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yungstirjoey666
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2019 8:47 am
Posts: 639
Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed Aug 17, 2022 7:34 pm 
 

This is something that I've been wondering for a while. I understand the necessity for the "melodic" terminology for death metal due to its historic and widespread significance, as well as other generally abrasive and harsh genres (such as grindcore and maybe black metal). However, the label is also used for genres that are already widely melodic (eg. Kamelot and Dreamtale are both "melodic power metal). I wonder what the significance of the descriptor serves here, because bands like Iron Maiden, Avantasia, and Twilight Force are very melodic, yet are not labeled as such.

Metalcore is somewhat of a gray area, because a lot of bands are not in the Archives, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. Still, there is still a difference between melodic metalcore (metalcore with lot of influence from melodeath), metallic hardcore (the original metal + hardcore metalcore), and whatever else is called metalcore today. The issue here is that melodic bands like Killswitch and AILD are labeled simply as "metalcore;" the same with metallic hardcore bands like Integrity and Lamb of God (tbf they do have hardcore and groove metal with them, but I don't think that's enough to differentiate the metalcore styles). There are Archived bands like The Raven Age that are labeled as "melodic metalcore," but it's most likely not worth reviewing back almost 5,000 bands just to determine if it's melodic enough.

A similar issue with other descriptors such as "symphonic" and "neoclassical." We have bands like Rhapsody of Fire with tons of classical influence yet without the neoclassical label. I also wonder what truly constitutes as "symphonic" in the Metal Archives, because bands like Kamelot and Trans-Siberian Orchestra have tons of symphonic elements, yet are not labeled as such (TSO does have "orchestral," but I don't think it's as well-used with searching for metal as much as "symphonic" does).

I guess part of the reason why some of those bands don't have the descriptors is because they're already recognized enough and don't really need labels for recognition. Still, Kamelot is relatively more well-known than Twilight Force even though they both equally melodic.

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