If it is for the 'dungeons & dragons / sword & sorcery' influence in its lyrics, I can understand Dio's inclusion on power metal as a pioneer and/or influential figure of the genre, but... Scorpions?

I could see Anvil as an early influence on thrash metal, even some of the Big 4 have Anvil as their influence. And I know this is not the general consensus in MA, but there's a lot of people out there who consider Pantera as a thrash metal band.

On the subject of thrash, Dunn should definitely make a reference to Venom, since "Welcome to Hell" is regarded as the first thrash metal album ever and a definitive influence in the development of the genre. I think my expectations on Dunn's approach are still a bit high, perhaps... :S

I'm doing my best to not be combative about this. I swear to god. Most forums this post would take me to full bore troll mode. But look - if Sails of Charon isn't heavy metal, then there is no such thing as heavy metal pre-1980.

Now that's a good point you have there...

He's not saying Scorpions isn't metal, he's questioning whether they're power metal...

This is funny... I heard a Scorpions interview on our national radio (Kossuth Rádió) the other day (about future disbanding and farewell tour). They got also mentioned here, and now I just checked for pure curiosity if they're on MA: yes, they are, I'm impressed. :)

By who? It's definitely an important influence on the development of thrash and extreme metal, but the first thrash metal album? Welcome to Hell is simply a black and evil NWOBHM record, a more raw version of bands like Bitches Sin, Tank, Raven, and Holocaust. Venom went unmentioned in the NWOBHM episode, so don't expect them in the thrash episode. They will almost certainly be mentioned if there is a black metal episode.

This, pretty much. Arguably, the first thrash record is Metallica's Kill 'em All, and even then it's more of a speed/thrash hybrid so you have to take that with a grain of salt. Also:

Which I really doubt. This is mainstream TV people, so do you realistically expect bands like Mayhem or Emperor to appear there?

PS: Just to clarify; that last part wasn't aimed at you, Nolan.

You guys are silly, if there's a Power metal episode then there's definitely going to be a Death and Black episode, especially since those genres are so popular, much more then power as well as being quite notorious. I highly doubt Blues is popular amongst people who watch VH1 as well, so really it's not that hard to grasp. I think he added Grunge, Shock Rock, Blues and Nu-metal to this first season because if he threw in Doom, Death, Black, Stoner, Gothic all together he wouldn't get renewed because then he'd have to go into the more obscure stuff. This season doesn't have Punk(they we're mentioned in the NWOBHM ep but he featured it in Headbangers journey), hardcore punk or Prog rock which are things he generally talks about as well so I rate we'll see some combination of these for a second season and maybe even he'll stretch out whatever he can for a third season. Although, this doesn't mean he'll butcher those like he has most of the other episodes so far.

The episode guide for the show is already out, and it doesn't exist. He did get episodes for Progressive and Power Metal greenlit.

The episode list for the first season. I've seen it as well. They aren't going top have a list for season 2 for awhile considering they're only half way through season 1. Logic!

You're making the very big assumption that there's going to be a Season 2.

I don't know if anybody else knows this, but in my country of Canada, the station it's on (Much More Music) actually gets this series 8 days before the episode airs on VH1. Just this week, I've been seeing commercials for the Grunge episode. For anybody that wants to see the Thrash episode, here it is: http://www.muchmore.ca/category/shows/metal-evolution/

Of course it may not work, but I haven't checked, so make sure you get some weird IP tool for that. And no, for those wondering, I don't recall Sam Dunn giving Anvil any good time in that episode.

If it's successful why wouldn't they?

Well, given the fact that Dunn managed to come up with 26 subgenres, and this "first season" has... 11 episodes? Perhaps... just perhaps they will give him another season but I don't see that happening

Perhaps not by today's standards, but I remember back in 1990, when a third generation of thrash metal bands were realising albums everywhere, the Big 4 were well established and touring all over Europe and North America, "the lesser six" destroyed everywhere and trehre was this fuzz about the "New Wave of Florida Death Metal" and the Scandinavian Metal Gods (yeah, from all the countries of the region) were about to take over and turn asunder the metal world, the scarce heavy metal press you could find in those days (Metal Hammer, for an instance) were picking what they considered at the time the 10 most important / influential thrash albums of the decade... and these were the chosen few...

