I was curious as to what are the most popular bands that people are currently listening to? I wondered how many metal bands on the charts are well known? I don’t usually pay attention to charts, but I wanted to know how many bands have I not heard of that are popular to others?
I surveyed two groups that I am a part of on Facebook. One is centered in the Midwest, and the other is centered around metal memes and posts in general. I decided to ask two important questions:
“What age range is this group mostly? And what are your top 3 most listened to musicians or bands right now?”
I plan on listening to all of these bands I haven’t heard of. I’m hoping to chip away and tell others what I think, whether it’s albums or songs or comparisons to other bands. I will also cover general information, such as the band’s status and whether they’re currently touring. I want to use this process to discover new bands, not only for myself, but also so I can hopefully expose other people’s ears to new music as well.
I don’t want to write too much of a research paper on this, but here is what I’ve discovered so far….I don’t know much about a lot of metal that’s out there.
I am not sure how much of it is recent. I personally listen to CDs and youtube. My metal tastes tend to focus on classic bands I have always supported, and bands that may have broken up by now. That’s why I want to find out more information and discover new music with these upcoming articles.
Onto some of the stats:
Midwest metal had 88 votes total for age with 37% of the group being aged 45-55. There are 36 comments, of the 36 comments there are 64 bands listed.
Metal Memes had 407 votes total for age, with 38% aged 40-50. There are 75 comments and 100 listed bands.
In both groups, the most popular band people are listening to right now is Sleep Token. Other popular bands listed in both groups were Gojira, Slipknot, Metallica, Ice Nine
Kills, Type O Negative and Motionless in White. Orbit Culture also had 3 votes in each
group. Of these popular bands, Orbit Culture is the one that stuck out to me, as I’ve never heard of them.
Orbit Culture is defined as a melodic death metal band. The band was formed in 2013 in Sweden. They currently have 4 full length albums, 4 EP’s and two of the full length albums come with deluxe/bonus tracks. I decided to dive in with their song ‘ North Star of Nija.’
If you don’t know anything about the band you would assume they have multiple vocalists. I did too, but they do not. Their vocalist, Niklas Karlsson, does all clean and harsh vocals as well as playing guitar. I can see why they are popular. They also seem to be consistently putting out music. I am personally having a hard time comparing them to something I listen to regularly but they are often compared to Gojira it seems.
I am curious as to how much their music has evolved since the beginning with so
many albums in their catalogue. I’ll have to go back and listen. The next song I heard was ‘Carvings.’
The melodic pieces seem to come in right as the chorus ends. It’s still heavy but I can distinguish the bridge of the song as well as the background instruments. Well done on this one. They currently are touring with Slipknot and Knocked Loose. Based on Spotify’s numbers they are listened to 327,244 monthly listeners.
It seems I could find new music based solely on the list of bands I haven’t heard of from
both of these groups. I mostly took these surveys to find out what people are listening to right now. I’m always curious if people are similar to me, not only in age, but in what we’re listening to, and I can confidently say that no we are not.
Even so, I hope to find lots of new music to enjoy from these groups and from my fellow writers here at Harsh Vocals. I have always enjoyed sharing new music with others, and I will continue to check out the bands on this list and tell
you what I think. Not all metal is the same and metalheads are definitely not the same, aside from the fact that we all love metal. Stay tuned for more articles!
Visit Orbit Culture’s website here: https://www.orbitculture.com/home
And check out Orbit Culture’s latest album, Descent, here:
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