Map of Metal
December 3, 2010 9:10 PM   Subscribe

 
Oh. That kind of Metal.
posted by clarknova at 9:21 PM on December 3, 2010


There is so much goodness in here. Dimmu Borgir, King Crimson, Malice Mizer, Coil all in one post!

I had often thought something like this would be a good idea. Though, instead of laying it out chronologically it would be bookended by ManOWar on one side and Gwar on the other. Metal is, after all, a pretty ridiculous genre. ManOWar taking themselves far too seriously and Gwar owning that ridiculousness.
posted by munchingzombie at 9:23 PM on December 3, 2010


this will make 'metal monday' at the bike shop so much more meaningful. no. seriously. it will.
posted by RockyChrysler at 9:54 PM on December 3, 2010


I stand and appreciate this at the back of the hall, arms crossed, trying to look badass.
posted by vanar sena at 9:54 PM on December 3, 2010 [3 favorites]


Trance Metal. Wow.
posted by stp123 at 9:56 PM on December 3, 2010


Oh hell yeah - they've got Helloween on there. \m/ \m/
posted by deadmessenger at 10:12 PM on December 3, 2010 [1 favorite]


Related.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 10:16 PM on December 3, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is a pretty good primer, but the one major oversight I would point out is the lack of a "Folk Metal" spot on the map. Down in the lower right corner there's a spot that puts "Medieval Metal," "Celtic Metal," and "Oriental Metal" all around a clover. I think a more accurate representation might be to start Folk Metal as an establishing genre, with bands like Skyclad and Moonspell representing it, then do fusion genres going off from there. A strand from folk to Viking would also probably be appropriate, with bands like Mithotyn, Turisas, Folkearth and others often doing double-duty in their music. Obviously, none of the bands on this map fit into discrete categories. They would all be better represented in a spectrum, but in the spirit of how things are organized here a Folk Metal category would really clean a few things up.

Also, avant garde metal! Arcturus, Solefald, Elend, Agalloch, Ulver, Green Carnation...too many to list.

But seriously, if you're reading this and you're new to metal, go to that link and navigate down to Oriental Metal in the lower right corner. Click on Spirit of Mongolia by Ego Fall and prepare to have your face melted and mind blown.
posted by Demogorgon at 10:25 PM on December 3, 2010 [7 favorites]


Hah, Hammerfall! "Hammerfaalllll, we will prevail!"
posted by shinyshiny at 10:45 PM on December 3, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is the best thing that has ever happened. Ever. \m/
posted by thecjm at 11:11 PM on December 3, 2010


Mathcore?

I'm always surprised to read about Metal being technically analyzed in this way, but it always makes perfect sense and I feel a bit stupid and dismissive for thinking it didn't have the depth that the analysis makes clear.
posted by fatbird at 11:25 PM on December 3, 2010


I think the appropriate way for "Death 'n' Roll" to have started is with ZZ Top just completely losing their shit.
posted by 3FLryan at 11:29 PM on December 3, 2010


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH WHERE'S THE FUCKING ZOOM FUNCTION FFS!

Click on Spirit of Mongolia by Ego Fall and prepare to have your face melted and mind blown.

That is pretty cool.

I couldn't see where he'd stashed the Operatic Metal, though.
posted by rodgerd at 11:33 PM on December 3, 2010


Also, is this the place to complain about Black Metal bands getting a little too big for their britches and putting out albums backed by a full orchestra? I don't mean Thereon. Full orchestra is there thing. I am talking about the album where they hire some Eastern European national symphony to play the keyboardist's lines.
posted by munchingzombie at 11:37 PM on December 3, 2010 [1 favorite]


How could a song called "Bondage Goat Zombie" not be awesome?
posted by louche mustachio at 11:44 PM on December 3, 2010 [1 favorite]


I also needed this really badly. I do enjoy the Heavy Metal Musics, but I can't necessarily parse the categories. I can't tell Blackened Doom from Melodic Death from shineola from a hole in the ground. Not proud of this. Nope.

All I know is there is a man up there wearing a leather skirt and makeup and he sounds like Cookie Monster and he's yelling something about Satan and it cracks me up and then a bunch of Very Serious Dudes with their arms crossed stop nodding their heads and glare at me and I'm like "what?"
posted by louche mustachio at 11:58 PM on December 3, 2010 [3 favorites]


Cookie Monster is fucking metal.
posted by secret about box at 12:29 AM on December 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


Impressive! A bit slow to scroll, though.

