As I said, the harsher vocal styles would have made the albums different. Do you consider The Gathering the same album as The Legacy?

of course it's my fault for not making myself understood (it seemed obvious to me) but I bless the technique and the search for complexity not only in thrash but in music in general, to go beyond brutality and good riffs…

already from Hell Awaits there is a germ that will give birth to thrash masterpieces more elaborate and as much as I love Bonded at the same time I love AJFA,Killing Technology,The Years of Decay,The Principle of doubt and expecially Time does not heal…

So for me is a blessing that someone influenced thrash in more mature way…

Nothing wrong with mature songwriting and mature lyrics. But I guess my unpopular opinion is that Time Does Not Heal is fucking awful. Yeah it has a great sophisticated lyrical concept but the songs are all way too long and Ron Reinhart gives the most one-note vocal in the history of heavy metal.

This is true. I love DD but TDNH is just boring. Way too long and the vocals are awful.

Mine was simply a reply to Bastarhead post…

who supports a thesis that is impossible to prove…

Tastes are completely subjective

King Diamond's falsettos are complete crap. And when he's not doing them, his normal voice is crap as well. Actually, Mercyful Fate would be a great band if they had a decent singer.

Falsetto can be divisive but the voice is a God

I once had a teacher say something like "if you think labels don't matter, try buying a pair of pants in a foreign country".

I think for most people, they see labels as necessary evils. They can be helpful in finding stuff a person likes, but they can just as easily be a rabbit hole that someone buries themself in. I think I can understand what Empyreal was referring to earlier, but sometimes people can just arbitrarily dislike a label and any band associated with it which is a pretty dishonest and performative way to go about with music. For example, I generally can't stand alternative funk metal of the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine, but for whatever reason, I'm really into the band Primus. I don't know if I can pinpoint what Les Claypool and Larry Lalonde do where avoid annoying or boring me like the aforementioned bands do, but I can't deny that I find a lot of entertainment in their music. That doesn't mean that I'm gonna start seeking out more bands of the alternative funk metal variety, but if I went in with the mentality of "alternative funk metal bad, therefore Primus bad", I wouldn't have been able to discover music that I enjoy.

Looking at the reviews on MA and I'd say yours is not an unpopular opinion.
Personally I love the album, it's a masterpiece, one of my all-time favourites. I bought it when it came out as a teenager and I was able to put a lot of time into listening to albums properly back then, meaning giving it all my attention with no distractions and repeated listens that obviously revealed all the layers and details that such a complex and demanding work will have.

I scoffed at Time Does Not Heal before even listening to it partly because of its advertising of 246 riffs. I thought "wow, someone's probably compensating for lack of songwriting skills by flaunting the amount of riffs their album has", but when I ended up listening to the album, it was pretty good. It's not a desert-island album for me by any means, but I'd listen to it again. Thrash doesn't always need to be scrappy or sound like the first Iron Maiden album to be authentic. The same way that punk eventually evolved into the more complicated new wave music, it was only a matter of time before thrash metal musicians would try making more complex or proggy music. That doesn't mean it was all successful, and I don't blame people who prefer Feel the Fire or Bonded by Blood to Years of Decay, but I think it's rather extreme to sat that ...and Justice for All ruined thrash metal for the rest of the time it was popular.

As a Dane it is sacrilege, but I also don't like King Diamond's vocals at all.

I concur that the vocals on TDNH are annoying. However, they're just one of the worst examples of a tendency that plagued many an otherwise decent or even great thrash band at the time. It seems that many of the vocalists in thrash bands felt compelled to sing ('cause that's vocalists do, right?) even when there weren't any vocal melodies to sing. To a lesser degree this monotone wailing can be found even in bands that are generally held in high regard - Helstar, Forbidden, Heathen, early Overkill etc.

Vocals in thrash metal are probably the hardest aspect to get right, which may be counter-intuitive since on surface level it seems that no special skills are required (like pitch-perfect singing, growling, etc).

Forbidden vocals and Overkill are the best in thrash after the mighty Baloff

Come on

Those more melodic vocals in thrash can be some of the best. Laaz Rockit does it really well. Helstar on the old albums had a really unique one... Realm's singer is fucking killer.

