For many years metalstorm.net has been dear to us here at Darkstereo. An essential online resource when undergoing research about a particular artist lying within the many sub-genres of metal music, or to discover new bands in genres that we adore such as doom and progressive. It is a wonderful site to explore with its user-friendly appearance and categorizations. Furthermore, the place is loaded with news, interviews, reviews and pretty much anything a metal-lover might wish to feast upon!
Recently, we were lucky enough to make contact with Kevin, the site’s Editor-in-Chief, and the site’s lead programmer corrupt. They so kindly offered their time to share some insights into the site’s history, development, and future. A story that is not only of great interest to me personally, but also a potential source of inspiration to many music fans and artists.
To start, I’d love to learn more about the two of you personally. Where are you based, and in what ways has your location impacted on your dedication to exposing and cataloging metal? What started this journey for you? Was it as an artist, writer, or a dedicated fan? In particular, I’d love to hear about any significant life events that drew you towards metal as a whole.
corrupt:
I’m based in Hamburg, Germany. I was born here, grew up here, spent a few years of my life in different parts of Germany and around the world, but ended up back here. At least for now. You never know 🙂
I guess my passion for Metal Storm started with me finding it. I was a teenager with very little exposure to the music. It started with what was accessible at the time through channels like MTV, and its now defunct German equivalent Viva: Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and eventually Korn.
Korn were the band that got me into metal and who really opened my eyes to what was possible outside of what my parents listened to or what would play on the radio. I discovered them through a friend from school around the release of ‘Issues’ and immediately fell in love with the sound and the energy. So naturally I wanted more of it and also wanted to know more about it.
We had a pretty unreliable dial-up internet connection at the time which my parents kept a close eye on to see how much it was costing!
I don’t remember how I found the site, but I do remember spending weeks and weeks on it, reading up on bands I didn’t know, going through threads full of opinions and new input. I had a Hotmail account that I used to create my first account around 2002/2003, but my increasingly excessive use of the internet and a rather unhealthy addiction to Diablo 2 caused my parents to cut me off from the internet for a while, except for school stuff.
When I returned to Metal Storm a few years later, my account had been deleted for inactivity and I spent a few years as a lurker before creating a new one. That second one is the one I still have today.
I made this account when I was at university and started spending a lot of time on the site again. Reading recommendations, trying new things, buying CDs on a whim (including a lot of really bad stuff), and eventually finding a thread discussing melodic black metal, specifically Emperor and Dissection. I got curious, bought the Emperor album that had the highest rating on Metal Storm at the time, and my life literally changed forever.
I remember putting the CD in and listening to a sound that I had never heard before, let alone imagined. I spent that whole night listening to the album over and over again and it just clicked for me. It is still my favorite album of all time and it was what made me realize that I need this music in my life. I’ve been active in the scene ever since. One of my outlets, especially today, is Metal Storm.
Kevin:
I’m from the USA, though I’ve spent musically significant time in Ireland as well (my regards to the Sound Cellar in Dublin). The local scenes in my corners of the East Coast are respectable, but the lion’s share of my relationship with music has evolved either within my own household or online. As for the cataloguing element, it’s simply in my blood; I have an innate need to make lists and rankings and look at information displayed in order. If I didn’t have a place like Metal Storm, I’d go insane.
My dad has pretty wide-ranging musical tastes, but in terms of heavier elements, he was a big fan of stuff like Thin Lizzy, Slade, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Queen, etc. back in the ancient times, so that was passed along to me. I remember being quite small and him showing me those very primitive live videos Black Sabbath did on Beat-Club in 1970, some live Alice that creeped me out, and lots of punk. One particular memory that stands out to me is from when I was maybe 10 or 11, we were in the car and he put on Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind. Nicko McBrain’s titanic drum intro to “Where Eagles Dare” was the heaviest thing I’d ever heard at that time, and to this day it conjures a certain magic in my ears.
I eventually returned the favor, because he was never into much underground or extreme stuff until I started digging into it myself. Some friends and I dragged him to an Overkill show because I wanted to see some of the opening bands and we were young enough to require a chaperone, and because of that Overkill has since become one of his favorite bands. I was probably the only kid who ever got his dad into Darkthrone and Rotting Christ, which I think we’re both rather proud of.