1. Venom - Welcome to Hell
2. Metallica - Kill'em All
3. Slayer - Show No Mercy
4. Exodus - Bonded by Blood
5. Dark Angel - Darkness Descends
6- S.O.D. - Speak English or Die!
7. Slayer - Reign in Blood
8. Metallica - Master of Puppets
9. Death - Leprosy
10. Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness

Now, you may or may not agree with the previos list (S.O.D.'s started the "funcore" trend, the riffs in Death's "Leprosy" are quite thrashy, and Morbid Angel's marked the end of an era and the rise of Death Metal, and those were the reasons why they included "Altars...") but that was basically the general consensus back then. Too bad I didn't preserve those magazines, scanning them would have been great.

I know this is quite off-topic, but since you ask me...

So anyone else just finish watching the thrash metal episode? In all honesty, it was what I expected: almost exclusively focused on American bands, specifically ones from the Bay Area, but I didn't think it was too bad...
Until Dunn tried to tie thrash to Swedish Death Metal/Gothenburg??? What the...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Entombed and other early Swedish death metal bands influenced by Swedish punk, Floridian death metal and England's grindcore movement? And then Carcass took influence from that, which ultimately resulted in Heartwork, then Entombed made Wolverine Blues, At The Gates released Slaughter Of The Soul, In Flames and others jumped on, and the American Metalcore movement mixed that with Iron Maiden and "pop-y" punk/hardcore?
It's just... je-ge-wha??? How does Darkness Descends play into all that? We're going to connect these two and ignore Teutonic Thrash, Sepultura and American death metal?
...Weird.

I thought the thrash episode was mostly pretty good. I know that people will be mad that Dunn didn't name a lot of bands they think he should mention, but I thought he did a pretty good job doing an overview of the rise and fall of thrash, and it makes sense that he'd sort of focus on 2 of the biggest bands that travelled separate routes, with Metallica going more commercial and Slayer sticking to what they do best. I was a bit surprised that he didn't mention Pantera at all, considering that they are on his "Thrash" chart. I know a lot of people don't like them around here, but back when they hit big, which was more or less at the end of the thrash golden era, everyone that I knew who liked thrash became Pantera fans. I'm also surprised that he didn't mention more about death metal. Sure, he could do a whole show just on death metal (although, it seems unlikely that VH-1 wants one), but he sort of glossed over it really fast and then jumped to the Gothenburg scene, which I always considered rising more from death metal than thrash (I could be wrong, as I'm not a fan of the Gothenburg sound so I haven't paid tons of attention to it).

I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Testament and Death Angel clips. And showing melodeath groups like At the Gates and Arch Enemy on prime-time TV is pretty ballsy.

Not to be a dick Zelkiiro, but don't you remember that Carcass and Morbid Angel used to appear on MTV?

Old-school MTV wasn't targeting 30-50 year old conservatives. :V

As of right now, I've recorded the Grunge episode before its premiere and have it in a video format. For anybody that wants to know, the last part of the episode has Sam looking at the post-grunge genre and interviewing Chad Kroeger. Just asking, is it against the rules to link to a stream of this episode that I uploaded?

Is that really MTV's targeting audience now? Because I actually thought it was composed exclusively of brain dead teenagers.

No, my post is about VH1's target audience--VH1 being the channel airing this series.

Okay, I agree with you in that aspect.

You know, if this guy linked thrash metal with the Gothenburg scene, I bet he will dare to link shock rock with black or death metal... gods forbid!

The connection was just something like "Thrash died in the 90s and this made people upset, and one reaction was a surge of extreme metal in Sweden."

