I love coming up with these titles that make it seem like I have something important to say. Instead this is just a straight up rant.

Anyway so I recently joined Metal-Archives (an excellent website for metal fans), and I have to say that the community made me delete every album in my collection, wanted list, and the review I had half finished. Why? Because everyone on the site who isn't a raging elitist is looked down upon. Now I'm pretty elitist myself sometimes, but seriously these people take it to the next level by completely ostracizing members based on their subgenre preferences. Oftentimes these are the same people who write reviews on every "mainstream" metal band (which is pretty much every metal band you've ever heard of) and give them a 5-10% and say that the album was absolutely garbage and isn't worth listening to (meanwhile giving bands like for example Lidskjalv, a fairly obscure BM project that had a demo in 1995 a review of 90% saying "best album ever, true metal"). If they wanted to impress me, they'd have listened to far more bands and have more developed and varied tastes, allowing them to distinguish what is good from each subgenre rather than distinguishing their preference for a single subgenre and only that subgenre. However, that's not the case. Of course I'm exaggerating a bit here, but one visit to their forums can easily show you the argumentative and elitist nature of some of the members. Topics derail quickly and oftentimes lead to random flamewars with little to no substance, or if there is any it's not related to the topic.

Metal is a diverse genre. As long as there is human emotion and instruments to play on, there will be metal or at least something like it. It's not like the genre is going to just die out. If there was, for some reason, a way that it would (not counting the destruction of the planet or something like that ), it'd be due to the rabid and elitist fanbase completely seperating themselves and their music from the genre (luckily metal is too big for this to actually happen).

I tend to listen to what I think sounds good. Whether or not it's "mainstream" (such an oxymoron for metal) matters very little to me. Sometimes due to song structure and musicianship I'll prefer a less "mainstream" act over a mainstream one, but for the most part it doesn't phase me to listen to a supposedly mainstream band like Behemoth or Opeth, both of which are excellent and incredibly talented groups.

Well, I'm still going to stay around the Metal-Archives forums, and use the site to find new bands and information. Really if there's anything I can deal without though, it's the idiocy of the "elite," the people who aren't so elite as they are close-minded. This goes for those who look back on the early albums, the "golden" days, and claim that those were the best albums and always will be. Sure, they might be great, but most bands (at least any band that improves, and if they don't then why are you still listening to them? Reminds me of Metallica fans who complain about the new albums despite their mediocrity, yet still buy the next one knowing what to expect) have surpassed their earlier work with a newer album that is better in at least a few aspects. If not them, then a band in the same genre has probably surpassed their earlier work in several areas, and if you don't think so, you probably haven't looked hard enough or listened long enough.

I guess I'll just have to ignore these two groups of people for the most part, although they always tend to ram their opinions down the throats of others. It's one thing to disagree and state your viewpoint, but it's another to say "NO YOU MUST THINK THIS WAY," which is remarkably similar to the religious fanatics that they condemn.

I think that Sothis, a symphonic/melodic black metal band from California had a great and very similar statement on this very point. Don't care for them that much though.