hello all, i am a citizen of the bay area in california. ive recently heard about some people talking trash about the san jose scene on this site. which i find hilarious. but unfortunately, i cant find anything or dig up anything. so tell me some shitty things about your scene in your area. ill go first: usually, everyone is just a wanabe tough guy. its all bark no bite. theyl hit you up on social media and talk shit. but when they see u at shows, they refuse to take action. which is lame. another thing about my local scene. is all the annoying tiktok posers jumping on the bandwagon since they dont get enough attention at home. so they dress in a costume hoping to get some attention. while doing free advertising for 50yo men. now all of you go off and tell me some shit about your scene. and if you can, tell me something about the bay area scene!

In my area, the scene itself is an amalgamation of folks from various subgroups (the 60s-70s rockers, thrashers, metalheads, e-kids, punks, hardcore heads, etc) which leads to many inflated egos constantly clashing. There's a lot of gatekeeping and, particularly in recent years, if you cannot afford certain threads, jewelry, and stylists you're automatically ignored.

I remember growing up it felt different. I recall in my teens, GenXers were incredibly accepting and when asked would always introduce the younger folks to new bands, but I suppose that's just my personal experience. For the record, I reside in a very popular city on the East Coast which I guess explains why there are so many self-absorbed a-holes. Feels as though it's all gimmick, the music they make is just as shallow as their personalities.

I lost interest in mingling outside, now I'm just kind of floating around cyberspace lol.

I am guessing that I am probably quite a bit older than you, and so I have fond memories of the Bay Area metal scene back in it's heydey- back when Testament, Death Angel and Forbidden were young, hot new up and coming bands playing to crowds of eager young thrashers, at clubs (such as The Stone, San Jose's One Step Beyond, and the Omni in Oakland) which I am pretty sure haven't existed in decades.

Things were different then obviously, no internet, no social media, no such thing as tiktok or any of that crap. I don't know what was said about the San Jose scene on this website and I certainly don't remember reading anything about it. Sounds like a lot of online drama, which is part of the reason I was never that into social media. Back then it was all pretty much one scene and it wasn't really divided into East Bay vs. Peninsula vs. South Bay. Maybe by now it is; that was a long time ago.

There certainly was a certain contingent of people who would show up at metal shows just to "fuck shit up in the pit" and really couldn't care less about the bands that were playing. Just bandwagon wannabe jocks with long hair (or not even long hair) who may or may not have even liked metal in the first place, it was just "Let's go fuck shit up in the pit."

I don't live in the Bay Area anymore so I admit I'm kind of out of touch with what is going on there, band wise, or scene wise. Where I live now it's a much smaller scene, the main issue is there aren't that many venues that book live music of any kind anymore.

Not nearly enough shows.

Most of the local venues are incredibly strict when it comes to what music they'll allow at their venues. It's mostly fiddle music, country, and acoustic singer-songwriter type stuff. Most venues around here won't even allow bands that play pop-punk, let alone metal of any kind.

There's a really good venue around here that multiple booking people use, but one guy is known for his extremely commercial attitude. Not just the bands he books either (which wind up being a bunch of alternative rock/metal acts anyway), but he's also a pay to play type guy as well. And he's not alone; pay to play promoters have had an annoying presence in central PA for a while.

This same guy also personally promotes and manages a few bands and for some reason thinks stuff like this is both aesthetically good and healthy for the band's image. This is supposed to be a Facebook header:



Fucking "sponsors" taking up more than half the image. And yes, I've listened to the music. It sounds like a bunch of kids just discovered Flyleaf in high school two months ago.

It doesn't exist.

The fact that the one fucking venue in town that was doing anything at all was shut down by the officials who are basically holding them, hostage. We were starting to sprout the buds of a scene. But, NOPE! YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE! I hate this fucking place.

My home area scene has a lot of egotripping jackoffs and druggies, and a lot of monotony surrounding a style that outlived its freshness about 2007 or so. There's some great people in mid bands, some great bands with mid people, and every show worth seeing didn't start until laaaaate on work nights which then caused promoters to gripe about how nobody "supports the scene."

I keep in touch with maybe one or two people from there who haven't moved on, either leaving the area behind completely or hung up their instruments to focus in career/family life, and it seems like it's gotten better at the expense of waning interest.

Where I live now technically has a scene, but most bands are either trying to ape trends from a decade ago, sound like whatever deathcore trend is fashionable at the moment, or outright play mallcore. And so fucking many of them are preaching their stripmall church's brand of Christianity.

