Must we apply a genre tag to every single little dervish
that pops up in metal music? Apparently we must, as is evident from the two
dozen or so metal genres and subgenres that have been created over the last
four decades that fans use to categorize their favorite bands, whether the
bands themselves approve of them or not. Some of the more, uh, interesting
genre tags that have been concocted by fans include death-grind, powerviolence,
death-doom, djent, blackened death metal and, of course,
progressive/sludge/post-hardcore/tribal/ambient (the genre that Neurosis fits
under according to metal-archives.com) and I can only wonder what people are
going to call the new Altar of Plagues album with its black metal-meets-Godflesh
sound. However, there are a blessed few bands out there in the metal world that
defy categorization and fly above the stigma associated with certain
sub-genres. Sweden’s Amon Amarth is one such band.
