To each their own. All bands are great for a certain reason.
On a side note, it think Clive Burr was fired because he was a drunken.

I've saw deicide live a year ago, and the Hoffman brothers are obviously right about Steve Asheim. He can simply not play drums. At all. There's no way he could have ever played those albums without studio magic.

I'm sorry but it's much more "true metalhead" to like Manilla Road than to like Manowar.

I think so too, but Manowar is more befitting of the stereotype.

I never got this sentiment. With the exception of about three or maybe four songs, Manowar's first four are as forgettable to me as the rest of their output.

I don't think there's a clearer "DON'T BOTHER" warning in discussion than Manowar criticism. Leaving the hall.

@Ericfg: The bit where Paul Di'Anno said that if he threw a brick at someone in LA he'd hit the Van Halens and Motley Crue was at the start of the book. One part of the book that I found to be highly exaggerated was the "I got my road-crew to smuggle me into America" story, not only that but some of the groupie stories sounded like something you'd find a bad porn script.

I don't think Iommi and Martin spoke to eachother very much post-Forbidden but I'm not sure if that's truth or hearsay.

all this Manowar talk is killing my buzz.

They're also fucking pricks. Friend of mine was trying to bring Amon up here not too long ago, and that completely fell flat because Eric Hoffman was, as he put it, "the biggest fucking asshole I've ever met". Rude, unprofessional, INCREDIBLY pushy and demanding... just a world-class prick in every possible way.

Enough about Manowar. REALLY!
Why should every thread center around them and their utter pointlessness. I actually like Battle Hymns and Hail To England very much and Into Glory Ride is fuckin' Epic heavy metal but it always pisses me off that they generate such a great deal of conversation given how of little importance the actual music has been for several years now. They took themselves too seriously that it turned into a joke and really I can't see any defence for Joey. That guy is a total douche. He loves his fans but he feels they are lucky to have him and not the other way round.

Three posts back to back talking about Manowar just to mention we shouldn't talk about Manowar? Probably not the best way to go about it. Here's an idea. Talk about something else!

Does anyone remember the Motley Crue bio where Nikki Sixx mentions sleeping with Bruce Dickinson's wife? I would consider this being nasty to another band.

Also, I don't think anybody said this yet: Manowar

Oh, Riffs! Don't be cruel to me! I usually love your commentary but this ode to true real unstained true mighty true true true true true and DID I MENTION TRUE?????????? DID I REALLY? Joey "True" DeMaio and his band of true real brothers has gotten older than the Titanic.

A link on that Nikki claim? And where does he get off saying that about Bruce?

Google their official biography. Around 2005, I think. The book is worth a read even if you hate Motley Crue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11LxDerJlSo

PS: I'm kinda yanking your chain with Manowar, hope you realize that. Must be the spirit of the holidays but it's all in humor (although yeah, I DO like the first six albums a lot )

Oh my god! Fucking Nikki Sixx!

It's also where Bruce Dickinson got the inspiration for Tattooed Millionaire if I remember right.

It looks like Richard Lagergren quit Portrait, defaced their Facebook page by removing all information (including all pictures), and took down their website. I'm not clear on what has happened but there is definitely something going on, in there. I thought that they had broken up at first, but they recently have announced they are actually still together and will still be making a third album. Hopefully they can recover from the loss of such a key song-writer for that album.

I remember reading, not too long ago, that Mauro Mercurio was kicked out of Hour of Penance because he got drunk and broke a TV at a venue they were playing at (in Spain, I think), apparently this led to the police being called and for some reason the band's instruments were confiscated... the last part sounds kinda like fiction, but who knows. Francesco Paoli (the vocalist) quit the band because he didn't want to be associated with unprofessionalism (apparently that's not a word... it should be). As much as I like Mauro's drumming, Francesco was right, I think. He's now the drummer of Fleshgod Apocalypse.

They're also fucking pricks. Friend of mine was trying to bring Amon up here not too long ago, and that completely fell flat because Eric Hoffman was, as he put it, "the biggest fucking asshole I've ever met". Rude, unprofessional, INCREDIBLY pushy and demanding... just a world-class prick in every possible way.[/quote]

I completely believe that just from seeing Amon's website and all the bullshit with that.

Confirmed by Giulio Moschini and James Payne when I asked. He didn't just smash the TV, either - he fucking DEMOLISHED the dressing area and caused thousands worth of damage. Paoli was apparently going to leave anyways, but that greatly accelerated his departure. Also, between that and other instances of drunken idiocy from Mauro, it was the straw that broke the camel's back and made Giulio go "okay, we've had enough of this shit, you can get the fuck out right now".

Peavy Wagner doesn't look too kindly on the other members of the Black in Mind to Ghosts era line-up. Who, apparently, tried to destroy Rage and then went on to do some lame pop project or whatever it was. Sounds pretty shitty of them. Actually, he has beef with Mike Terrana, too, who in a proto-Geoff Tate move spat at him after a concert.

