Alright, I have a thing for the pre-Web 2.0 aesthetic. The sites were much more a labor of love than they are now, for the most part, or at least it seems that way. I'm not a Luddite and I don't mind Web 2.0, it definitely has its advantages. However, as a music fanatic going through my teens in the late 90s and the early 2000s, I would spend hours reading these old school sites looking for music reviews, opinions, interviews etc. Looking back, they seem really special. Even when the design was garish, there was a sense of excitement. I guess it was a time when even web designers were still figuring things out and there were fewer rules. The idea of what makes for a good design seems to have been much more fluid. There were some visual disasters, but a lot of creative ones too.

Of course, many of them are no longer maintained and are disappearing. Some end up being available through the Wayback Machine for a while, but even that's no guarantee. Example: Satan Stole My Teddybear, definitely one of my favorites. At some point, Chedsey obviously lost interest. The site slogged on for years with an update once in a blue moon. Then the domain was sold, it seems. While the old site was still available on Wayback Machine, I went through the trouble of saving each page to my hard drive whenever I had some spare time. Yeah, I loved it that much. This was two years ago. Now I can't even seem to access it through the Wayback Machine. Good thing I got the entire site saved!

I want to celebrate this era, this kind of aesthetic, but I also want to maybe try to save some of these from being forgotten. To that end, I'm going to list the ones I've bookmarked and I also want to see yours. As the title says, music sites are preferred, but all other topics are welcome too. If all you can find is a functioning Wayback Machine version, that's cool too. Give us a short description as well, please.

But first, here's an article by Kate Wagner (the author of the hilarious McMansion Hell website) that talks about what the early web meant for certain generations and what was lost with the switch to Web 2.0: "404 Page Not Found".

Alright then, my list:

General metal:
Classic Thrash - oodles of old school charm and I love his unpretentious reviews and his narrow focus;
No Life Til Metal - pretty well know, I'd say; cool pictures of personally collected physical products and the Christian angle is at least amusing;
Doom-metal.com - another well known old favorite, a bit modernized these days, but still definitely of the old web variety;
Lost Souls Domain - used to spend a lot of time here; from this perspective, the edgelord attitude is off-putting, but there's some definite hilarity in the user reviews; still, an amazing snapshot of the darker 90s metal trends.

Unofficial band sites:
Soundgarden - always one of my favorites, with tons of great articles, interviews and images of various editions of each album, single, promo etc; elegant design too, not exactly a common trait back in the day;
The Iron Maiden Commentary - always liked the layout, though the host's tastes are way too conservative; on the plus side, every song, including every damn B-side reviewed; some real dedication here;

Other genres:
Punk77 - another one of those where the narrow focus is an advantage; when I read it now, I see how much I disagree with the guy, but there's no denying I learned so much from this site;
Ground and Sky - focus on prog, with some metal here and there; unfortunately, only available on Wayback Machine at this point; cool design, very readable, and again, much to be learned about the genre;
Sea of Tranquility - prog, metal and classic rock, quite a bit modernized and the focus has shifted to the YouTube channel, but the main site still has that Web 1.0 charm;

Review sites:
Trouser Press - the web version of the well known alt rock magazine; love the review format here, where a band's discography, along with various offshoots, side projects and solo albums, is presented as a kind of a narrative; an interesting thing about this one is that, depending on the reviewer, it can be pretty metal-unfriendly, but when you stumble upon a reviewer that likes and understands metal, you are likely to get the kind of fresh perspective that you won't get on specialized metal sites;
Mark Prindle - a legend; punk, noise, alt, grunge, HARDCORE (man, does he like him some hardcore) and, thanks to his admitted OCD tendencies, he reviews whole discographies; not unfriendly to metal, but he's coming to it from the hardcore perspective, so Possessed fare better than Iron Maiden, for example;
Only Solitaire - Georgiy Starostin was another one of those who were pretty early into the web music reviews game; there are now several versions of this site, there's also a blog, but what we're interested in here is the old site; focus on classic rock; the man's world revolves around the Beatles, which I'm fine with; not too metal friendly, but, bizarrely, he adores Accept and nails them perfectly; this site is a great way to learn about the development of rock music up till around the early 80s or so; handy overview by periods and categories; his original, but overly detailed rating system has been mocked, but I like it;
Wilson & Alroy - kind of all over the place and not at all metal-friendly, but included for the sake of completion;
Robert Christgau - another noted "enemy of metal", though he gets the appeal of Kiss perfectly (I mean, of all the goddamn bands...); still, TONS of content and, like him or not, he was one of the handful of people who made it acceptable to seriously review popular music; I disagree with him 90% of the time and he's damn annoying, but the site is still a massive depository of historical information and knowledge;
Tom Hull - mostly political writing, but he has gone in and out of the music reviewing game, so there's some interesting content here; the reason I included him is that this is the guy who designed Christgau's site and his own site features a similar design, exactly the kind of design I like about Web 1.0.

