Way back when I began this blogging task, I set up some news alerts for death metal. Now that we've neared the end of the task I figured it was time I collate the information. The two alerts that I found the most useful were Chad Bower's (from About.com) and the newsletter from metalunderground.com. The first sends out updates about twice a month but metal underground sends out email alerts every day.
The news is global letting fans know when bands move from country to country, where and when they are going on tour and when they announce that they're taking a break to record an album. Also common are public releases of the album covers of upcoming albums. One email I was sent offered me the opportunity to vote on choices of cover art for a bands upcoming release.
One element of these alerts that I found surprising was the very high rate of turnover in the members of bands, it seemed that almost everyday I would recieve a notification that a guitar player had left bandA and was going to create bandB with the drummer and bass player from bandC. I also found it confusing that metal musicians are often refered to in terms of bands that they are no longer in for example they may say; Antton - drummer ex-Venom. It seems to serve as a way of giving credibility or authenticity to a musician by providing them a history. What has been really helpful from the updates is the information they provide about new inteviews or posts from bands themselves, because I have found it more difficult to find direct quotes from the bands, rather than the opinions of fans.
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