So about the site in case anyone is interested. I made it with a friend who was studying multimedia. He helped with the data and I did the coding. Took about a week or two.
The site was originally Flash (remember that). But I ported it to HTML5 a few years ago. It still has those Flash vibes I think. Posted the code to GitHub when I ported it. I did this mostly to keep it alive for old times sake.
So about the mobile support. I planned to do it but got sidetracked building a custom WebGL map renderer because phone performance was poor. However I never finished, life finds a way to get in the way and all that... I have some mobile designs lying around.
The other issue was when I first built the site YouTube didn't really play ads much at all, just those little text ads, and you could embed the player really tiny. So it worked better. In the original flash version I actually hid the video player. But that got the site blacklisted from YouTube, I asked a Google engineer on a dev forum to put a word in and they removed the block, very different times, this was back when Google was a different beast, and you could chat to real people online and the dev communities were much smaller.
I have a illustration of a much bigger map in my sketchbook. It has a lot more subgenres and interconnected things like historical events and so on. But it's huge unfolded, like 2x1.5m or something ridiculous.
I miss those days when the web was full of weird and experimental stuff. I grew up with Newgrounds and Geocities, I'm sure it's all still out there buried under a giant pile of SEO optimised refuse.
Also Flash, most people don't realize what we lost with Flash. The amount of non-professional multimedia content available was so great. It was a cooking ground for people to experiment with animation ideas. Very low hanging fruit.
HTML5/Canvas/CSS just don't have that accessibility.
Now the internet is a complete different beast. There are 10 main websites that everyone sees only, and everyone wants to monetize. All content is full of "antipatterns" to maximize monetization. It's very very sad.
Aaaanyway, sorry for the rant. I love your website. I'm a Metalhead myself, and this year I'll go back to Wacken for a 2nd time after 15 years!!
Historical comment only. I first listened to this music in the late 1970s. One big change in the story, over time, is how few people trace the sound to Hendrix now. (Not this map in particular. Metal fans I know would agree with the map.) I think (?) a common current viewpoint is that Led Zep [!?] was foundational but the genre really started with Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.
Which, definitions change. But in 1977 I listened to Purple Haze and, sure, it was "Psychedelic Rock" as indicated on the map. 100%! But it was also almost definitionally metal. Forty-nine years ago, I mean, not today.
[!?] I love Zeppelin. But I would have been laughed out of high school if I'd compared them to metal, or claimed they were even hard rock.
There used to be a thing like 20-ish years ago called Musicovery that could sort of do this if you clicked around.
I've heard it as 'metalstep' but I'm sure there are other names for it. Very aggressive cross between metal and EDM. More of a metal sensibility than hardcore EDM; more of an EDM / trance sensibility than, say, Fear Factory. The drum tracks have more of a death metal vibe to them. It's probably easy to blend into other genres.
I'm thinking stuff like Invocation Array, Rave The Requivm, Follow the Cipher, even stuff like The Algorithm and Neurotech. I suppose Fear Factory would count here as well.
Metal also has history where a genre is aesthetically defined as well as sonically, which complicates things.
Just read the update:
> 2024-01-05 status update: With my 2023-12-04 layoff from Spotify I lost the internal data-access required for ongoing updates to many parts of this site. Most of this, as a result, is now a static snapshot of what, for now, will be the final state from the site's 10-year history and evolution..
what a shame. I didn't realize the author worked for Spotify. Guess it makes sense. Spotify should've acquired it from the author or made a deal with him to keep it live since all the links lead to Spotify anyway.
- https://www.music-map.com/ - https://everynoise.com/ - https://chartmetric.com/ - https://musicroamer.com/ - http://davidmckinney.com/app
But they're all kind of generic, I would love to see something more genre-specific with additional historic context and personality.
https://toposonico.com/#lon=14.4313&lat=-1.0200&z=9.10&entit...
Both these maps of styles have most of their richness in the past. Modern era is mostly stagnation. I suppose it would be different if I had a map of hip-hop?
Some have mentioned Sabbath, mc5, Stooges etc as origins.