Metal Storm itself has had an indescribable influence on my musical tastes. I discovered it c. 2008 and used it as a resource for a while before I finally joined in late 2010, motivated by a need to explain to other users why they weren’t appreciating Sabaton enough. Just about all of the new stuff I discover comes to me through Metal Storm now. If I could point to a kind of eureka moment like corrupt, it was in that window between finding and joining Metal Storm when I was discovering that power metal was pretty cool (or “pretty cool”) and I came across Blind Guardian. It wasn’t a full ten seconds of “Nightfall” before I realized that this was the stuff for me. Nightfall in Middle-Earth remains my own very special favorite years later.
Thank you so much, corrupt and Kevin! I always enjoy finding out what music really influenced people and changed their futures. For me it was buying cassette tapes from a large local music store in my early teens. Solitude Aeturnus “Into the Depths of Sorrow” and Bathory’s “Twilight of the Gods” kind of acted as an introduction to all the other wonderful forms of music out there. The journey has been continuing ever since!
Can you tell us a little about your roles at Metal Storm, as I expect they might be quite different? In regards to your duties there, how has your contribution changed over the years, in terms of changes in technology, and the music itself?
corrupt:
I think we need to explain a little bit about what Metal Storm is today before we get into the roles and how we got here.
For more than the first 20 years of its existence, Metal Storm was the hobby project of its founder, Ivan. He wrote it and actively maintained it for 10-12 years, give or take a few. When I was made staff, it was to contribute to its development, but we never got to the point where the whole team could agree on a common idea and a path forward for that idea to gain momentum. So I stayed on and off as part of the team for about a decade, helping out when things got really bad, but never actively participating in actual development.
That changed when in about 2020, the site was in such a bad state that it was more dysfunctional than functional, and a decision had to be made about its future. Kevin and the rest of the team had done an amazing job of running the site on its catastrophically outdated technology and working around its bugs, its outages, and its quirks. But it had reached a point where the rational decision would have been to just pull the plug.
But when you see something that has been part of half your life hanging by a thread, you don’t make rational decisions 😉
So we got together with the team that we had and looked for ways to continue.
The whole process took over a year, but in the end we had a vision for Metal Storm that we were all happy to support, and a way to move forward. I guess we can talk about the vision later, but the way to move forward – initially – was mostly me sitting down and doing a lot of work.
It was during Covid, and I happened to have a lot of free time on my hands, so I started porting the old code to a new platform, refactoring it to work with current technology, about two years of groundwork, slowly adding new features.
That’s my role today. I develop Metal Storm and run it, and do very little database work. I also try to engage with the community as much as I can, which unfortunately is not much.
There is probably enough work to be done for the next 5-10 years between all the stuff we still *need* to do, the stuff I, personally, *want* to do, and the stuff users ask for or suggest. I’m trying to balance the three, with an emphasis on what the staff need to perform their everyday tasks.
Kevin:
I’m actually doing my job right now, I think, since my only defined charge as editor-in-chief is to be Metal Storm‘s official point person. In addition to pointing, I undertake things like allocating promotional materials to our writers, corresponding with labels and bands, and writing public announcements and other official statements, which I would say are the primary responsibilities that occupy my time.
Other than that, I’ve always tried to be casual about it. I don’t actually do very much that you would associate with the title “editor-in-chief”; unlike at a typical publication, I’m not claiming final draft approval, handing out assignments, or making big editorial decisions. Everyone at Metal Storm works on a volunteer basis in their spare time, the two of us included, and I’m in this role by grace of everyone else’s tolerance rather than any immutable corporate structure, so I don’t feel like I have a right to dictate how people direct their freely given efforts; we have a good group of writers whom I trust to be responsible and interesting, as well as a very hard-working database, news, and moderating staff who spend many invisible and thankless hours keeping the website up to date, so I’ve always reasoned that whatever contributions we feel like making are all anyone can ask. We make all our important decisions as a group and I think we enjoy healthy creative latitude. I fell into this role basically because someone had to take over to do that handful of external things that need regular doing, and I just happened to be here all the time; I was a longtime user and I did a lot of writing and database work, and by that point I was one of the most active staff members. I continue to feel like I just so happened to walk into this place, so I prefer to execute my function with the caution of someone who has just discovered the keys to a mysterious object of unknown provenance.
