I've known and know a few metalheads that don't like the big name classic bands like Metallica, Maiden, Slayer, Sabbath, Priest etc. Usually they're big fans of death, grind or black metal. It's never bothered me, they can like whatever they fuckin like, who gives a shit.

It shouldn't be that hard to believe if you look at page 226, which resembles a group of schoolchildren pointing and laughing at the guy who dared to say he didn't like their flavor-of-the-month band.

The thread started off quite well, but rule #1 should have been to respect everyone's opinions as valid and welcome and don't need to be "fixed".

I doubt GT will lose any sleep over this, he's a big boy, he can handle it, otherwise why say it.

Moving on...

I'm tired of opening threads in 2024 announcing new metal albums that are "killer", "incredible", "glorious", and by these words being reminded of how it felt in the 90s discovering metal music, and then on hearing it finding that none of this new music holds a candle to music I'd heard back then. I'd like to say there are exceptions, and perhaps there are one or two that qualify as passable listening for a few plays, but it's easier just to say that post 2010s metal is a complete write-off for me.

Yeah, I mean, if I was bowing down to some kind of clout or idea of what needed to be said to gain good will, I'd pretend Jari Maenpaa ever wrote any good songs.

Or you know... maybe we actually like Black Sabbath with Ozzy...? Did this thought ever cross your mind or did your mind just went straight to our testicules?

Oh, I wasn't just talking about Sabbath. But we just saw someone dismissing a dozen classic bands as overrated and getting ripped apart as "wrong" for saying that, so it's hard to imagine there not being others discouraged seeing that kind of thing.

People have been getting ripped apart for their shitty opinions since the thread opened and they keep on coming, its all part of the fun.
That posters 'opinion" was total bait and deserved the response it got, probably deserved a harsher response actually.

The guy name dropped something like 15 the most renowned, genre defining and innovative names of metal, called them "overrated" and didn't elaborate any further. That's bait. And not even goog quality bait. Besides. I don't know why we shouldn't put the opinions shared in this thread under scrutiny. If we're not going to debate these unpopular opinions, what would even be the point of such a thread?

I think everybody's fine with your (or whomever's) opinion that Sabbath, Ozzy, whoever, suck in your opinion, but when you start speaking for "most metalheads," that they secretly feel the same but are somehow afraid to admit it... well, that's a bridge too far. In other words, you're saying everyone should respect everyone else's opinion and yet you're telling them what their [allegedly hidden] opinion is even while they're telling you, "that's NOT my opinion."

Metalheads probably all think Black Sabbath is terrible, but we all just pretend to like the band, because we're supposed to. That's because we don't have balls.

Gravetemplar's post gave a hint - how about owning your reaction and expressing it? How did you feel when you read someone say that your favorite band was overrated? Hurt? Offended? Sad? Or is the only "point" that a thread can have is to be a Metal Warrior and right about everything, and we all come here just to prove that to ourselves?

I think I get what ThStealthK is saying, "regardless of flawless albums that each band has" being the key. As much as I love Iron Maiden at their best, for example, their discography still includes stuff like No Prayer for the Dying. Black Sabbath has 13, Morbid Angel has Illud Divinum ins Anus, and so on. Curiously Metallica is not in the list of bands, but their discography isn't perfect either.

Sometimes these deservedly classic, undoubtedly influential bands do get elevated to a sort of untouchable sacred cow status that a single word edgeways is frowned upon. That is rare, though, usually reserved to the most boneheaded fans of said bands. Nevertheless, nobody in this thread has been "ripped apart" or "excised from the community", that is a bullshit hyperbole. Disagreeing and saying it is not that.

I personally have no reason to listen to Venom or Slayer, they just don't do it for me. I've listened to both, don't hate them and respect their historical importance, but will much rather crank up early Bathory or, say, Dark Angel if I'm hankering for stuff like that. No sane person should have a problem with a stance like this.

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say


But there is no more nothing to say

That's why I said that I find bands that are basically riding the glory of a couple of great albums until this day to be overrated. Sure they have the cred of having made a genre defining masterpiece, but when that's the minority of their discography... Yeah, they probably aren't that great.

