...because only fans actually rate them? This mainly relates to new releases, as old releases often have cult status. If a mainstream band releases a new album, I think it's likely to get a lower rating than otherwise because people who are not fans still rate it. For extreme bands, I think a lot of people who aren't fans of extreme music will simply avoid it and thus not rate it all, while extreme metal fans have no qualms about approaching more accessible forms of metal and rating their releases as long as it's still branded as metal (this isn't meant to discredit extreme metal fans, it's just a comment on the natural of extreme music and it's inaccessibility, less extreme metal fans do the same to more accessible rock/pop releases). As for underground music, people who aren't fans simply don't know it exists, so they won't rate it. I think this is how Deafhaven managed to get the highest score on metacritic for 2013, it's because it was generally underground and inaccessible, but still managed to get enough reviews from critics to be considered. It can be seen that the most mainstream reviewer of the album, Rolling Stone, gave it the lowest review, likely because the album clearly isn't targeted towards the Rolling Stone guys, but they decided to review it anyway for whatever reason. Anyway, it's just a hypothesis I have, but I think it could be tested by looking at albums and to see if more extreme/underground albums statistically have higher average scores AND less total scores, and then it would still only be a theory.

I'm not sure about your premise.

"Do Extreme/Undergrounds albums get higher ratings because only fans actually rate them?". There's a problem with this sentence. The first time you rate an album by an underground band, you're not a fan yet. You just rate it. And if that album sucks, it will be rated just as harshly as if it were mainstream. I think Reverovavavoom Ib Molasses is the best example of that, read the comments.

Pretty much what Ilham said.

I mean I can see where your mind is going in terms of mainstream bands being given more exposure and thus being more susceptible to lower ratings as a result of so many varying opinions compared to the album that only gets 12 ratings by people who care enough to go out of their way to find said album, but still what Ilham said applies.

What does it suppose to me extreme/underground
extreme or underground separate
extreme/underground together ?

if you think MS ratings ... many just rate , Syk did hunt down vote abusers ... many voters just voted, I like Jup because he don't vote so ... ratings, votings does not mean much, because how manmy ppl have heard those albums

Yeah that's just a statistical problem. Nothing to do with extreme/underground/mainstream. Just chances of getting a 10/10 slimming with more people voting on it.

Written by Ilham on 18.08.2014 at 01:55

I'm not sure about your premise.

"Do Extreme/Undergrounds albums get higher ratings because only fans actually rate them?". There's a problem with this sentence. The first time you rate an album by an underground band, you're not a fan yet. You just rate it. And if that album sucks, it will be rated just as harshly as if it were mainstream. I think Reverovavavoom Ib Molasses is the best example of that, read the comments.

" There's a problem with this sentence."
Yes, there is. For extreme metal, I mean fans of extreme metal in general, for underground bands, I mean fans of the specific band. For underground you're mostly right and thus just stats, but some people become fans of a band before listening to any albums from them because of live performances or singles or whatnot, and already being a fan of the band makes one more likely to pay attention when the release an album. Anyway, my claim is just a generalization, not an absolute law, and there is a spectrum of extremity and obscurity, so it would take more than looking at a single album to investigate.

Written by Bad English on 18.08.2014 at 02:01

What does it suppose to me extreme/underground
extreme or underground separate
extreme/underground together ?

Separate but definately overlapping, which I think is one of the problems with my premise is I'm tackling two separate yet similar phenomena. Anyway, I'm talking about in general, not just on MS or even just in regards to metal, which is why Merzbow songs are highly rated on youtube, but "Baby" by Justin Bieber is not. While Merzbow is certainly more artful than Bieber, I don't think most people actually prefer the way his music sounds.

Written by Ilham on 18.08.2014 at 02:04

Yeah that's just a statistical problem. Nothing to do with extreme/underground/mainstream. Just chances of getting a 10/10 slimming with more people voting on it.

For 10/10, yeah, but for generally high scores where there is enough ratings to keep it from getting a perfect score it comes more under suspect. If I get a good sample I can conduct statistical tests to see if it's likely just to be the result of variation, or if some actual bias is at play, though this is all assuming how underground or extreme something is is independent of it's actual quality.

So this is going to be a continuation of the extreme/underground VS mainstream threads?

Written by deadone on 18.08.2014 at 02:39

I agree with Ganondox.