As the site has grown larger and my real-life responsibilities have increased, I’ve been less able to focus on writing, which disappoints me, but I still review albums regularly and I help organize our annual Metal Storm Awards, which is one of my favorite operations. I don’t know that much has changed along with the music, which itself has obviously evolved a great deal since Metal Storm‘s inception. Certainly the breadth of what Metal Storm covers has expanded significantly over the years: we now have a monthly feature that covers new nonmetal releases and we have accumulated some categories in the Metal Storm Awards that are borderline or explicitly nonmetal, and I guess my contributions to the site as a whole have changed inasmuch as I occasionally cover some nonmetal releases therein.
In terms of “changes in technology”, we have corrupt to thank for that. As he mentioned, there was a long stretch of time where the site simply wasn’t maintained at all. It had fallen into disrepair and lay in a heap of twine and chewing gum by the side of the road: stuff broke all the time, we had long site outages, and probably everything that wasn’t outright nonfunctional was running on hardware designed by Charles Babbage. It was in the midst of that slump that I became editor-in-chief, being barely computer-literate enough to log into my account on a regular basis, so I took the job assuming it was a matter of time before the whole site just withered away on the vine. At that time, half my job was telling people that I don’t know why stuff is broken or how to fix it or whether it will ever work again. Corrupt swooping in to take over redevelopment was something of a miracle for us, and it’s thanks to his years of endless effort that Metal Storm is able to function at all. The last few years have been excellent, since we can not only go for more than a few days at a time without crashing, but we’ve been able to add loads of new features and quality-of-life upgrades. I enjoy not having to field questions I can’t answer about why some corner of the website is on the verge of imploding.
corrupt:
Kevin really downplays his role there 😀
It’s true that we don’t have a hierarchy and can’t (and won’t) expect anyone to put in more time and energy than they can spare. But as a team, we look to Kevin a lot as our moral compass and the public voice of Metal Storm.
There are decisions that can be made without me, or without other members of the team, if they’re not available. But we almost always wait for Kevin’s opinion.
You can think of it as “everyone’s voice is equal, but Kevin’s is more equal.
If I’m not mistaken, your team comprises of no less than 14 wonderful staff, from just about every corner of the world, and 7 active contributors too. How do you coordinate as a team to manage all the public-facing aspects of the site? News, reviews, articles, event information, the catalogue itself, not to mention the forums? Do your contributors have clearly defined responsibilities, or is it more a case of them acting autonomously, under the one umbrella to meet the site’s main objective?
corrupt:
Everything that anyone does on Metal Storm is on a voluntary basis. We have very few rules among staff when it comes to contributions. The most important one is to always be transparent if you cannot do something.
Some of our publications and some other work come with deadlines, either self-imposed or externally dictated, and we always need to know who can contribute.
Roles are largely assigned by preference. Obviously, we have certain things that need to be done and we try to fill those roles, but for the most part we find it important to have a working team of people who get along with each other. If working on Metal Storm starts to feel like actual work, either because you don’t enjoy doing what you’re doing, or because you don’t enjoy the people you’re doing it with, we cannot operate productively.
This also means that certain aspects of the site may simply cease to exist when “that one person” loses interest. News is one such example. We have been very fortunate over the past 20 years to always have at least one person diligently running the news section, but there is never a guarantee that this will continue forever.
Following this logic, we also assign roles on the site. Contributors are people who like to write for Metal Storm, or help with the awards. Staff are people who actively shape the direction of Metal Storm and have more critical roles, like Kevin being the EIC, people being in charge of the database and user edits, people moderating the community, etc.
You are a staff member for the time you are actively contributing, and you stop being a staff member when you stop contributing. The same goes for contributors.
Elite (a term I hate but that we haven’t renamed yet) currently serves as our retirement ground for former staff. We want to recognize people’s contributions over the years, and not just relegate people back to regular users when their active contribution period ends.
