Genre, sub-genres and labels, oh, my!

About twenty-five years ago if we were talking about music and you said it was metal then it was fairly easy to know what you meant. Bands like Priest, Maiden, Dio, Ozzy and others were all just metal. You may have had some people who chose to use the term hard rock for lighters bands like Def Leppard and Ratt. Then somewhere around that point and slightly toward the end of the decade you started off shoots of the sound and to describe those sounds we got more labels. Thrash and crossover popped up. The origins of death metal came from thrash in the likes of acts like Possessed and Death. Glam became an offshoot of hard rock, but that was 80's glam which wasn't the same animal as early 70's glam. Doom starts to develop a bands like Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Trouble took what Sabbath and Pentagram started and pushed the boundries even more. Skip forward into the 90's and the growing metal underground sees even more offshoots as power metal kind of pulls away from classic metal to become it's own category and black metal develops and grows. Since then even more categories have popped up. Perhaps it's convenient for labels and pr people to use to let people know what style a specific band plays. Reviewers use the labels to let their audience know what genre a band plays. However some times it seems more confusing than it needs to be. However it can be useful for occasion when someone says a band plays symphanic metal I know to avoid it. Anyways it's funny to think how much metal has expanded over the years. Not all bands or genres are to my liking, still the numerous genres do indicate that metal is alive and some, but not all bands are trying new styles and pushing the limits.