This is a list of metalbands I've collected over the years. Lots of (technical) death metal and mathcore, some "regular" death metal, a little djent, some bands that are hard to define, so quite a wide selection. Over the years my taste in metal (and other music) has changed, at times gradually, at times drastically. For example: When I discovered djent I quickly absorbed a lot of material finding new bands and getting acquainted with the sound... Once the novelty wore off, I found most of it pretty generic and boring... And I wondered: "Where did it go from Meshuggah to feeble attempts at jazz, blastbeat-less tracks and clean vocals?" In a similar vein, when I heard my first deathcore band I was like: "This is cool, it's a little like death metal, with a fresh take on it." Then I heard another, and another, and fresh turned stale.

Currently I gravitate mostly towards bands which have their own sound, like Ulcerate, Gigan and Wormed. Gone are my purist days of exclusive love for technical death metal. Then there's my bipolar love/hate relationship with mathcore. Structure is important and it's what differentiates music from random sound. That being said, typical scales, rhythms, orchestration, cliches and tricks, etc. are associated with certain styles. A finite set of static elements, leading to endless permutations but producing the same material in the end. This tends to steer me towards "something different" eventually. Mathcore certainly fits that description. You'll find a handful of black metal in this list, or stuff that sounds black-ish (genre nazis, please look away or at least be silent!) Last and probably also least, there's some metalcore and nu-metal in there, from the halcyon days. I'll try to sift through all the crap in due time, folks.

Do you think aquamarine and orange are not really metal? I agree, but it still looks better than those unreadable black metal logos, hahaha.

A few names to point out up front:

• Willowtip: Lots of bands with their own sound
• Profound Lore: Same as above, only even more so
• XOdiumNostrumX: This guy has an awesome channel with obscure material on Youtube here
• Bandcamp: Music download store with hours and hours of good, free music. Extra credits for offering albums in lossy and lossless formats.

A

Abigor

Abriosis

Abysmal Dawn

Abysmal Torment

Aeon

Age of Nemesis

Alarum

Allegaeon

Anata

Animals as leaders

Animosity

Anomalous

Antropofagus

Archspire

Arkaik

Artificial Brain

Assimilated Mind Phase

Atheist

Azarath

B

Behold… the Arctopus

Benighted

Between the buried and me

Beyond Creation

Blood Red Throne

Bloodbath

Bloodshot Dawn

Blotted Science

Blut aus Nord

Botch

Brute chant

Bulb

O

Obscura

Old Gods

Origin

Ovid’s withering

P

Persefone

Phazm

Pig destroyer

Pitbulls in the nursery

Pressure Points

Prostitute Disfigurement

Psycroptic

Psyopus

Pyrrhon

Q