Yeah, but Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath are horrible. And that still kicks the other guy's asses. Although I'm not sure about Motorhead.

:finger:

Sonata Arctica definitely rule. But some other Finnish metal bands, while being good to decent don't measure up as well. Children of Bodom are awesome on their first three albums, but afterwards, they just kinda got boring at times. Nightwish certainly have their moments, but are mainly a novelty band and are in no way superior to Maiden or Sabbath. Ensiferum certainly don't rise above good/decent. Finntroll are pretty sweet, but again don't compare to the best of British metal. After that, we get a lot of mediocrity. Finnland has it's good bands, but Britain still reigns supreme over it.

If you've got other Finnish metal to show me that puts Britain to shame, please show it to me.

Never! My country sucks.

Ah, you're British? Don't look so sad, give us a smile!

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/5/4767387_0b6e9b005f.jpg

The Metal Order (of the top 6)

USA> UK> Sweden> Germany> Norway> Finland.

The UK retains its position due to the quality of its metal bands in the 1970s and 1980s, since then Sweden produces the best metal bands along with the US.

I didn`t realize the Mighty Salami had posted his picture before on MB!

As much as I appreciate the vote for my homeland, I disagree with it. My ranking would go something like this:

UK > USA > Canada > Japan > Italy > Several other countries that I'm not knowledgable enough to rank but which woul include Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

I`ll re-do it slightly as I now think this is more accurate:

Traditional order:
USA> UK> Germany> Sweden> Norway> Finland

Contemporary Order:
USA> Sweden> Norway> UK> Germany> Finland

Of the other countries you`ve mentioned such as Japan and Italy, I`m guessing the metal bands you are referring to are fairly recent and from the 00s as I know about two bands from these countries!

I'd also kinda like to challenge the US as top dog. We have 300 million people. It would be pretty sad if we hadn't produced a lot of great bands. Unfortunately we also tend to produce incredibly bloated sub genres with vast amounts of crap. Melodic metalcore? Hair metal? Nu-metal? How many thrash bands were there? And most of them just sounded like the last fifty? I think the US may have a bigger percentage of crap than any other country.

That may be true due to your sheer size, but no other country can produce the same variety of metal and with such quality. Most of my favourite bands regardless of genre come from the US and one reason why I love these bands is the diversity between a lot of them. Bands from the west coast sound distinct from the east coast, then there are southern bands and mid western bands and all with a myriad of sounds and influences and often there were bands from one part of the USA doing a sound more typical of another part. British bands were tighter, but in general bands from different parts of the UK didn`t sound that different from one another, which is no surprise given the size of the country.

Looking at metal, you`ve got San Francisco for thrash, Florida for death metal, New Orleans for sludge and a whole load of great metal bands that sound very distinct, from all the other major US cities. If I lived in the USA and had a whole load of money I`d probably go mad, with the sheer choice of bands that I could see live:laughing:

I guess they are more recent bands I'm referring to when it comes to Italy and Japan. It's actually only a handful of bands I'm thinking of but considering that they are some of my favorite metal bands I felt like those countries deserve the nod. Canada is in a similar boat, though the bands I'm thinking of aren't nearly as new.