ratings for a lot of stuff, particularly the more average scores, say 2.5-3.5 star ratings and I am starting to think that my ratings should be more severe here than they are on a general music website like RYM. Now stay with me on this, my reasoning is that if ratings measure 0.5 as the absolute worst music has on offer and 5 is the absolute best, then on a general website 0.5 includes some of the absolute worst monstrositites human art has ever inflicted on the world. I am thinking Crazy Frog, Joe Dolce, Justin Bieber levels of utter shite. As adevout metalhead, as I would expect most on Metal Academy to be, there are very, very few metal releases I would consider to be objectively as bad as those steaming piles, so I am thinking that maybe my criteria for rating on a specialist site such as this should be stricter, as I am better inclined on a genetic level to the music covered by the site. 

For example of what I am saying, this morning I was listening to Onslaught's 2007 album, "Killing Peace" album and I was thinking that it was very average indeed, "A definite 3 star" I thought to myself. But then I thought, "But on a site like Metal Academy where the standards and criteris for a metal album should be higher than on a general music site, I don't think this even stacks up as a 3 and 2.5 seems a far more appropriate rating".

Does this ring any bells for any one else and if not, do you have any comments to help me resolve this personal quandary?

I don't think it's necessary to adjust your rating protocol between the two sites Sonny. Your ratings are meant to be an indication of how much you enjoyed a release so if you generally enjoy metal releases more than other genres then your scores should reflect that. You are so well versed in metal by this point in your musical journey that you will always tend to gravitate towards metal records that you're more likely to enjoy too. Should that mean that the weaker end of that should suffer more than with other genres? I don't think so. I understand why you might question yourself on a three-star rating for a metal release that you didn't enjoy much as it doesn't sound terribly harsh but if there's music out there that's several levels worse than that then you need to leave space for it in your rating system in my opinion. In saying that, I don't believe that metal is less conducive to absolute garbage than other genres. In fact, the bottom end of my ratings database if littered with metal filth, most of it being far worse than Justin Bieber. 

In fact, the bottom end of my ratings database if littered with metal filth, most of it being far worse than Justin Bieber. 

Wow, that must be some seriously bad shit.

The only things I can think of that are even remotely that bad are Piledriver and Exterminator. In fact, out if my 3800+ ratings on the site I only have 8 with a 0.5 star rating and just over 100 with 2 stars or less, so I reckon I still have plenty of room for all the shit metal I haven't heard yet.

In saying that, I don't believe that metal is less conducive to absolute garbage than other genres. In fact, the bottom end of my ratings database if littered with metal filth, most of it being far worse than Justin Bieber. 

Me as well.   I've got quite a few metal albums ranked at 0/100, including Attila's Fallacy and the two Thrash Queen albums.  Metal's some incredible stuff, but sometimes somebody puts out something that only manages to be an embarrassment to it's genre.  Hell, that's the only reason to check out Psycho Synner or Keydragon.