I've heard that Mike Terrana is a total dick in general. As someone put it best, "he used to play with Malmsteen, and holy shit does it show.", which seems to be the rule for a very large amount of former and current Malmsteen personnel.

True to the bone. They were supposed to play here at that time and because of those incidents they cancelled all their remaining shows.

I think Francesco was already drumming with Fleshgod Apocalypse long before Hour of Penance. He played Guitar and sang on Oracles then switched to drums after leaving HoP

Mauro played session drums on Oracles and gave Paoli a few lessons. This was prior to the "rockstar incident", as James put it.

Heh, I can believe that. He apparently took great offence to the fact that the band told him that people were complaining about his drum solos.

As someone who had this happen at least once, fucking with a band's websites right after you leave said band is a huge douche move.

Twisted_Psychology, I think Portalgate was already ample evidence that the band consists of huge douches in general.

On learning to play "Black Night", a shuffle recorded by Deep Purple, when drummer Ian Paice (self-taught) was only 22 and at the last minute because the label wanted a single:

[...] and for me that just wouldn't work out. The slowness of it — what kind of drove me into playing extreme drums in the first place was not having to play slow stuff like that, but the idea of still doing a cover was cool. We played around with it a bit and what we did was that we turned it into a DEICIDE song. We turned it into a death metal song and changed up a few things, the speed and the time signature

Basically, they turned it into something he could play.

I'm late on this but damn this quote is hilarious. I've never been a big fan of Testament, I glossed over them (so to speak), and that was that. I was stuck in my a family member's car yesterday listening to the awful metal station on Sirius radio while they did their shopping and Testament happened to play twice during the occasion. Both times I couldn't believe how similar to Metallica they sounded. I'm not surprised they caught shit for this. I'm not saying they're bad, but they definitely sounded extremely similar to Metallica, if only at one point in their career.

That Guitar World interview makes Mustaine and Ian look like dicks. I appreciate Testament even though they never became a favorite band of mine. First time I saw them was a few months before that interview, during the Painkiller tour (Testament-Megadeth-Judas Priest bill). They did a great job there and that's when I got into them.

It showed in their music that they were obviously very much influenced by early thrash and they were also very transparent about that fact in almost every interview I heard or read on this. I've always sensed a lot of respect by them for their influences and their peers. They were not innovators within the Bay Area but they did a good job creating honest, solid thrash albums. The thing I always appreciated about them was there enthusiasm for metal music and this has allowed them to pick up other influences along the way and become what they are now. I also like how they've kept on growing as musicians and I particularly admire the perseverance displayed by Billy and Peterson in keeping Testament afloat through really tough years with horrendous health issues, big changes in metal trends and the music industry and lots of lineup changes.

So while they may not have ever been leaders in metal or "that band" which defines a particular era, they've also managed not too far from their roots like a lot of bands mentioned in this interview whose shit supposedly never stinks. They've kept the workman attitude and I like that their more recent music is respectful of their legacy but is relevant enough to not simply be a nostalgia act. Plus, a Testament show remains a fun happening for me.

I guess I just don't understand why Mustaine always does stuff like this.

I like quite a bit of Megadeth's material (pretty much everything up until and including Youthanasia), but Mustaine is a renown asshat. The only difference between old school Mustaine and modern day Mustaine is that the latter became everything that the former hated; a conservative, fundamentalist, willingly ignorant fuck.

The most funny stuff is that Testament is like 100x better than them nowadays and instead whining and getting softer over time, they reinvented themselves enough to keep their sound but also getting stronger.

About Asheim: I can't believe what I read. I've seen them twice and both times Asheim was relentless and precise; in both ocasions they played a lot from the S/T flawlessly and OUTC as fast as Legion. The second time was then they were promoting Stench and they played Death to Jesus even faster than the studio version; again, flawlessly.

There is about 5% (if that) thrash on the new album. Each of the big 4's most recent albums had more than that (even though I strongly dislike 50% of them). I like "The Dark Roots of Earth" (mainly because of the solos), but to say that it tops The Big 4's output is ludicrous.

The only album from the big 4 that I liked was Worship Music, which wasn't a thrash fest by any means. Slayer sucks since Divine Intervention, Metallica's DM was a complete flop, dishonest and mediocre attempt at thrashing and Megadeth's 13 was flat as a coin.

Also, you should check your definition of thrash.

Are you serious? What does the other 95% of Dark Roots of Earth consist of in your mind? Gospel?

He'd probably say groove metal though there's really not much of it on that album. There are more melodic moments and such but it's more thrash than anything else. True American Hate and Rise Up, anyone?

The only "big 4" album that's better than DRoE is Endgame.

Melodic, normal song structure = Not thrash

0_o

I don't think the amount of thrash in an 80s thrash band's new album twenty five years (and countless albums) after their debut is a good measure for how good or valid or relevant they are. It's a fairly superficial way of going at it. With that said, choosing between the recent output of any of the Big Four bands or Testament is like choosing whether you want to be drawn and quartered, flayed or boiled to death.

But, but... more thrash = better songwriting. This is the reason why the retro-thrash movement has been such a resounding success!