Let's see yours.

How about this site that lets you download metal songs in midi? As a midi enthusiasts, that is cool!

http://metal-midi.grahamdowney.com/

Hahaha, this is awesome. Shades of the original Doom and all that stuff.

Some more I could think of:

Chronicles of Chaos - a pretty good death/black/gothic metal review site that kept it old school until they decided to stop updating it.

Band pages:
Deep Purple (The Highway Star) - can't believe I forgot this one, it's a textbook example of what I want this thread to be about;
Joy Division - funny colors, considering the band, but such are the joys of Web 1.0
The Sisters of Mercy - they kept their official website pretty simple; highly entertaining content - Andrew has a reputation for being difficult, but no one can accuse him of not having a sense of humor;
TSoM Ultimate Resource Guide - more Sisters; this site tracks down the numerous cultural/literary references in the Sisters' lyrics and has lots of other content.

I also just realized that Bathory's former website was stuck in the early 2000s!

http://www.bathory.nu/x1.htm

While it was last updated in 2003-04, it still has that cheesy 90s feel in it.

Awesome. The background, the fonts, the layout... this website had to be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming.

I remembered the official Anvil page, it's not as simple as the Bathory one, but this one was last updated 3 days ago, so it makes it more weird anyway:

http://my.tbaytel.net/tgallo/anvil/

I want my eyes back. Holy goddamn hell. But so appropriate, of course.

Ha, I used to post at the punk77 forum... same goes for the punkrockers.com forum, which is now gone (the URL just redirects to a fucking Facebook page now - sad).

Also, as many have pointed out over the years, the Space Jam site hasn't changed since it was put up. Still stuck in the mid 90s.
https://www.spacejam.com/

The website for the Heaven's Gate cult is still up and running a whole 24 years after the cult committed mass suicide. It's maintained by cult members that did not participate in the suicide.

https://www.heavensgate.com/

In terms of movie sites, the InGen site created as viral marketing for the second Jurassic Park movie is still up.

http://www.lost-world.com/Lost_World02/inGENe.html

This website is not around anymore, but up until December 2016, the WCW Thunder website was still up, unchanged from the day that WCW announced they were entering a period of "indefinite hiatus" in March 2001. On the Wayback Machine, it is perfectly preserved, with no broken images or bad links in there at all.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161219143 ... /index.htm

That is BRILLIANT. Plus, the long piece on Dr Avalanche is a great read, proper bit of tech archaeology t here

always loved this wacko site:

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/

Well that was quite a fever dream... I especially couldn't handle the 9/11 page.

And don't even get me started on this: http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20 ... effect.htm

Don't forget Time Cube, a website so poorly formatted that it's essentially unreadable.

https://timecube.2enp.com/

As for another music site, here be Savage Grace's website, complete with pyramid schemes and transphobia right on the front page.

http://www.savagegracemetal.com/

Glad you liked it. I wish more bands had official websites of this kind.



Holy shit, what's wrong with this band? I remember them being terrible anyway. When you're beating Anvil for the sheer cringe factor, you know it's time to see a professional.


Keep 'em comin', guys. Some great finds. I definitely remember that Jesus page.

I'm preparing a list of old Pink Floyd sites, there were some truly great ones.

