No more:
... opening songs or albums like you're trying to fool us into thinking we just turned on Slaughter of the Soul album. You know, that little guitar riff, stop, "GO!", and then you thrash into the song.
... covering half your body in tattoos, including your arms, and then deciding you want to wear eyeliner, black nail polish, and tons of shit in your hair.
... bands where less than half the members have long hair. Go on. Name some good bands that break this rule.
... albums with all of your verses using "extreme" vocals, and all of your choruses using "singing" vocals.
Follow these three simple rules and metalcore disappears.
Here are some other rules for everybody else:
Make sure your album passes the "three second test." Anybody skipping through your album, listening to just the first three seconds of every song, should be able to tell the difference between many of the songs. From just three seconds. You don't know how many albums I never bothered listening to because they utterly failed the three second test.
If there's a band name on the marquee, then we don't want the entire band to take a break while one member shows off on his instrument. If you're seeing Yngwie Malmsteen perform, you know he's going to shred for extended periods of time while making kissy faces at the crowd. If you're seeing Gamma Ray, there is no excuse for Dan Zimmerman banging away on his drums for five minutes by himself.
Never, and I mean NEVER, rhyme "space trip" and "space ship." A certain ProgPower headliner did that on *two* consecutive albums I bought with him on it, and I've never spent money on him since.