The popular bands have "professional haters" ie people who hate their new releases regarded or even people who just hate the band period. This is of course offset by some "professional fanbois" who love anything by the band. However the impact of "haters v fanbois" is somewhat reliant on the types of metalheads frequenting a site. A more mainstream site might have more "fanbois" whereas a more underground site might have more "haters."

I think there's a few other factors at play too such as level of mainstream exposure, trends as well as band reputations in various groups of metalheads.

The underground bands don't attract as much instant negative publicity as the big ones nor do they generally have well known reputations. People might not like the albums released by these bands, but this won't generate as much of negative emotional response as a bad new mainstream album does. In fact it will probably be forgotten quickly whereas the new crap Slayer album will boil many people's blood.

Well, I agree to the regard that it takes exposure to get actual haters rather than just people heard the band and dislike it, and no matter how obscure a band is it can get fanboys, after all I fanboy over a few underground artists. Anyway, the difference between extreme/underground and mainstream music is just a matter of perspective from where you are on the spectrum, and I think that on more mainstream metal websites the people there do think their bands are extreme and underground in comparison to pop music, and that extreme metal is just noise or doesn't exist because it's too underground for them to know about it.

Written by Ilham on 18.08.2014 at 02:48

So this is going to be a continuation of the extreme/underground VS mainstream threads?

I like both underground and mainstream music, I just noticed extreme metal rarely get's any hate even though objectively it's no better or worse than non-extreme metal. The more extreme the metal, the less hate it gets, even though less people will find it to be listenable. I'm not a huge fan of extreme metal, but I do like some extreme metal. I mean not respect to extreme/underground metal, I just theorizing on why it seems to get rated better than more mainstream metal. Sorry it seems to going that direction.

Your hypothesis seems off to me. One cursory look at Encyclopedia Metallum should show you that this is not necessarily the case. You can search all of the obscure bands you'd like, and the underground bands don't correspond to a higher average rating at all. We don't suddenly neglect our critical abilities just because an album is underground and neglected by mainstream audiences, as Ilham pointed out. I also have a huge problem with your use of the words underground and extreme; you often put them together even though they are part and parcel with each other. These are separate concepts that you can't just throw together generally, and, to put things bluntly, I don't think you understand these terms enough to continue using them.

Regardless of how many people actually listen to the album, the general population will still review it with some consideration towards their subjective idea of an objective scale; we all have a general idea of an "8 album" for us as opposed to a "4 album" for us for any particular genre we're invested in, which we ultimately develop by listening to a lot of albums. There are fanboys and haters that don't listen to music this way; I suspect fanboys tend to dominate based upon the ratings of most of the mainstream albums I come across. The sheer number of 10s for most later-day Metallica or Slayer albums is highly suggestive the fanboys have a pronounced influence. But I also suspect there will be lots of 7s, 8s and 9s for mainstream albums from inexperienced or nostalgic metalheads who evaluate with some sense of objectivity, and this will more than cancel out the opinions of hardened metalheads from the underground that may not enjoy that album (giving it a 4, 5 or a 6 at best). I'm not willing to make this suggestion a generality, but I think a lot of mainstream albums are actually rated more highly than underground albums. Basically anything on the Metal Storm top 20 is much more highly rated than your average underground album.

Yeah, I don't see any underground band occupying a high place on MS top 200...?
Also extreme doesn't seem to have anything to do on this context, the way of rating won't change for a band because they play extreme metal...

Apart from that what seems to happen is the following:
For more well known bands: Some people are fanboys, they will rate everything 10. But then some people will be nostalgic over the releases from the 80s and 90s and will think that every new release is crap. And then there are the haters. They will rate it low.

On underground bands? Anything can happen. There are haters. There are fanboys. There are those who actually judge the album on an impartial way... However it would most be likely that the rating pends to one specific side. Like, if more fanboys rated, the rating would be bigger. If the opposite, it would happen like in the Reverovavavoom Ib Molasses thread. I don't think there's enough of a general state among the set of all underground bands which we can look and state: "the underground bands are more highly rated in general"

Everything depends. Depends on who made the review, who rated, what is the webzine... Idk.
Honestly the only thing that matters is whether I am gonna like it or not =P

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 03:14
I like both underground and mainstream music, I just noticed extreme metal rarely get's any hate even though objectively it's no better or worse than non-extreme metal. The more extreme the metal, the less hate it gets, even though less people will find it to be listenable. I'm not a huge fan of extreme metal, but I do like some extreme metal. I mean not respect to extreme/underground metal, I just theorizing on why it seems to get rated better than more mainstream metal. Sorry it seems to going that direction.

