page_title: Encyclopaedia Metallum
section_title: Accepted and excluded bands
hierarchical_section_title: Encyclopaedia Metallum / Accepted and excluded bands
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of metal bands per country, using data from Encyclopedia Metallum
context_page_description: Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives is a website which lists bands of predominantly heavy metal music. Encyclopaedia Metallum was described by Matt Sullivan of Nashville Scene as "the Internet's central database for all that is 'tr00' in the metal world." Terrorizer described the site as "a fully-exhaustive list of pretty much every metal band ever, with full discographies, an active forum and an interlinking members list that shows the ever-incestuous beauty of the metal scene". Nevertheless, there are exceptions for bands which fall under disputed genres not accepted by the website.
  Encyclopaedia Metallum attempts to provide comprehensive information on each band, such as a discography, logos, pictures, lyrics, line-ups, biography, trivia and user-submitted reviews. The site also provides a system for submitting bands to the archives. The website is free of advertisements and is run completely independently.
context_section_description: Traditional heavy metal genres and era (such as the NWOBHM) have stringent rulings; users are warned in the rules section to consider bands submitted under these classifications as "ambiguous," in the sense that if a band is submitted with these terms as their genre, the music will be extensively reviewed by the moderators before they decide whether or not to accept the band onto the website. This is because in the past, some submissions labeled with those genres have turned out not to be metal, according to the site's guidelines. Some bands which are commonly referred to as traditional heavy metal or NWOBHM, such as Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions and Stryper, are on the website due to only one or two of the bands' albums meeting the website's specifications.
  Additionally, there are some non-metal bands featured on the site that are considered to be part of the metal scene despite not being metal themselves (usually dark ambient and folk bands, examples being Mortiis, Elend, Nest, Of The Wand & The Moon, Autumn Tears, Stille Volk, etc.). These bands are selected by the moderators "in an admittedly arbitrary fashion," and their submission by normal users is discouraged. Their submission was entirely restricted to site staff in September 2015.
  Certain genres related to metal that the site does not accept are djent and nu metal, although some bands who are on the site have released albums in the latter genre (examples being Machine Head, who released two nu-metal albums while the genre was at its peak in popularity, but have spent most of their career as a groove metal band, and Soulfly, who started out as nu-metal before moving away from that sound, and were accepted on the basis of their later albums). Metalcore and deathcore are only allowed on the site if the moderators consider at least one album "clearly more metal than core", examples being As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage, After the Burial, Carnifex, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord and Despised Icon are allowed on the site while Bring Me the Horizon, Atreyu, Born of Osiris, Between the Buried and Me and Oceano are not allowed.
caption: A map of heavy metal bands per capita based on Encyclopaedia Metallum data.
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