There aren’t too many metal subgenres, you just don’t know the difference between them.

“There are so many metal subgenres, it’s so convoluted and annoying.” It may seem convoluted to you because you don’t know the difference between them. Learn, then speak. Explore all the cool genres. Learn what separates brutal death metal from regular death metal.

“People need to just learn to enjoy the music!” I do both. I recognize what subgenre a band is in, and then I enjoy their music. It’s not hard.

“We need to stop overclassifying everything!” My brother in christ, do you think losers just sat down one day and over classified everything? All these labels came to be from existing musical movements within metal with their own histories and subcultures. No magical boogeyman is doing the overclassifying. Learn, then speak. (No, whatever genre salad joke you’re thinking of doesn’t have its own rich culture and history.)

“What genre a band falls under doesn’t matter!” I mean, yeah. Doesn’t really matter, but it’s still true. Like, if someone calls Lorna shore “brutal death metal”, they’re wrong, but it doesn’t really matter that they’re wrong. (Of course there can be gray area. Like, is seven churches the first death metal album? Can be fun to discuss things like this.)

“What about stuff like pornogrind and nintendocore!” Ok, silly niche little micro genres exist. Who cares about them. I haven’t really explored them to have an opinion on them, but if a micro genre has like 20 bands in it, then I don’t care.

I’d get the whole argument that there were too many metal subgenres if they were actually indistinguishable. (No, I’m not talking about how you find Viking metal indistinguishable from other folk metal. I’m talking about indistinguishable to people with ears).

But really, you just gotta listen to all these styles and explore them and have fun doing so. Sure, you’ve been wrong this whole time, but don’t cry because it happened, smile because it’s over. You’re free, free to explore so many awesome and cool and radical styles with so many different bands.