I always thought that beatdown was just the hardcore equivalent to slam.

Has anyone heard of "argent metal"? From what I gather, it's a made up subgenre for Doom OST copycats. Not sure whether there are any relevant artists in this "subgenre" besides Mick Gordon himself.

Isn't DOOM's soundtrack just djent?

It has some djenty sections, sure, but a lot of it is just modernized industrial metal and electro-industrial. Kind of crazy that some people thought it was so revolutionary when it's not far from what Fear Factory and others were doing in the 90s. Mick Gordon does have some pretty cool presentations on how he went about creating it though.

Are 'slow' metal and doom metal different things? And, what's deferences between post-rock and doom metal?

So, is there anything more to "melodic groove metal" than djent-ing and -core breakdowns with groove tunings? It really doesn't sound metal at all.

Djent is metal and ""-core breakdowns"" sound much more metal than hardcore punk. So what doesn't sound metal?

lol

I think the fact that you ask it this way proves how nebulous a tag it is. As far as I can tell it's an attempt by the mods here to differentiate the second/third wave of melodic death metal bands from the original pioneers. Since M-A focuses almost exclusively on riffing style as the determinant of subgenre, they don't view these bands as really related to death metal anymore, so they swap "death" with "groove". Usually there's more of a focus on clean vocal choruses, guitar riffs are more rhythmic and percussive, production often more polished. Some of these bands have djent influences or breakdowns, but I don't think that's really inherent to the sound. Regardless, that's my interpretation based on lots of listening time to bands somewhere in this sphere, and reading various old threads where it's mentioned, but it's not usually discussed in much depth by anyone on the staff here, so I can't say for sure. What do you have in mind as representing this sound?

Well, my impression about what melogroove is came from looking it up on Youtube and checking the first few things that came up. Here is what I found upon searching for "melodic groove metal" on youtube:

Well, those kind of make it murkier since they seem to just be bedroom-recorded stock music with programmed drums. Particularly being instrumental it's hard to say what they're aiming at, but they could be template tracks for Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, or anything in that alt metal range that tends to take influence from Pantera, Tool, Helmet and such. Some here see it as closer to hard rock, and there can be a fine line between them, but the double bass, low tunings, palm muting, and heavy usage of the minor second and tritone give it more metal than rock flavor to me.

Doom metal is at this point a wide umbrella for various subgenres but at the end of the day most of these bands can trace back their sound to Candlemass and Black Sabbath. The more extreme forms of doom also can trace their lineage back to Celtic Frost and Saint Vitus and some other bands. Roughly speaking ofcourse, it is not exactly as "strict" as this irl.

Of course slow metal is not actually a subgenre of metal

Slow is not the same as doom in my opinion but a lot of slow parts in metal songs are doom metal influenced. Some people call every slow riff in metal doomish and I do not agree. This is usually a point of discussion when it comes to doom/death but there are a lot of problems here. First of all doom metal influenced most of death metal, for example Grave's song Into the Grave is pretty much a death metal version of Black Sabbath's eponymous song and nobody calls that song doom/death because it is not a slow song. However if they played the same chords etc slowly people would call it doom/death for sure. However there are cases of slow parts/riffs in death metal not being doomy but instead slow death metal, I think Incantation has quite a few examples of this.(Ibex Moon comes to mind here)

The differences between post rock and doom metal are pretty significant. First of all post-rock is not based on riff based guitar playing at all never mind metallic riff playing. Post-rock in general focuses more on sound textures and soundscapes and all sorts of other more atmospheric ways of playing the guitar. This is quite obvious with the classic post rock bands of the 90's.
However it is not weird that people confuse doom metal with post rock as after the y2k sludge metal bands and post rock bands have started to increasingly influence each other. Turns out you can use various elements from metal to for atmospheric effect in post rock and that you can use elements from post rock to make more atmospheric metal.

Ok, so if djent is not metal to you, could you please explain to which genre it belongs?
About new hardcore scene (the "core breakdowns" stuff you talk about) sounding more metal than hardcore punk, there's been many discussions about this and the majority seems to agree with that. Any opinion about that?
However I do think this "melodic groove metal" doesn't sound metal. Maybe you did not highlight the right elements.

21th century (since metalcore before then is pretty different, being a fusion of metal and nyhc) metalcore isn't really metal or hardcore. It's it own thing and a lot of metalcore doesn't even use metal riffs, (significantly) which naturally also excludes -core breakdowns, even if they may some metal influence.

Djent spawned from progressive metal, but it also doesn't use metal riffs. It's completely possible to be inspired by metal or have metal influences without playing metal yourself. As far as I'm concerned, metalcore and djent are completely new styles of music with metal influences.

Would you say metal belongs in the progressive, hard, or blues rock category because early metal bands took influence from those styles of music?

I agree with your point of view, but terms are too often confusing. Contemporary metalcore just should be named something else. There should be a distinct umbrella name for nu metal, metalcore, deathcore, djent or idiotic claims like argent metal or whatever people need to invent... as they have always been rejected by the majority of metalheads and seem indeed a branch influenced by metal but departing from it.

What I don't get is the idea that riffs that focus on more intricate rhythms based on a heavily downtuned root note are an invention of the hardcore scene. For example, Fear Factory and Dream Theater were doing this even before Meshuggah started coining the idea of "djent" or the melodic metalcore scene existed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai1Mf6zQSks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv1_Gz1aELg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwscRurgXbQ

I'm far from an expert on the punk/hardcore scene, so it's entirely possible I'm just not aware of it, but I've never heard anything similar there from earlier.

