Didn't expect to see something I made on HN while my wife is trying to find something to watch on TV.

So about the site in case anyone is interested. I made it with a friend who was studying multimedia. He helped with the data and I did the coding. Took about a week or two.

The site was originally Flash (remember that). But I ported it to HTML5 a few years ago. It still has those Flash vibes I think. Posted the code to GitHub when I ported it. I did this mostly to keep it alive for old times sake.

So about the mobile support. I planned to do it but got sidetracked building a custom WebGL map renderer because phone performance was poor. However I never finished, life finds a way to get in the way and all that... I have some mobile designs lying around.

The other issue was when I first built the site YouTube didn't really play ads much at all, just those little text ads, and you could embed the player really tiny. So it worked better. In the original flash version I actually hid the video player. But that got the site blacklisted from YouTube, I asked a Google engineer on a dev forum to put a word in and they removed the block, very different times, this was back when Google was a different beast, and you could chat to real people online and the dev communities were much smaller.

I have a illustration of a much bigger map in my sketchbook. It has a lot more subgenres and interconnected things like historical events and so on. But it's huge unfolded, like 2x1.5m or something ridiculous.

I miss those days when the web was full of weird and experimental stuff. I grew up with Newgrounds and Geocities, I'm sure it's all still out there buried under a giant pile of SEO optimised refuse.

Very nice map.

Historical comment only. I first listened to this music in the late 1970s. One big change in the story, over time, is how few people trace the sound to Hendrix now. (Not this map in particular. Metal fans I know would agree with the map.) I think (?) a common current viewpoint is that Led Zep [!?] was foundational but the genre really started with Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.

Which, definitions change. But in 1977 I listened to Purple Haze and, sure, it was "Psychedelic Rock" as indicated on the map. 100%! But it was also almost definitionally metal. Forty-nine years ago, I mean, not today.

[!?] I love Zeppelin. But I would have been laughed out of high school if I'd compared them to metal, or claimed they were even hard rock.

I'd love of this showed me the spiritual successors of a band / sub-genre even if they're not mainstream or well known. For example, I really love Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and a number of other "classic" Heavy Metal bands with a slow, hard but not sludgy brooding sound and amazing vocals. But it's hard finding modern acts with a similar sound. What tends to happen when I search for modern metal is I end up finding stuff that is more a descendant of speed metal, or thrash, or black metal... and none of that really strikes the right chord for me.

There used to be a thing like 20-ish years ago called Musicovery that could sort of do this if you clicked around.

Reminds me very much of https://music.ishkur.com/ which is the same kind of thing but for electronic music.

Ya'll should checkout https://everynoise.com/. Similar in spirit.

Just read the update:

> 2024-01-05 status update: With my 2023-12-04 layoff from Spotify I lost the internal data-access required for ongoing updates to many parts of this site. Most of this, as a result, is now a static snapshot of what, for now, will be the final state from the site's 10-year history and evolution..

what a shame. I didn't realize the author worked for Spotify. Guess it makes sense. Spotify should've acquired it from the author or made a deal with him to keep it live since all the links lead to Spotify anyway.

Great map. There might be some categories missing, couldn't find any Katatonia, Agalloch, Alcest nor Tiamat. Alcest and some Deftones are considered blackgaze and Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room fall more into grey metal.

There's a really great map of electronic music here that I've always loved

https://music.ishkur.com/

i also made something like this. it cover 17M entities across tracks albums artists and labels. posted on show hn a few times but it went unnoticed (hate u (joking))

https://toposonico.com/#lon=14.4313&lat=-1.0200&z=9.10&entit...

Given this is Hacker News, this easily could have been some re-vamped "table" of metal elements or what the linked site ultimately is ... LOL. Personally, I am more happy with the actual site than metallurgy.

Love it, though it looks like the website got the HN hug of death.

One of my favorite documentaries to learn the history of metal is "metal: a headbanger's journey" (available on YouTube).

Took awhile to figure out clicking the skull is the interactive element, I kept clicking the text label and nothing was happening

really nice! For the inclined, there's also

https://www.metal-archives.com/

Reminds me of the works of Ward Shelley. Especially his History of Science Fiction.

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/ward-shelley-history-of-scienc...

The song "Ten Ton Hammer" from Machine Head is not right: it's showing another song. Besides that, fun experience!

And here I was thinking it would be a materials science map

I see Judas Priest, I upvote.

Reminded me a bit on the design space of Metal logos: https://renecutura.eu/metalvis/

Looks great! However I'm not sure how it is supposed to work. Like, should it play doom when I click doom? For me it started with Black Sabbath, and it doesn't change

Not sure why there is Swedish death metal when Melodic Death exists.

Very cool visual representation of metal history. I'm working on something similar for basketball history.

Very nice work of art. (I don't really like the bullets though, they don't seem very metal-y to me. Scythes maybe, or flensing knives.)

It might be fun to have a sort of gazetteer for the map so we can find bands.

That live version of War Pigs is INSANE

This website has instantly more relevance than 50% of the online news outlets out there.

Seeing as this is HN, I was expecting something on chemical properties of iron etc, but was pleasantly surprised

Love it. gonna be listening yardbirds all day today. The map also feels like a jeans.

Where would Mastodon be on this?

This is amazing! But I need SEARCH feature :)

Btw, the map interface is very well implemented, what is it based on?

There is no need for anything else, on the Internet.

To be excapt: This is a Mäp of Metäl, no hair was cut in making the map.

\m/

Most awesome site ever created.

Nu Metal not having any Linkin Park songs is a crime.

beautifully done!

why when i click the different links does new music representing that period not play? I expected to hear 1960's progenitors to metal when I clicked that section

I liked the anti-establishment, Anarchist/socialist vibes of the Hardcore punk rock island. Don't like all of the macho posing and shrieking (neither in punk and especially not in the more "black" part); and double dislike the crass commercialization of so much of it.

Now that is a great map!