Top 10 Worst Things About Encyclopaedia Metallum

Despite the fact that the Metal Archives is a serviceable website in many ways, I definitely have a fair few issues with the website. These reasons will be listed below. Note that I don't hate the website.
The Top Ten
1 A large amount of elitism

From my experience on this website, as well as the normal reviews, you also get many people who think that their taste in music is supreme and everyone else is wrong. This can go both for praising or heavily criticizing an album.

2 The black background with white text

I understand the aesthetic that they're trying to go for, but it honestly hurts my eyes to the point where I can only read smaller reviews and only 1 or 2 at a time. I personally believe that there should be a way on the website for those who find it too difficult to read, to be able to have it normal colours if one wants.

The best thing about this site is actually their comprehensive database and not the subjective reviews/ratings/opinions of people who visit the site. By database I mean info / facts about the bands, albums, band members and even the accurate lyrics the site offers.

3 The average scores are very easily messed with

Due to the fact that a lot of bands have very few reviews for an album, a single highly negative score can change the percentage drastically, causing potential listeners to turn away thanks to a few negative reviews.

Yes, the average scores often suck and because of that, I may read some reviews and ratings but at the end of the day, I always trust my own opinion.

4 Extremely hyperbolic scores from many people

In another point I'll go into more detail, but so many underrated albums get ridiculously high scores thanks to a few people, as well as just generally insanely high or low scores.

5 A lot of popular albums and bands get much lower scores than they deserve because of a few people calling it overrated and giving it 0%

Yes, I've seen some of the 0% ratings. Most of them are just spiteful, biased and unfair. And if you read the reviews you would quickly understand that they were written by people who had no idea what they were talking about. Like, Madonna fans trying to understand a great progressive death metal album.

I believe that no album deserves a 0% rating, as that would mean that there was not a single thing that was even slightly redeemable about it, much less an album like Master of Puppets or Vulgar Display of Power.

6 A lot of modern metal is reviewed negatively by a lot of people who have a bias against it

Take Trivium as an example, Shogun is known to be a very good album overall, possibly the band's strongest, but because a lot of the elitists call them a Metallica ripoff, the average score of it from 15 reviews is 65%. I'm not saying that my opinion is superior, but I find it annoying when highly acclaimed albums get destroyed by people who refuse to accept any form of modern metal, or music in general.

7 The regulations for what is allowed and what isn't is written in a fairly annoying way in certain parts
8 Many underrated or unknown bands don't get enough reviews (or any reviews most of the time) for people to get an accurate impression of them

Getting 1 90% review doesn't necessarily mean that a band is 90% material, it simply means that 1 person really likes that album. This can lead to false impressions.

9 A band can make the list if it has a single metal album at any point during its career

I don't think this is bad. I actually think it's one of the best things about this site because:
1) this makes their data base the most comprehensive
2) the site doesn't discriminate by popularity

This adds unnecessary entries of bands that might only have a single ep of metal. This is a more minor complaint though.

10 Some fairly questionable choices

My 2 examples are BTBAM, which I personally think has enough metal influence to count and should be on there, and I think that Rush has no reason to be on the website, as they clearly never have made anything resembling metal. I put this point at the bottom as there is a chance I could be completely wrong about this one.

Agreed. Motörhead is on the site even though Lemmy has stated many times before that his band isn't metal.

The Contenders
11 Moderators refusing to delete obviously non-metal bands
BAdd New Item