Easier would be if metal had only 2 genres: Great and Sucky.

Nah, then each band would be both Great and Sucky, as opinions vary.

Written by [user id=1868] on 16.09.2006 at 14:17

Written by Bitch Boy on 16.09.2006 at 06:13

And, why the extreme-power metal bands like ETOS or CoB are in the melodic forum as well??

Because what's widely accepted as "extreme power metal" has nothing to do with extreme music.

Thank you man!! But why the Arch Enemy thread is in the extreme forum and Dark Tranquillity is in the melodic forum?


@ Master_o_Puppets: CoB melodic death?? Well, that's not the first time I heard/read something like that.

@ Dream of Hate: metal is over-classified but at least 9 main classifications (heavy, thrash, power, progressive, gothic, doom, death, black and alternative) are necessary. Other sub-genres are only for classifying those 9 I listed before (for example extreme-power metal, funeral-doom metal, symphonic-black metal, melodic-death metal......)

Written by Bitch Boy on 16.09.2006 at 19:40

Thank you man!! But why the Arch Enemy thread is in the extreme forum and Dark Tranquillity is in the melodic forum?

My guess is that arguing over whether "borderline" bands are melodic or extreme for the most part would be pointless, so people just don't bother to go all strict about them.

I think you guys care too much. For a website like this with a band search engine, yeah, then it's a little important, and I'll be the first to admit I'm kind of anal about classifying my mp3's, but let's think about what the purpose of a genre is. It's supposed to be a quick, convenient classification, no more than an adjective used to describe the music. So go ahead and use your "nine main classifications," or even give each band their own genre, or mislabel things at your will. As long as when it comes up in discussion you can give an impression of a band's sound to someone else using only words, it doesn't matter. Besides, outside of the metal community, it's not like anyone can follow our crazy, disjointed jibberish anyway. Seriously, there are people who think Living Color and God Forbid play black metal*

I think THAT should be the measure of one's ability to classify. If you can explain to someone who listens exclusively to avant-garde bluegrass what Children of Bodom sounds like, then you don't need to waste your time debating here.

Except for those doofuses who call Children of Bodom black metal. Then we have a problem

* Disclaimer for the politically correct masses: this is not intended to be a racist comment, merely observational. It wouldn't be amusing if I called it "African American Metal."



[edit] By the way, don't get me wrong - I have no problem with this thread or debating genre or anything like that. I just think some people tend to get way too into it.

Oh, and I agree with Jester Eddie. I nominate Ozman for High Minister of Genre.

Written by [user id=1455] on 16.09.2006 at 20:16

I nominate Ozman for High Minister of Genre.

thx, but seriously, why?

I usually laugh at webpages having only 2 metal genres, heavy metal and black metal, black metal includes death, trash, black, gothenburg, doom and some times even power metal, heavy metal is Nu-metal, heavy metal and hard rock , If they're allowed only to make 2 genre pages for metal, why not extreme and melodic??
@Bitch boy, I think you need one more classification and that's folk, it's getting more and more common and it's wide enough to be called a main genre

@ Destryphior: folk is more common nowadays, but is usually accompained by other genres (symphonic, heavy, gothic, viking, black...)

how about opeth? in m-a they are called "extreme progressive metal" and here they are both prog and death

Written by Valentin B on 16.11.2006 at 17:26

how about opeth? in m-a they are called "extreme progressive metal" and here they are both prog and death

Same difference. For bands who use techniques from more than one genre, we just have to classify them as best we can without being stupid about it.

Speaking of genre discrepanices, why are Skyfire still classified as 'Death'? I wasn't aware that your bog-standard DM band used O.T.T. keyboards and synths...