So, to answer your question, yes and no. We have clearly defined responsibilities, but no strict demarcation between them. Sometimes there’s only one staff member online when something needs to be moderated, so they just jump in. The same goes for database editing, news posting, and some other aspects of our daily work.
The exceptions are tasks that require specific skills. Proofreading is one that comes to mind. I couldn’t proofread an English text if my life depended on it. But we have several native speakers with great language skills on our team who can do the job.
And then there are roles that cannot easily be filled by several people. Mine would be one of those, I guess, and so would Kevin’s. As Kevin said, these have grown historically. But we are happy where we are right now and things are running pretty smoothly for the most part.
I think one thing we do need more of is user contribution. This ties in with my answer to the next question in that some users, especially younger ones, aren’t in the habit of contributing to a platform that they’re on.
We have a number of really dedicated users who post news, make band edits, add and edit events, but that kind of contribution is definitely on the decline compared to 10-15 years ago.
If that kind of contribution stops altogether, we’re just not going to be able to provide certain features anymore. And it’s getting harder and harder to motivate users to help out.
It’s a problem we’re very aware of, and we’re keeping an eye on it. But it’s also a sign of the times that we have to adapt to at some point.
Kevin:
Since we have such an informal environment behind the scenes, anything that gets done usually comes down to who has the time and wants to do it. Our specific roles are pretty loose – or rather, if they are defined more specifically, it’s by practice and not by design. Generally speaking, we all have tasks we’ve chosen or fallen into and we carry those out independently, unless something comes up that we think requires some sort of unified action or ruling. I like for there to be consultations before breaking new ground in terms of policy or features, and otherwise we each work on Metal Storm in our own time and in our own way.
I prefer having this structure; as I said in my answer to the previous question, it’s important not to take our own work for granted since this is voluntary and it’s supposed to be fun, and we are understanding about how the demands of our real lives may take time away from Metal Storm. The cost of being loosey-goosey, however, is that, as corrupt said, we’ve basically had to rely on being extremely lucky for 20+ years in having just a small handful of people who can grind hours and hours of news submissions and database updates on a daily basis for extended periods of time. That’s a bit of a precarious position to be in, and that’s why the contributions from the community itself are so important. We have a good cadre of staff, but we’re a few people managing a constant flood of information, so having users out there who can submit a news article here, build a band profile there, add tour dates, etc. is necessary to keep things running. There are always gaps to fill and institutional knowledge to be passed on.
For a new member of the site, how best do you recommend for them to get involved with the culture there, and get the most from the experience? I’ve often considered being present on the forums for example, to find some new friends of similar passions, but making that first post is always so daunting.
corrupt:
It can certainly be daunting to come to a site that has been around for over 20 years and wonder how to get involved. As we discussed this question, Kevin pointed out to me that joining an online community and contributing to make it better may actually be a skill that many people today don’t have anymore.
Forums in the 90’s and early 2000’s sometimes had pretty strict (and strictly enforced) rules of conduct, and that kept people in them coming together with a common understanding and vision. That’s something the Internet has largely lost, and it’s also something that’s hard to sell to some people these days.
I would say, however, that if ever there was a good point in time to start doing just that, it is now.
Today’s modern platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, to name just a few, only care about user behavior and contribution to the extent that it serves their business model. This usually means complying with local laws in the countries where they operate, and applying just enough moderation so that as few people as possible feel the need to leave their platform.
This approach has changed people’s expectations of both their freedom to behave as they see fit, and of what it means to contribute to a project, to the point where some members of our community are young enough to not even remember forums and their codes of conduct, or to realize that Wikipedia is not built by magic, but by their own peers. Just like Metal Storm.
Metal Storm is part of a small group of sites that are trying to preserve the pre-Web 2.0 spirit of community and contributing to a common goal. At least Metal Archives should be mentioned here, as another part of this group.
We’re also in a place where sites like MetalSucks or Metal Injection, etc. have taken the spotlight with fast, easy to consume content, and RYM likely offers more tools to catalog and rate your music collection (if you even have a music “collection” these days). Meanwhile “new” (AMG just turned 15!) sites with excellent reviews and blogs like Angry Metal Guy or Heavy Blog is Heavy have emerged to provide even more metal content.
