Future Subgenre Poll?

[Draehl]

Would you folks have any interest in doing a favorite sub-genres poll/list?

At first I thought about doing a generic ranking of the overarching genres (death, prog, thrash, etc.) and while it would make for easier organization and provide maybe more distinctly interpret-able data... I thought better of because if the end result just puts the big genres in order, are you really that interested to see the results? I don't think I would be. Metal and the genres have become more and more fractured to the point that fans of one sub-genre might not care at all for something else. Trad Doom, Stoner and Sludge are all very different from one another (FOSD, etc.) and I'm way more intrigued to see what other genres people who specifically like Stoner also like.

I'm thinking we compile a big list of ~30-40 sub-genres. Distinct but not so distinct that we're getting silly- IE Pagan/Blackened Folk/Viking would all share the same label as they're close enough for our purposes here of differentiating it from BM and Folk. When we do the polling everyone will just choose (in no order) their top 5 from anywhere on the master list.

-----

So that said we need to use this thread to get a consensus of sorts of the "big list" we'll be choosing from. So get me your distinctions. I'll organize them under bigger umbrellas just so it's easier to keep our thoughts straight, but the big genres will have no bearing on the poll. Let's try to avoid overly thematic/political/ideology specific sub-genres unless they have a uniquely distinct sound. I'll start with some. Please add-to, suggest names changes and generally nitpick what I've got below.



We're getting thick with Black/Death/Thrash here. Looking for some other perspectives! We're well above 40 genres total (I'm just copy/pasting much of this from suggestions in the thread) and still lacking in some categories. After we get some more added we can start condensing down categories that are "close enough" as we don't need to be getting quite this granular.


Black
Atmo/Post BM
DSBM
Raw BM
Melodic BM
Progressive BM
Symphonic BM

Death
Brutal DM
Death/Jazz
Death n Roll
Melodeath
OSDM
Progressive DM
Tech Death

Doom
Epic Doom
Funeral Doom
Gothic Doom
Sludge
Stoner
Trad Doom

Folk
Folk Metal (Brighter, more Power influence)
Pagan (Darker, more BM influence)

Heavy/Power
Epic Heavy
EUPM
USPM
Hair/Glam Metal
Trad Heavy

Hybrid
Black/Death
Black/Doom
Black/Thrash
Death/Doom
Death/Thrash
Prog/Power

Prog
Djent
Neoclassical

Prog Metal

Thrash
Crossover Thrash
Groove
Progressive Thrash
Speed Metal
Technical Thrash

Other
Alternative/Nu Metal
Post/Drone Metal
Gothic
Grindcore
Industrial
Metalcore
Symphonic

 

[Baroque]

Thrash/death
Brutal death
Technical death
Technical thrash
Progressive thrash
Progressive death
Melodic death
Progressive/extreme
Death n roll
OSDM
Groove metal
Crossover thrash
Djent
Speed metal
Neoclassical
Symphonic
Industrial
-core
...

 

[Phylactery]

This sounds interesting in theory, but I feel that you'd just be left with the main subgenres at the end anyway. I'm guessing most people would just vote off the more niche genres early.

 

[Baroque]

Neoclassical belongs under prog, other or power/heavy. Prog most likely.

Groove metal probably belongs under thrash.

Symphonic belongs under power probably.

For heavy you're going to want NWOBHM before some people around here freak out lol.

 

[Draehl]

Thrash/death
Brutal death
Technical death
Technical thrash
Progressive thrash
Progressive death
Melodic death
Progressive/extreme
Death n roll
OSDM
Groove metal
Crossover thrash
Djent
Speed metal
Neoclassical
Symphonic
Industrial
-core
...

Glad you posted those. Was meaning to ask how we're going to differentiate between progressive in the experimental sense versus the technical type. IE Mastodon vs. Dream Theater.

This sounds interesting in theory, but I feel that you'd just be left with the main subgenres
at the end anyway. I'm guessing most people would just vote off the more niche genres early.

I agree. I don't think it will be as useful in a directly measure-able way like the main genres would in providing a very concrete 1-10 type ranking, but rather looking at the substance of each person's choices as they relate to each other. If anyone is great with statistics or Excel or such it would be interesting to see a correlation IE people who like Post-Metal are much more likely to also appreciate X, but not Y.

