[Semaphor]

What works well for me is a metal discord community (run by writers of a review blog [0]). Tons of interesting recommendations, including sometimes non-metal stuff, my favorite album of the year so far is chamber folk / Americana [1].

For new music, I tend to at least give a few seconds to every new release that is of an even slightly interesting sub-genre, older stuff sometimes shows up in what people post they are listening to, but there are also listening pods (me and two others are currently doing a one album a day discography run of Necrophobic), and adopted months: March was Screamarch, where two people curated a list of Screamo and adjacent albums/eps for every day, now it’s Finlapril where a Finn curated 1-2 albums a day moving through the history of Finnish metal.

Since joining, my monthly bandcamp purchases went pretty far up, though. And I’m only buying digital albums, there are quite a few who do vinyl purchases for even higher bills.

[0] https://www.angrymetalguy.com/

[1] Vera Sola - Peacemaker https://verasola.bandcamp.com/album/peacemaker

[cageface]

I hardly ever listen to metal any more but I still often check Angry Metal Guy just because it's such a well run independent music review and community site.

Unfortunately such sites are increasingly rare these days.

[Semaphor]

And no ads/payment whatsoever. Purely volunteer-run, for the fun of writing/reviewing.