Metal Reviews

I just sold all of my CDs but still have a desire to buy my music from here on out. I don't want to use itunes or any DRM media. I've been extremely frustrated with amazon's mp3 store and don't plan on going back to that. So, where do you guys go to get mp3s (that isn't a torrent site) that has a large (obviously) metal library?

iTunes is not perfect, but definitely has some good shit. Lots of obscure albums you'd never expect and all the popular new ones. If I don't buy an actual cd, I only buy from iTunes.

bring on the apple haters

afaik iTunes ditched the DRM thing a while ago.

Buy lossless and make your own MP3 if you insist on using that horrible format. Burn a copy of lossless to the CD or something or store them on an extra hard drive.

I love lossless but it has a big draw back when it comes to portability. First of all, the biggest iPod they make is 160 gig. If I ripped all of my music in lossless, I would have terrabytes worth of music. So I need to be selective about what I bother to rip into lossless.

Secondly, it's arguable whether or not iPods can even handle lossless to the point that it's worth doing. And not everybody wants to drop $800 - $1200 on a HiFiMAN. And even if you do, storage space is an even bigger problem than on an iPod.

Long story short - if you care about portability at all, lossless is too much trouble.

Elegy records (Great selection of black/death, underrated distro)
Nwnprod (One of the largest US metal distros, mainly vinyl, 5 dollar cds)
Paragon Records ( five dollar cds, free shipping in the US, black/death)
Sentinel steel (Heavy/Non gay Europower metal)
Hells Headbangers (one of the biggest metal distros of all, rapid shipping)
Xtreem Music (Spanish distro, lots of great death metal reissues)
Brutal Bands (brutal deat distro)
Dread Records (rapid shipping, decent selection of black/death/punk)
Ominous Domain (massive selection of black metal, reliable distro)
Pagan Fire (atmospheric bm/doom distro, mainly their own releases)
Crestfallen Records (Brutal death label of oop releases may be inactive)
Versets Noir (Canadia bm label, may be inactive)
Hospital Music (Mainly raw bm albums)
Blackmetal.com (lots of black/death, also a selection of rare/oop various albums)
Regimental Records( Various black/death releases, reliable distro)
Shadow Kingdom Records (Massive heavy/power/thrash distro, frequently out of stock but has a lot of rare material, beware of shipping cost)
Echoes of crom records (Limited amount of non gay Power metal/USPM, used cd selection as well)
Razorback records (death metal reissues)
Abyss records (Massive selection of black/death/thrash)
Moribund records (Massive selection of black/death/thrash, reliable distro)
Cmdistro (high shipping, insecure site, but lots of material to choose from)
Negative Existence ( cheap cds from 5-8 dollars, -reliable distro)
Dark Descent Records (Massive selection of black/death/doom this guy gets a lot of out of print material from the early nineties, reliable distro)
Archasm Releasing (limited stock of black/death reliable)
Salvationdistro (black metal distro)
Doomantia (Lots of doom, noise, and other stuff)
20 buck spin (vinyl mainly, cd material 7-9$)
Fallen empire records (mainy vinyl)
Hammer of Hate records (vinyl, obscure black metal)
Satanic Skinhead mailorder (email only distro)
Antitheist Disseminations (rapid shipping, great selection of metal clasics for cheap and lots of melodic/atmospheric bm to choose from)
Forever Plagued Records (Massive selection of black/death, you might have issues with the cart)
Tankcrimes (Mainly thrash/punk)

I'll have to check some of those out.....but the OP was looking for MP3s!

Metalhit.com

Bless you, my son.

I've been wondering if something like this exists for a while now! Dunno how interested I am though. ruv my ipod.

I think I've found a winner in mp3million.com

there he is.

Missed the part where I normally buy cds.

I just wanted to post the Saint Steve picture, so sue me!

Only really worth if you're a total audiophile. As in, the sort that scoffs at ever listening to MP3s in any situation. HiFiMANs are crazy expensive and they have an insanely tiny storage capacity for something that is designed specifically to play lossless files on the go.

I'm kind of an audiophile to an extent - I've spent some pretty silly amounts of money on headphones and amps - but I wouldn't buy a HiFiMAN. It's just a bridge too far.

I'm tempted by the idea because a while ago I noticed my old computer had a nicer sound than my iPod, even playing mp3s (and that my new iPod sounds better than my old one). On top of that, all my attentive listening these days is through my iPod. Price doesn't really phase me because it's something I'd use every day.

That said, small capacity hard drive kills it for me.

Oh yeah I generally buy albums from bandcamp if the band has one, then iTunes if they don't.

I"m not familiar with lossless WTF is it?

It's basically what it sounds like - sound files where no information whatsoever has been lost. As you probably know, MP3s are very significantly compressed so that they can be small enough files for easy storage on both hard disks and iPods. What this means is that a lot of sound quality gets lost in the process, compared to the orignal files mastered at the recording studio.

Lossless files give you the full impact of how the music is supposed to sound, and in fact how it did sound in the studio. Problem is, the file sizes are fucking colossal.

A lot of people can't tell the difference in sound quality, and that's fine, in fact it's better for them because you don't have to bother. There are a lot of audiophiles who think people that listen to MP3s are fools and heathens, but that's a very extreme view and mostly held by assholes. But I have to admit the more you listen to lossless, and then go back to MP3, the more you notice it.

One important thing though - you need good equipment for lossless. You can't just play it on whatever and expect it sound better. You need expensive, high fidelity gear. This explains the HiFiMAN discussion - lossless would usually be enjoyed at home on stereo set-ups. But some people are willing to drop crazy cash for portable devices which will do justice to their lossless files. Crazy, crazy cash.

Nitpick! It's actually how they sound on the CD, not how they sound in the studio. Not everyone thinks that CDs are the pinnacle of audio fidelity, which is why you have things like vinyl's resurgence and the HDCD/SACD formats and such.

mp3million is what I'm going with. They have a huge selection and each song is 10 tracks.

Sorry noodz, but that's not quite right.

CDs are compressed as well. If you download lossless files, they are actually way less compressed than what you hear on CDs. CDs are a very outdated format now, with not much space on them, and just to fit albums on there it has to be very compressed. Not as compressed as an MP3, but still compressed as hell.

Now, if you rip a lossless file from a CD, obviously all you are doing is restricting the amount of compression on the file to what was already present on the CD.

However, as I said, directly downloading a lossless file that hasn't come off a CD is what it sounded like in the studio. Trust me, I know my shit on this one.