General Chat

Ben, I took some time to think of your comment about a slogan that would fit better with the site's inclusive aspect, and I just came up with I think is a better but slightly cliche slogan. I was in a "teaming with autism" webinar the other day (I have autism), and I was put into a group where we came up with a team name and logo with a "United We Stand Divided We Fall" kind of theme. Hence my idea to make this better slogan, "United We Stand for Metal"! The new slogan is in an edited version of the first post above.

I'm also not a fan of genres like country, hip-hop, or R&B, but if that's what some of my friends in the outside world are into, I'll go with it. And the band that I like from that small list of "favorite bands" is Blind Guardian, which was from my earlier epic metal taste, but I might come back to listening to that band someday, now that I'm in The Guardians. Thanks again for that clan change, Ben!

Well as much as I love Travis Smith's artworks, there are two other metal album cover arts by other artists that are my actual favorites. This is my favorite "epic" cover art:

And this is my favorite in the "brutal" category:

When I was in a science class two years ago, we had to dissect a goat's heart. Most metal science project EVER!!! I decided to recreate that This is Love This is Murderous artwork by stabbing the heart with a penknife and taking a photo of it. It was just a wimpy penknife and there wasn't a lot of blood, but worth a try. Here's my recreation:

Look who's popular saxy!

For me it was Nightwish. My mom is definitely stuck in the 80's but I put on some old Nightwish and that was our driving music. This was in high school and Dark Passion Play just released, but we went through Once as well. Mom didn't notice the singer change as much as I did, but Annette still did a good job and was glad to have something newer that we could listen to over holiday trips. 

I also like to feel my rating system is absolute, in that it holds for all genres of music, so a rating of 0.5 is for absolute shit that I really can't stand, probably the likes of Justin Bieber, Crazy Frog or some other crime against music. A 0.5 or 1.0 is only meted out to metal albums on extremely rare occasions ( Adema and Atreyu are the only metal bands that I've ever given 0.5s to).

My feelings exactly. I remember having a debate with a couple of mates about the fact that my scoring tends to be in a bell curve with 3.5/5 at the centre. One believed that 2.5/5 should be the centre of the bell & the other thought that my rating distribution should be equal across the various possibilities. My argument was pretty simple really. I know what I'm likely to enjoy after all these years so I expect that I won't be selecting too many releases that I'm gonna hate. In reality I expect to enjoy the stuff I listen to more often than not & that naturally leads to an average of around 3.5/5.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. After all, most of us are usually listening to things we think we'll enjoy. Occasionally something will be a letdown, or we might be trying something different on a whim or because it got a lot of attention elsewhere, or we might be reviewing something for a publication, but or the most part I don't listen to stuff without expecting to at least somewhat enjoy it.

Looking at it, my most common rating is 4 (though 3.5 is close behind) so I guess I lean on the generous side :p

That's the one! Also Powerwolf and Metallica shirts, and all from both her and her (very cool) mother too.

I listened to about 260 albums from 2019 so expect many more releases in the Clan specific top 10's. 2019 was such a fantastic year for new metal in all sub-genres.

1. Inter Arma – Sulphur English

2. Devin Townsend – Empath 

3. Wilderun – Veil of Imagination 

4. Avantasia – Moonglow

5. Cult of Luna – A Dawn to Fear

6. Funereal Presence – Achatius

7. Twilight Force – Dawn of the Dragonstar

8. Runemagick – Into Into Desolate Realms

9. Weeping Sores – False Confession

10. Blood Incantation – Hidden History of the Human Race

I've heard some of you aren't really fans of song covers, but I think there are some other members of this site (such as myself) who are tired of hearing the same boring radio pop frappe practically everywhere. So I found a couple YouTube playlists of some of the best metal covers of pop songs. These covers are the best (at least for me) because now you get to hear some of the most popular songs in the world in a genre you really love like metal, and like I said before, NOT the song's original style. The first playlist is for metalheads in the "Epic Side", and the second playlist is for those in the "Island of the Revolution" (metalcore) and the "Rebel Sea" (post-hardcore/screamo):

COVERS (POP to METAL): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdtc350h7ULOz4-56IEfbFWABeMJTzi24

Best metal covers of pop songs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-eqYqo4XkD8_laSN7ENp6n7qFPOGo0Hk

Metal Academy clan map (if you don't know what I'm talking about when describing the playlists): https://metal.academy/forum/25/thread/25?page=1#topic_1144

If there's a metalized pop song cover you like that isn't in one of the two playlists, please let me know. Enjoy!

Glad you like them! Anthrax and the W.A.S.P. was the main reason I made all this. I was writing a list of songs from popular metal bands as a metal playlist for a movie or something, and the first two bands listed were Anthrax and W.A.S.P. Hence the Metal Cinematic Universe!