Greetings, all! It's almost that time of the year again - time for our classic reviews challenge!

This challenge is a time-honored tradition among our reviewers here. Every spring and autumn, reviewers are encouraged to spend a week writing and submitting as many quality reviews as possible. The challenge is focused on virgin albums: those with no reviews so far.

Every day, the reviews submitted and accepted are tallied, so that participants can see how they compare with one another and whether or not, altogether, we've been able to surpass previous challenges' totals. There's no prizes or rewards except knowing that you've given a review to an album that didn't previously have one. There's also bragging rights for the most reviews, if that matters to you. Please read this thread for the rules and to discuss the challenge!

The challenge is named in memory of our friend Diamhea, a long-time contributor to the challenge and staff member here at Metal Archives, who sadly passed away on May 21st, 2018. He was the first person to have ever written 100 reviews for a single challenge!

The challenge will start a little over three weeks from now at 12:00AM EST on Monday November 28th and will run until 11:59PM EST on Sunday December 4th.

Everyone is welcome to participate - all you have to do is submit reviews as usual during that week.

Looking forward to your participation! \m/

-Derigin

It's here!

Yes, we are finally doing site merch, largely to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Metal Archives (sorry, bit late in the year I know, but it took time to get all of this set up...). We've commissioned artworks and designs by Misanthropic Art and Annick Giroux and they look pretty darn awesome if I may say so myself.

The store focuses largely on shirts, but we also have wall art/prints, flags, buttons, stickers and other cool stuff, and most items are fairly customizable. You can choose among the proposed items on the store homepage, or browse through the Collections or the menus to pick what you want. Make sure you select the right size/colours/options (back print or not, fabric, etc).

-Morrigan

20 years!



That's how long this site has been around. Do you feel old yet? Or are you among those of our users who were not even born then?

In early July of 2002, HellBlazer and I put this site online on the public Internet, but almost no one knew about it yet. With the help of a few friends (and some of their own friends), we went about to test the platform and started adding data, with the first band page being Amorphis, added on July 7th. Why Amorphis, we are often asked? I have no idea. I was probably listening to Elegy at the time or something. Or I looked around and saw an Amorphis CD lying around. Or maybe not, I honestly can't remember!

Then, on July 14th we bought the metal-archives.com domain name. Yes that's right, in the earliest, pre-launch days, the site ran on a... Tripod.co.uk URL, seeing as it was one of the rare web hosts that offered free PHP/MySQL hosting at the time. And a few days later - band addition records suggests this would be July 17th 2002 - one of our staff members decided to plug the site on a (sadly now defunct) public metal forum, and thus opened the floodgates. The contributions came pouring in quickly, the early “big push” needed towards building what quickly became the definitive heavy metal database on the Internet.

Never would I have imagined, two decades ago, that one day we would be hosting a staggering ~160k bands, or that there were even that many metal bands in existence. HellBlazer and I are constantly awed and humbled by the wealth of knowledge and information our community has gathered over the years, not to mention the wonderful attention to detail and work ethic of our tireless contributors and staff members. We could not have done it without you all, and we sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to this site, both in big and small ways.

Now, the 20 year anniversary of Metal Archiving ought to be celebrated and commemorated in some ways, and we do have some plans for that, which we will disclose shortly. Stay tuned…

For our users old and new, feel free to share your memories, anecdotes, thoughts, or other comments here or on social media.

Here’s to, I hope, several more decades!

-Morrigan

You've probably noticed that on every band page we list the band's status. There are six options: active, on hold, split-up, unknown, changed name, and disputed. Typically, it's our policy that a band is listed as "active" unless proven otherwise (i.e. there's an official statement from the band saying that they're taking a break (thus, on hold), have changed their name (self-explanatory), or have decided to call it quits (and therefore split-up)). The "unknown" status is a placeholder, intended only to be used when there hasn't been activity from a band - even in the form of gigs and communication with fans - for a long time. The "disputed" status is for special cases involving band members claiming ownership of a band and deciding to take it in different directions - think Batushka or English Dogs.

When a band member dies, so long as there are other band members, and it's not just a solo project, do not change the band's status from "active". Wait until the band has made a statement about their plans before doing so. Just because a band member has died - even the frontman of the band - it does not necessarily mean the band is immediately over. The remaining band members may choose to keep playing, or take a break, or quit, but give them time to grieve and figure that out first. Sometimes a statement may never be given, but context is important, and we'll have a better sense of the band's status at a later point in time.

This is also true for other circumstances that might impact the lives of band members. Just because a band member may be charged with a crime and/or is incarcerated does not necessarily mean the band is automatically "on hold" or "split-up". The same is true if everyone but one person leaves a band; the band could remain active, you don't know unless the band says otherwise.

In any case, tl;dr: ideally, wait until the band makes a statement on its status before changing its status on MA.

Thank you. \m/

-Derigin

You know, every year I think nobody will be fooled by the joke, and yet... Some of you always provide some amusement. No, we're not really getting rid of genres, that would be really silly. Happy April Fools.

-HellBlazer

If you haven't been living under a rock for the past week, you probably already heard about the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.

In these dark times, please consider donating to help with the situation over there. Every little bit can help!