I never get notifications when you quote me. I am not saying you are driving the thread towards that, but I can assure you it's what it's going to be. Well, as you said earlier, people who don't like extreme metal rarely listen to any because it's noise to them. But I can tell you that some bands get a fair amount of hate even in extreme/underground circles. It's just not going to be as visible, that's all. I think what you label as "not getting as much hate", is just people not knowing about it or not caring. And in the end, it doesn't really matter, it evens itself out.

Written by deadone on 18.08.2014 at 04:00

MS is a generalist website with a slight preference to underground and experimental music. It's voting patterns will be different than says a pure extreme metal website or more mainstream website.

I see where you're coming from with all of your other critiques, but this one seems hasty. Does MS really have a slight preference to underground and experimental tastes? I think it's generally a mainstream metal website that just happens to be populated by a sizable minority of users who are interested in more underground metal acts. Yeah, there are unique articles that showcase some underground acts and encourage people to support/listen to them, but I think most listeners tend to have pretty conventional tastes in heavy metal. It may seem like there are a lot of people like !J.O.O.E.! or Alex Fenger or Lit or mz, but they are actually a drop in the pool compared to most of the users on here. There are a lot of users (myself included) who don't have nearly the same level of investment with the more underground music they tend to bring, but I do try my best to listen to a good deal of it when I can. Many users here are pretty silent and enjoy the generalist base of music and the rating system without getting personally involved in conversations; most of the lists on here, as you'll see, are pretty conventional lists that you're going to see on pretty much any metal website you check out.

I don't know if the voting patterns would be that different, to be honest; I do have a bias because I'm obviously a member of MS, but I think the users are more open-minded here and I think most album ratings here are pretty consistent with the general reception on just about every other website. Sometimes there are albums that I think MS is wrong for hating (and other websites seem to share my sentiment about those albums), but for the most part, it's just like any other metal website. If I had to give an example not based in metal, I'd say Prog Archives ratings are very close to MS ratings in general (not just for prog albums, but for extreme metal albums when they are listed on that website).

^Thank you.

Written by deadone on 18.08.2014 at 05:02

The most vocal posters are generally generally fans of underground and/or experimental stuff - there seems to be only about 20-30 users that are forum active at most.

Most of the active lists aren't that "mainstream." They're quite experimental or underground.

Dunno what the "silent majority" think.

First of all, let me say that I'm glad we're on the same page with regard to the minimal amount of underground metal users on the site. I think that you tend to portray yourself as the rare metal "poseur" in the sea of underground metalheads, and oftentimes I agree with other users who think you play the "victim card". I don't know what you intend by this, but I think your general tastes are ones that many other silent listeners share. For any given album you like, you should check out the ratings and click on people who have rated it similar to you; I can almost guarantee you'll find similar users or even some amazing lists from former users that have since moved on. Even try list-hopping- find an album you like, click on lists that have that album, and click on another album and find another list after that one and repeat until you get tired. Most of the lists and users aren't really that active relative to MS's superusers, but their ratings and perceptions certainly shouldn't be ignored. (Forgive me if I sound preachy or like a primary school teacher- I'm just trying to suggest a way to utilize the site so as to find people whose tastes are more consistent with your own).

Quote:

I think there's definitely a different vibe here compared to other sites which are all different too. In recent years I've been following Terrorizer forums, Metalrules, Metal-Reviews, Metal Sucks, Metal Injection and Blabblermouth in addition to MS. Each has a different vibe e.g. Metalrules is stuck in 1995 Power/Heavy Metal, Metalsucks is very hipster, Blabbermouth is commercial and very negative (in terms of commentary by users), Metal-reviews is dying but the vibe preferred underground, Metal Injection is extremely commercial and Terrorizer forum is new extreme plus surprisingly old school.

Different vibes doesn't necessarily equate to different average ratings, first of all. I see where you are coming from, but I still think there's a general consensus in the metal communities about how certain albums should be rated. The choice of site just depends on the feature or perspective you want; I choose this site mostly because of its generality and because of its great forum system and friendly users, not to mention some of the mind-blowing lists on here. But if something is bad, users don't shy away. Look at what happened to Thou's Heathen album- a lot of people were loving it and then it got trounced by the entire community (and rightly so!).

