Most Likely to Rock - A Metal Overview

Some context is necessary here. Several of my friends have formed a sort of bi-weekly disc exchange program in the spirit of old painfully 90s mix-tapes. Each week we're either exchanging CDs or meeting to discuss the selections we've listened to. It's been fun so far, providing an excuse to discover new music. In addition it's required us to engage in focused listening and critically evaluate what we're hearing before the discussion. Typically they're curated around a broad theme like "travel", but this previous round turned into a genre-focused overview, with each member tackling a genre that they had more familiarity with. I'd gotten it into my head that I knew a decent amount about metal music, so I went with that idea. Various factors collided to delay the next meeting, meaning I had something like six weeks rather than two to compose my disc. This is good, because I discovered that I actually knew very little about metal going into this.

I ended up spending an solid chunk of time just determining when and how various sub-genres of metal evolved, as well as what distinguished them from their siblings. Sites like Map of Metal and Every Noise at Once provided an amazing starting point as well as a shot of motivation for the task. While this did result in a playlist, the more interesting (read: time intensive) products were the liner notes. For each track I wrote up a short paragraph or two about the genre, threw in the album cover, lyrics, and a list of other artists that fall into the same camp. It's worth noting that chronology was used as the organizing principle behind the playlist, so don't expect smooth transitions nor consistent tempos. The tracks were selected with three goals: provide exemplary tracks for the genres, be accessible for an audience who had never been interested in metal before, and above all fit within the 80 minute limit of a CD-R. I dropped a lot of amazing tracks to stay under the limit, and they were painful omissions, but the various metalheads I consulted with eventually agreed that it was a reasonable introduction.

Enough words, here's the goods.

Album Cover

Playlist (Google Docs)
Liner Notes (PDF)