Hi! Regarding gig I found Italy is little well but going worse due to little audience, expecially once there was a festival called "black lake fest" near Brescia lake where in the last edition played in one night darkened nocturn slaughtercult behexen satanic warmaster and many more! Now geenerally speaking if you live in northern Italy and can drive up to 50-60 km you can see often some underground band and sometimes more important or out of border bands, if you can drive up to 150-200 km you can see often very interesting gigs! But there is not a recurrent location for great concert example I saw blacklodge hell militia aosoth in one city and after that no great concerts there, hell militia and nachtimystium in another and after that no great concerts in that city, ondskapt somrak the one in another ecc....! Once only Brescia with olden live and Padua with country star, and sometimes Bologna were regulary good!

Where I'm at there isn't much for metal unless it's a huge act, however Chico, which is a college town, has a number of decent metal acts go through and it's only an hour from me. If I want to see symphonic metal acts, which is what I generally prefer, I have to drive down to the bay area(SF), a 3 1/2 hour drive. Next year I move to Dallas and should be a little closer to some good shows.

I think I live on the end of the world, for there's nothing in the way of any musical culture here. No bands I know of, for metal or any genre, for that matter. Scratch that. I think there's some neo-hippy groups who strum guitars singing about god.

But there's nothing in the way of pure adrenaline music here. Not in bands, not in groups, not in venues, not in culture or social life.

Maybe I need to move. >.<

Matchbook...that's sound terrible! But what country do you come from?

Wow Matchbook, I feel for you! Your area must be missing out on so much!

There is definitely no metal culture here(Philly, could be wrong), if there is, it's definitely on the down low. Most of the music genres are mainstream and hip hop. No complaints about who choose to whatever music genres piques. I was cleaning the kitchen yesterday and playing various metal bands, the window was opened, someone said, "Hey! Someone is playing metal." Considering how surprised the fellow sounded, metal music is rather uncommon. That's what makes metal music awesome, perhaps it's a destiny of metal not to be mainstream and hang on the fridges for those who enjoy it.

Perhaps the person was also a metalhead and thought he was the only one

Well, here in finland its kinda decent. I live next to helsinki (capital city), and theres like 4-5 bars/venues that usually have some bands playing live on weekends. Metal is a big thing, cant say how many people listen to metal, Rammstein, Metallica etc are huge here, and the more shallow end of Extreme Metal (Children of Bodom, In Flames etc) is pretty common too on peoples playlists. Band shirts are pretty common, but nowadays the numbers have decreased. Dunno, people are moving towards some fucking retarded dance/electro/house garbage.

What opportunities are there for metal in your areas/home towns?
Well here in Courtenay BC, Canada, theres not much going for metal, as as a metal artist, this kinda sucks balls. We do have venues, and we do have a decent amount of metal fans, but no one seems to stop in our town, or plan anything here. On top of that, theres no real metal or rock hangouts, its all top 40s, and with no shows, no one from here seems to get signed.

Hopefully I can find another place where metal is more prominent when I graduate from college. But until then im stuck in this dump.

I live in Hungary
I'd say a bit poor the scene sadly :/
Mostly everyones concern is core core core and that vagina punk (like 500 times more soft than Rise Against -.- 4 of 5 members playing guitar and singing about how life is good etc... awful). Core bands are very generic and i hold a bit of a grudge against them because their parents are pretty wealthy (which is wouldnt be a problem) and when they go like "mom I wanna start a band" reply: "here are son, some marshalls and tamas" while we at my band use 30 yo equipment, borrowed drums. Like 1 yo. band already has an album (not bad but nothing special either) cuz they had money to record. Once I with my bandmates we went to a vagina punk band's show, we left after like 15 mins and listened to Pantera and Slayer playing cards and Angry Birds. We wasted the cost of 2 beers
On the other hand thrash and heavy is OK. But everyone is only concerned about them, some death metal bands (there was an annual small death festival nearby where i live until the organizer band's vocalist was found on the street his head halfway cut off), and only on a nation-wide festival there were some black metal bands.
Some great bands come here often, there was Cannibal Corpse, Testament, Slayer, King Diamond, but they are of course only in the capitol. Sadly the more extreme bands (Anaal Nathrakh and shit) go to almost all neighbouring countrys to the west but not us which makes me sad :=(