I am writing an essay about metal and of course there's also a chapter about sub-genres of metal (metal itself is a musical genre, so I called them sub-genres). I had some root genres from which metal evolved, then I had "real" genres: nwobhm (which is no genre in my opinion, I'd just call that heavy metal, but whatever), glam, power, pop metal, prog, stoner, thrash, black, death, goth, doom, industrial, nü and folk metal. I took the genres mainly from the documentary Metal: A headbanger's journey and books that i've read.
I got so many sub-sub-genres in there (Gothenburg, Viking, Medieval, Grindcore, Hardcore,..) and I've come to the conclusion that there's so many diverse bands that you can't say: "oh well, they're black (or whatever)" because there might be so many influences by other genres that you could say: "that band is black because they're not well-produced and growl/death because they're singing anti-christian songs with the use of stage names/pop because of the song structure/prog because of the time changes and shock because of their hairdo" or whatever. So I don't think that you can really categorize all bands. There are certains, that just fall into one genre, but most do have elements of so many diverse genres that you could just say they're "mostly this and that".
I do also believe that the great thing about metal is that there is a huge diversity in the way the bands sound which makes it interesting. It would be boring if we could classify every single band into certain sub-genres because we wouldn't have the thrill of finding out new structures/images/... of other genres that influenced the band - may it be positive or negative.

Written by [user id=11816] on 19.11.2006 at 22:04

I am writing an essay about metal and of course there's also a chapter about sub-genres of metal (metal itself is a musical genre, so I called them sub-genres). I had some root genres from which metal evolved, then I had "real" genres: nwobhm (which is no genre in my opinion, I'd just call that heavy metal, but whatever), glam, power, pop metal, prog, stoner, thrash, black, death, goth, doom, industrial, nü and folk metal. I took the genres mainly from the documentary Metal: A headbanger's journey and books that i've read.
I got so many sub-sub-genres in there (Gothenburg, Viking, Medieval, Grindcore, Hardcore,..) and I've come to the conclusion that there's so many diverse bands that you can't say: "oh well, they're black (or whatever)" because there might be so many influences by other genres that you could say: "that band is black because they're not well-produced and growl/death because they're singing anti-christian songs with the use of stage names/pop because of the song structure/prog because of the time changes and shock because of their hairdo" or whatever. So I don't think that you can really categorize all bands. There are certains, that just fall into one genre, but most do have elements of so many diverse genres that you could just say they're "mostly this and that".
I do also believe that the great thing about metal is that there is a huge diversity in the way the bands sound which makes it interesting. It would be boring if we could classify every single band into certain sub-genres because we wouldn't have the thrill of finding out new structures/images/... of other genres that influenced the band - may it be positive or negative.

It would be incredibly boring and pointless to categorise each band into a particular subgenre of their own and i can't see anybody vouching to do the job anyway. There's always bands sprouting up out of everywhere anyway, thus it is inevitably pointless and far too time cosnuming to work initially.

i havent got a clue about genres, all i know is - everyone bitches about them, so its best you just dont mention them :p

its actually only metal heads that bitch about it , thats the main reason i dont know many, i dont like them very much :/

Written by [user id=12867] on 22.11.2006 at 08:34

Written by [user id=11816] on 19.11.2006 at 22:04

I am writing an essay about metal and of course there's also a chapter about sub-genres of metal (metal itself is a musical genre, so I called them sub-genres). I had some root genres from which metal evolved, then I had "real" genres: nwobhm (which is no genre in my opinion, I'd just call that heavy metal, but whatever), glam, power, pop metal, prog, stoner, thrash, black, death, goth, doom, industrial, nü and folk metal. I took the genres mainly from the documentary Metal: A headbanger's journey and books that i've read.
I got so many sub-sub-genres in there (Gothenburg, Viking, Medieval, Grindcore, Hardcore,..) and I've come to the conclusion that there's so many diverse bands that you can't say: "oh well, they're black (or whatever)" because there might be so many influences by other genres that you could say: "that band is black because they're not well-produced and growl/death because they're singing anti-christian songs with the use of stage names/pop because of the song structure/prog because of the time changes and shock because of their hairdo" or whatever. So I don't think that you can really categorize all bands. There are certains, that just fall into one genre, but most do have elements of so many diverse genres that you could just say they're "mostly this and that".
I do also believe that the great thing about metal is that there is a huge diversity in the way the bands sound which makes it interesting. It would be boring if we could classify every single band into certain sub-genres because we wouldn't have the thrill of finding out new structures/images/... of other genres that influenced the band - may it be positive or negative.

It would be incredibly boring and pointless to categorise each band into a particular subgenre of their own and i can't see anybody vouching to do the job anyway. There's always bands sprouting up out of everywhere anyway, thus it is inevitably pointless and far too time cosnuming to work initially.

