King Diamond is pretty much his own thing, and doesn’t really fit thematically with much else, but most of his records are concept albums (his next records ‘Them’ and ‘Conspiracy’ are actually a continuing concept).
Mercyful Fate are one of the best HM bands ever, and I’m glad you heard through the production to hear their potential. They really only had two records (‘Melissa’ and ‘Don’t Break The Oath’), as well as a couple of other great records full of demos, EP tracks, etc, which I strongly recommend (‘The Beginning’ and ‘Return of the Vampire’). Their later records (from the mid 90s on) are less interesting.
I didn’t get to Accept yet, it’s on the docket for tomorrow. I did listen to the song Balls to the Wall and I had not heard it before. Feels sorta Judas Priest lite, but I’ll give the whole album a shot.
As for Anthrax…how is this not a Hardcore album? Like, honestly what is the real difference between this and Black Flag or The Circle Jerks?
It has better production values but otherwise
Hyper fast 1-2 1-2 drums? Check
Heavy guitar distortion? Check
Singer who doesn’t so much sign as shout in the general direction of the melody? Check
Humor? Check
Politically charged lyrics? Check
Crazy guitar solos… Wait a second punk doesn’t do guitar shredding.
So, Hardcore if hardcore had real producers instead of DIY and add in shredding solos?
So the thing about thrash is that it pulled a lot of influences from a lot of places; this is, IMO, the first real new sub-genre of metal. It pulls the volume from arena rock and earlier metal acts, the fast pace and simplified song structures (and DIY ethic) of punk rock, the horror imagery from movies, the technical precision of NWOBHM and German speed metal, etc., etc.
Hopefully as you listen to more, especially by the time you get to Slayer, you’ll hear the specific Venom influence, the connection between punk and thrash and the way that the undeniable and infectious energy of thrash manages to make it’s way into so many subsequent iterations of metal.
To that end, and to help you learn more about the genre and about bands therein, I highly recommend two films: Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Music and the more narrowly focused Inside Thrash: The Rise of L.A. Thrash Metal. Both are much rougher than Headbanger’s Journey, but they’re also both solid docs with a lot of good footage and information. Get Thrashed is by far the more complete and better produced, but both are worth watching IMO.
ETA: IMO, Anthrax is a much different band than the west coast 3. They were more focused on melody, less on concise song structure and came up in a very different scene than the west coast scene. Sometime, if you don’t know it already, you should look into the different evolutions of NY/East Coast hardcore and West Coast hardcore. They’re as different as east and west coast rap, IMO.
I’ve read through the thread but may have missed some stuff.
Have you listened to Iron Maiden by Maiden? I saw you seemed to have liked Killers and they are similar. I actually like IM better then Killers. You might like Fear of the Dark as well.
For Priest most people, including me, really enjoy Defenders of the Faith and Painkillers. Both albums for me are really good all the way through. Their new album, Firepower, is my favorite though. I’ve been listening to it since the day it came out and almost every day or so since.
I like Accept, but never really took to Balls to the Wall, like the song but not really the rest of the album, Metal Heart and Russian Roulette are ones from that I go to from that era. Some of their newer stuff isn’t bad, Blind Rage, Blood of Nations, Stalingrad are good.
Anthrax is hit or miss for me, I like a handful of songs from the first few albums, but really like Persistence of Time and Sound of White Noise. The two newest albums are pretty good too.
Has Ozzy come up yet? Bark at the Moon and Crazy Train are both good albums.
I’m all over the place on Motorhead, I could live without the song Ace of Spades. Both Bomber and Iron Fist are really good, but you might want to check out No Remorse which has a wide range of songs.
What about some Armored Saint? I like most of their stuff, but La Raza, Revelations, and Symbol of Salvation are my favorites.
Hehehee, and now you’ve entered the world of Crossover. There were a lot of bands that straddled that line and played shows with other bands that would be otherwise considered punk. D.R.I. were a pretty popular example of that in the day. S.O.D. is another band that included Anthrax’s Scott Ian. It’s probably my favorite metal record from 85-90. Just so heavy on the beat.
Stormtroopers Of Death’s Speak English or Die is a landmark album, IMO: easily one of the single most influential metal recordings of all time.