Who the hell said that? I don't agree with that at all.

It's just about the need to section things off and completely put things into neat little boxes that bothers me. It's everyone's own prerogative how to do it. I think Bruce was just speaking broadly and obviously you do need to know what genres are what - that said, as I said before, I do see some people who just have a totally opposite view on appreciating the content than I do. "If it diverts from genre expectations I'm docking points." "This weird outside element was the weak link, should've kept it strict to genre boundaries." It's all just opinions but I just don't see it the way some do.

Also I can't see what other vocals would ever work for Mercyful Fate. King is fucking awesome.

I'd love to hear that music with a different singer and wonder if I had a different take. I can usually handle poor vocals but Reinhart just kills it for me. Too many lyrics for him to spit out I think.

Nah, Ron's vocals are fuckin awesome, grit and clarity, perfect for the complex nature of the songs and the incredibly dark lyrics/themes that Time Does Not Heal deals with. I couldn't imagine anyone else performing those song's.

That statement from BastardHead was what I was referring/responding to. I know that isn't word-for-word what he said, I was just summarizing what he and others (either here on this forum or elsewhere) were implying.

I actually agree with you in broad strokes. It was a good thing for the boundaries of thrash to expand in directions beyond simply "faster and meaner", which basically just led to death metal anyway. I just think a lot of the bands that tried to replicate what AJFA did just weren't equipped for it. There isn't a version of myself anywhere in the multiverse that wants to hear Znowhite, Dark Angel, and Toxik, three of the most unhinged and violent thrash bands in the country, cut the intensity in half, double the length of all of their songs, and get shittier vocalists. It would have been neat if a bunch of new bands cropped up doing long thrash or bands that were already more technical and/or progressive than their peers tried branching out in that direction, but a surprising amount of bands that kicked ass for specifically the opposite reasons tried doing it instead and produced a bunch of stinkers.

Regardless whether that was what Bruce was driving at, the attitude you reject bothers me, too. Not so much when it's an individual's stance (it's their loss) but when it becomes a mass phenomenon.

For example, over at Progarchives this attitude is etched into their rating system:

5 stars: Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
4 stars: Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection
3 stars: Good, but non-essential
2 stars: Collectors/fans only
1 star: Poor. Only for completionists

The rating doesn't reflect if a reviewer loves an album but whether an album consists of the building blocks of the prog genre or not so that "commercial" or pop- and new wave-influenced albums could only get five stars if enough reviewers rebelled against the system. :lemon-face-emoji:

But yet with Hell Awaits,Megadeth albums and Voivod we have an evolution in thrash metal and for two or three “stinkers”albums maybe there are twenty great albums….

And TDNH isn’t The Unspoken King despite its divisiveness, not everyone considers it a failure…

Toxik was never really violent. They were an extreme band in the sense of the songwriting (unhinged speed and technique) and the constant screaming of the vocals, but I would never call them "violent", certainly not in the same sentence as Dark Angel (including 1989 Dark Angel). For years, World Circus was my favorite and Think This was the one with a couple of great songs but too much noodling otherwise. Today, Think This is my favorite and I wonder what it was that bothered me before.

I like Znowhite more than Cyclone Temple for sure, although I still wouldn't put them in the same sentence with Dark Angel (Demolition Hammer or the Germans? Sure. Znowhite? no).

Dark Angel remained just as brutal with Leave Scars and Time Does Not Heal has great music, like some of the comments above, I don't like Ron's performance at all, I find it very irritating and it almost (almost!) ruins the album for me. But it's not the prog, long songwriting that bothers me. At all. In fact, I think I've mentioned this before, TDNH has some of the best intros in metal, I mean all songs!

You know what? Heathen's Victims Of Deception falls right into this trap. Prisoners of Fate is particularly guilty. It wants to be a better version of One and Take Hold of the Flame and fails miserably at both.

I don't really even take ratings that seriously anymore - I do it as a vague way to show how much I think it's worth, but it's more interesting to be able to talk about flaws even of albums you totally love and can't quit playing, without qualifying in a way that I did when I was younger.

I think Slipknot is metal.