Compared to this ecosystem of amazing outlets, we play a pretty small part in the overall publishing scene. But we do still have a community of dedicated users, and I absolutely find it to be worthwhile and rewarding to be a part of that. Otherwise I wouldn’t do what I do.
We are trying to make that community one with respect at its core, and we have a specific user group in mind. Given that the metal scene as a whole can be quite toxic, being largely homogeneous with very few minority voices, a lot of casual sexism, political extremism and ignorance, partly infused by a style of music that sells a narrative of rebellion, extreme individualism and … well … sexism, I think it’s important to have spaces that hold their members to a higher standard. If we can achieve that, I hope it will actually be easy to join our community, especially for people who might not otherwise feel comfortable in the metal scene.
Balancing our ideas with decades of expectations from members of the scene is another matter. Metal is still an art form that strives to push boundaries and provoke. But it can become a problem in a social community when aspects of artistic expression seep into people’s views and behaviors that then negatively influence others. This is one of the many reasons why we strictly prohibit any racist or anti-Semitic content, for example.
One of the most common issues raised by members of our community is what they consider “freedom of speech”. Some people feel that they have the right to speak their mind, regardless of other people’s feelings, and feel censored when they are moderated. That’s where our approach to a community clashes with the expectations of certain individuals, and where I think more minority voices would make a big difference. It is my hope that we can move certain discussions away from personal feelings of entitlement to a more holistic exchange of perspectives and the role of the community at large in people’s experiences.
I think there are a lot of really interesting conversations to be had about how our scene views women, members of the LGBTIQ+ community, ethnic minorities and issues of so-called “race”, nationalism, identity building, and, finally, dealing with artists who violate social norms. But that requires a community where people affected by these issues feel comfortable talking about them.
As long as the metal scene still objectifies female musicians and fans; as long as people’s first reaction to allegations of sexual misconduct is to defend the alleged perpetrators and blame or attack their victims; as long as we tolerate right-wing views, bands that are openly racist, homo- or transphobic, or fans who support these ideals; as long as we stereotype cultures, genders, sexual identities, religions, and peoples; and as long as we value individualism over a shared sense of community, we still have work to do to make all of this happen and remove mental barriers to entry.
Can it be daunting to join such a community? Sure. But I personally would rather see someone not find their way into the Metal Storm community because they think it is too “woke”, than someone not find their way in because they feel they cannot make their perspective heard.
Fortunately, we don’t operate for profit and we don’t have any community growth goals. I would rather see Metal Storm become the place where all these conversations take place, and one where people listen to the voices of the minorities in our community, than another extension of the worst features of the scene.
I think we need to get to a place where we don’t have to explain the concepts of free of speech and censorship, sexism, or the social dynamics of sexual abuse to someone every other week, and where people are willing to educate themselves about certain issues without needing people who are affected by them to guide them every step of the way.
Part of the respect that I see at the core of the community is listening and being open to those voices without making it their job to “convince” someone who is ignorant about these issues. But in my experience, that’s rarely a behavior you can just assume. That openness has to come from within.
Clearly, we are still a long way from that vision. And there are valid arguments that such a community is impossible to build in the current zeitgeist. However, no community will ever become a better place, if people do not try to make it so. We are fortunate enough to be able to operate entirely self-funded, and not depend on traffic or the size of our community, so we have the opportunity to try.
I also know for a fact that there are a lot of really amazing people in this scene and in our community, who wouldn’t even need to grow into our vision of it, and who would happily and openly welcome new members, whether they have a story to tell or not.
We just have to try and make it clear that we want to be a space for those people, and I hope that other people will grow as well if they feel part of a community with a strong moral framework and role models.
As far as making a first post, that’s a really easy one to answer 😀
I guess there’s only one way to try. The water will feel colder if you dip your toes in first than if you jump in head first.
We have a “Welcome Newcomers!” thread where everyone can say hi and introduce themselves, and an overall really open and friendly community to welcome them.
We also have a public shoutbox that is used quite actively where people can speak their minds (within the community rules, of course) and have a relaxed chat.
