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Favorite labels


Midi

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Sometimes we come across labels that seem to have an excessive amount of excellent releases and serve as a tool to discover new music. Hence the question: what are your favorite labels? As for mine... - I, Voidhanger Records - Dark Descend Records - Code666 Records - The Ajna Offensive - ...

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Two of the longest running and most consistent metal labels that I've come across, especially in their earlier years, are Osmose and Peaceville. I don't know that I could pinpoint another label that has released as much top tier material as those two, but there are plenty of other labels that have an abundance of great artists, like Profound Lore, in addition to the ones listed by Midi.

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  • 11 months later...
I don't really pay much attention to labels. Hell half the bands I like I couldn't tell you who's even in them. Maybe I should look through my collection and actually work out what labels were associated with what band and when but that doesn't sound like fun.

It's certainly not something important, but they do tend to have fairly distinctive sounds to their rosters. For instance, you pretty well know what you're going to get when you see that a band was on No Fashion, Barbarian Wrath, Malicious Records, Combat Records, Firebox Records, etc... Also, many labels span various genres, but they still tend to focus on certain sounds, like Napalm Records, Candlelight Records, Earache Records, Relapse Records, Profound Lore Records, etc... People don't really do catalog orders anymore, so paying attention to record labels doesn't matter all that much. In can be helpful in the same way that paying attention to genres can be helpful, but less so.

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Yeah then you've got the sound produced by particular studios like Sunlight Studios and Morrisound. As you say the label isn't as important now that catalogue orders are less popular. Think I'll stick to genres as my guidelines for now. I might get curious one of these days though and look into my collection more.

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  • 6 months later...
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