Explanation

This map colours each European country by the number of metal releases of the selected genre. Use the slider to move through the years. In Cumulative mode a country's shade reflects every release up to and including that year; in Per year mode it reflects only releases in that single year. The data is the same country/year dataset used elsewhere on the site, covering 1964 to 2025.

The colour scale is logarithmic and fixed to the busiest country across the whole time span, so a country's shade is comparable from one year to the next — you are watching it grow, not re-normalising every frame.

"Total (all genres)" sums every genre together. Countries in grey have no data (or are not covered by the dataset, such as micro-states).

Is the data accurate? Not perfectly. Genres are recorded at the band level, so a band tagged "black/death" contributes to both "black" and "death". Treat the map as a broad picture of where scenes are, not a precise census.