Here’s An Infographic of the Most Metal Cities in America
Repping your city is an American tradition. No matter how refined or intelligent someone might be, they should always be ready to shout their area code at a dickhead hater, should that person arise and give them shit. But there are no participation trophies in metal, and so we must admit that some cities are more metal than others. The question, then, arises: which are the most metal cities in America?
Simon Davis over at Noisey decided to find out. Using Encyclopedia Metallum, he determined that the US has approximately 22,983 metal bands within its borders, or 72 bands per million people. He then examined the numbers by city. You can check out the full breakdown in the infographic below, but here’s the top 20:
- Cleveland, OH
- Portland, OR
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Rochester, NY
- Richmond, VA
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Tampa, FL
- Seattle, WA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Lansing, MI
- Atlanta, GA
- Madison, WI
- Boston, MA
- Dayton, OH
- Cincinnati, OH
- Oakland, CA
- San Francisco, CA
- Buffalo, NY
- Providence, RI
- Denver, CO
Okay, so I only included 20 so that Denver was on the list. But hey, Denver, we made it into the Top 20!
The list might actually be kind of surprising for some. New York City is #80, which seems low but actually sort of makes sense, given its art rock background and the many other musical subcultures that metal has to contend with. Davis also notes that certain cities’ numbers are due to their metal history–Cleveland, he notes, doesn’t have a ton of active bands, but was host to a huge number of OSDM bands from the ’90s.
Anyway, check out the full breakdown below. Let us know if you think any cities got shafted, or if there are cities not listed that may not have a ton of metal bands but are still metal as fuck.
