According to this (admittedly 3-year-old) map made by Reddit user “depo_,” the countries with the most metal bands per capita (in the blood-red) are all frozen Nordic nations: Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and to a lesser degree Denmark. The data comes from Encyclopedia Metallum’s archive of metal bands (both active and inactive) and compares national counts to the population figures from the CIA.
The colors don’t do justice to the number of metal bands in Finland. Here’s the top 5:
Finland 53,2023
Svalbard 50,7614
Sweden 37,1384
Liechtenstein 27,2383
Norway 26,9583
Some claim that Finland is “the only country in the world where metal is mainstream”. People actually study Finnish and Norwegian to better understand heavy metal music. By the way, if you are a Swedish citizen, just by existing, you have a 0.25% chance of being IN a metal band!
All of this helps to explain Lordi.
Anyone got more up-to-date data, we’d love to see it!
