Pet Grief: The Top 10 Responses to our Metal list

This week, we at Treble published a list of our 100 favorite metal albums. We called it Treble’s Top 100 Metal Albums because it’s based on our opinions — informed opinions based on combined decades of listening to metal, but opinions all the same. That’s why we didn’t call it the “100 Greatest” or “Most Influential” or “Most Important” metal albums, or whatever. Who really wants to get that rigid and self-important about this stuff, really?

But back in June, when we were in the planning phases, I predicted one thing correctly:

Next month on @treblezine we're running a feature that's going to provoke unprecedented amounts of nerd rage.

— Jeff Terich (@1000TimesJeff) June 10, 2014

For the most part, the response has been awesome. It’s fun to get into the nitty gritty of a specific genre or style and get a little dirty with it, roll around in its muck and discover what’s going on under the surface. Sure, not everybody agreed with every placement or every album, but debate and discussion isn’t just fun, or even welcome — it’s a necessary part of writing about music.

But on Facebook, Twitter, and an epic Reddit thread, a handful of angry readers let their opinion be known that this — THIS — was not a Top 100 Metal Albums list they could abide by. It’s an abomination, an affront to all that’s true and pure about metal. It has no power metal! It has no Scorpions! It has no Rammstein… wait, what? And God forbid, an album from 2013 with pink cover art should make it to the top half.

But we don’t take criticism lightly here at Treble. No sir, we want to give you, the reader, the best experience possible. And so, as the site’s editor and concierge, I’m taking some time today to address the 10 most pertinent criticisms about our list. (Note: These are all real comments made about the list; we left the anonymous internet handles out to protect the outraged.) Let’s take a look inside the suggestion box, shall we?

10. I was pleasantly surprised when they started the list off with The Body — made me think that maybe this list wouldn’t be typical list-bait — but tbh they should’ve just made a Nu Metal/alt metal list.

We actually did make an alt-metal list right here. But we draw the nu-metal line at Deftones. And that one System of a Down album. And fine, since you mentioned it, the first Korn album. Can we move on?

9. No Machine Head ‘The Blackening’, which was Metal Hammer’s #1 ranked album for 2000’s decade, and it doesn’t even make this list.

None of us has ever listened to a metal album before. We just took a tally of other magazines’ best-of-metal lists and I guess that one just got away from us.

8. How dumb do you have to be to put Deftones before fucking Crossover or In The Nightside Eclipse?

We put it to a vote, actually. And that’s how the results shook out. It’s entirely possible that a team of 11 writers just enjoyed The Deftones a little bit more than D.R.I. or Emperor, collectively. Or it might have been payola. Probably payola.

7. Hardly a top 100 list, reads more like train of thought listing off of every similar artist. really fucking boring

We started off with System of a Down’s Toxicity and then started naming albums that sounded like it. Mayhem. Bad Brains. Deafheaven. SunnO)))… next thing you know we have a hundred, organized into a — say it with me now — rhymes with “fist”…

6. fucking garbage list. but i enjoyed some write ups on some of the albums here that i like

Just to clarify — this list that enrages you so contains albums you like and you enjoyed reading what we had to say about them? OK, just making sure.

5. Also, is Dillinger Escape Plan even considered metal? I have only listened to Calculating Infinity, and it’s a pretty good mathcore album, but I see no metal influences whatsoever in their music.

No metal influences whatsoever. None. The Dillinger Escape Plan has never even been in the same room as a metal band. Same state, even! No metal to see here, folks.

4. I am about as new to metal as they get, and I could have written a better list. …followed by… I just wonder if this list is just the Dunning-Kruger effect in full display.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is where unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority. Now take a look at what you said before you dropped that Psych 101 nugget.

3. Close the polls guys….it’s all over…Sunbather did it. Shut down everything.

If this were a Burzum album you wouldn’t have blinked. I’m now going to put on “Dream House” and transform all of your nerd rage into double rainbows. (Btw, I absolutely love the reverse-Pavlov effect Deafheaven has on some people. Love it.)

2. paranoid for that matter. hard to call them heavy metal almost.

Yeah, you know? Calling Sabbath metal. Bit of a stretch. Maybe we were thinking of the Black Keys…

1. Who the fuck is Converge???

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Alright, I hope you found this fun and informative, and that this clears up any additional questions. I also hope you liked the metal list, and if you didn’t, well — at least we never called Skrillex one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

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