Or that Finland has more metal bands per square mile than any other nation on Earth. It’s no accident that so many of the most talented musicians on the planet hail from Finland. Finland spends five times more on musical education per capita than any other country does. Then in the ’90s the main breeding grounds moved again, this time to the icy north – Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark – where they remain to this day.
In the early ’80s the main breeding grounds moved to the US as the thrash movement (and, hot on its heels, the death-metal movement) exploded from San Francisco Bay Area (or in death metal’s case, South Florida) out to all other parts of that nation. Metal was born in Britain in the late ’60s and grew there throughout the ’70s and right up to the early ’80s, with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (or NWoBHM to those in the know) spawning a staggering depth and breadth of talent. Yet magazines continued to print their nonsense about the death of metal, which in reality had never been more alive. A few miles in the other direction, Sweden’s Gothenburg scene was blossoming, with In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and Soilwork spearheading the vanguard. It spawned the trailblazing bands Amorphis, Omnium Gatherum, Swallow the Sun, Insomnium, Ensiferum and Wintersun. And just a few miles away in Finland, the melodic-death-metal scene was being born. That Second Wave – or, as some call it, the First Wave of Norwegian Black Metal – saw a phenomenal surge in creativity which continues to this day. Meanwhile, the Second Wave of Black Metal was building momentum in ways that changed the face of the genre forever.
Some of metal’s biggest-selling outfits sold fewer albums during the grunge years, but the old guard rolled on regardless, continuing to record new music, release it, and play it live around the world. Even in the ’90s when the print media – horseshit-talkers to a man – was blethering about “the death of metal” and claiming Kurt Cobain and Nirvana had killed it, actual events proved otherwise. It expands and diversifies, evolving and surviving. Every year’s a good one for metal, though. It was a good year for metal, a decent year for rock, a so-so year for electronica, and a not-much-happening year for punk.