Well making a subgenre for every band would be quite silly... There would be millions of genres, no one would no the meaning of them nor what they stand for... The point of genres is to cathegorize, and if every band would have it own cathegory it wouldn't get us anywhere... Therefore it's not a such big difference if acouple of bands are given the wrong genre, as long as the whole is kept simple... Creating more and more subgenres is very confusing and unnecesery.

Well metalheads are not the only ones to put band into genres, there's a whole world of the same (or even worse) int the world of electronic music. Everything from "trancecore" to "bubble gum" .So we're not that odd, go disco music, go DiscoStorm

Just an innocent observation - I think a lot of people confuse "adjective" with "genre". Adding "symphonic" or "technical" or whatever to a band description doesn't create a new genre, it simply describes the band's relation to it (the original genre).

Written by Destryphior on 23.11.2006 at 20:50

Written by [user id=12867] on 22.11.2006 at 08:34

Written by [user id=11816] on 19.11.2006 at 22:04

I am writing an essay about metal and of course there's also a chapter about sub-genres of metal (metal itself is a musical genre, so I called them sub-genres). I had some root genres from which metal evolved, then I had "real" genres: nwobhm (which is no genre in my opinion, I'd just call that heavy metal, but whatever), glam, power, pop metal, prog, stoner, thrash, black, death, goth, doom, industrial, nü and folk metal. I took the genres mainly from the documentary Metal: A headbanger's journey and books that i've read.
I got so many sub-sub-genres in there (Gothenburg, Viking, Medieval, Grindcore, Hardcore,..) and I've come to the conclusion that there's so many diverse bands that you can't say: "oh well, they're black (or whatever)" because there might be so many influences by other genres that you could say: "that band is black because they're not well-produced and growl/death because they're singing anti-christian songs with the use of stage names/pop because of the song structure/prog because of the time changes and shock because of their hairdo" or whatever. So I don't think that you can really categorize all bands. There are certains, that just fall into one genre, but most do have elements of so many diverse genres that you could just say they're "mostly this and that".
I do also believe that the great thing about metal is that there is a huge diversity in the way the bands sound which makes it interesting. It would be boring if we could classify every single band into certain sub-genres because we wouldn't have the thrill of finding out new structures/images/... of other genres that influenced the band - may it be positive or negative.

It would be incredibly boring and pointless to categorise each band into a particular subgenre of their own and i can't see anybody vouching to do the job anyway. There's always bands sprouting up out of everywhere anyway, thus it is inevitably pointless and far too time cosnuming to work initially.

Well making a subgenre for every band would be quite silly... There would be millions of genres, no one would no the meaning of them nor what they stand for... The point of genres is to cathegorize, and if every band would have it own cathegory it wouldn't get us anywhere... Therefore it's not a such big difference if acouple of bands are given the wrong genre, as long as the whole is kept simple... Creating more and more subgenres is very confusing and unnecesery.

Well metalheads are not the only ones to put band into genres, there's a whole world of the same (or even worse) int the world of electronic music. Everything from "trancecore" to "bubble gum" .So we're not that odd, go disco music, go DiscoStorm

I dread the day that will come;D

I think it's slightly more vital than it is with other genres of music that we differentiate between the distinct sounds, because last time I checked, Power metal didn't sound too similar to Death metal.;D

Metal bands that do not fit in any genre ought to be called 'miscellaneous metal'. I can not think of a more polite name. A rude name for it could be 'shit metal'.
Indian metal bands like 'Demonic ressurction' and Nepalese metal bands like 'Antim grahan' don't REALLY fit in any genre; such type of bands are best examples of the bands that don't fit into any other genre than any other bands. They try to make their songs melodic (they succeed), use keyboards, use clean vocals and clean guitars occasionally , use BM or DM style vocals . Such type of style is increasing in this region.
I think progressive metal is undefined (please correct me if I am wrong).

Written by Paganblood on 14.12.2006 at 11:23

...I think progressive metal is undefined (please correct me if I am wrong).

Yep. I think "progress" is infinite process of changes. It can't be defined because how to define something that still "go on", still changes and still exceed itself?