Now my hot take is that No Prayer for the Dying and 13 are actually pretty good albums, and nowhere close the lowest points of neither bands.

Personally I don't think Iron Maiden has made a great album since 1988. Some good albums, some I find boring as fuck, and a couple I'd call terrible. But they have 6 or 7 albums that tower over most other bands entire output. Same for Judas Priest, though I like their later stuff better than Maiden's. Same for Metallica, Megadeth, or Slayer. But there is no band for other than Bolt Thrower who was able to keep up an unending level of excellence. Some bands decide to do different shit, sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. That's cool. If they are a one hit wonder then yeah I'd agree, they have 1 classic, a couple decent albums, and lot of shit isn't a great band.

A lot of it for me is do they deliver live.

I think what some people are forgetting is that most bands don't have the opportunity to be making music for multiple decades coasting on past glories and mediocrity. If Bolt Thrower ended up steadily making albums for 50 more or less consecutive years, how many of those albums do you think would be 8+/10?

That is true. If you have a 15 year career compared to a 30+ year career the odds of staying consistently excellent drop quite a bit.

I like 13 a lot. Some really great songs on it. Age Of Reason, Loner, Live Forever.

Sadly I kind of agree with Iron Maiden having no great records after their classic run from the 80s, No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark are good albums, but everything that they made after, the albums with Blaze Bayley as a singer and the Bruce's return albums till today never impact me in the same way as Powerslave, Piece of Mind, Seventh Son of the Seventh Son, The Number of the Beast and Somewhere in Time.

With Black Sabbath I don't have that problem though, I love all their albums from their amazing first run with Ozzy Osbourne, to the masterpieces that they made with Dio and the complete bangers that are the Tony Martin, Glenn Hughes and Ian Gillian albums. As a Deep Purple fan, listening to Tony Iommi with these monsters of singers has always been a pleasure, so good to hear that Tony is working in the remasters of the Headless Cross era of albums, they are amazing, I extremely recommended those albums if you haven't listened to them.

My apparently unpopular opinion is that it literally doesn't matter one tiny bit what anybody's opinion about music is, at least on a level other than banter. You can hate the band I think is the greatest band in the world, you can think Black Sabbath are shit, you can genuinely believe Ghost or BrokeNCYDE are the greatest bands in history, those opinions don't affect me in any way and it's stupid to take offense.

With that said calling an opinion crazy or riffing on it doesn't automatically mean you've taken serious offense over it.

Not sure if this is an unpopular or not: Iron Maiden's remasters are unlistenable. It's increasingly hard to hear these albums the way they're meant to sound. (The first series of remasters were brickwalled to hell, the second set of remasters were brickwalled EVEN MORE and had their EQ fucked with to the point of sounding muddy and weird.) That's a shame. The most recent remaster of Powerslave turns a 10/10 album into something closer to a 7/10. I can barely listen to it.

The 90's remasters were okay, but you are right. I try to track down original releases when I can. Main reason I could never go all streaming. You often end up with whatever late reissue shit remaster of classic albums. Thankfully a lot of their vinyl reissues were cut from the original tapes.

Only if you're like me and love a good outdoor metal festival. The lack of metal at metal festivals definitely gets on your nerves, there's not been one in the UK since 2016 I've wanted to go to*

*there were a few last year that looked really cool like Manorfest and Dominion that collapsed due to a lack of ticket sales, so metal (by the MA definition) just ain't selling.

If you're cool with just club shows though like most people are then there's no problem. The quality of metal being put out isn't a problem.

Yeah, my least favorite Ozzy Sabbath album is Never Say Die. 13 is leagues ahead of it in terms of songwriting, despite featuring bloated song lengths and dumb vocal effects. The bones are there, which they aren't in Never Say Die, in my opinion. Now, which album does Ozzy sound better on? Obviously Never Say Die. But bad songwriting is bad songwriting. And "God Is Dead?" still hits a good balance between menacing and catchy to me that hearkens back to the early Black Sabbath days in a lot of ways.

