Originally Posted by Ninetales

Maybe Im not the best person to ask as music listed as "boring" is usually stuff I like, but I think the last few years have yielded really great extreme metal albums. (I havent really been paying attention as much as id hoped this year though so my knowledge is very much limited).

I dont really know what kind of death metal you like/dislike but bands like Ulcerate, Septic Flesh, Be'lakor, Gorguts, Monolith Deathcult (amongst others) have put out really great stuff in the past few years. So no I dont think the majority of death metal released now is terrible but then again Im not really into the thrashy side of it anyway..

And I think there have been more and better black metal albums recently too. Blood of the Hermit by Mortualia has become one of my favorite albums of this decade of any genre although it would not be difficult to call it boring either. Im a big fan of the droning black metal that seems to be fairly popular right now. Inquisition have put out a couple albums recently that are very good and have a fairly distinctive sound, Murmuure has his lucid, noisy, beautiful album from 2010 that's really really great. Noregs Vaapen by Taake pays homage to an older school of bmetal, The Feral Wisdom by Wormlust has psychedelic undertones, Botanist uses a dulcimer instead of guitars for an incredibly eerie effect, Funerals from an Astral Sphere by Midnight Odyssey is like a celestial journey. All this without mentioning bands like An Autumn for Crippled Children, Sleeping Peonies, Cold Body Radiation, Lantlos, etc who do very cool work with shoegaze or ambient elements. And without mentioning tons of other bands that id like to work into this paragraph but I feel like this has become more of a list than I had wanted to begin with.

And all of this is just since 2010.

All in all, no I dont think extreme metal is in a bad place, in fact I think the opposite. I think its grown exponentially since the 90s and both black and death metal are flourishing with new ideas. I love old school extreme metal as much as the next guy but it cant always stay like it was and im enjoying seeing the branches that are coming from them. And maybe it is harder to find great ones, but thats half the fun.