(Apologies in advance for the lengthy post – I can’t help it. There’s a TL;DR at the end though…)

It’s no secret that metal is the underdog genre here on Genius. People mostly turn their attention to rap and pop, with metal only surfacing on very rare occasions.

A few days ago, I realized just how bad it really is. Even some of the most popular and influential metal bands have missing or incorrect metadata and/or lyrics, not to mention missing album artwork, incorrect track listings… the list goes on and on. The only example I’ve found where all the metadata was in great shape was Metallica – which is not really surprising. Hell, even Black Sabbath could use some work.

Coincidentally, I’ve been getting a few notifications over the past week or so of people editing metadata for metal songs. I see you @CRJ2 @BuhHromu @zersorger. This served as the catalyst to finally make this thread – I’ve been wanting to call attention to this topic for a long time.

Metal needs a lot more love on this site. Like I said, pretty much every band I’ve looked at so far other than Metallica has been severely lacking in the accuracy department, in terms of metadata and lyrics. You’ll notice a lot of metal songs have the Pop tag (which I believe is the default tag, meaning the people who transcribed it never added a tag to begin with) – I think that’s the biggest thing that needs attention. But it would be freaking awesome if we all added as much metadata as possible, regardless of the band’s popularity. If you know something, contribute! You get IQ for it! (You don’t get IQ for editing lyrics though, but that’s still important just from the standpoint of being a metalhead). Please also be aware that you won’t be able to edit metadata if you have less than 300 IQ (hit me up if you need some of that dank IQ, I may know a guy…)

Recently, my man @ewokABdevito helped out a lot by adding a bunch of new metal tags that we can now use to replace the disgraceful Pop tags that currently plague the genre. You can check out the full list of all existing tags on this page, but here are all the relevant new tags that have been added over the past few weeks:

• Black Metal
• Black ‘n’ Roll
• Blackened Death Metal
• Crossover (aka Crossover Thrash)
• Death-doom
• Deathgrind
• Djent
• Doom Metal
• Folk Metal
• Funeral Doom
• Grindcore
• Sludge Metal
• Speed Metal
• Stoner Metal
• Symphonic Metal

Where to start
Literally anywhere. Just search up your favorite metal bands and I can almost guarantee you that their metadata is either incorrect or not there at all. If you have questions/ideas/suggestions or need help, please don’t hesitate to ask me (especially if it’s metal-related). You can also ask pretty much any other editor or moderator on the site for help too – I’ve talked to a few of them, trust me, they’re not that cool (except maybe for @ScopeY). If you have questions about how much IQ you need to do certain things, your best bet is to ask a mod – I’m not too knowledgeable on that subject.

Note: Transcription is important too! If you know some music that’s not on Genius yet, put it up if you can. Doesn’t matter how popular it is, it’s important.

TL;DR: Metal is severely unappreciated on Genius and it could certainly benefit from some attention. Contribute whatever you can – release dates, producers, studios, lyric corrections, album artworks, track listing corrections, grammatical miscellany – anything and everything is needed! It’s too much work for just a few people. We need help!

Relevant people:
@rock-genius @genius-moderation @rock-genius-editors @transcribers @music @genius-editorial-board

Iron Maiden is the best btw

I have one question: When I tag a Death-Doom song for example, do I only have to tag it as Death-Doom or do I also have to ad a Death metal and a Doom Metal tag?

I’ve talked to a few of them, trust me, they’re not that cool (except maybe for @ScopeY).

I’m only cool by default because I live in a cold country.

Also, I am a proud IQ junkie, but isn’t metal incredibly tricky to scribe if you’re not a metalhead? (Don’t listen and don’t like it tbh)

sounds cool!!! cc @Drew_Harvie iq

@BuhHromu I’d say you only have to tag it as Death-doom, since that tag basically implies death metal and doom metal. It wouldn’t hurt to include all of them though if you want to.

@ScopeY Yeah, it can be pretty hard to transcribe metal songs as they come out since well, it can be hard to understand what they’re saying (even for an experienced metalhead). That’s what I said at the end, to transcribe stuff if you can, because it’s not exactly easy to lol. There’s actually a ton of older songs (I’m talking 80s and 90s) that aren’t on Genius either. A lot of times the only way you’ll get definitive 100% correct lyrics on the first go-around is if the song has an official lyric video or the person transcribing the song has the physical lyric booklet.

I’d include all the tags fwiw.

I don’t listen to much metal at all, but if you need help with annotation technique or organisation or anything like that then I’ll help.

I will do my best! :) ;)

this may be an unpopular post, but any chance additional *core tags can be added as well?

edit: nevermind, looks like they’re already there?

@mudsown The only core genre I can think of that we don’t have a tag for is mathcore, but tbh, I don’t even know what mathcore is, although I usually hear it being used in conjunction with The Dillinger Escape Plan.

Great thread! I’m not super into metal myself, but songs like Avenged Sevenfold’s “The Stage” and Metallica’s “Moth Into Flame” made it to the top of the hot songs on the Genius home page when they first dropped. There’s definitely a wider audience lurking around.

We also ought to create a label called “Shit metal” so we can tag all the Nu metal songs!

( Only kidding of course, mostly. Everyone can enjoy whatever they like :D )

Rude :(

@CRJ2 Haha. The only nu-metal I enjoy is Slipknot and Iowa. Never really got into Korn though I respect what they do.

Not to necropost, but I’m working on the symphonic/gothic subgenres :) Lacuna Coil’s major 20th anniversary compilation album hadn’t been added when I joined, and with 13 discs that’s a lot of work in itself. Mostly metadata, but. There are other bands in the subgenres that I’ve seen don’t have much up here (and for some weird reason, metal lyrics that are up on Genius don’t always seem to carry over to Spotify when BTL is turned on there), so I’ve a fair bit of work ahead of me. (Also in folk and filk, aiya. The perils of being multi-genre…)

@Trialia I was reading this post, super-excited, thinking that it was new—and believing that once and for all we were going to unite under a common cause to polish the turd that is the rock/metal section…

Or, as I like to call it:

Metaldatapocalypse☠