Anyway, the real point I was trying to make is this: extreme music or types of music that are generally conceived as being underground are rated similarly on all sites and in all forums, regardless of the number of fan boys and haters or nostalgic listeners that may not be listening with a sense of objectivity. What you find on MS is what you're going to find elsewhere for the grand majority of cases. Underground metal doesn't get higher ratings here and it's not getting higher ratings elsewhere because we don't abandon our critical faculties when we listen to music.

Written by deadone on 18.08.2014 at 05:55

My point was it depends on the vibe of the site. For example look at how much love gets thrown at say Revocation on Metalsucks compared to here or Metal-reviews (hell I started listening to the band cause of MetalSucks before I discovered Metalstorm). Terrorizer forums worshipped new Ulcerate and most other modern mainstream stuff wasn't even discussed. On Metal-rules the latest Edguy or Hammerfall or whatever is viewed as awesome whereas the new Mastodon or Opeth might not even be given a review because the website's vibe is traditional. Metal-archives forums were very anti-mainstream last time I went to them in almost a militant manner - this was several years ago so it might have changed. But the new Mastodon or Behemoth or Opeth would've been sledged by many posters as sell out crap.

All the bands you just mentioned were generally received the same way on MS. I actually don't care for Revocation either but they are widely well received, not just on Metalsucks. Ulcerate's newest was absolutely adored on MS as well. I can't speak for Edguy or Hammerfall because I don't really follow them, but all of the sites gave Opeth and Mastodon a good deal of attention (whether it was advance reviews or simply a large conversation on the forum, which actually involved a lot of users I would normally call "silent members" that came out for a discussion). I also tend to think Metal Archives agrees with MS more than you'd think, especially with regards to popular acts.

Written by Diverge on 18.08.2014 at 03:15

Your hypothesis seems off to me. One cursory look at Encyclopedia Metallum should show you that this is not necessarily the case. You can search all of the obscure bands you'd like, and the underground bands don't correspond to a higher average rating at all. We don't suddenly neglect our critical abilities just because an album is underground and neglected by mainstream audiences, as Ilham pointed out. I also have a huge problem with your use of the words underground and extreme; you often put them together even though they are part and parcel with each other. These are separate concepts that you can't just throw together generally, and, to put things bluntly, I don't think you understand these terms enough to continue using them.

Regardless of how many people actually listen to the album, the general population will still review it with some consideration towards their subjective idea of an objective scale; we all have a general idea of an "8 album" for us as opposed to a "4 album" for us for any particular genre we're invested in, which we ultimately develop by listening to a lot of albums. There are fanboys and haters that don't listen to music this way; I suspect fanboys tend to dominate based upon the ratings of most of the mainstream albums I come across. The sheer number of 10s for most later-day Metallica or Slayer albums is highly suggestive the fanboys have a pronounced influence. But I also suspect there will be lots of 7s, 8s and 9s for mainstream albums from inexperienced or nostalgic metalheads who evaluate with some sense of objectivity, and this will more than cancel out the opinions of hardened metalheads from the underground that may not enjoy that album (giving it a 4, 5 or a 6 at best). I'm not willing to make this suggestion a generality, but I think a lot of mainstream albums are actually rated more highly than underground albums. Basically anything on the Metal Storm top 20 is much more highly rated than your average underground album.

"you often put them together even though they are part and parcel with each other. " No I don't, I specifically made a thread where I said I DON'T think this way and asked if other people think they have are associated enough to be put together like deadone does. I only put them together here because I think they have the same effect on rating (higher rating from people not into it adding their 2 cents), only because of different reasons, which I explained. To be blunt I think your reading comprehension of my posts is lacking. If I thought they were the same or key to each other, I wouldn't have specific ""For extreme bands" and " As for underground music". Maybe it's me, I don't think I write in the most straightforward manner, but I've seen some reading comprehension fails of many users of some other peoples posts as well. " I don't think you understand these terms enough to continue using them." I don't think you understand what I'm saying well enough to make such judgements.

