“MAP OF DJENT” SHOWS NEW “BIG FOUR”

The Internet is a treasure trove of data just waiting to be spliced and re-assembled in new and interesting ways.

A recent feature added to Got-Djent.com gave users the ability to indicate their favorite bands on their own personal profiles, so the keepers of that site have taken that information and produced a map “where the proximity of two bands on the map indicates how much their respective fanbases overlap.” Fascinating. Check it out: (click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

The results are fascinating.

The most popular bands, or the “Big Four of Djent,” are Periphery, Meshuggah, TesseracT and Animals as Leaders. It’s worth calling into question whether Meshuggah, as the accidental progenitors of the genre who preceded its supposed birth by a decade, should even be called “djent”… but there you have it. It’s interesting to note which bands and musicians are more popular in this scene than I would’ve thought; Cloudkicker has more fans than Veil of Maya or Born of Osiris, while relatively obscure acts like Aliases, The Arusha Accord and Keith Merrow make great showings too.

It’s worth pointing out that the sample audience represents a very specific subset of music fans — namely super-nerdy Internet dorks that are mostly musicians themselves and gravitate towards a certain sound — so this map shouldn’t be taken as a definitive measure of overall band popularity. It’s also worth noting that Got-Djent.com is U.K.-based, so bands like Monuments and Fellsilent presumably have a much better showing than they would if the site were in the U.S. And of course, several non-djent bands are included too, such as Strapipng Young Lad, The Ocean, Mnemic, Gojira, The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza, and others.  But this map is still a great approximation of of band popularity within a certain scene, and it’s laid out in an easy-to-read visual style. Kudos to Got-Djent.com for putting this together!