The thrash episode was the first one I watched of the series, and it wasn't bad. Exactly what I had figured it'd be. A commentary on the big four mainly, a few other commercially successful groups, and the later bands that got influence from it. It was cool as fuck to see Gary Holt a little more than I had expected. I wish they would have focused a little more on the more underground European bands and how they influenced several subgenres after them. Hopefully when and if (I haven't seen the episode list) they touch on death and black metal, they will give more mention to bands such as Sodom, Kreator, Destruction, atleast more in this episode where they just did a two second name dropping of them. The only real European genre they touched on was swedish melodeath, which was a disappointment. Also, I don't see why Celtic Frost got a mention, I never thought them to be considered thrash metal.

But ultimately, you go to see the flagship personalities of the genre, exactly the way you always do. Lars was full of himself, Dave was making weird as fuck comparisons, Gary Holt talked about killing shit, etc.

The thrash episode confirmed a lot of what I thought back in '89 or '90. Or at least, Dunn came to some of the same conclusions. Metal, the underground movement, moves into the mainstream once the Big Four get their major label deals, and the major labels instantly ruin it. Gary Holt openly laments ever writing for the label rather than staying true to himself. Chuck Billy cites it as a bad time for Testament. the Death Angel guys kind of shale their heads, and Dave Lombardo all but spits directly in Metallica's faces. Sam Dunn describes the morphing of thrash into modern rock as a "betrayal", which is exactly the right word.

Dunn needs to spend more time on how metal apparently needs to be underground. It doesn't work in the mainstream. Some goddamn big label pushes for crowd friendly and radio friendly tracks and poof, it ain't metal anymore. Metal then goes where the viable subculture is, i.e. Gothenburg.

Grunge is worth mentioning just for that aspect, but a whole episode on it, while there seemingly isn't one planned for death metal for christs sake, is a waste.

Unfortunately tonight is the only time I'll be able to see an episode, since I'm home from school, and it's the Nu-Metal episode.

With that said, I'm really happy with the opening where Dunn says that Nu-Metal seems to be against everything he loves about Metal and he questions whether or not it deserves to be a part of Metal. I have the feeling he has no interest in doing this episode...

i really liked that part of the episode where the big thrash bands talked about the commercial pressures to alter their aggressive style or more radio friendly songs especially gary holt he really looked pissed/sad about that time. the best was dave though when he talked about throwing the black album down the stairs. the thing that pissed me off was when lars said selling out was staying the same and giving fans what they wanted

So I just watched the Nu-Metal episode on Much More. It starts off with Sam going to Nokia Theater to get Linkin Park's new album. Interestingly enough, even though he said that it pushed the boundaries of metal, even he said he couldn't stand it.

It then features an interview with Scott Ian of the influence of Bring The Noise, then an interview with the bassist of Faith No More, I believe. Then it went into this section on Rage Against The Machine saying that they were the right mix of groove and heaviness. Then they said that Pantera would help others get into nu-metal because they had their own groove. Then he interviewed Jonathan Davis from Korn saying they were the first true nu-metal band. They were also explaining how drop-d tuning and strings with more guitars helped experiment. After that, it was Deftones, saying the turntable was made into an instrument with that band, making soundscapes. And then they say that nu-metal wasn't truly a genre until Sepultera's album Roots because they wanted to try something different like every album.

Then they were talking about Limp Bizkit's origins, nothing I couldn't find on Wikipedia. It was really boring, talking about the Family Values and how it appealed to the mass audience and stuff. Then it was a section of Woodstock '99 and the participants' memories of the festival, showing Fred surfing on plywood, and how he realized that there were riots going on, not for fun. Fred still says it was the greatest concert they ever did. Then they were saying how nu-metal became so popular, it eventually came to Slayer infusing the genre in there music. Cue this second wave of nu-metal, first up, Disturbed. Then they said that the most commercially successful of these are Linkin Park (obviously). He now realizes nu-metal made a bigger impact than he ever imagined.

If anybody wants to download this episode, I'll upload it for you guys. I just want to make sure it's okay with the forum guys here.