More or less a simplification of my understanding:
Extreme: Basically a harsher and less accessible sound, anything beyond that is not well defined, in the context of metal it usually refers to death, black, and thrash metal and related subgenres
Underground: Not mainstream, a much more straight forward definition, but what is or is not mainstream depends on the context

I sometimes use them together because in general extreme music is underground music, but the majority of underground music is not extreme, and obviously some extreme music gets mainstream, like Slayer, or outside the context of metal, Skrillex (which is why dubstep is so hated, it's sort of extreme music which somehow got mainstreamed so non-EDM fans are rating it, ironically the less extreme form of dubstep is still underground). I specifically stated I'm really talking about two different things, there is just some overlap so it's hard to separate them.

"this is not necessarily the case. " Of course not, as I said in another reply it's a generalization. The question is with trends.

" You can search all of the obscure bands you'd like, and the underground bands don't correspond to a higher average rating at all." I think that is poor methodology to use as the sampling isn't randomized and there is no comparison being made. Rather a better way would be to find a number of random albums, take their sales versus their rating, and then run a correlation test. Considering that after repeatedly pressing random I've yet to come across a band which actually has any reviews, I question any sort of looking up obscure bands on Metal Archives methodology. (After around 12 tries I got Maineeaxe, which seems to be a non-extreme yet underground band, and both it's ratings are 70%s, which I assume is an above average rating, then I found Far Beyond, a black metal band whose only rating is an 85%, the same as the Jester Race, the cult classic In Flames album. While these single review scores aren't statistically significant on their own, if I get enough of them I can group them together and then they will be. ) Of course Metal Archives doesn't list sales for each album, so finding the sales for more obscure bands is easier said than done. Theoretically it should be expected that there would maybe be some positive correlation with sales and rating as it's expected for albums that more people to like to sell better, so if there is a statistically significant negative correlation than it suggests that underground albums do in fact have skewed ratings. As for extreme metal albums, my methodology would be be similar, but to have a second person who doesn't know the album rating to place there heaviness according to this so a number can be placed to subjective quality so a correlation test can be run.

"We don't suddenly neglect our critical abilities just because an album is underground and neglected by mainstream audiences" This is not what I'm saying AT ALL. For underground bands, like really underground bands, fans are more likely to know that the band released a new album than the general public, and fans of course are more likely to rate an album higher than someone who isn't a fan of the band. I'm not saying a fan of underground music will randomly come across an underground band on the site, listen to their album, and then instantly rate it high. I think it's better to think about youtube videos put up by local bands with an link to their album on bandcamp in the description than bands on the archives here. For extreme metal, I think more extreme metal fans are open to the style of more mainstream (for lack of a better term) metal than visa versa, so an extreme metal fan is more likely to rate a mainstream album than visa versa even though it's not as much in their tastes. Think of it this way, there are good black metal albums, decent black metal albums, and shitty black metal albums, and the same goes for power metal albums. Do you think a black metal fan is more likely to rate a random decent power metal album as shitty, or a power metal fan to bother rating a random decent black metal album as shitty? I think that mainstream, non-extreme metal fans wouldn't even bother listening to extreme metal, so they aren't going to rate it, while an extreme metal fan may bother listening to a more mainstream metal album and then pan it. It's not about not being critical, it's a matter of tastes.

"The sheer number of 10s for most later-day Metallica or Slayer albums is highly suggestive the fanboys have a pronounced influence. " Slayer is an extreme metal band, so they aren't exactly what I'm talking about. As for Metallica, Lulu and St. Anger are both panned, so I don't think fanboys are saving them. Speaking as someone who isn't a Metallica fan, I think both those albums are severely underrated. St. Anger really isn't that bad, the main problem is that it's raw, stripped down sound doesn't appeal to Metallica fans, and it's raw, aggressive style works better for shorter songs than long ones. If St. Anger was shorter and made by a different band, it would probably be received much better. As for Lulu, it's much better when it's thought of as Lou Reed album, not a Metallica one. It's targeted towards art music fans, not metalheads, and indeed it got positive reviews from one avant-garde music reviewer. Oh, and I should have been more specific, but when I said "This mainly relates to new releases, as old releases often have cult status.", I more of meant new bands rather than new releases, so Metallica and Slayer weren't the mainstream bands coming to mind.

"Basically anything on the Metal Storm top 20 is much more highly rated than your average underground album." Well, I looked at that list, and while it's not at all underground by MA standards I wouldn't say it's exceptionally mainstream either, and I think it's a given that the top rated albums in the 200+ vote bracket will be higher rated than the average album in the underground graphic because of top rated vs. average.

