Metal fragments further than any other genre in this directory, and the subgenre tags are not decorative: heavy metal, thrash, death, black, power, doom, metalcore and hardcore describe audiences that overlap far less than outsiders assume. A station tagged simply "metal" is usually playing the classic and thrash end, with the more extreme subgenres appearing on dedicated channels.
Metal is the hardest genre in this directory to encode well. The combination of continuous distorted guitar, double-kick drums and crash cymbals produces a dense, noise-like signal across the entire spectrum, which is precisely what perceptual encoders are worst at. A metal stream at 96 kbps turns into a hiss with a rhythm; at 128 it is acceptable; at 192 it is genuinely good. If you care about this genre, sort by bitrate and start at the top.
Geographically, the strongest metal radio comes out of Germany and Scandinavia, where the audience is large enough to sustain dedicated commercial and community stations rather than internet-only side-channels.