Sam Dunn (documentary producer) says Paganini has a big influence in the guitar solo, demonstrations of virtuosity by the players etc. interviews this crazy swedish guy can't remember his name.
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/ward-shelley-history-of-scienc...
Btw, the map interface is very well implemented, what is it based on?
It might be fun to have a sort of gazetteer for the map so we can find bands.
One of my favorite documentaries to learn the history of metal is "metal: a headbanger's journey" (available on YouTube).
I'm not entirely sure why those specific song choices for the Swedish Death category. The older At The Gates albums are more like the original Swedish sound but Slaughter of the Soul (included in Swedish Death) is essentially THE Melo-death album.
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No Opeth?
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Have you open any US news website in 5 years? Usually there are 2 or 3 layers of popups: subscribe!, cookies box, and news video stream playing on top of everything.
It's still there, but you have to look AND be interested in it. Many of us were only interested in e.g. newgrounds and ignored deviantart. Many of a younger generation are only interested in e.g. tiktok and ignore tumblr.
Overall, I think it's fine, and / or the kids are alright.
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This was going to happen regardless of if we had Flash or not
I don’t even think they’d value it to be honest. The culture of putting stuff out online now is to view everything as a potential revenue stream. If you can’t monetize it, why do it?
This is a cool thing. I hope you enjoyed remembering about it again today.
One disagreement: punk rock island should be a lot bigger in my opinion!
Garage and heavy metal definitely inspired the OG British punk rock scene, but they also inspired NY Dolls and Ramones (who formed specifically in response to the rising popularity of heavy metal, if memory serves), two massively influential bands that progenated several subgenres (pop-punk, which created Descendents, Green Day, Blink 182, etc; Ramones-core; melodic punk). DOA and Black Flag, both of whom are mentioned on the map, also helped inspire the whole Nardcore/West Coast thrash scene (RKL, DI, etc), which was happening, almost rebelliously, at the same time in the East Coast (Gang Green/Jerry's Kids, Proletariat, basically everyone on the "This is Boston, Not LA" album, which is fantastic and still holds up IMO).
I'm going to stop there because if I go any deeper, I'll have to start talking about emo, and that will for sure crash your map.
Anyway, metal is helping cleanse that part of my life; going to spend a lot of time going through the playlists in this map. :)
Thank you for making it!
But this is a map of metal, not a map of music. If one were to draw a map of punk, metal would also just feature as a few small islands I gather, along with islands not mentioned here such as surf, reggae and hip hop.
I do like and agree that you put Slayer - Necrophiliac under the development of death metal. Though by those same accounts I'd have moved Kreator - Ripping Corpse from the thrash column to the death metal column, but that's just a personal line.
I also feel your tech death is biased too much toward 2000s rather than stuff like Sadus, Demilich or Disciples of Power.
Absolutely loved the inclusion of death n roll, one of my favorite substyles.
> It still has those Flash vibes I think.
I can say I noticed. I wondered if the site had been Flash.
I just wanted to say thank you for making it, it was really important for me when exploring music back in 2010s. It was also great to see the "big picture" of metal genres, and start the long journey down the rabbit hole.
In a fun turn of events, I showed this to my wife just a few days ago, to show what I was up to when I was younger. And now less than a week later this is submitted to HN. Fun coincidence.
I would love for this Map to be expanded to modern subgenres. There are lot's of subgenres that completely changed in the last decades (notably, the *cores and the tech* ...)
And it's definitely missing Thall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtV9pcHh8vM). :D
My only note would be that I'm surprised that Order from Chaos isn't featured anywhere; I feel like they are kind of a Rosetta stone for so much of what happened in the 90s/00s with black and death metal converging on each other.
One thing to note though is that Hendrix had a very short career in which he lived/performed in Nashville, the Chitlin' Circuit, Greenwich Village, and London. On top of being an incredibly proficient/creative guitar player he also had an incredible ear and picked up sounds/techniques/songs from everywhere he lived and with everyone he played with.