Looking at the top 20 highest rated albums for 2014 those are about 15 mainstream bands and five somewhat underground bands, totally no true underground bands on there.

If being extreme automatically gets bands higher ratings, imagine how low Anal Cunt's and Gallhammer's ratings would be if they weren't extreme.

Imo the mainstream albumss get higher ratings than the underground stuff. I am of the opinion that mainstream listeners are more easily pleased than people who dig into the underground.

Written by Ilham on 18.08.2014 at 01:55

I'm not sure about your premise.

"Do Extreme/Undergrounds albums get higher ratings because only fans actually rate them?". There's a problem with this sentence. The first time you rate an album by an underground band, you're not a fan yet. You just rate it. And if that album sucks, it will be rated just as harshly as if it were mainstream. I think Reverovavavoom Ib Molasses is the best example of that, read the comments.

I dont know if these last few threads on the general forum are just that weak discussion-wise but most of them seem to be flawlessly answered on the first post....like this one.

well played.

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 18.08.2014 at 12:33

Imo the mainstream albumss get higher ratings than the underground stuff. I am of the opinion that mainstream listeners are more easily pleased than people who dig into the underground.

I agree in the since that the more developed ones tastes in music are, the more likely they are to seek out bands and thus come across underground bands. Those who are easily pleased have no need to seek out underground bands.

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 20:58


I agree in the since that the more developed ones tastes in music are, the more likely they are to seek out bands and thus come across underground bands. Those who are easily pleased have no need to seek out underground bands.

I imagine a lot of people won't take kindly to this comment. Even though it is true.

Written by [user id=4365] on 18.08.2014 at 21:00

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 20:58


I agree in the since that the more developed ones tastes in music are, the more likely they are to seek out bands and thus come across underground bands. Those who are easily pleased have no need to seek out underground bands.

I imagine a lot of people won't take kindly to this comment. Even though it is true.

Well, some can have a refined taste in music and only like "mainstream" acts because there are plenty of good mainstream acts in a wide variety of styles, and someone can be exposed to underground bands without actually seeking out new bands, but I'd say the last sentence still holds. In general I'd say I'm easy to please, a took a survey which said I had above average preference for all forms of music they listed, but some sounds please me enough more to get me to look for good bands.

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 20:58

I agree in the since that the more developed ones tastes in music are, the more likely they are to seek out bands and thus come across underground bands. Those who are easily pleased have no need to seek out underground bands.

I agree too.
But hey, let me grab my popcorn after that one

Written by deadone on 18.08.2014 at 05:02

The most vocal posters are generally generally fans of underground and/or experimental stuff.

This made me laugh. The most vocal poster of all seems to be you, at least in the topics that I've checked today. 3 posts in a row in one topic. You appear to be on a mission to get the highest post count in MS history.

Speaking personally, I don't rate albums that I don't own and I don't care enough about bands that don't appeal to me to be bothered to seek out their page and rate their new album. I wouldn't rate it even if I had heard it all, which I most likely haven't. I suspect that most fans of extreme and underground bands are similarly far more interested in talking about the bands that they actually do like than in down-voting bands that they don't. I would also suggest that fans of extreme or underground bands are probably much less interested in charts or ratings than average, because they have had to learn to accept quite quickly that the charts (any charts) are not going to reflect what they are interested in, and that their favourite band are never going to top it.

Written by deadone on 19.08.2014 at 02:28


I disagree. I actually found trawling through the underground irritating. I'd listen to dozens of albums to find one good one. A lot of it was clones of more mainstream stuff. The true gold nuggets were rare.

This depends on your haunting techniques and strategies. For example, I know that I am likely to enjoy underground avantgarde BM or DM, blackend death metal or modern old school death metal. I have a great chance of being pleased by going to the underground of these areas. On the other hand, DSBM of shoegaze BM don't cater to my taste and thus I avoid trying ti find proper underground bands in these genres most of the times.

Why do things have to be either mainstream or underground? I thought there was a big gap in between them.

Written by mz on 19.08.2014 at 11:07

Written by deadone on 19.08.2014 at 02:28


I disagree. I actually found trawling through the underground irritating. I'd listen to dozens of albums to find one good one. A lot of it was clones of more mainstream stuff. The true gold nuggets were rare.

