How Metal Is Soundwave?

With the Soundwave artist dripfeed starting this week and full announcement looming, the traditional social media uproar about a lack of metal has begun; annihilating any genre that dare stands in its way.

We’ve already seen LA-bred metallers Butcher Babies, metalcore act coldrain and pop punk five-piece Patent Pending added to the bill, which favours the heavier side of the spectrum, but what can we expect from the rest of the line-up? Are the pop-punk hating trolls right? Has the metal aspect of Soundwave been diluted over the past couple of years? (Check out the comments in the Facebook post below.)

We went back over the past four line-ups, crunched the numbers and put the results into some eye-pleasing charts which prove the naysayers wrong. Since 2011, we’ve seen an increase in metal acts on the bill, with almost 40% of the acts in 2013 being metal in one form or another, averaging 36% over the past four years:

There's still a decent amount of non-metal genres on offer, but analysing the past four years, we can see that the only other genre that comes close is rock.

If pie graphs aren't your cup of tea or need some more convincing, maybe a bar graph will set you straight:

Every year, metal – without fail – dominates the line-up, so all you metalheads out there can be rest assured 2015 will most likely follow suit. There’s also a decent amount of metal on the rumour list too.