Also, it probably wasn't necessary to say that Death and Suffocation are something called "tech death." Sure, they played technically challenging music, but that really wasn't the point. People don't listen to Jesus Wept and think, "Wow, that's so technical!" I think they're what a lot of people think of as "regular death metal."

Oh, well. Disagreement is inevitable with something like this.

One more also: I knew the Christian black metal had to be out there!
posted by ignignokt at 12:45 AM on December 4, 2010


pretty cool. some sections are lacking though. whatever. but the grind, usbm, blackened death, death/doom, funeral doom and crust sections were weak. and it seems that there could be added sub-genres. the first thing that comes to mind is french black metal. like the lln stuff or the more recent crazy/avant stuff. there's so much metal though, it'd be really hard to create a truly comprehensive 'map'. so many bands fall into multiple genres it would get really tedious.

no manowar anywhere?
posted by rainperimeter at 12:59 AM on December 4, 2010


muchingzombie: is this the place to complain about Black Metal bands getting a little too big for their britches and putting out albums backed by a full orchestra?

I assume you don't mean Dimmu Borgir, since they believe they've transcended the label of Black Metal. It would be a lot easier to stand if their synth lines weren't so trite.

This is a problem I have with a lot of [other genre]-metal crossover bands. It's nice that they're trying it, but it's painful to listen to when neither genre is done particularly well. Most opera-metal, for example - the "operatic" singers make me cringe.
posted by vanar sena at 1:23 AM on December 4, 2010


I'm amazed the makers of this site managed to secure usage rights from so many major acts, some of which are notorious for hating such free promotion of their work (looking at you, Metallica and Robert Fripp...)
posted by jet_manifesto at 2:17 AM on December 4, 2010


I usually have all sorts of complaints about these attempts to categorize metal. This one though, is very well done. Except for one minor quibble. Def Leppard in the NWOBHM? I don't think so. Just because they are from England doesn't mean they weren't glam metal from day 1.
posted by COD at 6:49 AM on December 4, 2010


The internet has found its apothemotherfuckingosis.

I'm going to listen to metal while me and the wife hike around the snowy Whiteshell (SE Laurentian Plateau) today.
posted by vapidave at 6:59 AM on December 4, 2010


Mikey-san, yes, yes he is.
posted by Primofex at 7:50 AM on December 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


oops, that second link is wrong. here's the stuff.
posted by Primofex at 7:52 AM on December 4, 2010


Also, avant garde metal! Arcturus, Solefald, Elend, Agalloch, Ulver, Green Carnation...too many to list.

Probably the most interesting genre of metal. Honourable mention of The Armageddon Concerto by Enslaved/Shining.
posted by ersatz at 8:17 AM on December 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


While we're picking at nits, here's mine: how does a band like Meshuggah get shoved in a little corner with Opeth under "Swedish Death Metal" while "Mathcore" gets its own skull?
posted by vanar sena at 9:22 AM on December 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


Hell, if anything Meshuggah should get it's own skull while Mathcore is a little skull branching off it. And Thaw by Converge is un-fucking-believable.

Deathcore should be ignored whenever possible....and nu-metal kicked off into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch along with all the fake plastic wallet chains and stupid facial hair.

Other than that, this map owns.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:45 AM on December 4, 2010


Existential Dread: Hell, if anything Meshuggah should get it's own skull while Mathcore is a little skull branching off it.

Agreed. I don't think there's a more widely ripped-off metal band today, and with good reason; the first time I heard "I", I was convinced that I'd been assimilated into some sort of (a-)musical singularity.

Not to mention that this is a band that makes this music while retaining their goofiness... Kidman is yelling about becoming the cybernetic antichrist. Into a pen.
posted by vanar sena at 10:21 AM on December 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


I wonder how much of Halls' sales is attributable to the black metal genres.
posted by klanawa at 11:43 AM on December 4, 2010


Domogorgon, the description for Celtic metal does mention Folk Metal as an ancestor, there just isn't a spot on the map for it.
posted by klanawa at 11:45 AM on December 4, 2010


vanar sena: "While we're picking at nits, here's mine: how does a band like Meshuggah get shoved in a little corner with Opeth under "Swedish Death Metal" while "Mathcore" gets its own skull"

Meshuggah also shows up under Avant-garde Metal.

I appreciate this, but I think the multi-page layout of Ishkur's guide was a little easier to navigate.
posted by mkb at 1:04 PM on December 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


And oh my eyes did get large and oh I said "WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS"

The following is a graphical representation of me doing the same thing, just now:
o.o
O.O
>8O
posted by AugieAugustus at 1:32 PM on December 4, 2010


you guys are killing me with all this meshuggah talk. it's so overproduced!
posted by rainperimeter at 3:10 PM on December 4, 2010


you guys are killing me with all this meshuggah talk. it's so overproduced!

