Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives (commonly known as Metal Archives per the URL or abbreviated as MA) is an online encyclopedia based upon musical artists who predominantly perform heavy metal music along with its various sub-genres.[1] Encyclopaedia Metallum was described by Matt Sullivan of Nashville Scene as "the Internet's central database for all that is 'tr00' in the metal world."[2]Terrorizer described the site as "a fully-exhaustive list of pretty much every metal band ever, with full discographies, an active forum and an interlinking members list that shows the ever-incestuous beauty of the metal scene".[3] Nevertheless, there are exceptions for bands which fall under disputed genres not accepted by the website.
Encyclopaedia Metallum attempts to provide comprehensive information on each band, such as a discography, logos, pictures, lyrics, line-ups, biography, trivia and user-submitted reviews. The site also provides a system for submitting bands to the archives. The website is free of advertisements and is run completely independently.
History
The Encyclopaedia Metallum was launched in July 2002 by a Canadian couple from Montreal using the pseudonyms HellBlazer and Morrigan. A couple of years prior, HellBlazer had the idea of an encyclopedia for heavy metal and attempted to create an HTML page for every metal band by hand. Although he gave up on that initial attempt, a fully automated site with contributions from its users was in the works.[4] The site initially went live early in July 2002 and the first band (Amorphis) was added on July 7, 2002.[5] In just over a year the site had amassed a database of over 10,000 bands.[6] The site continues to grow at a rate of about 500 bands per month.[7]
On January 1, 2013, the site announced that bands with entirely digital discographies could now be submitted to the Archives, changing the site's decade-long policy of physical releases only.[8] Digital releases must have a fixed track listing, album art, professional or finished production and be available in a high-quality or lossless format through official distribution sources (such as Bandcamp and/or iTunes).
On November 13, 2014, the number of bands listed in the database reached 100,000.[9]
Accepted and excluded bands
A map of heavy metal bands per capita based on Encyclopaedia Metallum data.
Encyclopaedia Metallum maintains a system where a user with a registered account is free to submit a band to the database that they deem to be within a heavy metal genre, but once the band page gets submitted it goes through an approval process where a moderator (or in some cases, multiple moderators) will review the band's music to determine if it's suitable for the website's classification of metal. Traditional heavy metal genres and era (such as the NWOBHM) have stringent rulings; users are warned in the rules section to consider bands submitted under these classifications as "ambiguous", in the sense that if a band is submitted with these terms as their genre, the music will be extensively reviewed by the moderators before they decide whether or not to accept the band onto the website.[10] This is because, in the past, some submissions labeled with those genres have turned out not to be metal according to the site's guidelines. Bands or artists commonly associated with either hard rock or glam metal will only be accepted if the moderators consider their material to be at least "fully, unambiguously metal", examples being Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, Skid Row and Stryper, while the site will not accept certain rock- or hard rock-based acts like AC/DC, Guns N' Roses, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Queen or Poison.[11]
Additionally, there are some rare cases of non-metal bands featured on the site that are considered to be part of the metal scene despite not being metal themselves (usually dark ambient and folk bands that are side projects of already well-known established metal artists), examples being Mortiis, Elend, Nest, Of the Wand & the Moon, Autumn Tears, Stille Volk, etc. These bands were selected by the moderators "in an admittedly arbitrary fashion", and their submission by normal users was discouraged.[11] In 2021 the staff collectively decided that they will not be adding any more of these "exception bands" to the database.[12]
