I REALLY like metal, but REALLY dislike the screamy-yelly bits, which I acknowledge is kind of contradictory.
I think I just don't like vocals, period, metal or otherwise. Anyway...
The symphonic stuff especially, like Blind Guardian (Wheel of Time, Orchestral is probably my all time favorite song!), Nightwish, and Therion, are fuckin amazing; but even within that subset the vocals are kinda overbearing for my taste - a lot of them have operatics, which I also file under the "eh, I'd rather not" category. Fortunately they have some instrumental versions of their songs, AND I LOVE THEM!
...but I keep plugging them into services like Pandora, Spotify, and Youtube Music, and I get either 1) "Oh you like any type of metal? Here's a playlist of 16 hours of dudes ejecting the entire contents of their lungs into a microphone! BWAAAAAAAAAA---" or, 2) "Oh, you like symphonic metal? Here's the same 10 songs over, and over, and over again!
No amount of thumbs up/down-ing on the results appears to have any impact on the algorithm. Youtube music even gives this snarky little popup when I thumbs a song down "Okay, we'll adjust your playlists" and then later plays THAT SAME FUCKING SONG again - not even a different version, but the same URL, which is still actively marked with a thumbs down.
Side question: is there a streaming service that isn't shit for finding new metal? That actually takes into account the different types of metal?
Anywho, looking for recommendations for songs/albums. Bonus points if it has symphonic elements, but any sub-genre is golden, so long as the specimen in question has no vocals, or just -soft- vocals that don't yank the spotlight away from the instrumentals.
Alright, class is wrapping up, I can start knocking these out. Gonna log my progress here, with a rating out of 10 and any comments (all 100% subjective to my personal taste - not looking to bash anyone here!):
Cloudkicker* - 7 - only complaint is some parts get overly repetitive
Maybe look into electric moon, the sword, mogwai, sleep, witchcraft,? I kinda lean towards softer, melodic doom metal but those are just some suggestions off the top of my head