Traxan

I'm watching Decline II. Man these hair metal bands are an embarrassment. I thought Mustaine was being sarcastic when he said in his book that Megadeth came off as the adults in that movie, but damn he was right.

wishbone

I remember the club owner going on and on about how big Odin was going to be. Um yeah...

Odin! Odin! Odin!

Josh-da-man

I think one of those guys bagged my groceries yesterday.

Traxan

Well Sam is bumming me out with episode one. He does a segment on classical influence on metal with no mention of or talking to symphonic metal musicians, and now he does a part on jazz without talking to Alex Skolnick, who is there in a clip of Testament practicing. Instead, he talked to Paul Bostaph. How do you talk about Buddy Rich and not get comment from Neil Peart, who has already done a documentary with Sam?

Ridiculous he's talking about the jazz influence in the members of Sabbath and not Megadeth, who were clearly inspired by it.

HUG-H

I like that he has people talking about classical's influence and actual clips of Jascha Heifetz and Pavarotti.
He should have had Lemmy comment on seeing The Beatles at The Cavern Club (They were a loud group before the days when they started getting drowned out by screaming girls)--Didn't he start a band after that? I was also hoping they'd have people talking about "Helter Skelter"--THAT'S like the closest thing to metal that rock had before Black Sabbath.

Traxan

Did anyone catch the most recent episode on thrash? To his credit, Sam went to Gothenberg and discussed how the melo-death scene kept thrash alive in the 90s. He showed a series of band pictures and one featured a guy wearing a shirt for the Japanese band Shadow, a band I love. So I'm curious who that was. It wasn't In Flames, Soilwork or Arch Enemy but it was so fast I had no chance to figure out who it was. So I'm hoping someone got it.

Bluelitespecial

It was pretty interesting. Kind of funny to watch everyone bash Metallica and the black album. It is probably the biggest selling thrash album of all time, and they talked like it was the sellout album for Metallica. Next week is the Grunge episode, even though I wouldn't consider it metal. They could sum it all up in less than a minute. Grunge started when "Nevermind" came out and died the day Kurt Cobain killed himself.

GuessWho

Nirvana, metal? No.

Alice in Chains or Soundgarden, metal? You can make a very good case for it.

nodeerforamonth

The Black Album was ANYTHING BUT thrash!

To the fans that have been with the band since the beginning THAT was the problem! It was NOT thrash!

statcat

exactly

Bluelitespecial

I thought Metallica were not considered sellouts until the Load album and everything after that, when the whole band cut off their long hair.

bunkaroo

To some Metallica sold out the minute they released the video for "One" as they were adamant they would never do a video. The Black album was just the full realization of what started when they got huge while supporting AJFA and that to me was when they really sold out. While the Black album still had some cool moments, Load was a just a fucking joke.

I look back on the Black album fondly now as I was 16 when it came out and it reminds me of that time, but at the time me and my bandmates who worshiped thrash bands were not amused.

nodeerforamonth

The funny thing is that Metallica considered THEMSELVES sellouts for writing "Escape" on Ride The Lightning. They said in Metal Forces and Kick Ass Monthly that they wrote that song to specifically gain airplay and it wasn't "them" and they would never do anything like that again. Nor ever, ever play it live.

NOW to this day, 28 years later, they still refuse to play that song live, despite having written dozens of songs "worse" and miles more of a "sellout" than that one!

Traxan

That had a lot to do with it. But really, metal is no longer about hair. If you're losing it, just cut it off. There's a ton of guys with shaved heads or crew cuts now. That would have been unthinkable 25 years ago. They got embarrassing plugs like Kevin DuBrow or bad wigs.

Still, you gotta love the dig Alice In Chains got on them with the 'friends don't let friends get friends haircuts.'

statcat

I don't care what they say about it. Escape I consider to be one of their best songs.

Josh-da-man

But they'll still play the fucking ballad at every goddamned show.

nodeerforamonth

I agree!

Actually they did play the riff from it at one of their anniversary shows and were stunned when the crowd started singing the lyrics.

Julie Walker

I also like the song and can't understand why the band would refuse to play it. It's an awesome song and rocks in my opinion. The only song I don't like off the Ride the Lightning album was the first track Fight Fire With Fire which did nothing for me. Meanwhile the title track is just amazing and would've been a better opening album track, much like how Hit the Lights is a amazing song that kicks off Kill Em All and is one song I like to crank up.

The Black album has some great songs on it as well even if it's not their best album. But it's definitely the last decent thing they've done in my opinion, and I now just ignore everything that came afterwords despite trying to give them a fair chance at the time. I do own Garage Inc. though mainly for the second disc compiling all the earlier covers (but the sound quality is really lousy upon listening to it recently, and I hope I can someday find earlier releases of the various songs to get better sound quality). Though it is funny how disc two starts out pretty awesome up until you get to the mid-90's covers and you can hear the change in their style.

I think the main reason the Black album gets a lot of hate is pretty simple. Once a band or album becomes popular, it becomes 'cool' to hate them then, so everyone turns on them that followed them up until that point since now everyone knows about the band and stuff. Meanwhile I'm sure all the bands and artists bashing that album wish they had the opportunity to become huge, and thus a bit of jealousy rears its head and thus the cries of 'selling out'. So bash the stuff Metallica did after the Black album and I'm fine with that, since the material is quite bad. But bashing the Black album is pretty stupid and played out today, considering the quality is actually quite good compared to what came afterwords.

Though instead of bashing a bands lesser quality releases, I'd rather concentrate on their good period and enjoy those albums which still sound amazing to this very day. And not every band(none that I can think of) who have continued releasing albums for decades kept putting out quality material. There is usually a cut off point where things begin to lack, and you can practically ignore everything that was released afterwords.

nodeerforamonth

Yeah, but Metallica was popular and selling out 10,000 seat arenas two years earlier when Justice came out.

I do think in most cases when a band becomes popular they're not as good, but that's because they dumb things down to appeal to the masses.

Look at the Goo Goo Dolls. They were pop punk leaders of the pack. Then they got one ballad that broke them big and while they are popular, all they're known for is playing wimpy ballads. They dumbed things down too much.

Traxan

Forget that, they were straight up punk in the beginning. Find their first album, Jud. Or Jed, I forget.

nodeerforamonth

That's what I was talking about.

Their second album was Jed.

Trout

Their original band name was The Sex Maggots.

bunkaroo

I tend to think of it like this:

The Black album as a metal album is a great record both sonically and melodically.

The Black album as Metallica's follow-up to AJFA leaves one wanting.

Bluelitespecial

Tonight is the grunge episode of metal evolution, should be interesting even though I don't think its metal.

Josh-da-man

Grunge is more metal than stuff like Bon Jovi, White Lion, Firehouse, Trixter, ad nauseum.