I just couldn't get into 13. A listen or two and it went on the shelf to never come down again.

I don't hate 13, but it's easily my least favorite Sabbath album overall. There's a sense of "let's just get this done" about it that I don't hear in other comeback albums like You're All Living in Cuckooland. My main problem with Never Say Die is that the band softened their sound. It is kind of impressive that even when they were considered the heaviest band in the world, Sabbath never rested on their laurels in the 70's and kept pushing the envelope of heaviness. I remember playing music on shuffle while I was doing house chores the other day and "Symptom of the Universe" came on and I didn't recognize it immediately and thought it was something from 1983. I can only imagine how people must have reacted to that back in 1975, so it's a little disappointing that the same band with the exact same lineup made something mellow like "Air Dance" three years later. That said though, when taken in isolation, I do like Never Say Die as a whole. Tony's guitar tone is still massive on that album, and I like most of the songs.

For what it's worth, Swinging the Chain has some of the best riffs Tony Iommi has done, and Johnny Blade might have worked better with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath production.

The thing with 13 for me is the production. The auto tuned vocals and the stale, barely distorted, overly compressed guitar tone just doesn't sound like Sabbath for me, it's more like buttrock. Which sucks, because the songwriting is as solid as ever. There's also the lack of Bill Ward, which I'm still bitter about, but that's another topic.

Haven't played 13 since it came out, but I just remember thinking there wasn't much reason to play it when I could go back to any of the first six albums instead. That's the issue with many legacy bands' newer albums really.



Fair point... I did really like Hell's Heroes when I went though. But that was the only metal fest I've been to so far. I guess there is a point to be made about the sales, but I wouldn't really want to pay money for a festival where the biggest bands with the longest sets are some shit like Ghost.

I'm not going to remember anything from your entire post, beside the fact that you remembered me that BrokeNCYDE existed. I had managed to erase this garbage entirely from my memories, and now I had to go listen to their stuff to remember what it was. And yeah, I hate you now.

I can't tell you how unamused I was when someone played them to me at uni thinking I would like it based on being into metal



Didn't realize Hell's Heroes was an outdoor one, just assumed it would be an indoor one - I don't really think of the US as having the outdoor camping festivals like Europe does. That looked like an incredible lineup. I'm doing Obscene Extreme this year which will be great. I want to do Graspop too but can't find anyone else who wants to go (probably cause half of the lineup is really poor) so not gonna get to go (had some pretty bad health problems recently and going abroad alone doesn't seem like a smart idea at the moment.) I used to go to London for gigs a lot but now I'm older I've lost the motivation, it being a hefty trip - going to a couple fests and seeing lots of bands at once is more efficient.

I still can't wrap my head around how any of the "crunkcore", "screamo rap" or whatever bullshit that was ever existed. I have Vietnam war flashbacks right now. The trauma of hearing "music" that's so offensively bad...

Relistening to some of Decapitated's body of work on the drive over to see 'em recently has re-confirmed to me that, while Winds & Nihility are both good, they aren't the band's best, as I still feel that the three records they did after them are better, with Hallucinosis being their finest hour as a band to date.

Well it was indoors when I went, though there was plenty going on outside too. It's outdoors now, I hear. I just like a good show - don't really have a preference, bar shows or whatever are fine, great if they're affordable.

Ehh, you mean the album otherwise known as Decapitated plays Meshuggah?

Further to this, my unpopular opinion is that this band has gone through radical changes through the years (some out of the band's control, obviously), but every album they've made has been top-notch. I will agree that Organic Hallucinosis could be top 2-3, though.

I think Anticult is a great album.

I could never get into anything passed their first three releases. All three are super unique and interesting in their own right. And then, they just got kind of samey and unimaginative, in my opinion. Plus, I'm not a big fan of the more "groove metal" elements they incorporated in their sound on later albums.

Honestly, Winds of Creation is where it starts and ends for me when it comes to Decapitated.