So what's been happening in this year of metal? What the fuck does zeitgeist mean? These are questions that just don't need answering but I am gonna try to do it anyway. Zeitgeist as Wikipedia will tell you is the 'spirit of the age'. So what's happened over the year, what's in the collective conscience of metalheads out there.
Before I show you some graphs I've stumbled upon you can create your own graphs. It's really easy and it might even be useful!
All the data here is compiled by searching news headlines from BlabberMouth.net, Century Media, Metal Blade, Metal Hammer, Metal News Storm, Metal Underground, MetalKult, Nucelur Blast, Terrorizer, The Gauntlet, Thrash Never Dies, Ultimate Guitar . Feeds from publishers have been removed so that their artists counts are not artificially inflated. So let's get on with it.
This graph shows the number of news items per month from all the news feeds New Metal Army scrapes (excluding publisher feeds).
There are over forty thousand individual news items over the year with an average of one hundred and fourteen news items per day. Quite frankly that's a lot of news. Some of them are duplicates but not too many. There is a lot going on in metal. A lot of bands competing for your attention. That's good though... well it's better then nothing going on at all.
Looking at the four thrash metal monsters it's obvious to see that Metallica's press machine has been at full force. The build up to Death Magnetic results in a huge peak ten times the size of their nearest rival. Death Magnetic was released in September and most of the news items for July and August talk about Death Magnetic or the world tour to promote Death Magnetic.
For the other three there isn't really anything to tell. While they are dwarfed by Metallica they are doing pretty well getting between one news item a week to one a day.
We are in the midst of a resurgence of thrash. So how are these new thrash bands doing? Well their not getting anything like the press coverage that Metallica get. No surprise there!
Evile end the year on a high but at a cost. Half of the news stories for November and December refer to Ol's broken Jaw. All press is good press I guess! Get well soon dude.
Wow, a really quiet year for the doomsters of metal. I really expected more press for these three giants of the metal world.
Surprisingly in September when all three bands play the Unholy Trinity Gig at the Forum in London there isn't any mention of it. It seems these guys are too doom laden to talk to the press.
In september Ulrich is talking about how he loves the internet again and hoping everyone forgets Napster. Isn't that sweet. Luckily the internet doesn't have a short memory. We forgive you Lars, but don't fuck with the internet!
Not much else to say about this other than when people are talking about Hetfield or Ulrich they seem to stop talking about Mustaine. It's probably a coincidence.
These three popular 'Black' metal bands end the year on a high. Satyricon do particularly well with the release of 'The Age of Nero' their seventh studio album. The press seem to love talking about how hugely successful Satyricon are but not successful enough. I feel confident in saying Frost and Satyr couldn't give a fuck.
Is anything going on in Death Metal at the moment? There are plenty of Death Metal bands and the local scene in London is pretty healthy but it just feels like 2008 has been... well dead.
Carcass get a lot of respect for coming back and lose a lot of respect for playing the 'final tour' card and then teasing with 'There might be a new album' and adding more and more tour dates.
Maybe it wasn't intentional and tours do grow when promoters see favourable reactions in early territories. It was good that a new generation of fans got to see the mighty Carcass but sitting in the gallery sometimes it felt they were hyping it all up a little too much.
All that hype was nothing compared to the right royal fuck up Metal Hammer made when giving an award to Carcass though. Ahem.
What I like about this graph is how Download gets the biggest peak but Bloodstock gets the most press over the year. It's a far superior festival and deserves the press.
This ones a little bit random. I just wanted to see if more bands were being signed then dropped. Unsurprisingly not a lot of bands talk about being dropped. It's only the big bands that make the press and they are obviously dropped less then the smaller bands ( there are less big bands and they tend to make money).
'Sign' is a difficult term to search for as well. There are a lot of news items about signings but a fair proportion of the graph are bands signing to a label which is good news for the scene.
Anyway, have a happy new year and I hope there are many gigs in your town AND that you go to them to support METAL!.
be seeing you
metaldazza