I don't know about lacks, but it's always funny seeing a bunch of fags try and romanticize the 90s black metal scene and still pander to the quasi elitism that Euronymous liked to prance around with

I'd say it lacks imagination, but plenty of bands in the underground really help with that.

You could say that it lacks a real strive for innovation outside of the underground, as most of the fanbase is so hell bent on being anti unorthodox its saddening that when actual bands come up and try to do something new it's met with the same shitty backlash

Biggest thing for me metal lacks is songwriting. Obviously you can argue that bad songwriting is universal to all bad music, but I find songwriting tends to take a backseat to things like tone or just riff salads or being extreme or whatever, even with widely praised projects. Too many metal bands are content to sort of just meander from riff to riff and back again until the song ends, without any kind of hook, buildup and release or any other reason to remember the song. Maybe I'm just getting bored, but it just seems like the albums I end up liking the most aren't necessarily ones that are novel and are filled with riffs I've never heard before, but it's more about how it's all put together..... .

I'm treading into dangerous waters, but I'm going to say metal is lacking perspectives that aren't male - both in terms of musicians, and in terms of "masculine" themes and attitude. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely female-oriented and female-led bands, but they're a small minority and often relegated to a subset of genres.

Biggest thing for me metal lacks is songwriting. Obviously you can argue that bad songwriting is universal to all bad music, but I find songwriting tends to take a backseat to things like tone or just riff salads or being extreme or whatever, even with widely praised projects. Too many metal bands are content to sort of just meander from riff to riff and back again until the song ends, without any kind of hook, buildup and release or any other reason to remember the song. Maybe I'm just getting bored, but it just seems like the albums I end up liking the most aren't necessarily ones that are novel and are filled with riffs I've never heard before, but it's more about how it's all put together. Every subgenre kind of has it's way of doing this, even the noisy and less structured stuff does interesting things with textures, walls of sound, dynamics, etc... The new Abyssal is a great example. It's not catchy in the traditional sense, but it's put together in a very satisfying way that keeps you listening.

The other thing would be decent lyrics and the delivery. I'm not saying that metal needs to be like woke or conscious or even have a message at all, but I dunno... I just can't relate to a lot of the escapist stuff anymore. I still like a lot of the classic themes, but far too often its just meaningless, might as well have been algorithmically generated. The other part of this is vocal deliver.y/arrangements. Especially with harsh vocals, way too many bands have put seemingly zero thought or effort in the vocal arrangements, leading to song after song with the same vocal delivery/cadence. I think were a lot of the most popular extreme metal bands succeeded was having catchy vocal rhythms, something like Decade ov Therion by Behemoth is a good example (lots of hardcore bands are good at this too). Also, another pet peeve of mine with extreme metal is the having too many/too little syllables in the verse lines. It doesn't feel like a cohesive song with any identity when the vocalist is just doing whatever during the verses.

Diversity of sound/production on records.

I know I'm catastrophizing when I say there is NONE of the following, but how often do you hear a power metal record with retro thrash production? What about a tech death record that sounds like black metal? I know these exist in some forms, but some more crossover would be kind of neat to hear to keep things fresh. That Dream Troll record that came out earlier this year sounds just SLIGHTLY different than anything around its genre, and it's refreshing to hear. The Idle Hands record sounds like a weird blend of some different production styles, and I dig that A LOT.

hmmm, back in the 80's nobody batted an eye when they heard someone use the derogatory "fag" slur but such is the sign of the times- and out of respect, I won't use it anymore either. So what lacks in metal? I can't say what lacks in ALL metal as there are still plenty of great bands out there but...its harder to wade through all the mediocrity and outright crap, to discover them. So I'll answer by saying what I hear a lot of bands lacking these days, and that is, great memorable songwriting and riffs. I hear a lot of really clinical sounding bands that "Check all the boxes" so to speak- heavy, aggressive, intricate- etc. But it sounds so soulless, so clinical, generic, and so on. The production is perfectly clean but yet ironically lacks the "grit" that would otherwise make a band sound aggressive. The riffs are either paint by numbers metal riffs, or too full of chugging open e-chords, or else, there might be a good riff or two but the overall song doesn't flow.

This post is lacking the common sense to not use homophobic slurs, though.

Metal lacks real life. I always realized that Metal can only be a part of my musical meal because it's most of the time over the top in every aspect. Life, especially when you're getting older, has just far more facets that need different sounds. I'm in a gritty, urban noir-mood? Please get away with Hell, Nifelheim or Middle-Earth. I'm in love? Maybe I'll find something more subtle than Whitesnake... or Porngrind ( just joking). We need some singalongs for drinking? Give me my Cock SParrer! Different stuff for different times. But I always come back.

I approach this by asking what the constants of metal are - then, whatever metal lacks would be the contraries of these. And the only constants I can think of are the loudness and the electric guitars (or approximations to these, as in the occasional bassist-led band). I wanted to add percussion, but I think there's some drone metal that does without it...like long stretches of Sunn O)), maybe? I can't quite remember.