Most of my time spent on the Metal-Archives is for surfing across the site looking at different band profiles. I think a good idea for the site would be to have a "Random Band" button on the homepage which would take you to a randomly selected band for you to check out.

Thanks and sorry if this idea has already been suggested.

I disagree. With so metal bands, most stuff you'll get from that is small-time bands with one demo or EP. Or this http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=104506 .

Lol

you don't like bikes ?

What does that have to do with anything? He's talking about finding random bands; the quality or activity of said bands isn't really relevant.

This has been suggested before and many approved (including myself) so I don't know why it hasn't been put into play, unless Morrigan's waiting for V2.

This could perhaps be a fun feature. I've enjoyed the same in Wikipedia a lot sometimes when really bored, only in Wikipedia it takes patience to find something worthwhile. Most of the entries are really boring there:

"Butthill, Nebraska, is a town in Transvestesticle County. In the 2001 census, there were 781 residents, 82 of whom were African-Americans and Bablo is a Mexican. The town is known for it's extremely smelly tannery and the third biggest landfill in the State of Nebraska. The landfill caught fire after a lightning strike in 1993, and has not been put out as of 3rd February, 2008..."

"Plywood welding is a rarely used joining method for structures made of laminated wood. There are currently three companies offering equipment used in welding plywood, one of which was nominated for an Ig-Nobel of Gadgetry in 1997. In popular culture: Garibaldi welded shut a plywood door in Babylon 5 season 13 episode 32 "Wrath of the Slimy Iguan" to prevent the Kwyjibojian Stormtroopers from gaining entry to the..."

On the MA it would be nice. To simulate the effect one can always browse the recently updated bands, but that of course causes a bias towards the more popular bands and those with massive discographies.

You're right; what I meant is that, for that reason, I would find such a feature a bit useless.. just my opinion.

I dont really mind finding bands with only demos out, so long as they have some way of listening to their music, such as a myspace or youtube etc...

There is a semi-solution for this. You can paste http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id= into your browser url bar and put in up to six random numbers after the equals sign (but not higher than 119551 atm as that is the number for the most recently added band) and get random band profiles to come up.

For instance, if you put in a one, you will get the page for Amorphis, a 666 will bring up the page for Black Jester, 1488 is Holy Terror. Just play around with it.

Yes, this also kind of works but as there are currently "only" 56527 bands on MA, the probability of falling upon a "404 error page" is nevertheless of ≈0,527.

Now that is just tedious.

88 is Burzum.

Always wondered if that's just a coincidence... can't be.

I once played around with that to see what band was number one...

Yep, I get way too many 404 errors.

Yep, it's fun, but leads to way to many small villages and railway names.

A fun game is to pick a random word (such as spiderman, or giraffe, or darkthrone) and then hitting random page, and seeing how quickly you can reach your word by clicking links in that page. It works quicker than you'd think (usually less than 15) you just have to be clever about it.

I like to do that on MA with band members' former bands. I get stuck a lot though.

Well, that game is all about knowing the persons who connect the different scenes. Like Kimberley Goss of Sinergy, she's a nice bridge between Finland and Norway, and her bandmates have been in a googolplex of bands. Also, knowing that any band in either Australia or New Zealand, and most bands in Japan are dead-ends. But that's not a discussion for this thread, perhaps someone could make a thread about this in the Tavern.

Yep, it's difficult to cross the seas.

Although I remember there was a way to link Burzum to Slipknot in like 6 moves.

You can also link Black Tribe with Wedard in one move.

It's kind of funny how good Gene Hoglan is for that game. He can get you into almost any genre because of how many bands, and more importantly how many bands of completely different styles that he is in.

Edit: In an effort to actually contribute to this thread, I will say that I think that a random bands function would be a cool addition to the site.

Burzum -> Slipknot takes only two moves.

Burzum -> Satyricon via Samoth
Satyricon -> Slipknot via Joey Jordison.

Touche

I figured out Nokturnal Mortum to Scorpions, but cannot remember how I did it

A guy I know links metal bands with unusual non-metal bands/artists. He has one rule:


He's done:

Venom --> David Bowie
Death --> The Beatles
Slayer --> Avril Lavigne
Burzum --> Duran Duran
Carpathian Forest --> Elvis Presley
Sepultura --> The Smashing Pumpkins
Obituary --> Ween

And others. I could post how he linked them if anyone cares.

I also support a random band feature. More often than not I find myself randomly browsing the "browse by letter" section and randomly clicking on stuff, or doing the same through the country section.

Yeah go on then. I'm interested in the Death --> Beatles / Burzum --> Duran Duran ones, although they may be obvious in the end.

It actually is.

this function is a must be.. i'm totally with you, mate..

This would actually be cool.

You could make an option that only randomizes bands with atleast one album, or simply make it so only "active" bands show up when randomized.

If that is done I hope it would just be an extra option as I would like to have a random search that isn't biased or selective in any way. A random search where you could select the genre would be cool to.