-About "Long thrash":

It's not a term I've heard but I do agree with what BastardHead said about AJA's influence on the development of thrash metal in the 90's and I think a very concrete and appreciable style was formed around this school. In fact some of my favourite thrash metal albums are clearly influenced by AJA and MOP and I really appreciate that because, even though I don't like Metallica much, I think they started the wheel with the most potential in thrash. Some examples I love are "Gargoyle - Misogi", "Aspid - Extravasation" and "Meshuggah - Contradictions Collapse".

-About Time Does Not Heal:

I agree with what has been said about the problems the album has, lots of riffs, lots of technicality but little substance when putting it all together in the songs themselves. What I disagree with is Ron Rinehart's performance, I don't consider it his fault when it comes to his vocal delivery, one only has to listen to "Leave Scars" to realise that he is a fantastic thrash vocalist, The thing is that the lyrics of TDNH are so excessive that you have to be a gifted vocalist to sing those paragraphs at breakneck speed and still be able to keep your performance at the top of your game, and even then he sometimes manages to do it, my favourite song on the album is "An Ancient Inherited Shame" and it's partly because his vocal performance does bring out the drama that the lyrics reflect.

Disagree... That album is one of the pinnacles of thrash.

Time Does Not Heal is an interesting album. I used to hate it with a passion, but over time I've started to appreciate it somewhat. Ron's vocals are pretty mediocre, but it is a fun record.

Victims of Deception, however, is fucking crap.

I have a new one... i love the Quorthon solo albums...

The Prodigy are metal. The riff from Their Law is one of the greatest.

I think french never understood metal and maybe rock, they do a big festival for the fun of showing ass but they almost invite U2 on big stage, they do blackmetal with french names and french lyrics for exotic meaning but with no sense, somekind of vintage feeling & often conservatism from old bourgeois family with lost power - funny because they cry french bands are not international but they are, just they don't even know what is reknown out of radio-TV bullshit - oh but they do think Ultra Vomit IS international
they do call metal "hard rock" and think rammstein and slipknot are the most famous metal band
they think vinyl revival is new from now and they think that since almost 15 years now, so they sell there Saxon copy 15euro but it's too damaged to be played
they do try thrash revival aswell, just decades later

all of this for the love of french scene in rock and metal without any consideraton for decades in this country

L’air dans le feu, le ciel embrasé
L’acier sur le feu, et le feu sur l’acier
Une lave jaunie, dans une gorge coulée
Une ébauche entamée, une âme préparée

a band from the north, here in the south provence its bullshit land, just seen from fleamarket this morning a 50euro G+ "Killers" Iron Maiden, what assholes they are

There is so much self-borrowing on Megadeth's dystopia. I really don't understand how so few people noticed the copy/pasted killing is my business riffs and carbon copied hangar 18 title track. It's hard for me to enjoy that album. Say what you want about the latest album's quality, but at least it's not blatantly stealing from earlier songs like that

Errm, "We'll be Back" = "Black Friday"? But I didn't get the appeal of "Dystopia" either. In my unpopular opinion, the official stinker "Super Collider" was much more interesting.

You have to admit the guitar solo on Conquer Or Die was one of the best and impressive fret melting ever heard that year.My unpopular opinion would be the Dystopia album is worth a purchase for that single guitar solo alone.I wonder if it was recorded in one take but that might be disrespectful to Kiko when asking.If it was though, holy shit it's impressive.

...really?

Just gave that track a fresh listen. Ok, if people listen to Megadeth because of that particular lead guitar style, they'll get what they're looking for on "Dystopia", no question, but, sorry, it seems to be music for other people.

But then I've never really been into the lead guitars in Megadeth ( ) because they're always so precise and sober instead of highly emotional or highly unpredictable or unhinged, the two performance modes that knock my personal socks off.



Yes! There's summery hard rock (title track), ill-tempered hard rock ("Burn"), an angry eruption ("Built for War"), a very nice chorus ("Dance in the Rain"), a banjo ("The Blackest Crow") and blues-based elements throughout the whole album. It's really different for a change (and I love blues and hard rock). My personal "Best of Recent Megadeth" would feature the brilliant "Warheads on Foreheads" cover and this track as an opener – and it would have to be played loud! The double bass drum… holy droppings!