Need To Find A Better Metal News Website

[tuonelan]

Okay, I've had it. I'm sick of Blabbermouth. Sick of seeing headlines dominated by gossip and manufactured band feuds and bands that are 20 years past any relevance. Time to get them off my news feed.

So where to go now?

Loudwire looks marginally more adult, but it's still too dominated by the old big names. Brave Words has much better writing, but is in bad need of a site redesign to make it more accessible. Metalsucks is too invested in their own cleverness for my liking.

I do like NoCleanSinging a great deal, but they may be just a bit too niche in their coverage to be a main source of news.

Am I missing anyone who is the obvious solution to my metal news needs?

 

[Luoto]

Am I missing anyone who is the obvious solution to my metal news needs?

Metal Storm crowdsources their news feed so it's varied. They also have a notification system built into the site as long as you're a registered user.

Filip's own Northwind Promotion isn't bad either

 

[tuonelan]

Northwind Promotion gets extra points for not having idiot commenters crapping on every post.

Dropped Blabbermouth from my newslinks. The puff piece review of Crüe's corporate gig for Dodge did it for me. I can take Scion AV and Jägermeister's sponsorship of heavy music. They at least seem to have a commitment to the scene and to promoting new music, but these corporate gig/nostalgia tour shows are straight up fucking pathetic.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

I was having the same problem, so I decided to go to the source. Go to Facebook, and 'like' the page of your favorite bands. All the official news comes to your FB homepage. That's what I've been doing and it's much better. I do remember back in the way when Blabbermouth only focused on the underground. The past few years it's been a sad change into covering the shit you described above.

 

[tuonelan]

I do follow several bands on Facebook, but that only really gets me news of bands I already know and like, which is a recipe for getting old and stuck in my ways and ending up a sad case like many of my friends on Facebook who stopped growing as people a decade ago. I'm too old to let myself start getting old.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

Maybe you are over reacting. I don't think that keeping up with bands on Facebook implies "getting old" or "stuck in your ways" or "growing as a person". If you're referring to the possibility that you won't discover any new bands that way, well, sure, maybe that's true. But you can also look at your favorite bands' page and see what other bands "liked" the page, and if you've never heard of them you can follow them as well.

And by using Facebook for band news, I've been actually quite pissed to see what's not being covered by Blabbermouth. As of this post, bands like Katatonia, Omnium Gatherum and Wolfheart are all writing new music for 2015 but Blabbermouth has not reported on any of this. Far better, again, to use FB no matter how many bands you have to search for and "like".

 

[Eurynome]

I'm too old to let myself start getting old.

Wish I had come with that one.

I stopped checking Blabbermouth years ago, good to know I haven't missed out on anything. My main source (by a long way) for news on bands I'm not directly following are the FB pages of my favorite metal 'zines (of course they're in Finnish, but I'm sure there are plenty of English ones around) and labels. I don't really have the time and patience anymore to check several different sources on an even remotely regular basis, so I do appreciate the convenience of stuff popping up in my newsfeed without any effort on my behalf. In addition, I keep finding plenty of interesting and obscure stuff through my friends' postings on FB, and I don't think that's a bad thing at all. (Of course it helps that the large majority of my friends are metalheads, or to put it the other way round, through metal is how I've met most of my friends. )

 

[tuonelan]

Some of the FB feeds do have some great links. Jesse Haff of Daylight Dies linked to a blog entry of his that listed some of his favorite dark music, metal and otherwise. Had some awesome stuff I was not familar with, including Enshine:

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

Sounds pretty cool, thanks for sharing that.

 

[xptrinity]

Okay, I've had it. I'm sick of Blabbermouth.

Dropped Blabbermouth from my newslinks.

I did that maybe five years ago and never spared a second thought.
Eventually I completely lost interest in following metal news sites. Nowadays everyone with half a brain can concoct a news metal site. The market is a bit oversaturated and life's too short for trying to catch up with all this.
The last one I stopped following was Loudwire - got incredibly annoyed by their FB posting manner. I still keep the British Metal Hammer and Classic Rock in my FB news feed out of sheer habit, but they suck too, especially the Hammer.
Nowadays I use mainly Facebook as a news source. I follow the bands I truly care about on FB - the news is there, if there is an interesting article, review, or interview, they post links. People on my FB list whose music taste I hold in high regard, also post something interesting every now and then. Whenever I feel like exploring, I hit last.fm and check out recommendations of bands similar to what I already like.