This depends on your haunting techniques and strategies.

My haunting technique involves wearing a sheet and going "Wooooooo-ooooooo" at people nearby. Good for getting a seat to yourself on the train, too.

Written by M C Vice on 19.08.2014 at 11:56

Why do things have to be either mainstream or underground? I thought there was a big gap in between them.

Written by mz on 19.08.2014 at 11:07

Written by deadone on 19.08.2014 at 02:28


I disagree. I actually found trawling through the underground irritating. I'd listen to dozens of albums to find one good one. A lot of it was clones of more mainstream stuff. The true gold nuggets were rare.

This depends on your haunting techniques and strategies.

My haunting technique involves wearing a sheet and going "Wooooooo-ooooooo" at people nearby. Good for getting a seat to yourself on the train, too.

nice one

Quote:

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 09:36

I sometimes use them together because in general extreme music is underground music, but the majority of underground music is not extreme, and obviously some extreme music gets mainstream, like Slayer, or outside the context of metal, Skrillex (which is why dubstep is so hated, it's sort of extreme music which somehow got mainstreamed so non-EDM fans are rating it, ironically the less extreme form of dubstep is still underground). I specifically stated I'm really talking about two different things, there is just some overlap so it's hard to separate them.

I think I may have exaggerated a little bit regarding the underground/exteme distinction that you make. Good point regarding the overlap of the two genres, which I do share. My point is that putting extreme metal and underground metal within the same series of general arguments seems a little strange to me, because no, in general extreme music is not necessarily the same as underground music. Your post does show some awareness that music can eventually become mainstream, though, so I can't really complain. My apologies.

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 09:36

" You can search all of the obscure bands you'd like, and the underground bands don't correspond to a higher average rating at all." I think that is poor methodology to use as the sampling isn't randomized and there is no comparison being made. Rather a better way would be to find a number of random albums, take their sales versus their rating, and then run a correlation test. Considering that after repeatedly pressing random I've yet to come across a band which actually has any reviews, I question any sort of looking up obscure bands on Metal Archives methodology. (After around 12 tries I got Maineeaxe, which seems to be a non-extreme yet underground band, and both it's ratings are 70%s, which I assume is an above average rating, then I found Far Beyond, a black metal band whose only rating is an 85%, the same as the Jester Race, the cult classic In Flames album. While these single review scores aren't statistically significant on their own, if I get enough of them I can group them together and then they will be. ) Of course Metal Archives doesn't list sales for each album, so finding the sales for more obscure bands is easier said than done. Theoretically it should be expected that there would maybe be some positive correlation with sales and rating as it's expected for albums that more people to like to sell better, so if there is a statistically significant negative correlation than it suggests that underground albums do in fact have skewed ratings. As for extreme metal albums, my methodology would be be similar, but to have a second person who doesn't know the album rating to place there heaviness according to this so a number can be placed to subjective quality so a correlation test can be run.

You already confused me with the extreme/mainstream distinction with this series of arguments. I was going to say you couldn't bring up sales because it wasn't a meaningful parameter for extreme music, but then you later implied that your first argument was ONLY for underground music. Most of the time you use the distinctions well enough for me to follow, but this paragraph completely lost me. Anyway, for underground bands, you'd really need to find some way to measure and quantify the Internet traffic for the band of interest (the far more significant parameter of interest because people don't buy albums anymore). Data about how many people attend shows is probably meaningless because *almost* everyone likes a good underground show; if you polled most of the showgoers in my town after a band, they'd probably give the night a 90%+ rating. This is pretty hard to formulate if you're looking for statistically significant correlations, and your problem is that you're ignoring many vital aspects of underground music if you judge it by some sales-correlation. Many bands don't even have their best albums in print any more, for example, for reasons beyond their control, and so that will obviously bias the data. Forgive me if I just don't understand the science behind what you're considering- I might very well be obfuscating something perfectly coherent. But my opinion is that you can't really talk about this with any kind of scientific formality- you're not going to be able to formulate anything to develop statistically significant correlations, and the best we can do is some kind of crude average (although admittedly a method far less crude than what I proposed earlier). As for your extreme music argument, that method doesn't make any sense to me.