I was standing in Spec’s in the then-still-fairly-new Coral Springs Mall when they put this on the shelf; I immediately grabbed a copy on cassette. A couple of years later when it came out on CD, a friend bought me a copy for my birthday. A few years after that there was a re-issue with bonus tracks, so I got that. In 1999, I got the Steamhamer-released Platinum Edition on CD. The next year I got the Japanese edition with the live tracks they recorded in Tokyo (both of these had to be special ordered as imports and cost me like 2x what they would have if they were domestic releases). In 2015 I got the 30th Anniversary edition. I have no other single album in my collection of thousands that I’ve felt the need to obsessively collect every edition, in no small part because there are few other albums I’ve listened to as relentlessly as I have this one. It was stunning when it was released: faster, louder and ruder than anything most of us had ever heard before.
For the first few years this was out, those of us lucky enough to have snagged a copy would play it for friends, include stuff on mix tapes we traded, etc; word got around. People were amused, bemused, confused and/or enthused, but nobody listened to this album back then without knowing it was absolutely the heaviest, most brutal ddamned music in existence.
It just can’t be stated properly how much this one album influenced thrash, death metal and grindcore as they developed and it’s reach extends even to metalcore, slam, pornogrind, goregrind, groove metal and all kinds of different extreme metal genres and bands today.
1000% this is an album that headbangers should own, IMO.
ETA: The follow-up, 1999’s Bigger Than The Devil is fun and has some great songs on it, but it’s definitely the lesser of the two. The spontaneity and immediacy of the first album was gone, in large part because of how each album came to be: the first was a spur-of-the-moment thing, a guerrilla session of writing, playing and recording that was far, far, greater than the sum of it’s parts, while the 2nd was the result of deliberate, long-planned and/or anticipated goals, and the difference showed.
So today ended up being unusually busy and I didn’t have as much time for music listening as I normally would. I did get to give Metallia’s Ride The Lightning a spin though. It was good. I actually finished it and immediately started over because it was so cool. I see what people are saying about how they changed, though there were a handful of songs that sounded like the Metallica I was familiar with. Mostly it was, obviously the same band but more so? I feel like this was the most cohesive sound of everything that I have listened to. The solos shred but in a way that sounds organic to the music (like Motorhead and Venom but pretty much no one else.). The beat drives so hard that at times Lars seemed to barely be able to hang on to it. The rhythm guitar felt like a feature player in a way that felt pretty unique.
I am glad that I listened to Judas Priest, Motorhead, Mercyful Fate and Venom before I heard this though because it feels like they took my favorite things from each band and fused them together. Also, unlike Anthrax, while I hear the punk influence this feels clearly like metal and not a different metal adjacent thing
It was kind of a weird experience because Metallica looms so large in pop culture that I felt like I already knew the band, but it was all totally new music to me. I was going to listen to Master of Puppets too but didn’t have time. Going to try to get to that tomorrow as well as some of the albums I wanted to circle back to before I tackle Megadeath.
That is an awesome post, NAF; I’m glad you were able to hear the influences so clearly and that the sense that this was a whole new thing was also present.
I listed the Big 4 in the order I did because IMO each one is somewhat more of the thing than the previous band, with Slayer being the most extreme, the fastest, the most brutal lyrical subject matter, and IMO, the very best of the bunch. In Anthrax, I hear much more arena rock than the others. Metallica was the perfect fusion of heavy metal, speed metal and NWOBHM. Megadeth is both a continuation and a focus of what Metallica was doing, while Slayer were simply so much more punk, more raw and scarier, like Venom (yes: back then Venom’s lyrics seemed genuinely subversive and dangerous; no one straight up sang about praising Satan at the time).
You seem to have a good ear for solos; I think you’ll find Slayer’s to be both chaotic and organic, somehow; their atonal solos are a signature of the band.
Undoubtedly. I kind of judge other metal heads by whether they recognize that record or not. It’s kind of an unfair standard in this day and age, but I still kind of think less of you if you profess to know/like metal and aren’t familiar with that record. It really is far more than the sum of its parts, explaining it does not help. It’s a really singular record. I can’t justify liking something that is intentionally that…Jesus, I can’t think of another word…stupid, but it still has a monumental merit on a subconscious, plodding, primordial level. When they thought about it harder, it didn’t really work. Seriously, I get so much joy from that record, I feel guilty. Like, “Bread and Butter” from the Newbeats or “Sugar, Sugar”* from the Archies level of guilty. No, nothing redeeming here. Enjoy.
