There are informal studies looking at the prevalence of metal in certain areas of the world, and then there's this one. Simon Davis of Noisey decided to sit down and figured out the "Top 100 Most Metal Cities In The United States," and did so with some damn fine accuracy.
You can read the whole article and his impressive methodology right here on Noisey, but to sum it all up he basically took the top cities in the 2015 U.S. Census and then looked at how many metal bands were in different cities, as per their listing on Encyclopedia Metallum. The Top 10 are…
- Cleveland, OH, with 837 bands
- Portland, OR, with 618 bands
- Pittsburgh, PA, with 601 bands
- Rochester, NY, with 582 bands
- Richmond, VA, with 572 bands
- Salt Lake City, UT, with 555 bands
- Tampa, FL, with 523 bands
- Seattle, WA, with 489 bands
- Minneapolis, MN, with 482 bands
- Lansing, MI, with 469 bands
These totals are the total of bands that have come out of those cities, whether they're active currently or not. Davis also adds that if you're just looking at currently active bands, Oregon has the highest amount of metal bands with 146, while Mississippi has the least with 17.
Some other major cities of note that were surprising are…
- Boston, MA, which comes in at #13 with 439 bands.
- New Orleans, LA, which comes in at #35 with 234 bands.
- Philadelphia, PA, which comes in at #51 with 163 bands.
- New York, NY, which comes in at #80 with 103 bands.
- Anchorage, AK, which comes in at #98 with 70 bands.
- Literally anywhere, NJ, not on the list. Really, NJ? Come on.
Seriously, go read his whole article. It's fantastic. Here's the full infographic:
