Which?

^^^
Fellas! Metal is a diverse thing. You really can't be a hardcore metal fan and listen to only power metal and thrash per say. One must find the metal sound in all kinds of genres.

I used to only like thrash (big 4 + testament), which slowly expanded to death (Carcass,Death) which lead to liking of melodic death (At the gates, Soilwork, inflames) which completely blew the door wide open for me once melodic vocals came in to the mix. Even things like Slipknot and Korn are A-OK Metal in my books.

Its really down to the albums now and which is a good album of that genre and which isn't. Some monumental releases in the last year for me were Fear Factory's Mechanize, Helloweens Sinners, Arch Enemys Kaos Legion, Soilworks last album...

Some disappointments were Inflames's and Trivium's new album, Children of Bodoms new one...

Some good alternative metal bands are Tool and Gojira. Probably my favorite metal bands around with Metallica ofcourse.

IF sucks for a long time now, but CoB fucking killed me.
It used to be my absolute #1 band, I can't even listen to one song from the new album from start to finish.

If looking from an absolute 100% melodic death metal standpoint, inflames sucks I guess. But some stuff they did after Clayman was quite interesting and I liked a lot of it. Last few releases they are almost commercial radio sounding though. Not really down with that...

COB is jsut bland these days. After are you dead yet their songs stopped standing out..

@disolitude

Very much agree, I'll add it's not only about Metal it's about music in general, try not be biased against other music and generas only in this way you'll have the possibility to often enjoy something new and good.

Metallica has always been good. Even at their lowest point they were still head and shoulders above Theory of a NickelCreed and other generic modern rock acts. (I even like Nickelback but still.)

Most modern music sucks, none of it will stand the test of time, you'll see. In a decade nobody will know who Lady Gaga or Katy Perry is. Hell, people barely talk about The Backstreet Boys or Spice Girls anymore and they were cultural icons in the 90's.

Oh, and I haven't seen much discussion about Progressive Metal, stuff like Dream Theater. Seriously, you can't go wrong there.

Well really I don't know...I'm into progressive, They were fantastic in the 90s, but their last albums while still technically remarkable arenot that great on a composition point of view, imo at least. I think Porcupine Tree are becoming (or have become) the next great prog band.

I agree with your previous post defining metal as diverse, but I gotta say I really dig InFlames; particularly Clayman, Reroute and Come Clarity.  Truth is, I don't personally consider them Death Metal (melodic or otherwise) at all.  I know people do label them that way though, which is odd to me.  I define Death Metal as something like Cannibal Corpse, which I personally think is terrible music (just my opinion).

Then there's bands like Cynic, which was founded by former "Death" members Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert.  I guess you could call the vocals Death Metal-like, but the music is so far beyond that incorporating so many different styles (even jazzy bass lines) that it makes lableling them almost impossible.  If nobody here has ever heard their '93 debut album "Focus" I highly suggest you pick it up.  It's one of the best albums of all time; truly amazing musicians.  The band broke up and recently got back together with a new EP and an album called "Traced in Air", but I haven't heard it yet.