Genres, subgenres, half-genres, decaf-genres, halfcaflatte-genres, SHUT UP.

[JayKeeley]

If you think about it, if you don't like traditional heavy or prog metal, and also cannot stand death or black vocals, you're not really left with much in metal. Thrash maybe?

Genre naming conventions fail completely because of the saturation. Metal needs a new genre naming convention and it needs to START with vocal style in its description:

<vocal style> <generic genre tag> <adjective>

e.g:

clean black ambient
death power neo-classical
grim prog technical

You know, something like that...

If a single naming convention was used universally, it could precede all album reviews. Think about how much time would be saved in research and download.

 

[Hell Mike]

add "good" or "crappy" before all of that then, all based on what I would think.

 

[JayKeeley]

add "good" or "crappy" before all of that then, all based on what I would think.

Actually, if we're just basing it on what you would think, you could become the metal community's central figurehead ('guru' if you will) and we can all come to you for spiritual advice before venturing further with a band/artist.

You would be like the Hare Krishna of metal.

 

[MajestikMøøse]

<vocal style> <generic genre tag> <adjective>

e.g:

clean black ambient
death power neo-classical
grim prog technical

That's actually a pretty good idea. Although standardizing the music description wouldn't be easy it clearly has benefits, although finding some combinations for certain bands would be difficult.

Especially Likely Sloth: childish avante-garde schziophrenic music

whereupon I just prefer to call it "fucked up"

 

[JayKeeley]

Yeah, but if you think about it, it doesn't need to be that elaborate. The fact is, metal fans are picky as fuck, and will already decide (at least 90% of the time) whether an album is worth checking out or not simply based on genre tag and vocal style. For example;

People will avoid albums entirely if they have clean vocalists.

Likewise with other attributes - some people will avoid all power metal at any cost. Or hardcore. Or black metal with blastbeats.

etc etc.

Describing something as "Death Metal" or "Heavy Metal" just doesn't work anymore. It needs dissecting so that you can "narrow down" (as opposed to "define") to inevitably focus on 10 albums that you can DEVOUR as opposed to getting your hands on 50 albums that you only skim through.

 

[MajestikMøøse]

hmmm, it might just be easier to implement an extra row on the Reviews info box and then that might just solve that problem of bands with way too many influences. Naturally, if there is a double vocal style the review would cover that distinction.

(Picture this formatted in a table)

Into Eternity - Buried In Oblivion

Vocal Style​

Simplified Genre​

Descriptor​

Power/Death​

Death Metal​

Progressive​

EDIT: fuck off to UBB formatting

 

[JayKeeley]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's just a question of everyone conforming to this naming convention.

So let's put it to the test:

If you didn't know Into Eternity, would you be interested to hear something that had:

"power/death" vocals, wrapped in "death metal" that just happened to be "progressive"?

I think that works great.

Now replace "power/death" with just "power" vocals and you've suddenly saved 50% of a potential audience from wasting any more time following through with the recommendation.

I mean, really, the logic dictates that people only need to know 4 or 5 attributes before moving any further.

Take Children of Bodom:

vocals: death
tag: power metal
descriptor: neo-classical

You see, you can apply that description to CoB, or Kalmah, or any other clone and I know already that I'll steer clear. Furthermore, assuming I hated "death vocals", the rest of the description becomes moot and I wouldn't even bother with reading masses of reviews or downloading MP3s.

Like I said, better to have 10 albums that you can digest than have 50 albums that you just taste.

 

[Krilons Resa]

That's a pretty good method me thinks.

 

[NAD]

Holy shit I think this method works. Let me grab a random band:

Virgin Black
Clean Doom Gothic
(I'd say that fits)

Scald
Death Grind Prog
(that'll do)

Nile
Death Brutal Egypt

Holy balls!

 

[JayKeeley]

Fuck yes, "lyrical themes" is a must so you no longer equate pagan metal with black metal, etc. It also divides any ambiguity between bands like Deicide or Mercyful Fate being 'conventional' black metal.

So here we have it:

<vocal style> <lyrical theme> <genre tag> <descriptor adjective>

Drudkh:
Grim Pagan Black Forest

Mercyful Fate:
Clean Satanic Traditional Horror

So much better than calling Drudkh "black metal" or Mercyful Fate "traditional metal".

 

[NAD]

Musical category division based on lyrical content = teh lose. I'm not going to miss out on a great band because they hate my pals or sing about christianity. For example:

Ah nevermind, both suck ass.

 

[JayKeeley]

Musical category division based on lyrical content = teh lose. I'm not going to miss out on a great band because they hate my pals or sing about christianity.

Yeah, but it's just a single attribute in the naming standard. There's no harm knowing in other words because some people DO make a distinction based on themes.

"This sounds great....ahh, it's about homosexual vikings!".

Problem solved, time saved.

But seriously, how many reviews on Extol or Tourniquet do you find where writers hadn't made mention of their Christian gospel preaching? I'd say next to none. (Granted, I didn't when I reviewed Extol but that's because they're Christians on their own time, not in their lyrics, but still this would be enough to put people off either way).

 

[MFJ]

I like the idea, but my opinion is void because I am not part of the RC Superfun Awesome Happy Friends Party Crew. :'(

 

[MFJ]

But I want to be part of the RC Superfun Awesome Happy Friends Party Crew too. One time I wrote an article about how the Lord of the Rings movies cower in the shadow of the books. I was the superstar of my school for a whole 1.3 minutes!11

 

[JayKeeley]

You mean "hadn't made mention of..." don't you

Ugh, shoot me now. That's got to be an all time low for me.

JayKeeley, do you think that this should be made into a part of RC? I mean, it would work... In the submission form, there would be four boxes to fill out, like so:

Vocals: [ Death ] Lyrical themes: [ Cthulhu-mythic ] Basic genre: [ Doom ] Qualifier: [ Funeral ] (no prizes for guessing the band)

I think this is excellent, Erik. Perhaps it would be easier if we used a drop down list just to make the choices finite? (Therefore making search criteria slightly more feasible - 'key words' instead of 'text search'). I know drop downs are limiting so we'd need to be creative when you'd combine values (e.g. power & death vocals).

I mean it would be HELL to implement this on all the old material, and even on some of the new, so it's probably not a good idea.

Perhaps but if we start embedding all content with it now, we could probably come back to it later for search functionality when all other more immediate matters are resolved.

However, it would make for mighty cool searching capabilities, where one filter reviews with rules like "doom with clean vocals" or "national socialist black metal" or whatever the fuck you can come up with.

Exactly.

 

[NAD]

NSTB

 

[MFJ]

wow, I just... don't really.. know what to say to that.

 

[Demonspell]

I agree that this is an acceptable solution for resolving genre issues, but I wouldn't limit the number of options just so the reviewers can get creative with those descriptors if they wish...of course, if you're looking for simplicity it would work to have the basic genres as part of the form and leave artist-specific commentary to the reviews themselves.

 

[Ayeka]

Drudkh:
Grim Pagan Black Forest

Mercyful Fate:
Clean Satanic Traditional Horror

So much better than calling Drudkh "black metal" or Mercyful Fate "traditional metal".

What?! No no no no NO!!! Now things are getting even more silly and absurd o for a quiet life....