Part of why you can trace the evolution of guitar playing through Hendrix is that on top of his records being popular and everyone learning those tunes as a first/second year student, his own musicological background was a fusion of the major songwriting movements of the 1960s that spawned modern blues, pop, funk, fusion, rock, and metal. It's easy to see Hendrix as an influence on modern music because he was a magnet for players of all those genres.
What's interesting about Hendrix is that he is "an artist you listen to" instead of "an artist who an artist you listen to, listens to" from the same era like Albert King or Joe Pass.
For me I would always say that somewhere between 68-71 metal was being cooked up by Black Sabbath in Birmingham, Motörhead in London, Pentagram in Virginia, and Blue Cheer in San Francisco. Obviously Hendrix’s influence would be most obvious with the latter.
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- White Wizzard
- Tailgunner
- Skull Fist
- Wolf
- Enforcer
- 3 Inches of Blood
- Lucifer
- and many others
Bands that you are saying. Maybe Hangman's Chair, Pallbearer, Faetooth, Rezn, Conan, and Monolord.
Bands like Sleep, OM, Electric Wizard, Weedeater, Dopesmoker, Satans Satyrs, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Salems Pot, Acid Witch… there’s so so many.
Also heavier bands that are more stoner/psych than metal like All Them Witches, Mars Red Sky, Dead Meadow, Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin, all rip too.
Unfortunately no longer being updated, but still has a fantastic backlog of new-ish artists.
I clicked into this thread expecting hobbyist/hacker machining with steel and brass and aluminum, and was surprised to see someone getting into electrical discharge machining. Those hair-fine wires, milled graphite electrodes, and ultrapure water baths can achieve incredible precision but are challenging even in an industrial context, though I know a few have made it work in their garage.
But you meant electronic dance music.
For concrete examples of what I'm thinking, something like Crossbreed[1], or more recently Electric Callboy[2]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS2zMciGHBE [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NdGBldg3w
I'm going to lose myself to "The Mantle" this weekend (best part is that I can now learn to play these songs on guitar). Thank you so much again - you made my day!
No offense to dwarf metal fans intended.
They do speak to more of the gamer culture... for example Rock and Stone https://youtu.be/8ZXBm1NXBaI - there's a lot of other dwarf rock.
Consider "The Breed of Durin" - who preformed it? https://youtu.be/dV51_xsV4uI
Other than seeing "Wind Rose" and knowing Blind Guardian discography, you'd likely have to listen carefully to identify if this was Blind Guardian or Windrose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIhpnUMTxak&list=OLAK5uy_m3G...
https://websites.umich.edu/~esrabkin/sf/HistoryOfSFVisualize...
Went through a phase of listening to Beryllium and Fortal.
Perhaps we need a word to disambiguate "atmosludge" from actual sludge, for the same reason "skramz" was invented.
Except Dixie Dave. Eyes crossed from Jim beam and cough syrup works too.
I suppose you used ◌̈ (U+0308).
> The popularity of nu metal came to a peak in 2001 with Linkin Park's diamond-selling debut album, Hybrid Theory.
But Bathory is Black, so a bit by-the-by. Venom (whom I count as an early thrash band; they have nothing to do with Black Metal except for that one song title), seem to have been more influenced by Motörhead, Motörhead, Motörhead, and Judas Priest. I believe Venom were a major influence for all European Thrash bands.
Speaking of Motörhead, they were also a major influence to at least Sodom and possibly other early Thrash bands too. So I personally think Motörhead are a more likely Thrash influence than hardcore.
Then again Metallica do have their Garage Days Revisited album which is probably a good catalogue of their influences. Maybe. Tbh I don't hear Sabbath in Metallica. And I've listened to oodles of both religiously as a teenager.
Back to European Thrash, Kreator and Destruction that I also listened to as a teenager, don't sound very hardcore-influenced at all. They are just harder, dirtier, Speed Metal bands with more violent lyrics.
Come to think of it, maybe there is an American vs. European Thrash divide. American bands more influenced by hardcore, and/like Metallica; European bands more influenced by Speed Metal. And Motörhead.