Hah! Yeah, typical Lars-esque assholery. Playing what the record company tells you so you can have videos on MTV isn't selling out. Playing what the fans clearly like because you had sold 11 million albums of it up to that point, that's selling out. Sure.

Well, at least...


Perhaps but, fortunately, it doesn't mean that he (or anyone else) has to like that crap


Hey, fine by me. Out of curiosity, was the grunge episode any good?

VH1 is run by a bunch of trolls, so I take anything they say with a grain of salt. Seriously, anyone who can claim that the death of G.G. Allen was less shocking than Fergie wetting herself onstage with a straight face is clearly fucking with us.

I think this whole episode needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I'm surprised they even let him say he doesn't like the music. His statement at the end about it being clear that Nu-Metal is important to Metal (or something like that) is the kind of statement VH1 would force him to make. He knows that whole episode was not about Metal.

One part in particular: One of the Nu-Metal bands mentioned how down-tuning was so important and I think it was one of the sociologists (the guy with the Slayer shirt) said that down-tuning became associated with that Nu-Metal sound. Meanwhile, Autopsy had tuned down to B on Severed Survival (and countless other bands have done it too), and I know Dunn was well aware of that fact. I can only imagine how much he must have been cringing.

Wait, so, "Metal" Evolution..."grunge"? Is Metal Evolution alt rock next? lol Grunge has used metal elements, but it's more of a devolution than an evolution.

Grunge is worth exploring, but they're going to spend three (four, if you're technical and count the pre-metal episode) episodes on non-metal genres and hasn't even mentioned death or black? haha

Well I just watched the Thrash ep, first one I've watched of the show because, hey, I've seen the origins of other genres a hundred fucking times. Overall it was pretty good, only really falling over in the last 10 minutes where he makes some weird points or fails to explain them well. Firstly the melodeath link isn't really there, apart from the Slaughter of the Soul song (An album which I consider more thrash than death actually) which they play none of the things they reference sound like thrash at all. It's as if he'd seen a few songs or albums, like SotS which do have thrash running through them, and tried to shoehorn it into a point spanning a lot of shit that doesn't fit. Also the evolution is more thrash->death->Melodeath so it's a pretty big link to miss out on. Along with that his claims that death and black metal are totally devoid of melody is pretty dismissive, particularly of the later. After that the odd choice to mention Lamb of God and Lamb of God only as a huge carrier of the torch is just confusing, not just due to the minimal thrashiness of the sound, but also due to completely ignoring the half-thrash style they' come out of, and ignoring the genuine new thrash bands.

Oh and one last gripe, the guy at the end who says something along of the lines of "As long as there are kids who are angry, rebellious and confused and want a way to express that anger, there will be a need for thrash" I hate that mind set, I hate metalheads being described as angry angsty kids, it's a horrible image and stereotype, Kerry Kings description of it was far better.

Really I though Global Metal was great, it looked at practically the first metal scene in India, and the violence surrounding Iran and political/religious associations with artist in the Phillipines, I though were very interesting.


On another note, I would of loved to have seen Dunn explore Stoner and Doom metal and an episode on folk metal would be interesting since it is fairly relevant in the modern day, with the popularity of band such Eluveitie and Finntroll. Regardless i still thinks it's an awesome show.

However I will be angry if Djent isn't covered in the progressive, since it's probably the first example of a metal genre becoming gaining a lot of fans through the internet and not through TV (i.e Bulb's soundcloud.)

This! The funny thing is that Dunn's episodes on Glam and Nu-Metal started with his statement of disliking both sub-genres. Yet he spent the whole hour wanking around on each, yet a majority of metal fans around the world would dismiss the whole notion of those two subs even being a part of a true metal.

And on the other hand the most extreme subs (DM, BM) are not even have their own episode. What a joke that guy is. Though in all honesty I think that Much Music has something to do with that. However that does not excuses the fact that Dunn obviously dislikes DM and BM even more than Glam and Nu. Hi is just like that moronic writer Martin Popoff who has spent his whole life listening (and writing about) stadium rock and claiming that what Metal is.