Didn't expect to see something I made on HN while my wife is trying to find something to watch on TV.
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.
This is an awesome visualization. I have always enjoyed 'structural taxonomies' as a way of visualizing data relationships. I appreciate you keeping it alive.
This was hugely influential on a younger me! I remember tracing forward and backwards from the bands I liked, finding and checking out new bands at every stop. Thank you!
Your map was very formative for me when I was exploring metal, thanks a lot !
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* ...)
Do you disagree with hardcore punk influence as being one of the key disambiguation between thrash from speed metal? Personally at least that's what I feel. I do understand this means for example a lot of Metallica won't count as thrash but I like to say if you slow down Metallica it sounds more like Black Sabbath while slowed down Slayer or Anthrax sounds quite different, so I feel there may be a hard physical evidence for my theory. I found it a bit odd you didn't have this aspect written in the statements about differences between speed metal and thrash metal.
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.
Wow! I didn't expect to see mapofmetal on HN, and I *definitely* didn't expect to see the author's response.
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.
Incredible work and yes, it really captures a Flash vibe.
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.
This is absolutely incredible. I've gotten much more into metal this year; unfortunately this only further enables that!
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. :)
Ah man, thanks so much for making this. Metal is not my main favourite genre, but this site definitely helped grew my understanding and admiration for it a lot. I come back to this site every now and then for years since the flash version. So cool that you ported it! Was it a big task?
I am very sad to see NSBM and bands with problematic members being promoted here. We have so many problems with right-wing structures and people (mostly male band members) who think they can do whatever they want in this world. Giving them a platform and advertising them will show that metal communities are more exclusive than they are promoting. This is especially concerning given that the metal community seems to be very tolerant, but I think 'ignorant' is a more accurate description of accepting murderers, racist and molester. Yes, a significant proportion of the metal history is problematic persons and bands, but I cannot find any warnings, FAQs or contextualisations. It's a shame. As a result, the metal community will remain old, white and male.
Great map. There might be some categories missing, couldn't find any Katatonia, Agalloch, Alcest nor Tiamat. Alcest and some Deftones are considered blackgaze and Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room fall more into grey metal.
I can't thank you enough for mentioning Agalloch! I used to listen to them so much in university but somehow completely forgot about them until I read this comment!
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!
Wolves in the Throne Room are RABM not grey. Their are clearly political and clearly anti NSBM and anarchists. And very clear that the musical genre is black metal.
Looks great! However I'm not sure how it is supposed to work. Like, should it play doom when I click doom? For me it started with Black Sabbath, and it doesn't change
i also made something like this. it cover 17M entities across tracks albums artists and labels. posted on show hn a few times but it went unnoticed (hate u (joking))
I'd love of this showed me the spiritual successors of a band / sub-genre even if they're not mainstream or well known. For example, I really love Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and a number of other "classic" Heavy Metal bands with a slow, hard but not sludgy brooding sound and amazing vocals. But it's hard finding modern acts with a similar sound. What tends to happen when I search for modern metal is I end up finding stuff that is more a descendant of speed metal, or thrash, or black metal... and none of that really strikes the right chord for me.
There used to be a thing like 20-ish years ago called Musicovery that could sort of do this if you clicked around.
Very curious the conspicuously absent genre in your list, especially given how much of modern doom is death metal. I can't help much with traditional doom however as I don't listen to it much, I just found it a bit funny you never encountered modern death metal during your searches for slow metal.
90 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 86.8 ms ] threadBtw, the map interface is very well implemented, what is it based on?
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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!
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!
It might be fun to have a sort of gazetteer for the map so we can find bands.
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/ward-shelley-history-of-scienc...
https://toposonico.com/#lon=14.4313&lat=-1.0200&z=9.10&entit...
There used to be a thing like 20-ish years ago called Musicovery that could sort of do this if you clicked around.
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.
Bands that you are saying. Maybe Hangman's Chair, Pallbearer, Faetooth, Rezn, Conan, and Monolord.