Hey now, c'mon. No need for this mindless Hate for the site because of an obvious misunderstanding.

You should know that Spirit of Metal only accepts bands who have a physical release (disk, cassette, vinyl, pretty much anything you can touch) of an album. Now that more and more bands are turning to digital releases as a cheaper alternative, it becomes problematic for our validators to tell what is real and what is not.

If you do think there is a band which is being rejected over and over again for being fake. Just provide them with some images of proof that this is in Fact a real album. There is no point resubmitting albums over and over again, contact the validator.

It is worth noting that 90% of the validators have french as their native language, and because of that, communication can be tough at times. Please, don't get upset if the validators sound "rude", it's just that they lack the syntax of politeness in English

If you have any more problems, contact me.

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I remember having fun once, it was terrible...

ADD Dungeon Synth as genre

(btw, I still think that only accepting physical albums is a big mistake!)

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Actually... there is also an unwritten rule on SoM which says that if a review is going to be written for that album, it does not matter if the album is download only.

The reason for enforcing that rules is to stop fake bands from being added to the site. Although this rule could possibly change due to more bands distributing their music digitally rather than physicals.

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I remember having fun once, it was terrible...

Couldn't you just have some sort of system in which you need to prove a band exists when adding one that only has digital releases? Actually, I'd think that providing the names of band members, songs, albums, and mp3s/YouTube videos would be enough.

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I do album art for bands! Send me a Message or email [email protected] for more info. My website: http://curtisbotham.weebly.com/

That would be enough for me if I was looking at a band... but not for the "other" validators unfortunately. I've had this discussion before about tweaking the system a bit with digital bands, but however Nothing is going to be changed for the time being. Hopefully soon though

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I remember having fun once, it was terrible...

Why there is a War Metal forum but War Metal is not on the genres when adding/editing bands? ADD it.
And again, try to convince the french admins to ADD DSBM too

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If you can gather a strong argument together about adding new genres (that goes for everyone else here, and don't be afraid to team up to create more convincing arguments )I will happily present them to the french administrators (and vise versa if necessary).

I would help, but DSBM and war Metal are Beyond my expertise.

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I remember having fun once, it was terrible...

Well, I understand that you cant count "Black Death" as War Metal (still not the same but...)

But DSBM? For the love of GOD, is a genre itself, No One calls Depressive Suicidal Black Metal "Doom Black Metal" Doom Black is a genre, and Depressive Black Metal is other.

The melodies, the lyrics, the atmosphere, everything is part of a genre. DSBM is different from black Metal

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Yeah, I see where you're coming from.

But there are some things which turn me off from thinking that DSBM is a completely different subgenre of it's own (rather than a base genre with a twist) and that it does not really stand out physically different to other black metal. Apart from general emotion and aesthetic, if the only thing that makes dsbm different to other more "general" (those are super super apostrophes/quotation marks) black Metal is lyrics and sense of Sad atmosphere, I would not really "call it" a distinct genre (maybe a sub-subgenre).

Also, DSBM is one of those classes which has a wide variety of styles within. Compare Lifelover and Gris for example (yes, this is an Extreme case), both DSBM but have radically different sounds. The only thing they really have in common (for the most part anyway) is lyrical themes and a depressing tone of music. I don't know if I can speak for others here, but I wouldn't class Lifelover and Gris in the same genre because of their differences in sound. This ambiguity of what dsbm actually is, makes it a problem with calling it, it's own genre.

Finally, if we look at how Spirit of Metal lays out it's genre classifications, we can see that there is already a wide spread of black Metal and sub-genres. However, like I said before there are differences between genres within dsbm. Adding dsbm to this list of genres would lead to confusion about where to put a band, and may cause doubling up.

In short: I think dsbm is more of a conceptual idea, rather than something distinct . Also its a side dish, not the main course.

Although, like I said before, I'm not an expert in black Metal so feel free to comment on what I have written. This is open to (friendly) discussion

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I remember having fun once, it was terrible...

I'll give you an argument: Unblack Metal. The only difference is the "general emotion" and Unblack is a genre here in SOM

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