Haha I know what you mean and I know how you feel. Besides, I envy those parts of the world where the metal scene is comprised of people beyond the age of 18. Like serious people deep into extreme metal who are at their 40s and 50s. That would be super cool for me. Or am I only dreaming and there aren't such scenes?!

People in the scene are really stuck up. Some people won't even come to local gigs because "their quality is shit", but that's just perpetuating the circle.

Also, the fact that most bands are unoriginal as fuck, ride on trends that don't exist anymore, and have English lyrics and band names, as if that's what will make them famous abroad. Heh.

It doesn't really exist! Used to be a good smattering of local bands, but as normal with local scenes, they all went to university and split up. I think the pandemic being in between them splitting and the new batch of potentials meant we had a big gap where no new bands formed so we don't even have local bands at the moment. That said, the city up the road (45 minutes away) tends to get a lot of the smaller tours and has a decent local scene as well so I can't complain too much in terms of actually getting to gigs if I want to.

I live in a city of over 200k people, but original local bands usually play in the outskirts and the small towns in the county. You would think there would be more places to play in a city this size. It's safer for bars/restaurants to get a cover band.

It's one of the best known venues in the world (Rock City - famed for many live albums being filmed there), yet it really jumps the shark on getting so many bands booked when they're over this side of the pond.

Just like every other place around here that if you like Pantera, and only Pantera, its a good scene

My "city" has many single big band fans, but no metal nerds to come across. That's just how it is on the shores of Lake Ontario.

In our city, most venues that still exist have really dialed back on live music, and many live music venues that existed prior to 2020 no longer exist, or no longer do live music anyway. This has really put a damper on the music scene in general, both metal and all types of rock. We have our annual music festival in March that draws thousands of people and hundreds of bands, and the occasional touring band (that doesn't just skip us over and go straight from Seattle to Denver, or fucking Salt Lake City) but in between- I guess you would say that the local scene that does exist has been driven deeply underground- mostly house parties or private small shows that aren't even advertized. The next big concert that's coming here is Three Days Grace and Chevelle. Whoopee. Hooray for us.

It didn't used to be this way, but again- 2020 really made a mess of things and I don't think it ever recovered. I even talked to a dude today who used to be in a local band, and he said that once 2020 hit, "We just stopped playing" and the band essentially ended. This has happened to a ton of local bands, and with fewer places to play, there's less incentive to keep them going...it's just a bummer, but that's how it is.

EDIT: And I am talking about rock music in general here, not just specific to metal. But what goes for rock, also goes for metal- different "Scenes" but really, it's the same issue across the board. I think the only local metal band still going (somewhat) strong is Ghorot. I'm not sure if By Fire and Sword are still going or not.

There never was a real 'scene' in my town. There have always been metal fans, true, but always scattered here and there.
For most concerts we mostly go to other cities as there is a lot more happening there.
Just like 3 decades ago, there are about 3 venues here that sometimes have rock or metal bands too but on a small scale and never much fans.
Metal in my town is so small that there's only one record store left which sells it (there were 4 in the nineties) but very limited to the bigger names only.
Most metalheads here buy stuff at gigs or online these days anyway.

But regarding the 'scene' in my province.
A lot is happening (concerts as well as new local bands) in the town next to mine but everything is scattered into subcultures and fans of subgenres. It all seems a bit more rigid than decades ago. The fact that the metal scene has more generations in it than 3 decades ago and that there are way more subgenres also impacts this a lot. There isn't much cohesion. What I do notice here is that the oldest generation of metal fans here is the generation with the broadest interest and taste when it comes to metal subgenres.

On the one hand, after COVID kind of settled down many promoters tried to rejuvenate the scene by bringing several underground extreme metal bands, and some more famous ones.

My only grudge is that my town is always second to the capital in terms of everything. From sound quality, organization, venue quality etc.

For example I saw Possessed in my city. The venue didn't have air conditioning, we had like 500-600 people inside with a temperature of like 40 degrees Celsius. The sound was horrible. For the first two tracks poor Beccera was screaming his lungs out and we could not hear him. From what I heard their gig at my country's capital was far better. Better sound, organization etc.

My city doesn't even have a local metal scene, only hard rock/modern "classic" rock stuff.

I'm also new here and understand all to well about what you're saying about todays music scene's.

as far as I can see my local scene is me
and it seems I'm not socialyfriendly and not very good on guitar