It may be a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll, but the route is shorter if you want to get Twitter followers. At least if you are swedish and have a history with death metal.
Which swedish band have the most followers by far? If you are a mainstream metal bloke like me, you’ll be a bit surprised of the answer. Take a look at the chart below.
But the most interesting thing with this is that Twitter is an other piece of evidence that it’s the swedish death metal bands, or at least bands with death metal roots, that really fascinates the worlds metal heads.
They even stand out if you compare with international big names in their genre, like for example still active bands like Cannibal Corpse (223 100 followers) and Obituary (140 100).
The whole list:
| Band | Followers | Tweets |
| 1. Amon Amarth | 447 500 | 1 961 |
| 2. In Flames | 329 000 | 7 567 |
| 3. Arch Enemy | 300 600 | 7 219 |
| 4. Messhuggah | 242 500 | 1 333 |
| 5. Opeth | 177 100 | 1 417 |
| 6. Ghost | 143 200 | 1225 |
| 7. Entombed | 142 000 | 704 |
| 8. Sabaton | 114 900 | 27 800 |
| 9. Hammerfall | 84 100 | 8 100 |
| 10. Yngwie Malmsteen | 68 800 | 9 499 |
| 11. Soilwork | 68 400 | 2 514 |
| 12. Therion | 58 000 | 446 |
| 13. Dark Tranquillity | 42 300 | 310 |
| 14. Amaranthe | 34 100 | 2 778 |
| 15. Pain | 27 500 | 639 |
| 16. Avatar | 24 900 | 1 137 |
| 17. Candlemass | 23 800 | 415 |
| 18. Hypocrisy | 17 800 | 410 |
| 19. Europe | 17 800 | 626 |
| 20. Graveyard | 11 600 | 677 |
| 21. At the Gates | 11 300 | 1 630 |
| 22. Mustasch | 8 664 | 1 300 |
| 23. Witchcraft | 5 645 | 134 |
| 24. Pain of Salvation | 5 701 | 212 |
| 25. Evergrey | 5 127 | 6 127 |
Regarding non kind-of-extreme metal genres, well, some seem to do ok, but it’s not a global mass movement of popularity, at least not on Twitter. It doesn’t help much that Yngwie tweet a lot of interesting guitar-stuff.
One exception seems to be the power metal band Sabaton. Power metal giants Blind Guardian has 94 100 followers, Kamelot 76 400 and Helloween 72 200 followers, but Sabaton has 114 000. (Well ok Hammerfall is quite strong as well).
What lies behind the successful strategy of Amon Amarth? Is it about popularity only or a smart twitter-strategy? After a bit of research I think it’s both: they are one of the most popular swedish metal bands on Spotify, and they tweet a lot – with lyrical excerpts, which they have in common with for example the other top three tweeters In Flames and Arch Enemy. (Isn’t that a promising observation for those that claim that young people doesn’t read anymore?) . And of course, they surf on the big wave of the neverending interest in vikings in the popular culture.
Twitter is of course only a snapshot of one of the sources and signs of global internet popularity. But take a brief look at Spotify-plays and you’ll see that there seems to be a strong correlation between twitter popularity and popularity in general.
