Metal - The Six Genres

I agree, the constant emerging of new and more specific genres and the reinterpretation of the features of already established genres really irritates me, too. It's simply impossible to keep up with all those genre labels.

But at the same time, I recognize the human need to categorize things and also the human need for some sort of identity, and I think that all the subgenres that people operate with within certain underground and non-mainstream genres simply just reflect human experiential and social cognition.

Personally, I think that genre label - also specific ones - are useful if they are descriptive; but the problem is that very often very specific genre labels come of as being arrogant fanboy w*nkery, which it probably is in many cases (and which, again, I think, is a reflection of the need for an identity, and identity that one flags by showing one's mastery of all the obscure terms and categories within the type of music in question).

I generally respect other people's genre categorizations because categorization, like anything else, is negotiable and depending on both the individual's and the community's experiences, so I typically stay away from this-band-belongs-to-Xcore-and-not-to-Ycore discussions. I use my own genre tags in my reviews just for the sake of being descriptive (and sometimes to make a friendly parody on general genre w*nkery).

To be honest I don't mind there being so many subgenres on the website. If that's where the admin people feel certain bands belong, so I'm cool. And like Time Signature said above, it's perfectly normal for people to want to be more specific with their labeling, and to attempt to differentiate their own niche genre.

Reminder for visitors: the system allows ALBUM GENRE TAGGING, the artist genre is a sum of all his album genres.

I can�t say I support the idea of more subs. Not only will it create a massive amount of work for the collabs re-tagging albums, there will probably also be spend lots of time listening to samples to make sure that re-tag suggestions are valid ( unless we blindly trust the re-tag suggestions). IMO both artist bios and reviews usually explain pretty well how the music sounds. Be it old school, melodic, progressive or technical death metal, it�s still death metal IMO. I�m of the opinion that more subs will confuse rather than help.

Edited by UMUR - 17 Nov 2010 at 8:31am

UMUR wrote: Be it old school, melodic, progressive or technical death metal, it�s still death metal IMO.

That's exactly what I did when I joined.

Valarius wrote: That's exactly what I did when I joined.

Thanks for your replies.

Yeah, I get pretty peeved at the seemingly hundreds of sub genres out there, (some seem to be like one band!) and some so ridiculous.

For me personally, this is how my metal is categorized.
There is:
Heavy Metal        Which I guess would be "traditional" including NWoBHM (Which I don't think really exists)
Thrash Metal
Death Metal
Black Metal
Prog Metal
Alt Metal

If I'm not quite sure of which sub genre to put it in I bump it to the next one, or with some bands like Pantera and LoG where I had no real clue, as well as some metalcore bands....they are just labeled "metal"

As for folk metal, avant, technical I just group it all as "prog metal"
Melodic, tech, brutal etc death metal are all "death metal" 

Oh, I forgot about Power Metal and Industrial Metal. I have little of each so its not an issue, but for the few I do they have those sub genres as well.

Consolidation used to piss me off because I NEEDED to organize and specify, now I love the simplicity of it.
Tis all metal


Edited by The Angry Scotsman - 18 Nov 2010 at 3:42am

By the way, if/when we are going to add new subsub genres, it would be the best if we add only one or maybe two at max at a time. No big updates at once, so that we can focus on discussing and working on one subject more effeciently, and see how it all goes with a new subsub.

UMUR wrote: I�m sure my Black metal team buddy Vehemency would agree 100% here.

Indeed.