a long boring post reminiscing about the good old days
When I was 15 or 16, metal was the greatest thing ever. I remember the day "...And Justice for All" came out like it was the best birthday I ever had. I remember the first semi-prog metal I heard, a friend giving me a mix tape... Side A: Slayer - South of Heaven, Side B: Coroner - Punishment for Decadence.
I learned every rhythm guitar line on Justice and South of Heaven. I saw a lot of metal. There were some huge bands back then. I saw Slayer, Anthrax, Sepultura, Coroner, Kreator, Exodus, Testament, Forbidden, Morbid Angel, Death, Prong, Megadeth, Sacred Reich, Voivod, Flotsam and Jetsam (back when Newsted was their bassist), Metallica, and so many little local bands I can't even remember them all, bands like Death Angel and all the Slayer clones like Epidemic, Oblivion... In probably a 2 year period, I saw all of those bands, many of them several times, and many of the shows were packed, if not sold out. We stayed up every weekend til 3 AM, I think it was Friday nights, to watch the Headbanger's ball, first with Adam Curry, then with Ricki Rachtman. We would always flip out when the Sepultura video for "Inner Self" came on, the rare times it appeared, and I still remember the Chemical Assault video that looked like the Clash "Rock the Casbah" video like it was yesterday.
Two things happened that changed everything for me. One was the emergence of Primus. Since I live in the Bay Area, I remember the way they started, playing for $3 or $5 at the Omni on Oakland. It seemed like they played every other weekend, and I saw them tons of times. At first it was just thrilling to see 3 peopel with such ridiculous talent up there wailing away, but after a while, it was just such infectious music. They signalled a little bit of shift in the music scene, and the "thrash/funk" scene started edging out the "long stringy hair" scene. Suddenly the big crowds were Primus crowds, the tickets were $15, and the death metal acts were playing Wednesdays and Thursdays for $5.
The second thing that happened was the travesty of the Black Album. We waited 5 years for that piece of crap. The day it came out, one of us bought a copy and I sat in a tense living room with probably 12 other little metalheads, and we listened to it 3 times in a row. I still feel like a little part of my soul died that day. It was like being betrayed, we all felt like we trusted James Hetfield to guide us through our metal guitar adolescence, and what he gave us was basically an AC/DC album. Say what you want, but metal never recovered from the Black Album. It was the most popular Metallica album up to that point, but the crowd for "metal" shifted from awkward long-haired teens in Forbidden shirts to the whole mullet/Bud shirt crowd.
There were a few points of light after that, like the first Friedman Megadeth album, the Anthrax "Time" album, and there were still a few good Sepultura albums after that. But the scene had clearly changed. I bought a Kreator album to find the music vastly simplified and a pot leaf on the back. Sepultura's "Roots" was an incredible album, but I don't think it was really "metal," just really great heavy tribal music. Coroner covered "She's So Heavy."
The rest of the scene specialized and in doing so, the fan base was splintered into smaller and smaller sections. Prog "Death Metal" was practically jazz, with Chuck Schuldiner assembling groups that included 6 string fretless bass. After Seasons in the Abyss, Slayer went speed/death metal for a few albums. Everything changed. I saw Soundgarden open for Danzig, and was actually impressed that something so loose and sloppy could also make me feel something. When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit in 91 or whatever, metal had already fallen apart.
Now it's so splintered a recovery would be impossible. I mean, Black Metal? Hardcore? Remember the 2 or 3 years of Grindcore? It's so specialized and aimed so directly at each tiny little genre, it's impossible to capture the kind of power and attention that it once did.
...any band has "under 20 years" player is NOT metal band. Period.
