First Stop - In Praise of Metal Archives

FIRST STOP - IN PRAISE OF METAL ARCHIVES

Hey y’all. First post here might be a case of the blindingly obvious for many, but there are some moments when you just have to stop and give thanks. Is there a more useful and comprehensive catalogue of Metal than that holy grail of information, Metal-Archives?

Considering the site has been running for only seven years, what the two Canadian founders have achieved is to be admired. It’s one of the top 500 most-visited websites in five countries. Not bad for a bunch of filthy Metallers, eh? Posting on the main forum here on Metal Ireland, it’s almost redundant asking what release came next in a band’s back catalogue, who is it that drummed on the debut album or what label they’re signed to now.

Without having to resort to Googling the band’s website or having to do any proper search at all, 99.9% of the time, Metal-Archives will be waiting there with the answer. It’s a clean and extremely easy to use database which is totally ad-free. It’s also much more comprehensive than competing sites such as France’s Spirit of Metal (and it looks better). And you can’t fault those never ending apologies on the home page about the huge, free site going down for a few hours.

The site is especially useful when you’ve heard of a band, have an inkling what they might be like, and have a spare minute to delve deeper. For example, a thread about the new release from Spain’s Teitanblood was posted up the board today.

I’d heard of these guys before, but within about five seconds I had their Metal Archives entry up, complete with their whole discography, logo, links to myspace, distros, band photo and line-up history. But what really makes Metal-Archives so useful is the pages for completely obscure bands. Ever wanted info on ancient Irish Metal bands like Dublin thrashers Killer Watt? It’s all there. Or how many copies of the Xasthur split was made, so you know that goon on Ebay is chancing his arm asking that much? Look no further.

Arguably, this wealth of collective information from the open userbase becomes a problem when it comes to the reviews of releases. You can’t argue about who played on a certain album, it’s there in the liner notes. But you can argue ’til the cows come home if it’s crap or not.

Despite a hefty amount of user direction and rules, Metal-Archives reviews are still very hit and miss, while well thought out and reasoned reviews standing next to completely polarized, badly written ones which serve to unfairly swing the percentage rating of an album one way or the other. However, when an band is well known enough to have attracted a fair number of reviews, an almost lazarus-like reflection of the generally accepted grading of their back catalogue emerges from the mass of opinions. Democracy in action.