well i bet you that most likely agalloch didn't come up with that subgenre name. i mean we didn't really say to call us "astral metal." DS heard you say that and ran with it as a marketing thing. So its dumb to classify yourself into subgenres but the idea of genres is really as necessary evil from what i can tell for the commercial aspect of art.
I am sure the last thing Percy Shelley called himself was a "Romantic" but some guy somewhere lumped him, Byron, Coleridge and whoever else was around into that category so it could be marketed most effectively as a movement and not individual poets.
Another example would be the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. I mean it was just a ton of bands coming out of the UK doing metallic type stuff all at the same time. However, one guy calls it a New Wave of British Heavy Metal and now you have instant marketing if you were one of those bands. Look at bands like Blitzkrieg and Raven who are still living off of the NWOBHM name to this day.
Basically, my point is that it sucks and its silly but all art gets lumped into categories to make distinguishing it easier for the masses. Its annoying but whatever, it is kind of part of being an artist on the commercial level at this point.
Its funny though because there was that cool band Silencer at Metalfest last year and they called themselves "Cosmic Metal." So I was thinking MOTW being "Astral Metal" should challenge them to like a game of dodgeball or something to crown the true "Universe Metal" band.