To add one - the Whitesnake site is gloriously old fashioned - there's a youtube link on the front page, but to use it you'd have to copy & paste it

https://whitesnake.com/news/

Some of the earliest website that I used to frequent:

Music:

Do not remember the URL for the first two. I am sure someone here will know

Metal Maniacs message board - As far as I know it is long gone. An early place on the net to go talk about heavier music. Became a cesspool when I stopped going there. Nonexistent now as far as I know.
Metal Edge message board - Also gone as far as I know. A place to go and discuss hair metal. Also became a cesspool.

http://www.fmp666.com/ - Full Moon Productions. Used to be a great webstite, filled with lots of information and early black metal pictures. It also had a fairly active message board. Before the label folded, the message board started going down the shitter like the last taco night at my house. Its still all up, but the website is not actively updated and the message more dead than Dead.
https://metalsludge.tv/ - Metal Sludge. They were the site to go to for metal news before Blabbermouth. They also had a great message board. Its still all up and active as far as I can tell. I stopped going there at least 15 years ago.

Non music:

[url]boredatwork.com[/url] - Bored at Work. As far as I know still up. Not sure if it is still updated. Used to be random URL's to check out, of interesting and strange sites. Discovered so many strange fucking sites. Wish I could remember half of them.
Ghostcams.com - As far as I can tell this site is long gone. Live feeds of webcams, to supposed haunted sites. They had a library, the engine room on a ship, a castle and some other places. Used to have it open all night (when I did all nighters) listening to music, and surfing the web/or playing computer games. Had two siting's. One in the engine room and the other in the library. I screen shot them, but have long since long the screen shots. Just a blur of something, moving around as the camera refreshed. Probably a blob of dust, maybe not. Still a fun site to check out.

This is a strange case. There are these sites that are caught between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. The graphics are very outdated, but the format is basically that of a blog. I'd say this one leans more toward Web 2.0, despite the initial appearance. Also, check the copyright date.

Metal Sludge, which wizard_of_bore posted above, now features a similar mix of pre- and post-Web 2.0 features, but it started out as a Web 1.0 site and then got gradually modernized over time. The Whitesnake one seems to always have been a blog with outdated graphics.

I remember the original Metal Sludge site, which is why I included it. My opinion is when he took the site down to redo it, it was a big mistake. It was offline for a long time. I believe he was doing the work himself, which was what caused the delay. He really should of gone another route, such as hiring someone else to help in a quick update to a more modern format. I believe he lost a huge part of his audience, which included myself. I kept going back and it still was down. I believe this was a mistake, especially since in more recent times I saw he was trying to sell it. Not 100 percent sure, but I believe he lost his momentum when he took it down for so long.

Yeah, me too. You're making some very good points. I like that the site is listed here and it definitely belongs, but it has lost a lot of its charm for the reasons you mentioned.

I used to go on Nathan's Toasty Tech site a lot back in the days, particularly the "IE is EVIL!" section.

http://toastytech.com/evil/

IE haters like me practically had a field day on that section.

The Million Dollar Webpage is still up. For the unaware, the site was the effort of a UK college student to pay for his college tuition, so he set up a site with a 1000 x 1000 grid, selling each pixel for $1. He ended up leaving school one term in because of how much money this site raised. It raised $1,037,100 in five months.

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

Just be aware that most of the links on here are dead as fuck.

One of the links off that site is still up, though, and boy is it another fever dream

https://www.lingscars.com/

http://v1.metal-archives.com/

VileRancour, there's a name a haven't seen in a while.

Wow I had completely forgotten the site used to look like that

I still have Classic Thrash bookmarked and every couple of months or so I check it for an update that's probably never coming lol.

I'm actually glad that he's not updating it anymore. Do I remember it correctly that, up to a certain point, he didn't feature any neothrash bands at all? Then when he decided to include those bands too, the pages got a bit clogged up in my opinion. There's good modern thrash, but there was a purity and the narrowness of focus about the old version of the site that made it that much more special.

Just checked this out now and wow, it's everything I never knew I needed in my life. Okay, maybe not but it's still an interesting little corner of the net I'm excited to pick through over the next few days.