 

[Baroque]

Are you going to do mixed genres like thrash/death and so on also?

 

[Draehl]

Are you going to do mixed genres like thrash/death and so on also?

Yeah, I was thinking of just adding a hybrid section. I'm probably going to leave Progressive/X in the base parent category as typically it refers to being experimental within the genre rather than specifically technical/noodle-y, but otherwise Hybrid will work.

 

[Baroque]

Glad you posted those. Was meaning to ask how we're going to differentiate between progressive in the experimental sense versus the technical type. IE Mastodon vs. Dream Theater.



I agree. I don't think it will be as useful in a directly measure-able way like the main genres would in providing a very concrete 1-10 type ranking, but rather looking at the substance of each person's choices as they relate to each other. If anyone is great with statistics or Excel or such it would be interesting to see a correlation IE people who like Post-Metal are much more likely to also appreciate X, but not Y.

There's a whole debate that could happen over this what is technical vs progressive. I see it fairly simply, technical thrash sounds like regular thrash but with more complex riffing. It keeps the overall pace of a regular thrash song though. Progressive thrash is more experimental and will have more tempo changes slow to fast, longer songs, maybe some unique instruments to the genre like violin or choir or piano etc.

 

[Draehl]

There's a whole debate that could happen over this what is technical vs progressive. I see it fairly simply, technical thrash sounds like regular thrash but with more complex riffing. It keeps the overall pace of a regular thrash song though. Progressive thrash is more experimental and will have more tempo changes slow to fast, longer songs, maybe some unique instruments to the genre like violin or choir or piano etc.

I would agree to that.

 

[RadicalThrasher]

Isn't NWOBHM more of an area specific thing? Sure it had a distinct sound but no more than regional thrash metal ( bay area, teutonic, brazilian, east coast, etc.). Kind of the same thing from calling something black metal vs. Norwegian black metal etc.

 

[Draehl]

Isn't NWOBHM more of an area specific thing? Sure it had a distinct sound but no more than regional thrash metal ( bay area, teutonic, brazilian, east coast, etc.). Kind of the same thing from calling something black metal vs. Norwegian black metal etc.

Fair enough. Removed unless we get a reasonable consensus to add it back.

 

[Baroque]

Isn't NWOBHM more of an area specific thing? Sure it had a distinct sound but no more than regional thrash metal ( bay area, teutonic, brazilian, east coast, etc.). Kind of the same thing from calling something black metal vs. Norwegian black metal etc.

It's a fair point it really just depends how specific we want to get. There is definitely a difference in regions but do we want to list all of those?

 

[Baroque]

Jazz/death
Alternative metal/nu metal
Gothic
Grindcore

 

[RadicalThrasher]

It's a fair point it really just depends how specific we want to get. There is definitely a difference in regions but do we want to list all of those?

No. That was my point. Really just splitting hairs on some of this stuff. Where do you draw the line? Its an age old argument that rose with the internet.

 

[Draehl]

Let's add some more to the genres with less representation then we can start to pare it down a bit once we get feedback from more people. I'd be comfortable with Post/Progressive BM being in the same category, for example.

 

[Baroque]

Will there be a "vanilla" option in each category? Like you have Folk Folk but not Thrash thrash

 

[The Ozzman]

Jesus Christ this is autistic as fuck

 

[Draehl]

Jesus Christ this is autistic as fuck

Agreed. It will need to be condensed quite a bit as we're getting way too specific in some cases. Better to keep adding and reduce later though. ~30-35 would be an ideal range.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

So we're gonna eventually rank our top 5 sub-genres? In other words, we can't just vote for black, death, thrash, etc. Correct? Otherwise, the top 5 is just gonna be black, thrash, death, doom, heavy in some order.

 

[Draehl]

So we're gonna eventually rank our top 5 sub-genres? In other words, we can't just vote for black, death, thrash, etc. Correct? Otherwise, the top 5 is just gonna be black, thrash, death, doom, heavy in some order.

With "Pick any 5" It may be best for the popular genres with a lot of styles to not include the parent genre otherwise we may get exactly that, which doesn't really tell us a lot. Ideally each choice will be granular, but not too specific. Black Metal has enough division that having a choice of "Black Metal" wouldn't really accomplish much. Folk metal would probably do fine just having "Folk Metal" and "Pagan Metal".