Do you guys prefer your metal to be much more "heavy" and "brutal" like extreme metal? Or do you prefer your metal to have a tad bit more "emotion" and "harmony" like melodic metal? Or do you enjoy listening to both equally? I personally enjoy melodic metal much more because for me, while the music isn't as "heavy" as extreme metal, incorporating melody allows the songs to stand out more and be more easily recognizable from one another, yet still retaining that heavy sound. That's just what I think.

I like both, it depends on my mood I guess. Anyway, the best for me are bands that find a balance between the two so that it doesn't get either too boring or cheesy.
Bloodbath is a band that does that perfectly, pretty extreme but they go melodic when needed.

Same for me .. I like both and it totally depends on how I feel at the moment .. I tend to listen more extreme metal, but I love both directions

I prefer extreme otherwise mostly it will sound so boring

Using the MS classification, I almost only listen to extreme or alternative metal bands (trad doom and some occasional melodeath is pretty much the only exception), and /most/ alternative bands I listen to I'd also call more inaccessible/extreme than the kind of stuff in the melodic metal section.

So extreme it is.

I like bands that strike a good balance between melody and extremity. The reason I don't power metal is because it's totally based on repetitive melodies, while you've got brutal death metal bands (not the good ones like Benighted) being extremely boring because of their complete lack of melody on the other side of things. So I don't like stuff that is too melodic or too extreme*.

*lame pun intended.

Both I like both depends of mood, situation, season etc, many factors say what I like most so...

When I started listening to metal, I did not understand extreme metal at all. I just wanted to listen to power metal and prog metal. Now I tend to listen to way more extreme metal. It's really not a rule though, I do like both. I've always been drawn to dissonance and use of harsh sounds, but melody and harmony are good, especially dissonant and harsh ones! But really, both have their own unique qualities and pitfalls. I find myself in most of these polls/metal battles coming to the same conclusion: 'I like good bands' or 'I like what I like'. Some of it is extreme, some of it is Maiden, some of it is the Decemberists...

I like metal that's both extreme and melodic. The best drone, black metal, sludge, doom etc. has melody to enjoy, but it's still very unconventional and abrasive. The Angelic Process, Enslaved, Esoteric and Acid Bath are all good examples of extreme bands that don't shy away from melody.

But I guess that's a bit misleading, since almost all music has some form of melody. (The kind that doesn't falls into experimental genres like noise, lowercase, etc.) How much distortion, beats per second or screamed vocals you add doesn't make a sequence of notes any less melodic, nor is a clean and furious power metal solo any more melodic than some slow riff Earth repeats for ten minutes.