Kevin:
I was just going to say that you should just say something nice about whatever the hot melodeath band of the moment is – make a post about how great the new Be’lakor/Insomnium/Swallow the Sun is and you’ll fit right in. Corrupt raises a lot of serious points, of course. Social media has, for all its benefits, been a debilitating influence on the way people seek and build communities online. I value civility and clarity in communication, especially in digital discourse, and asking for that in a modern setting is like trying to make an ice sculpture in the mouth of a volcano. I think one thing to keep in mind as a new user is that what we’re interested in – we, not just the staff, but the longtime users who have made the community what it is – is getting to know you. We’re not interested in the solipsistic insistence on radical freedom that some people still use as excuses to peddle insults and perpetuate harmful beliefs. We want to form connections with you, a human person, about your favorite rare black metal demos and what you think of the Pelagic Records roster and how many distinct voices King Diamond has. That’s why we have certain expectations of conduct and a set of values we try to espouse: because we’re all actual people here and we want the spirit of inclusion and respect that should come packaged standard. If everyone approaches discussion cognizant of that basic contract, able to retain human dignity in their conversation, then we’re golden.
That’s perhaps high-falutin’ for a simple question of how do you start, because I do understand the more practical uncertainties that can hinder you from launching yourself into a new environment. As corrupt mentioned, we have a ShoutBox, visible everywhere on the site except the front page, where conversation is always happening, and new users often like to introduce themselves there. I think that’s always a good place to start; you’ll be greeted by whomever is hanging around that day and then you’ve successfully passed your first interaction. We do also have that new user introduction thread. But sometimes drawing attention to yourself as the new guy is the opposite of what you want, depending on your level of apprehension; I’d say just peruse the forums, pick a poll to answer or a discussion to contribute to, maybe drop by a new album you like and leave a comment. Reviewers love it when you comment on their stuff, too, so if you want to start friendly and easy, you can’t go wrong there.
Thank you so much for this insight into the culture of your site and its members! I really hope it encourages some of our readers to jump on in and get involved. I know many of them are great lovers of metal! I also think it is a great credit to you that your message boards are so active and filled with interesting conversations. The arrival of social media to the masses really did some damage all those years ago, or at least I believe so, to the former tightly-knit and friendly forum-based communities that existed at the time. It is wonderful that dedicated and distinct communities still exist online, and have remained focused on their strengths and purpose.
I’d like to ask you now about the future! Based on developments in the music itself (new styles, new technology and recording methods etc) and changes to the industry as a whole (streaming vs less prevalence of gatekeeping perhaps), what do you think the future might look like for musicians and fans, particularly those who’ve just discovered audio of a metal flavor?
Kevin:
In terms of music itself, there are some genres that metal has yet to be fused with in a meaningful way, and there yet remain some countries where metal does not have a prominent foothold. Someone out there is going to find that state of affairs unsatisfactory, so the next logical step would be to continue doing whatever hasn’t been done yet. Or we could do another 27,000 thrash albums that all sound like worse Exodus. I’m not picky.
Despite the persistent pessimistic moaning you always see from other publications, I don’t think that metal is dead or dying or at risk of disappearing; metal’s future is in an upward direction if you measure it by things like creativity and craftsmanship, rather than streaming numbers and how many stadiums you can fill. There’s always new and interesting stuff being written. There’s even plenty of old and interesting stuff being written – I get that the unrestrained unorthodoxy of more experimental artists like Thy Catafalque, Sleepwalker, Brii, Aetheria Conscientia, Kekal, etc. isn’t for everybody, and on the reverse end you’ll never stop seeing more accessible trends rankle the gelatinous midsections of the metal fan base, be they Deafheaven, Babymetal, Ghost, Sleep Token, or whatever you like. But the classic sounds as much as the novel sounds have many practitioners these days, so if you don’t like Liturgy or Lorna Shore, you always have the option of Evil Invaders, Steel Arctus, Bewitcher, Fer De Lance, Frozen Soul, and a thousand others. We’re absolutely spoiled for choice, no matter what we want, and even if not a single new metal album were recorded after tomorrow, you’d still have a heck of a time trying to discover everything that had already been recorded. I think we’re doing pretty well in terms of quality and variety, and as long as Metal Storm is operational, you’ll have some means of navigating all of that.