Even when Black Flag were using slower and heavier chugging riffs back in the early 80's, they admited this was inspired from Black Sabbath. Later on, the hardcore scene appropriated breakdowns and chugging downtuned riffs as something their own. But one thing is certain, they sound nothing like hardcore punk.
I think that hardcore punk has by nature very few possibilities of evolution compared to metal, so it had to hybridate with metal and other genres to survive.

Yeah, even something like having both harsh and clean vocals in the same song seems to always be labeled as a concept belonging to metalcore. As far as I know Celtic Frost, Paradise Lost, Fear Factory, Edge of Sanity, Dark Tranquillity and others were doing variations on that long before.

Breakdowns hardcore are also kind of funny, the oldest breakdowns I know of are basically thrash bands trying to sound more hardcore. Later on this got picked up by hardcore and metalcore bands and got turned into a different thing again.

Not sure early thrash metal bands who performed breakdowns wanted to sound more hardcore, and not sure early hardcore bands used to perform a lot of breakdowns.

I have a question regarding genre hierarchy. Is viking metal a subgenre of pagan metal, and is pagan metal a subgenre of folk metal? I heard they are both more black-metal oriented, so should they be considered subgenres of black metal instead? Also, should sludge and stoner metal be considered direct subgenres of doom metal, or just doom-influenced?

I don't believe in genre hierarchies except for very niche cases, like funeral doom being a sub-subgenre of doom metal. Take the relationship between black metal and thrash metal for example. Venom and Mercyful Fate came into being without thrash metal and in fact influenced thrash metal, so it could be argued that black metal came before thrash metal. Then again thrash metal also influenced the evolution of black metal, as did death metal which also came from thrash metal. It's a crosspollination with no clear hierarchy.

EDIT: On second thought, funeral doom is as much a sub-subgenre of death metal as it is of doom metal, since it is kind of an atmospheric variant of death/doom.

Stoner is still not a subgenre of doom, even putting this whole "genre hierarchy" argument aside. Listen to Kyuss or Orange Goblin and tell me where the doom metal is.

People get confused over this because stoner has a history of mixing with doom with bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep to the point that stoner/doom is more popular and well known than stoner by itself.

I've never been a thrash metal fan at all, what does it sound like today? Is it basically the same as it was back in the 80's and 90's, or did it get more extreme like other genres?

Maybe you should listen to some modern thrash bands and get the answer by yourself?

I... literally don't know any. But whatever.

There is the retro revival thrash scene which is often called "pizza thrash." One of the biggest/most popular groups to come out of that would be Municipal Waste. Warbringer and Havok are other modern thrash acts that are popular. "The Good" if you will.

However, Many groups took Exodus and their imagery too seriously and you get bands that sound like every bad Exodus song, but worse. Bands like Bounded By Blood and Lich King. These are "The Bad"

"The Ugly"

Back to my question on the genre hierarchy thing, is pagan metal just blackened folk metal, and is viking metal a type of pagan metal?

Norway has been producing a lot of killer thrash this past decade with bands such as Nekromantheon, Condor and Deathhammer... much better than p much any other thrash scene.

Rock Opera is a real genre?
There's only 1 artist in the MA (Ives Gullé, tagged as "Power Metal, Rock Opera")
I Always think Rock Opera more like a concept of the albums and the lyrics, than the sound itself
But if we take Pink Floyd's The Wall by example (that is considered Progressive Rock/Rock Opera), there's pretty much operatic influences in songs like The Trial or Bring the Boys Back Home
So, what about this as a real genre?

It's an interesting point of view and I'd answer yes to both questions.
Some might argue that viking metal emerged before the term "pagan metal" was coined and therefore should be a separate subgenre. But if you consider so-called "pagan metal" being blackened folk metal - which sounds right to me -, then viking metal should belong to it as it is folkish metal with (mostly) black metal influences.
In this perspective, viking metal would chronologically be the first occurrence of "pagan metal", which is not necessarily the most appropriate term in my opinion.

If there's blackened death metal, why is that there's no dying black metal?

Same concept, but the first label sounds more natural

Same concept but not the same thing. "Blackened death metal" suggests that this is death metal with black metal I fluences. So when it's black metal with death metal influences, there should be an equivalent like "dying" or maybe "agonizing" or simply "dead" black metal. Also there should be the same system for each subgenre which is mixed to one another.
Yeah right, that sounds stupid, almost like "blackened death metal" sounds to me... I'm an old-school guy and I prefer to use "black/death" or "death/black" just like we did 20 years ago. It sounded much better and much less confusing.

There was a thread, where it was agreed upon, that we would call it “deadly.”

Deathly black metal isn't terrible either. But for some reason none roll off the tongue quite as well as blackened.

Oh there was an agreement? Sorry, I wasn't there, I didn't sign it. Now I have some questions:
- What is the authority of those "we" people to take official (and utterly idiotic) decisions in the name of the worldwide metal community?
- Will any metalhead not using "deadly black metal" be punished with a fine for transgressing the agreement of the "we"?

If the Agreed ones agree, I'll make some suggestions suitable to their taste:
> We shouldn't say "doom/death" any more but "condemned death metal" (in the case death metal is the most prominent.
> On the same pattern, we shouldn't say "heavy/speed" but "weighed speed metal".
> In the case of groove metal with nu metal influences, "renewed groove metal" should be used.
> If a black metal band contains a few viking metal elements, then it should be called "viking-invaded black metal".

Please let me know if you agreed on those ones. I've got some others if you want!

Is "noise metal" a real genre?

Fantomas' first album is the closest thing to that idea.

I meant that a group of people, in a metal archives thread, thought it was cool, and came up with some examples. “Viking-invaded” sounds good though. Better than “pirate metal.”