u/SuspiciousFishy178

At this point in my life I consider myself to listen to a nice spread of music, but mostly rock, punk and metal. The majority of my taste is borrowed from my father, as he was foundational for my taste in media as a whole. One of his favorite bands was The Magnetic Fields, and now The Charm of the Highway Strip is my favorite album. I got into metal because he played me High on Fire one day and I got hooked. He's the biggest punk fan alive, and now I listen to majority punk music. I obviously find most new music by myself now (usually through my lord and savior AOTY) but he laid the foundation for my taste in music as a kid, and let me explore music more confidently now.

I was wondering how other people here developed their taste, how it changed over their life, their genre preferences, what may have influenced it, and how you all find new music.

Looking for more recommendations for metal tracks I might like (and also thoughts on my top 25).

I know my metal top 25 is horribly basic, but it is my favorite genre of music and I wanted to know people's thoughts on my picks and recommendations.

Note I do have a whole "separate the art from the artist rule," where I don't feel comfortable listening to music made by mentally reprehensible people if they're still alive. I'm fine with it if they're dead or otherwise will receive no profit or support from my listening. (Which is why I'm comfortable having Dissection here, for example.)

I've been hosting a weekly Album Club (I assign an album, people listen to it for a week, we come back and discuss) for about a month at this point, and its helped me to find and listen through a lot more obscure albums, and a lot more stuff I wouldn't normally try.

Because of this I've been gaining a want to listen to a lot of new music that I wouldn't normally try. If anyone has any recommendations to listen to, that would be really helpful. (My current top 25 for reference on my favorite stuff.)

In this sub, the mods post Small Artist Highlights, which shout out and show smaller and more obscure artists. I personally appreciate these posts, as they're useful for finding fun underground work, as well as being useful shoutouts for small artists.

I think it would be fun to allow the community to assist with highlighting small artists that they've encountered be that through shows in their local scene, or close friends. I propose either making the Small Artist Highlights a usable flair for any posts within the subreddit, letting people highlight small artists of their own, or letting people submit small artists somehow to the mods in order to have them featured in Small Artist Highlights from now on.

Obviously I'm not a mod, and don't know how feasible it would be or what difficulties there would be into enacting these changes in the server, I just wanted to give a small suggestion on something I thought would be fun for the server.

With this I'd also like to shout out some semi-small artists. Sharp Pins is a really cool lo-fi Power Pop project by Kai Slater that I saw at a free concert in New York. His album "Balloon Balloon Balloon" was one of the most fun projects of last year, and he just released a new single. I also saw Cupid's Nemesis and Crush Fund at a free punk concert, who were two very fun local acts.

I know there's a lot of metal fans on here, so I was interested in what different people's results would be. I tried to pick a good mix of the most beloved metal albums, both of all time, and that I've seen praised on this sub, but if there's an album I missed, you're free to comment that one instead as an extra choice over another album.

Personally my choice would be Symbolic and Dopethrone, but if you asked me a different day, I might say Symbolic and Blackwater Park.

If it'd be ok, I'd also like to know people picked their specific albums, but if you don't have time or aren't feeling it today that's okay.

I know The Doors is a beloved album, and it should be an album I love based off my preexisting taste, but I find it deeply uninteresting and annoying.

Whatever song or album you hate, I'll listen over it to see if your malice is justified.

If it's too basic what are some recommendations you might have?