Honestly. A lot of European Thrash sounds to me like Motörhead. For example:
https://youtu.be/-qmbiw38o2I?si=z35EZG1X07p4uUe5
But, well, that's a bit on the nose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8C3Tez3iAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOa5p0FVhko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XphUURIAx5g
and for my "cheat" example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAD870Lx-o
I suppose its my bias speaking but at the end of the day there has to be something that distinguishes thrash metal from speed metal or heavy metal of course. Its in our "guts" so to speak but it needs teasing out exactly what the difference is. In the branch of thrash or partition perhaps that I gave the distinction is clear: hardcore of some sort or scene as the influence. For German thrash, I can see clearly there is a difference, as Sodom and Kreator in their early era feels like black/death metal structurally so it isn't just sped up Motorhead. While a lot of Metallica sounds like thrash, there is an element of rock music to Metallica's sound. Your example with that Sodom song is a good one. In my view a band that considered itself thrash when doing the "odd one out" song for an album, would never write something like For whom the bell tolls, they'd do a Discharge cover instead or a east coast hc style short song. Perhaps its my finding rock music grating that biases me to leaning toward some of Metallica's work not being thrash. For German, we can see it by asking what is the difference between Rage or Angel Dust and Kreator/Destruction (here of course even Rage and Angel Dust are already absent of any rock feeling even though they are supposed to be the older so called "speed metal" style). In both my examples and much of German thrash I think for me, if I look back and see, I think its that whatever path they took the rock aspects have completely gone from them by that time.
But I do see what you mean in many places, e.g. the structural similarity of Sodom and Kreator with early Black. Including Bathory again! It isn't just sped up Motorhead, and the Sodom track is indeed a bit out of the ordinary, but they're still a big influence I think.
I don't know if I agree Metallica have a rock element. Hmm. Can you point to a track more specifically where you hear that? I can't think of any. Unless it's in the Black Album or later?
>> I suppose its my bias speaking but at the end of the day there has to be something that distinguishes thrash metal from speed metal or heavy metal of course. Its in our "guts" so to speak but it needs teasing out exactly what the difference is.
Well, yes, and then, maybe it's a bit of an affectation. It's only something you do once you've listened to a bit more metal than the ordinary person (which is not much: AC/DC, Metallica, maybe Slayer, end of). I of course had endless debates with my friends as a teenager and I may or may not have written angry letters to the editors of the only Greek language Metal magazine when I was growing up (and I think the only one still?) to protest the clandestine placing of a band in the absolutely wrong category in this or that article of theirs.
Maybe kids these days will get over that sort of thing. Maybe not. It's all good.
>> and for my "cheat" example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAD870Lx-o
Yeah without even listening to that I can tell it's cheating XD
I really don't think he copied Manowar though. People point to Hammerheart, but I think they forget Blood Fire Death, which is the true first Viking Metal album and sounds nothing like Manowar. Hammerheart also sounds nothing like Manowar to my ears although one reason for that could be that I haven't listening to a lot Manowar post-Hail to England. Maybe it sounds more like epic-Bathory after that?
The Viking theme of cousre is neither Quorthon's nor Manowar's invention.
One thing I just realized is that compared to early thrash metal, some speed metal bands had already gotten far more militant, stripped down and free of any remaining rock feelings. Think of Exciter, Rage, early Helloween or Agent Steel.
Again speaking to my bias of course but for me thrash starts getting truly exciting when it started growing toward death metal, its the most "fun" form of metal to me in a way nothing else gets, its in some ways the most spiritually "hardcore punk" like form of metal in the sense of instead of just including this or that hardcore guitar phrase or drum beat in a song, their approach of writing and playing was very pure, heart worn on sleeves and egging each other on fun. The complexity level was increasing rapidly but I feel due to this hardcore sensibility it doesn't just start sounding like prog rock as this hardcore like minimalist thinking keeps the melodies elegant and flowing, its probably one of more legato leaning genres of metal.
But yes, genres are not mathematical structures, trying to find a really hard scientific dividing line would keep leading to moving in circles forever. I have my preferences of course, death thrash and OSDM mainly.