But while you’re still on the cusp of what I figure is Metallica’s crest, I think you should pause on the title track of Master of Puppets. I was around when it was new, and saw them on that tour (and subsequent ones that were underwhelming). I used to kind of dismiss this song. I generally preferred the earlier stuff, and felt it was stronger. But over the years, that song has kind of stood out as a master(heh)piece of their original songs. When I’ve heard it recently on the radio, it’s been a particular pleasure. As much as a heavily produced record can be considered “spontaneous”, MOP seems that way, in a way that none of their records afterward attain. “One” almost does in its solo section (the only time I really like one of Hammett’s solos), but the rest lacks energy. It’s similar to what Bo mentioned in his criticism of later S.O.D. records, but transferred to a band that has more tricks to offer than pure pleasure of the beat translated into aggression and energy.
*Apropos of nuttin, one of my favorite live mashups of the late 80’s-early 90’s was the local band Lithium X-Mas doing a medley of Sugar, Sugar and (probably Big Black’s cover of) Wire’s “Heartbeat”
“A singular record”, indeed. Nothing else quite captures a feeling of such joyously aggressive friendly, unbridled, uncensored immediacy as that album does; it is a mosh pit made into songs.
Well said, brother; well said.
MOP is, IMO, the pinnacle of Metallica’s output. It is perfect. It is a model for anyone wanting to write a thrash song. It isn’t the only perfect thrash song, mind you, but it is perfect.
Frankly, I’m not sure Metallica doesn’t think so too. IMO they’ve never even tried to top (or equal) it; they knew they couldn’t so they switched gears a bit and have mostly coasted for the past 25 years.
I get the feeling that his ambition as a drummer outstrip his ability. I’m listening to it again right now and on both Fight Fire with Fire and Escape he doest exactly fail to hang on, but he seems to clearly be struggling.
It does underline the drive of those songs though. I am not a drummer so maybe it’s possible that breathless feeling is intentional, but I don’t know how you do that on purpose.
On this listen I have a new appreciation for how James Hetfield actually holds down the beat with his guitar part. The guy is playing crazy fast and is a freaking metronome.
Everyone else is very technically proficient but Lars is indeed usually playing right at the ragged edge of his abilities, and that’s where the swing in Metallica’s sound comes from. IMO most rock & metal music finds the swing in the rhythm guitar work and the fact that the drums is the source uniquely flavors Metallica’s sound.
King Diamond, IMO, represents the pinnacle and end of the proper influence of the NWOBHM (even tho he’s Dutch, yes :p) and as a pinnacle is also an apex point that can be seen in subsequent music. Abigail in particular is right up there with similar NWOBHM albums like Iron Maiden’s Powerslave or Judas Priest’s British Steel, but it’s time of release also allows in a lot of newer innovations that aren’t present or as prominent on those late '70s/early '80s releases.
In King Diamond you can hear a culmination of KISS, Alice Cooper, NWOBHM bands, speed metal, classical music and training, etc. all coming together in a fantastic package that crosses and blends lines in a number of ways.
Keep that in mind later, because once you get past Death Metal, things get really complicated with the sub-genres and where the influences came from and really interesting with how the different branches grow and flourish (and sometimes grow, wither and then flourish again).
ETA: One of the things that drives that is the technical proficiency of the musicians. Starting with NWOBHM and Eddie Van Halen, the bar was raised considerably and the up-and-coming generation of musicians responded well to the challenge. As such, they wanted to play what they could, so they often stretched the limits of the music to match their abilities, calling in influences from disparate genres simply because they could (or because they were such a part of their non-US/UK culture that they seeped into their rock music regardless).
Aye; he’s ready for Black Metal; Bathory is a good introduction (and one of a handful of BM bands that I halfway like).
But Black Metal’s not really my thing, so you or anyone else with a handle on the genre: feel free to speak up and educate us all; heck, take us all the way thru to today’s kvlt scene if you want.