Written by [user id=1455] on 16.09.2006 at 20:16

I think you guys care too much. For a website like this with a band search engine, yeah, then it's a little important, and I'll be the first to admit I'm kind of anal about classifying my mp3's, but let's think about what the purpose of a genre is. It's supposed to be a quick, convenient classification, no more than an adjective used to describe the music. So go ahead and use your "nine main classifications," or even give each band their own genre, or mislabel things at your will. As long as when it comes up in discussion you can give an impression of a band's sound to someone else using only words, it doesn't matter. Besides, outside of the metal community, it's not like anyone can follow our crazy, disjointed jibberish anyway. Seriously, there are people who think Living Color and God Forbid play black metal*

I think THAT should be the measure of one's ability to classify. If you can explain to someone who listens exclusively to avant-garde bluegrass what Children of Bodom sounds like, then you don't need to waste your time debating here.

Except for those doofuses who call Children of Bodom black metal. Then we have a problem

* Disclaimer for the politically correct masses: this is not intended to be a racist comment, merely observational. It wouldn't be amusing if I called it "African American Metal."



[edit] By the way, don't get me wrong - I have no problem with this thread or debating genre or anything like that. I just think some people tend to get way too into it.

Oh, and I agree with Jester Eddie. I nominate Ozman for High Minister of Genre.

THANK YOU for saying Cob IS NOT BLACK METAL!!!!!! there older stuff had black vocals NO OTHER SIMULARITY! i think of old Cob and wintersun in simulary ways using black vocals and agressive power/progressive instramentals. Extreme vocals + power instramentals = Extreme Power Metal
Now please dont anyone call Kreator black metal (satanic lyrics DO NOT EQUAL BLACK METAL)

What about bands such as Ensoph, Isis or Farmakon??? I cant really realise them... So many stuff in their material that confuses you.:noidea:

Farmakon? (quite) Technical Death Metal.

Farmakon is technical, but they're not just technical...they're more progressive death metal...

Isis is atmopsheric hardcore...

Never heard of Ensoph...

Maybe we create the problem trying to give everything a name ... a difference ... for me today you find to many useless definitions of genres .. it would be quite nice back to the beggining ... and classifiy thigns more generally ...

I'd like to chime in here with a question I'd like to have answered, namely what do you think our band plays? I'm quite stuck with the definition, so I'm gonna ask you metalheads..:) One full song and a few samples can be found here: www.myspace.com/insilentionoctis

Written by [user id=27887] on 27.12.2007 at 09:52

I'd like to chime in here with a question I'd like to have answered, namely what do you think our band plays? I'm quite stuck with the definition, so I'm gonna ask you metalheads..:) One full song and a few samples can be found here: www.myspace.com/insilentionoctis

What I gather from the song and samples is that it is symphonic black metal

Written by Ascalon on 27.12.2007 at 06:23

Maybe we create the problem trying to give everything a name ... a difference ... for me today you find to many useless definitions of genres .. it would be quite nice back to the beggining ... and classifiy thigns more generally ...

That's never going to happen...back in the beginning there was blues, classical, jazz, fusion and world music that begot hard rock that begot metal (Arguably of course) and with so many innovations in metal over the years you will never be able to just switch a lightswitch that says SUB-GENRES/OFF SUB-GENRES ON ... it's evolution, baby...you can't stop that...

hm it can get a bit stupid 'pirate metal' and y so many 'cores? i hate genres with 'core' at the end. it seems every new band these days is a new genre. its pathetic. i only use a few i cba with most of them.

Can someone clear this up for me please? what genre are Ensiferum. ive heard them classed as so many now its just bugging me. ive heard
'blackend death' i hate this soo much
'extreme power/folk'
blackend extreme power' - i mean how bad can it get?
folk viking metal ahhh!

ok a challenge. describe them in one word.

Ensiferum = Extreme Power Metal

Written by necrovamp on 03.10.2008 at 03:12

ok a challenge. describe them in one word.

not that much of a challenge. i'd go with either "bad", "sucky" or "booooooooooring".

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 03.10.2008 at 12:23

Ensiferum = Extreme Power Metal

No, they're Folk Metal.

Extreme PM is like Children Of Bodom or Norther.