PHP's one saving grace is that it was used to build MA. The update they did a few years back was great, especially because of the search improvements. The one caveat is that it's not mobile friendly at all; there was an android app created by a member some years back but it hasn't been updated in years. I think it crawled pages and then re-rendered them into a mobile-friendly layout but it didn't always work. MA doesn't have any kind of API which would help with this, but every facet of it is voluntary effort, it's unfair to hold this against the maintainers, great folks who I've met at Montreal fests. \m/
If there is anything like the Metal Archives for electronic music or rock music (actually any genre) out there, I'd like to know about it. It's simply the greatest music encyclopedia I've come across, albeit entirely focused on metal.
As much as I appreciate Discogs and RateYourMusic, they tackle different things and don't really function as encyclopedias, the former functioning more as a catalogue and the latter as a way to track and list your favourite albums.
Edit:
Looks like this post resulted in a hug of death over on metal-archives.com!
I wouldn't take that list too seriously. Metal-archives genres tend to not delve into "styles" as much. But there are certainly many distinct sub-genres and one can't exactly argue that Black Sabbath, Dimmu Borgir and Cannibal Corpse sound similar.
I agree that the community itself takes the genre thing way too far and it often ends up being pretty funny.
I agree that the community itself takes the genre thing way too far and it often ends up being pretty funny.
Some people are in on the joke and some are serious. Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference, but that's OK, because I like talking with both types of people. It's usually informative and/or entertaining. :)
Ishkur's guide, in both it's modern implementation and earlier java implementation are works of electronic art in and of themselves - An opinionated guide to the infinitely deep and broad world of electronic music.
My gateway metal idols were Tony Iommi, Randy Rhoads and Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, all of whom I got to see in concert. And I'm going to just going to say it, "1984" was one of my favorite albums (although not really metal, the cover reminded me of the one on Black Sabbath's "Heaven and Hell"). Paul Graham's description of high school in one essay was right on the mark for me, I sat at the heavy metal table at lunch when I wasn't truant.
A friend of mine at work mentioned around 1988 that I should listen to 10,000 Maniacs--the name sounded interesting, and (I'll probably get beat up here for saying this) Natalie Merchant's Greek Siren-like voice led me down a more, er "primrose path" musically. Peter Tosh, too.
[On a personal note, I might have been able to get the courage to ask Natalie out back then even though she was totally out of my league--like my wife, and I dated a few women like Lita over the years, but asking Lita out? That's a whole other level of courage. Iommi was engaged to her, by the way, for reference.]
I'm 55 and I still listen to metal especially while working, but I stopped trying new stuff in the early 2000's. So the newest I listen to would be Slipknot or Soulfly. My brother tried getting me to listen to modern "Norse Core" or something, but I didn't get it.
I suspect my wife got into metal through the albums of Bon Jovi, but she denies it.
Early Nightwish releases were consistently classified as sympho power metal, so I'd say there's a consensus there. Sometimes people threw around more complicated labels like sympho-speed/power.
Musical genre multiplication and creation is just an internet disease where a bunch of would-be critics put original research on wikipedia and retroactively justify it by referencing one sentence in a 10 year old Slate article by some actual critic of no particular note.
Most of the people included in these genres had no idea they were in them when they created the music (because they didn't exist.) Plenty of them still have no idea, and may not have ever heard of the genre that they "typified."
edit: and since most people who are "experts" on popular music create that identity by just vacuuming up what they can find on the internet, creating a genre in Wikipedia becomes equivalent to creating a genre.
as a sound tech at a nightclub, I cornered one of the musicians on break and started listing lists of bands in grouping somehow.. unimpressed, he looked askance and replied "musicians don't talk that way"
Indeed, this has become pretty much the authoritative source for prog rock information. It seems to be what everyone refers to from all the online communities like reddit.
As far as specific bands go, you can't beat http://www.gbvdb.com - yes, Guided By Voices has recorded and performed enough to fill their own devoted database.
But I second your request, I'd welcome links to any electronic and alternative websites that also detail the lore and bios of the band.
It’s not totally an archive per se but I discovered this site for electronic music when it was originally a Flash application: https://music.ishkur.com/
And for the 20th anniversary it sounds like the project could use some better architecture to protect against a DDoS despite using Cloudflare. I'll be sure to donate somehow given it's been a big part of my life and I've sadly probably used it more than Wikipedia in my life.
Ah, yes. The site that has a thousand reasons why the band you're looking for isn't "metal" enough to be in its database, but then has an entry for Rush:
I mean the line needs to be drawn somewhere, right? It's not that a band isn't "metal enough", it's just that they have a bunch of rules interpreted by mods and if it doesn't fit those rules they make the editorial decision to exclude it. It's impossible to have some kind of perfect description anyway.
Rush were added probably in the first year or two of the site's existence, so they probably kept them on their for nostalgia.
It's a little puzzling that Blue Oÿster Cult isn't there. There's a historical case for them and the post-1980's records have recognizable modern metal.