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 09:36

Think of it this way, there are good black metal albums, decent black metal albums, and shitty black metal albums, and the same goes for power metal albums. Do you think a black metal fan is more likely to rate a random decent power metal album as shitty, or a power metal fan to bother rating a random decent black metal album as shitty? I think that mainstream, non-extreme metal fans wouldn't even bother listening to extreme metal, so they aren't going to rate it, while an extreme metal fan may bother listening to a more mainstream metal album and then pan it. It's not about not being critical, it's a matter of tastes.

You seem to think that extreme metal fans are more adventurous than they actually are, which is not substantiated whatsoever. There's a significant number of extreme metal heads that just stick within their familiar style of music and don't go beyond it; again, it may not seem that way on MS because the underground metalheads are more vocal and prominent, but I think a lot of extreme metalheads just don't bother downloading/bandcamping the things that just don't appeal to them to begin with. Unless you're seriously into reviewing (a sizable minority of the metal population, I'll grant), you don't really care about things that don't appeal to you. I know what I want to listen to and I know I'm not a fan of most types of power metal, NWOBHM, etc. and so I just don't listen to them. So yes, one side of your effect is grossly exaggerated. I see metalheads used to extreme metal converge and pan the modern efforts of bands like Alcest, Morbid Angel, etc., but I think it's safe to say the band deserved to be panned in that instance. Even though I like Alcest, I can't really make a spirited defense for their cause most of the time.

As for the mainstream fans not wanting to check out extreme metal, I agree with you to some extent. I think if you have less than ten ratings on an extreme album, the rating might not be within one standard deviation of the mean you'd get if you averaged the rating of all other metal websites/forums. If you get more ratings than that on a site like MS, you're probably already converging on the mean, imo. So below a given sample size (which I estimate to be about 10), your effect might be seen, but above it, I highly doubt the community is going to continue having such an inflated rating. Eventually some albums reach a critical point at which people comment things like "I don't get the hype for this album", and this division only makes the album more appealing for other people to trying.

Written by Ganondox on 18.08.2014 at 09:36

"Basically anything on the Metal Storm top 20 is much more highly rated than your average underground album." Well, I looked at that list, and while it's not at all underground by MA standards I wouldn't say it's exceptionally mainstream either, and I think it's a given that the top rated albums in the 200+ vote bracket will be higher rated than the average album in the underground graphic because of top rated vs. average.

I would say MS is exceptionally mainstream, although maybe it is growing a little more underground these days. By "a little", I mean that 2-3 of the 20 top albums might be unheard of for longtime metalheads. I've been here since at least 2009 as an on-and-off member, and most of the albums from MS in 2009 and 2010 could be easily found at my local HMV store. This is remarkable, because my local store doesn't really have a lot of metal selection to begin with. This isn't really the most effective argument since it's based on my own limited experience, but I think it's safe to say MS is very mainstream to this day. In the top 10, the only band I don't really recognize is Empyrium, but the band has been quite noticeably hyped on MS. I will concede again that my argument wasn't the strongest one possible, though. I haven't replied to all of your claims, but I've tried to develop some that will get the conversation flowing forward.

Written by deadone on 19.08.2014 at 02:28




I disagree. I actually found trawling through the underground irritating. I'd listen to dozens of albums to find one good one. A lot of it was clones of more mainstream stuff. The true gold nuggets were rare. I figured out why seek out a third rate Kreator/Morbid Angel/Helloween clone when I can just listen to Kreator/Morbid Angel/Helloween. This is obviously for traditional genres - Thrash, Death, Power, Heavy.

I don't doubt there's good stuff out in the underground. And for some less known/less popular genres it's the only place to go. But for someone like me, I get far more enjoyment out of established mainstream acts than underground clones.

These endless clones sure are rather annoying when exploring underground. This especially goes for thrash in my opinion, where many newer bands sound like watered down Kreator.

On the actual topic I think underground generally receives more constructive criticism. Sure, there are some raw black metal nerds who fall for every band which recorded a "badass" terribly produced demo in 1994 and disbanded the same year, but I think (more) mainstream bands receive more irrational hate than underground gets irrational praise. Some dislike the changed sound or stagnation. Some just hate them because underground acts get less exposure. Also fanboys may distort the ratings to an opposite direction for popular acts. But really poor material, even if the band is underground, will get the negative reviews as well if someone is willing to give them some.

And like many have stated already, extremity is a completely different story and I'm not gonna go into that.