• The UN's Ukraine Humanitarian Fund
• CARE's Ukraine Crisis Fund
• A whole slew of other charities, organized by area of interest

-HellBlazer

Based on what we keep seeing in the band queue, I'd like to remind our contributors that approving band submissions solely based on one digital (one-track) single release is still the exception rather than the norm. I know that a previous news post on the matter states that one single can be acceptable in certain contexts (ex. with such unusual length that one might as well call it an EP; in addition to other criteria such as cover art and downloadability being met), however as a rule of thumb and for the overwhelming majority of cases there should be at least two before we'll even begin to review the submission for any other requirements. This particularly holds true if the band is playing a borderline genre, since multiple singles can offer a better picture than one, even if it is comparably lengthy, although moderators may opt to reject a submission even so if the available music so far remains ambiguous.

Also, there is no 5-minute rule.

-Azmodes

The end of the year is nearly upon us, which means it's time for the Album of the Year poll for 2021!

How does it work? Select your top ten metal albums of the year; they have to be metal, they have to be new, original material, they have to be on MA, and they have to have been released in 2021. Put your list in order, with #1 being the album you liked the most. Once you're certain you have your list, send it to BastardHead by private message (pm) on the forum. You have until 12:00AM EST on January 1st, 2022 to submit your list to him.

You get one ballot, and your account on MA must've been registered before November 30th, 2021 in order to participate. Please read the first post here for more details on the way the poll works.

The results of the poll will (ideally) be announced on January 1st, 2022 or shortly thereafter. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the poll in the thread located here.

EDIT: Results can be found here.

Have fun, and look forward to the results. \m/

-Derigin

Wow, that little joke blew up, huh? Cool to see so many people enjoying the feline band pictures. So much so that our traffic more than doubled, and the server had a hard time keeping up. Sorry about the slowness!

Thanks to Black Metal Cats Twitter, sadanduseless.com, various cat pic subreddits, and many, many other random sources from Google Image Search for the material.

Happy April Fools to all, and by general demand, if you want to keep browsing MA with cats instead of humans... Now you can!

-HellBlazer

Here's a few items regarding some largely unrelated things we've noticed during the last year or so of working on the site and which either (to my knowledge) aren't explicitly addressed in the rules or may need an explicit refresher here. Nothing really major, but I feel they warrant some clarification regardless.

• As with logos, band picture collages should generally be avoided. Only use the most recent available photo. There are some exceptions, particularly for some of the bigger bands that have particularly lengthy careers under their belt, but these are rare and it's best to leave adding them up to moderator discretion.
  
• Please do not add digital releases that are being offered for clearly ridiculous prices. This is a common issue with Bandcamp in particular, with a lot of bands setting an album's price to (usually) 666 USD/€/etc. This appears to be a common way of encouraging people to buy the physical release instead, while still making something available for listening. Obviously, essentially nobody is going to pay these amounts and as such we do not consider such releases to be valid in any way, neither for submitting a band nor for addition as an album entry to an already listed page.
  
• Please, please, PLEASE do not use the "Add another version" function for "correcting" errors. Use the report function instead if you cannot edit the existing version yourself. We get way too many duplicates that way.
  
• If a label puts out a re-release of a band's work after they've split up, please do not put said label under the "Last known label" field. The same applies to posthumous releases of recorded, but hitherto unreleased material. The label field should only ever reflect whatever the band was signed to while still being active. Use "Unsigned/independent?" if they weren't signed to any label when they disbanded.
  
• The chronologically first release is always the parent version of a discography entry, barring perhaps a very few freak cases generally up to the staff to rule on. For instance, it doesn't matter if a band considers a later CD release to be the "official" release if a digital version has been available from their Bandcamp before that. If it came first, it is first.
  
• There seem to be some misunderstandings about how to properly use the "Formed in" and "Years active" fields. To clarify, "Formed in" should always reflect the year a band entry's name (or minor variations thereof that don't warrant their own entry) was first active under. It does not refer to when they may have formed under an earlier name (regardless of whether that incarnation is listed or not). We also do not differentiate between things such as when the idea for a band was first conceived and when they actually played their first show/rehearsal/etc. "Formed in" and the first year under the entry name under "Years active" should be identical in that regard. Also please do not add guesswork based on when a band's first release came out, only use explicit information.
  
• There is no need to add the current year to band or lineup ranges to represent "-present". Leave it blank and this will get filled in automatically (and otherwise the information inevitably becomes outdated).
  
• No US state postal abbreviations for locations, please, always spell them out. Not everyone knows these by heart. An exception to this is the label address field.
  
• The photo field is, surprisingly, only intended for actual band photos. Not album covers, not additional logos, not any other kind of band-related photo that does not show any band members. It's alright to leave it blank if there are no usable photos.
  
• Instrumental album versions should be added as child entries to the main releases, and not as separate entries or even separate listings. An "Instrumental" tag can be added to their version descriptions. Note that being an instrumental version doesn't automatically mean it can only be a version entry. It largely depends on the difference between the recordings. If we are just talking about the same source material being used, simply without the vocal track(s) (and maybe missing or adding a few other things), then it's a version. If something was completely or mostly re-recorded, a separate entry is required.
  
• There is no need to add redundant information to the version description. If a release is a CD, don't add "CD" to the VD field. If it's digital, don't add "download" or similar. These can all be covered with the format field.
  
• For external links, Spotify and Deezer should go in the "Official" section, while Amazon and iTunes should go in the "Official merchandise" section. Furthermore, please add Bandcamp links in the form of bandname.bandcamp.com as opposed to bandname.bandcamp.com/album/albumname.

-Azmodes