That’s all I feel completely confident in saying, as pondering the future to any greater extent will invariably lead to me saying something that will look foolish one year from now. Or 10 years or 20 or 50 or 12,000. Predicting the course and effects of technology is like trying to follow your favorite raindrop in a hurricane, but we can allow at a minimum that technology changes things. Some bands invest in subscription-based models or routine crowd-funding to maintain steady income and output. The shift away from dedicated websites to social media pages changes how artists communicate with their fans. Streaming allows easier proliferation of music, which is something to appreciate, even if most platforms are distinct from piracy only in a legal sense and not in terms of how they financially benefit the artist. In general, the threshold of entry for recording, producing, releasing, and promoting music has lowered substantially with each generation of technical innovation and fluency, and while it hasn’t necessarily made it easier to do any of those things particularly well or successfully, being able to do them at all is easier than it once was. I expect that further changes will have similar effects: the possibility of yet more direct engagement with artists/fans, easing entry into the world of creating music, perhaps a new model for paying bands even less money per stream. The sky’s the limit.
As of now, the landscape is stabler than it could be. Bands still sign to labels, go on tour, sell merch, etc. (all subject to the economic tar pit we’re chilling in, which has not so much to do with either music or technology). While it isn’t necessarily everyone’s preferred method of consumption, the album format remains overwhelmingly the preferred method of release and the standard unit of career measurement; even singles are still in vogue, albeit as music videos online and not 7-inch records. This modus operandi seems generally satisfactory.
Unfortunately, metal fans are not going to be immune from developments that impact the entire world, and right now it probably goes without saying that the cultural threat du jour is the incursion of artificial intelligence into everything that once belonged to people. It’s working its way into all facets of the music industry, mercifully with a great deal of controversy to fend it off so far, but it has rapidly become a challenge for us, as it has for so many other publications in our position. We’ve spoken about the time and effort that go into running a place like Metal Storm, and all of that is done in the name of art and community; for us, who value those things, the drive to replace the human element with something devoid of intent and experience is contemptible. The machine-processed agglomerations of algorithmically estimated “content” that people pass off as “art”, their own work, are to my mind nothing more than Soylent Green, just a horrific parody of a foundational element of existence. Yet we’ve had our first dust-ups with AI-generated bands, including the embarrassment of an unwitting nomination of such an album in our last Awards (which we swiftly replaced with a deserving candidate), and we’re having to crack down on user submissions as well. It’s been confusing watching people try to engage with an art form by insulting everything about it, and I have to say that I’m pessimistic about how the cultural world’s relationship with AI will progress. The technology will become more sophisticated, the results will become more difficult to spot, and people’s attitudes will likely soften as it becomes more commonplace and fewer people remember or understand a time before it, but I’m hoping we can avoid the normalization of randomly configured pastiche replacing genuine human expression. I tend not to think that metal as a whole has specific consistent values, since that’s demonstrably untrue, but I do believe that authenticity is a big part of what makes metal so enduring and cohesive. Certainly it is something that I want to be important to Metal Storm, and as long as it remains integral to our philosophy, we’ll continue making efforts not to be unhorsed by AI.
corrupt
I think the music itself has always evolved and I’m sure it will continue to do so. Likewise, the metal fan base will continue to be divided between people who embrace that evolution and purists who prefer things to stay the way they were. And fortunately, there always seem to be bands that try to either push the boundaries of a certain genre or preserve it in its purest form. I share Kevin’s view that there will be more music than any one person will ever be able to consume in a lifetime, on a spectrum wide enough to have something for everyone.
The industry side of things is more interesting to me. Streaming services are a great way to consume a lot of music, but they remove you from the physical experience. Music consumption has become less of a conscious act and more of a habit, which changes our relationship with the bands and albums we love. People discover music through playlists rather than albums, and revenue is generated by number of streams rather than sales. This has already been a factor in the evolution of other music genres (Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act did a great episode on this phenomenon in hip-hop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEZV6EE8JMA), and I’m sure it will have an impact on metal as well.
At the same time, we’re seeing more and more platform-exclusivity in other industries like video streaming or gaming, and I can see that happening to music at some point. Music streaming services are competing fiercely with each other, mostly on price and features. Band exclusivity seems like the next evolutionary step to me. It is absolutely not something I would want, but it is definitely something I can see happening.