As promised, here's some Floyd:

The Pink Floyd Archives Home Page - the granddaddy of them all; site launched in 1996 as an online version of an archive that dates back to the 1970s! Incredibly detailed; especially interesting is the discographies page - want to know all about the singles that came out in, say, Angola? - this site has the info; I also remember writing a bunch of emails to Vernon Fitch, the man behind the archive, asking the most inane questions about details I could have easily found on the website anyway, and he still answered each one patiently; of course, a page this detailed also has a comprehensive list of links to other Floyd sites:
The Pink Floyd Archives Home Page - Links - which probably makes the following obsolete, but here are some others I selected:

The Pink Floyd Fan Club - another site with a detailed discography and lots of articles and interviews;
The Pink Floyd Hyperbase - the usual; cool design;
The Pink Floyd Fandom - incorporated the blog format at some point and is still updated, but the menu and the pages it leads to are of the classic Web 1.0 variety; reviews, pictures, more links;
Brain Damage - another famous one; like the previous one, there are some Web 2.0 features and it is regularly updated, but by and large, this is a cool old-school site and very comprehensive too;
Pink Floyd Fans - mostly interesting for the reviews, though check out the merch section too ("Stuff") for some amusing items.

A couple of history related things from Uni days, if they're allowed -

Victorian Web http://www.victorianweb.org/index.html - ancient pre-Wikipedia website dedicated to Victorian-era history, in just about every type you could come up with. The site is still maintained, and they don't seem to have bothered with anything internet tech-wise after about 2001.

Victorian Forts & Artillery https://www.victorianforts.co.uk/ - This is probably a bit 1.5, as they have some modern drop-down menus scattered about, but otherwise it's always looked the same - someone went for modern with some shiny background textures ages ago, and never bothered updating. There seemed to be a lot more of these single-topic sites around, pre-Wiki !

Third Reich in Ruins http://thirdreichruins.com/ - based around the photos taken by a US soldier towards the end of the Second World War, with modern-day re-visiting of the same sites (for before & after shots) - it's a useful resource of information about sites & contexts that aren't 'on the tourist trail', is maintained by one man, and is very un-modern in look & feel. (always amazes me how much of the infrastructure is still in use, actually)

Looking forwards to spending an hour down these rabbit holes - there's a reason I've always been afraid of getting into Pink Floyd, and these websites are it

Just in time for my renewed Peaceville trio/general doomdeath obsession. Much appreciated.



Let me tell you a story. I was 11 in 1995 and I randomly picked up my father's cassette of Wish You Were Here (Yugoslav issue, very cool cover with the metal hand and the magnetic hand flying into each other). That was the start of my proper obsession with music. No longer just random videos you pick up on TV and individual songs on the radio; now it's full albums, played over and over again, you know how it goes.

Anyway, It being 1995 and me living where I did and still do, I knew no one who listened to Floyd. I even somehow thought no one did anymore even outside Serbia. But all this time, I'm collecting the cassettes. This goes up to 2000 or so. You see Floyd on TV fairly frequently (The Delicate Sound of Thunder was a popular choice for local TV stations, they played it all the time, and PULSE was also relatively new, so you could see that too). And obviously, I could find their cassettes even in my one-horse town. So, clearly, there were others interested in the band. It didn't feel that way, though. I wanted nothing more than to talk Floyd with someone, but there was not one single person (my father did his best, but he only knew WYWH, plus some of the biggest hits like Another Brick and Money).

So I go online for the first time in 2000 and the first thing I do is parse through all these sites and subscribe to a few newsletters. In a matter of days, the first newsletter arrives... featuring a massive flame war about real vs fake Floyd, Gilmour vs Waters, lots of only-Barret-is-real talk and just general unpleasantness, most of it coming from men well into their 40s in my estimate. This is pre-social media, but it definitely was a sign of things to come.

I avoided fellow Floyd fans for years afterwards.

I use this quite often. Ugly but useful, and a weird selection of bands. Thank Morrigan for metal-archives!
http://www.progarchives.com/

That is hilarious and sad all at the same time I used to work for an old biker type that loved Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones - He considered that anything after about '75 was children's music. I still have the burned copy of 'WYWH' he gave me, telling me 'don't bother with that metal, that's kids music, listen to this'



That's very cool - always wondered if other types of music did sites like this, and it makes sense for prog both to have one, and for it to look like that.

Hahaha, I know the type.



Oh yeah, I should have remembered this one when I was opening the thread. At some point, if you searched for prog reviews, you'd either get results from this one or the Ground and Sky website I linked above. At least for me, those were the two main ones. Prog Archives is pretty messy, though, from this perspective.