The Metal Scene

Written by Crux Humanus

Tracked metal scene might sound somewhat fictional to the majority of the scene involved people out there, but it exists, breathes and actually is doing quite well.

Personally speaking, the first ever tracked material that I've heard was some house music. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't imagine to myself, back then, that metal could be tracked. As time passed, I even threw that wicked idea out of my mind.

Somewhere around 1996, I encountered the Internet for the first time. At that period of time, my track collection consisted of about a hundred tunes, not even a single one having a guitar sample in it. And so, one of the first activities of mine on the net was discovering the tracking scene. With great sorrow I noticed, that all the groups that I have found, were specializing in electronic types of musical genres. Not giving up hope, I tried seeking for any, if at all, metal composers harder. After a week of that, I assumed that metal is impossible to track, and hence no one attempts. The last hope seemed gone.

I continued to gather the electronic tracks, until one day, at the beginning of 1997, I saw this track, on one of the big archives, it was a Metallica cover. Immediately, I felt a magnetic drawing to that song. After instantly downloading it, and listening to it for uncountable times, I read the file info, and there it was, that magical URL, http://www.geocities.com/~frizfry. The next night, I visited there, and was amazed. Metal tracking, as I found out that very night, was possible. That site was run by a guy called FrizzleFried, who was doing a great contribution to the then starting metal scene, and is still active.

Later, after downloading all of the site's contents, I visited the links page, and from there was transferred to a now legendary group, Horde, site. It was at its dying stages that time, and I was very disappointed - I found a soon-to-be-dead metal scene, that was what I thought. Downloading every existing Horde's song, I consolated myself, being sure it won't end this way. I continued visiting FrizzleFried's place for a relatively long period of time, getting the once-in-a-week-posted-song, and was partially happy. So it went on, until at autumn of 1997, FrizzleFried mentioned something about a new tracked metal organization at the news section of his site, namely Regal Embryo Dismemberment, or as it was shorted, R.E.D. (http://start.at/red)

It was an organization run by a Finnish guy, Galahad, whose goal was set high - to bring the young metal scene to public awareness, through releases. "I want to make metal known on the net", Galahad said then. Those were the roots.

The state of the metal scene today is nothing compared to a year before. The scene became larger, stronger, and gained much stability. After R.E.D. was established, music groups popped simply out of nowhere - the blackmetallers Goatwarriors, the Russian duo Yerastica and the brutal Armagon, to name a few. Many disorganized releases were brought to us at the beginning, now all the stuff is marked and labeled. The overall policy of the scene nowadays is to concentrate more on a quality music disks, released at a pre-scheduled periods, than on single tracks. The singles weren't completely dropped behind, they just went through some reformation, and now have order in them. During 1998, the scene had greatly evolved. FrizzleFried totally had redone his site, and called it MetalMod Domination (http://metalmod.domination.org/). It was considered to be the biggest and the most informative place on the scene, but that status was lost, because of lack of updates, and the enormous expansion of R.E.D. Regal Embryo Dismemberment now consists of more than 30 members, has a monthly newsletter with news, articles and new releases reviews, an IRC channel (#metal_militia, irc.eu.scene.org, irc.us.scene.org) and an active message board, used for spreading the news and the rumors across the scene. All that, while being frequently updated, made R.E.D. the biggest and the most innovative place in the metal scene.

Looking back at 1998, it could be surely said, that the scene got more mature than ever before in its short life. Many new talents were discovered, and the pioneers only got better. The scene's biggest sites, R.E.D. and MetalMod Domination, both are reffered as the scene's meccas. Dozens of groups, both new and old are releasing quality material. Everything just seems good.

Peeking forth at 1999, it seems like more growth to the metal scene. The year is going to start with two R.E.D. produced metal disks, which will kick the year's start. Later on, you can expect a bunch of more quality disks with the year's progress, more trackers, more quality, more releases, more ideas.

The metal scene is here, as I said at the beginning, and it is here to stay.

- Crux Humanus / R.E.D.