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I don't usually associate modern rock production with metal, unless you're talking about symphonic or power metal. Different production styles fit different subgenres in my mind; for thrash or death metal, I like the "gritty", raw production that was common in the 80s and early-to-mid 90s. For normal "heavy" metal or anything really technical, I like the production to be fairly clean, with a good amount of breathing room for each of the individual instruments. This production style was common for rock music as a whole from the 1960s until the mid 1990s, when producers discovered they could catch the attention of naive listeners and make their records louder by reducing the dynamic range, which to an audiophile's ears actually makes things sound worse. With power metal and symphonic metal, as these are newer subgenres I've honestly kind of gotten used to hearing them with over-compressed dynamics-be-damned production, like you hear with most modern rock music. It would be *nice* if a producer out there working on a symphonic metal album actually decided to respect the symphonic component and ditch the compression, but I can't see this happening any time soon.

As for bass grooves being more of a rock thing than a metal thing, well, give this a listen.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G5rfPISIwo[/youtube]

Also this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg92QpjRcJk[/youtube]

See? Basses have their place in metal. Metal wouldn't be the same without them!

Anyhow, about In Flames, I will admit that I've mainly only heard their newer stuff, but "Stand Ablaze" actually sounds pretty sick. It actually reminds me of CoB, in that it combines technical playing with black metal-esque vocals. Maybe that's why CoB are considered melodeath; they were referring to THIS melodeath and not the bastardized later versions.

As far as vocal styles go, I somewhat prefer black metal style vocals to typical death metal vocals, as I find that a lot of death metal vocalists sound too similar, though that's not to say I can't appreciate good death growls.

Taste in games, as well as music, is highly subjective, but I would probably absolutely hate SA2 if it weren't for the fact that I played the living crap out of it as a kid.

At one time I fancied myself a "metalhead", but ever since I branched out and discovered that there's more to music than just metal, nowadays I merely consider myself a "fan" of metal. You can thank Nine Inch Nails for this; I was drawn in by songs like "Wish" and "March of the Pigs", which are two of their most metallic songs, and I eventually discovered that I enjoyed their non-metallic material as well. In fact, I would say that my favorite NIN album is actually "Pretty Hate Machine", which is one of the *least* metallic records they've ever recorded. It has more in common with Depeche Mode and Skinny Puppy than with Ministry.

I've found that if you have a good, loud set of speakers, a lot of older music actually sounds much better-produced than newer stuff. Newer stuff is often made to sound superficially better on small speakers and cheap earbuds, due to the fact that the compressed dynamic range better "fits" the capabilities of small speakers, but when you play it on a quality sound system, the defects in the sound become more apparent. Likewise, when you listen to older music on smaller speakers and such, the dynamics and small intricacies get lost since cheap speakers are simply not made to handle those things.

Now, I'm not saying that cost should be the main determining factor in finding a good set of headphones or speakers. Apple earbuds are insanely popular, and expensive, but I find that they sound like absolute shite. With this cheap pair of Philips earbuds I found in an airport gift shop however, I paid less than half as much as a new pair of Apple earbuds would have cost, and found that they delivered much much better sound quality. They weren't the absolute best ones I had ever heard, but they came pretty damn close.

Sorry, I went a bit off topic... again. I am rather picky about sound quality though, and I am NOT a fan of what is known as "the loudness war". I tend to prefer listening to music with clear production that I can listen to at comfortable volumes, rather than over-compressed, louder-than-loud crap designed to be blasted through a teenager's iPod earbuds or some car audio system with a subwoofer that sounds like a swarm of bees.

That's my rant about modern music production, I kind of have "golden ears" as they say, and I've spent far too much time listening to music on gigantic sound systems with eccentric 40 and 50 somethings.

Back to topic, like I mentioned before, I like my metal, but I'm definitely more of an alternative listener and a rivethead. I tried the whole holier-than-thou metalhead thing before, and while that side of me still comes up occasionally, I don't really consider myself a "real" metalhead anymore. I'm more likely to be listening to KoRn than Cannibal Corpse, let's just put it that way.

Not a bad site, but I think they should be more inclusive, though I do understand their reasoning. I think they should accept metalcore/deathcore (even if more strongly rooted in hardcore), industrial and djent stuff.

I think sub-genres of metal are becoming way too granular, and with the derivatives of each sub-genre, it gets even more convoluted, eg., Thrash metal (one of my favorite sub-genres) has derivatives of Crossover, Groove and Teutonic. I guess it's fun to try and classify bands into one sub-genre or derivative, but when it gets argumentative then it's no longer fun. And being that metal is an art form, there will always be a level of subjectivity and "creative differences" between us all.

That being said, I think we can all agree that there are certain elements that define the difference between metal, rock, pop, and punk, but some bands combine some or all (or more) elements to define their sound. For instance, I love Anthrax because they've melded elements of punk and thrash (some alternative when John Bush was the lead singer and also some rap elements) to make their own style of groove metal. Their rhythms are awesome and they usually have songs with catchy riffs. They're typically not poppy, but they have songs with hooks that you hear in many pop songs. Alternatively, A7X as of late I would consider more rock than metal (almost pop-ish at times) and have clearly moved away from the metal (metalcore) sound they had with Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, Waking the Fallen and City of Evil. Still...they are still metal in my eyes because their thick sound and riffing is more a metal element than a pop/rock element.

Metal archives is a good source if you looking for new bands to check out but the forum especially the politic threads are the worst! If you have any unpopular opinions chances are that you can get either bashed on there a lot or even banned. The mods especially is the worse I've ever come across on the internet. So extremely condescending and look down on you if you're not part of their little cult. The Irc of it is even worse because it's like a war zone over there.

I've been checking out this pretty cool site: http://forcesofsteel.com/forums/index.php