Pretty much all metal is over-produced, except for the ultra-underground demo-BM scene. Even Mayhem's Ordo ad Chao, which is aiming for that muffled, recorded-in-a-sock-drawer kvlt sound, was purposely miked, mixed and mastered to sound like that. As long as it's not compressed within an inch of it's life (cough Devin Townsend cough) or triggered to hell (Jan Axel von Blomberg) it's not too bad.

Also, have you heard the original mix of Nothing? Feels like the strings are scraping my eardrums. I'll give you Obzen, though...that one is really super compressed.

And just because I fucking love it: Sol Niger Within medley.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:42 PM on December 4, 2010


Domogorgon, the description for Celtic metal does mention Folk Metal as an ancestor, there just isn't a spot on the map for it.

Yeah, I was aware of that. But really, that whole area of the map seems to be operating off of the citation of a few Wikipedia articles. Seems kind of silly that the description of Celtic metal describes Folk metal as its parent genre and then there's no place for Folk on the map.

Meshuggah also shows up under Avant-garde Metal.

Oops, mea culpa. I didn't realize there was a spot for avant-garde on the map in my initial comment.

While we're picking at nits, here's mine: how does a band like Meshuggah get shoved in a little corner with Opeth under "Swedish Death Metal" while "Mathcore" gets its own skull?

No shit! Calling Opeth "Swedish Death Metal" is kind of like calling New York "a city in America." It's like...it is that, but it's also a lot more. Besides, when I think of Swedish Death, I think more of bands like At the Gates, In Flames, Dissection, Dark Tranquillity, etc. "Swedish Death Metal" as a genre is mostly defined by the unique elements of the 90s Gothenburg sound, which Opeth and Meshuggah don't really exemplify that much IMO.
posted by Demogorgon at 10:21 PM on December 4, 2010


Pretty much all metal is over-produced, no.

except for the ultra-underground demo-BM scene. sure.
posted by rainperimeter at 12:01 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


rainperimeter: you guys are killing me with all this meshuggah talk. it's so overproduced!

My yardstick for deciding if a track is overproduced (for any band) is whether they can reproduce it accurately on stage without sample and trigger tricks. Existential Dread mentioned obZen - here's Meshuggah playing Bleed live. Haake doesn't even use triggered drums on stage AFAIK.

I think the main reason that so much post-Gothenburg metal sounds overproduced is that the bar has been raised for just how tight and accurate a band has to sound to be taken seriously these days.

That, and perhaps Daniel Bergstrand.

Devin definitely loses hell of a lot of dynamics in his production, but I've seen Strapping Young Lad live many times and they reproduced every single track with almost boring accuracy. DT/DTP self-titled stuff not so much.
posted by vanar sena at 4:38 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


i'm a bit miffed at cathedral not being included in there under 'doom'.....as doom-metal giants, they deserve mention over a few other bands listed there...
posted by g.i.r. at 9:56 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


...but besides that, i love this ! i thought i knew my early metal history pretty well, but was surprised at buffalo...i never knew about them ! awesome.
posted by g.i.r. at 10:06 AM on December 5, 2010


I dunno, when I saw SYL it struck me as a blur of incomprehensible noise, and I love City.

rainperimeter, you're right, that was kind of a dumb blanket statement I'd like to retract.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:33 PM on December 5, 2010


retraction noted, existential dread.

i should state that i'm just not into extreme/tech/brutal/progressive/etc. death metal. it really just bores me to tears. so meshuggah might be fucking amazing but i'm really just not willing to give them much of a chance. i watched that link vanar sena posted and the only part i enjoyed is the brief solo at around the 4:15 mark before the chugga-chugga moshy breakdown part. their playing might be tight and proficient but there is just zero emotion or mood or feeling at all as far as i can see.

and here's my really dumb blanket statement; these brĂ¼tal/extreme mega shows roll through town on their 'summer of annihilation' tours and they're always in the bigger venues, packed with security, full of thick necked dudes with tribal 'tattz', shaved heads and goatees, looking to mosh your head in bro... sorry, ranting. there is always one band in these 6-10 band line-ups that i would love to see if they were playing with a couple local bands in a waaay smaller and intimate setting and for waaay less money. bums me out.

death to false metal.
posted by rainperimeter at 2:32 PM on December 5, 2010


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