Just linking to this site:
Map of Metal

and my own, much less pretty, metal map I made:

(click on it and then zoom it, it's pretty big)
For the one I made, I made a connection between any two metal subgenres (or rock subgenres that are significantly related to metal and fit in the chart) which I consider their to be a natural continuum between them without having to go through a different metal subgenre on the chart. The genres are loosly arranged by the heaviness along the vertical axis, and tempo along the horizontal one. Anyway, what do you think of these metal maps, and how would you arrange yours?

My head hurts. I salute the effort, but I hate focusing on stuff like that on screen. I might print it tomorrow if I get my printer to work.
Although it must be a very interesting exercise to draw one, I think it'd be much more interesting for the ones reading your map if you gave an example for each.

Nice idea. It's a bit hard to read though...

I would dispose all the genres in a circle and use a different colour for each genre when connecting to the other one, like say thrash metal is red. Then everything that connects to thrash should have a red line, also the thrash metal itself could be written in red. It would facilitate association, namely when the one looking at it would see black metal with a red line coming to it he would know that is the thrash line, and so on.

Also for the in circle stuff, well, it just stays well presented, idk... The mess with the lines is unavoidable, so at least make the patterns interesting. The lines will form more beautiful patterns if the genre names are all disposed equally spaced in a circle. Of course, you would lose the tempo and heavyness information... But the heavyness is sort of a relative concept, Some fans of a certain genre will complain when they see their genre below other one they think it's not heavier...

And either way if you did the colour thing you could put a color bar graph on the side which arranges the colours on tempo, so that the information is still saved, idk... It all depends on which information you value the most. The point is, there are other ways of showing the information without compromising the presentation.

I'm going to clarify mine wasn't meant to be an actual presentation, it was just meant for analytical purposes.

Yeah I think the only way to get a good mental view of all the interactions between the genres and styles is to draw one yourself, not to read one. Even if you inhance the readability, the reasons why you linked x and z might still remain obscure for someone else. I should do one someday, especially for the genres I have just discovered.

Locked the old one, continue discussing here. hooray.