At the other end of the marketing spectrum is a platform like Bandcamp, which gives bands and labels more agency over their revenue, but is a fairly isolated phenomenon. Even Metal Storm relies heavily on Bandcamp, despite it being sold to new owners every few years. While this is the better platform for both artists and fans, it doesn’t seem to be a sustainable model, which worries me a lot.
It’s hard for any of us down here to say what the future holds in this area, but as far as Metal Storm is concerned, I follow some trends more closely than others. We are definitely not willing to promote music streaming services through our platform, knowing how little they help bands financially, but if Bandcamp turns to the dark side (or shuts down) one day, we will have to remove a major feature of Metal Storm when it comes to actual music consumption.
I assume this is the kind of gatekeeping you are referring to. Most industries are moving more and more to walled garden platforms. Even bands themselves are mostly dependent on Facebook and Instagram for promotion these days. I hope that will change eventually, but I’m not optimistic about the near future. And to come back to the question, this “direct” access to bands has changed fandom and what fans expect from platforms and communication.
It still seems like we as a community can turn this ship around, and we definitely try to do our part on Metal Storm, but the capitalist reality of our world is that we are all dependent on platforms, that we have given way too much control over our habits, that are run by people with mostly financial interests.
Kevin:
Corrupt raises some very interesting points. This is why I usually let him answer first.
What are your future plans for Metal Storm? Aside from maintenance and keeping on top of content, new releases, artists and news, is there anything special in the pipeline, or any large developments sketched in for future work? The way I see it, the site already has pretty much everything a visitor might want or need to know! It is well designed and easy to use, and all the information is very well and clearly presented too. That’s no mean feat with so much content!
Kevin:
It’s very kind of you to say so, and I certainly hope that we can keep things that way. Corrupt probably has a wishlist a mile long, but in terms of major features, I don’t believe we have anything under construction. Not since everybody vetoed my suggestion to replace the front page with a gigantic gif of a pinwheel that doesn’t redirect you anywhere. But I might be forgetting something obvious, as I often do.
corrupt
Yes, thank you for saying that. However, I must respectfully disagree.
Several of Metal Storm‘s features are still in disrepair (or, as one could argue, were never completed in the first place).
I do have a vague plan of things I would like to do to modernize the site and expand some of its features. But I see our work on Metal Storm mostly as an evolution of what’s already there.
We get great feedback from our community and have already added a ton of new features, but there will probably never be a day when we make a big reveal of a major overhaul or anything like that.
We are aware of our history and of certain expectations that our community has for the site. I mentioned earlier that we are trying to maintain a culture of communication that has largely died out on the Internet, and I feel very strongly that maintaining the look and feel of the site is part of that.
For example, I absolutely love what Metal Archives is doing with their site. Their look and feel has been largely unchanged for 20 years, and the platform still functions successfully as a forum and source of information for pretty much the entire scene.
You’ll find a lot of metalheads out there who’ve never heard of Metal Storm, but you won’t find many who haven’t heard of Metal Archives. They have a real platform identity.
Obviously Metal Storm is a different kind of platform and we are going in a different direction when it comes to our evolution, but my goal is to maintain our own platform identity as much as possible to make sure our long-time users still feel at home, while still slowly modernizing the site.
This work has been an amazing hobby for me over the past four years, and it will be a while before we reach a point where I don’t feel like there’s more to do.
Thank you so much Kevin and corrupt for sharing your precious time with us, and showing our readers some of the action that goes on behind the scenes at Metal Storm! It has been a pleasure getting to know you, and our appreciation for your work has only grown. We wish you and all your team the very best for the future, and look forward to finding lots more great music thanks to your efforts! We really hope to catch up with you again one day soon.
Kevin:
I suppose all that’s left is to thank you for taking an interest in Metal Storm and the people behind it; it has been fun answering your questions, and I hope some of this was of interest to the readers. If you’re coming here as a Metal Storm user, I hope you gained some insight into how things work around there and why, and if you’re unfamiliar with our site, I hope you’ll come check it out and spend some time with us.
Once again, thank you for your time, and whatever this mysterious future we’ve been discussing has to bear, I hope it looks kindly on you.