MA, as well as several metal forums I've been a part of, have stayed shockingly consistent over the years. It's really neat to me. There's drama in every corner of the internet, but I've always enjoyed my metal spaces.
I visit MA pretty often and was glad to see it on the front page. However, it looks like Hacker News crowd gave MA a hug of death for their 20th birthday!
Cool site, I love the detail each band has. I learned a lot about my favorite bands than I did on Wikipedia or similar. Although, I think each album's user reviews are my least favorite part. You will commonly see every review score from 100% to 0% with justification like "I don't get it, it just sounds whiny" but in long-winded review format.
I've read a ton of clever, whimsical (usually highly critical) reviews. The reviews are full of examples of fine twists on the employment of the English language.
That said, I don't pay much attention to them usually. It's pretty easy to judge music simply by listening to it but at least the combined percentages can give you a good idea of which album to start with for a given band.
I feel the same way, a lot of the time I'll have a browse at reviews to get a bit of context on an album, and at some level pay more attention to the aggregate review score than I do individual ones. However I will admit that occasionally a review sticks with me, the most recent example being Within Destruction's Yokai, I believe the term used was "Weeb Core" and I now refer to a lot of deathcore bands that have added cringe levels of Japanese influence or trap beats as weeb core.
Somewhat surprising and very nice to see metal-archives posted here. It seems rare these days to see continual high quality from a single website, but metal-archives has just been solid good for a real long time. Many things have been tainted or destroyed with the maturity of internet business.
Pirate metal is probably seen as "ironic," or maybe just too niche to deserve a top level genre (how many bands besides Alestorm are there?). Viking metal has a long history, though, given the Nordic roots of many extreme metal genres.
That being said, I don't think Viking Metal is too helpful of a genre anyway given the completely different sound of, say, Ensiferum vs Borknagar, or Tyr vs Windir.
They do? I see Folk/Pagan/Viking as one genre when I browse by genre. Alsetorm (sorry, don't know of any other pirate themed bands) has some folk elements so I think it fits.
As much as I appreciate Discogs and RateYourMusic, they tackle different things and don't really function as encyclopedias, the former functioning more as a catalogue and the latter as a way to track and list your favourite albums.
Edit: Looks like this post resulted in a hug of death over on metal-archives.com!
I mean, look at the wiki page on subgenres:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_genres
It fills me with awe and giggles.
I agree that the community itself takes the genre thing way too far and it often ends up being pretty funny.
Then again, electronic music probably gives metal a run for its money: https://music.ishkur.com/
Some people are in on the joke and some are serious. Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference, but that's OK, because I like talking with both types of people. It's usually informative and/or entertaining. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkdkZN1rduo
Cookie Monster (includes Black Metal)
Hardcore (see Pantera)
Metal (see Metallica)
Crap (see Poison)
But what about Pterodactyl-fronted Black Metal: https://youtu.be/UZlZuYp1fZc?t=164
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lita_Ford
Since our tastes are so far apart, I guess we have nothing else to talk about.
A friend of mine at work mentioned around 1988 that I should listen to 10,000 Maniacs--the name sounded interesting, and (I'll probably get beat up here for saying this) Natalie Merchant's Greek Siren-like voice led me down a more, er "primrose path" musically. Peter Tosh, too.
[On a personal note, I might have been able to get the courage to ask Natalie out back then even though she was totally out of my league--like my wife, and I dated a few women like Lita over the years, but asking Lita out? That's a whole other level of courage. Iommi was engaged to her, by the way, for reference.]
I'm 55 and I still listen to metal especially while working, but I stopped trying new stuff in the early 2000's. So the newest I listen to would be Slipknot or Soulfly. My brother tried getting me to listen to modern "Norse Core" or something, but I didn't get it.
I suspect my wife got into metal through the albums of Bon Jovi, but she denies it.
QED
Nightwish is a good fit except the "power" part.
Most of the people included in these genres had no idea they were in them when they created the music (because they didn't exist.) Plenty of them still have no idea, and may not have ever heard of the genre that they "typified."
edit: and since most people who are "experts" on popular music create that identity by just vacuuming up what they can find on the internet, creating a genre in Wikipedia becomes equivalent to creating a genre.
But I second your request, I'd welcome links to any electronic and alternative websites that also detail the lore and bios of the band.
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Rush/1206
Rush were added probably in the first year or two of the site's existence, so they probably kept them on their for nostalgia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeOrddRaSM8
I often use them to find out if some band I found in the depth of my hard disk still exists, or to help decide what genre to sort some band in.
That said, I don't pay much attention to them usually. It's pretty easy to judge music simply by listening to it but at least the combined percentages can give you a good idea of which album to start with for a given band.
More decades, let's go!
Yes, please stay off my lawn.
That being said, I don't think Viking Metal is too helpful of a genre anyway given the completely different sound of, say, Ensiferum vs Borknagar, or Tyr vs Windir.