If you had to pick a favorite decade of metal?

[SentinelSlain]

The thing about that is then you have to ask why they all peaked when they did. I don't listen to Napalm Death, but I know most of the other band's later work isn't all that compared to their earlier classics despite the fact that they have access to more technology and money now. The dynamics of a scene itself and the specific influences a band has also determine the quality of an album, it isn't just musicianship + songwriting + production.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

That IS a good point. And there's a famous quote, too: a musician has a lifetime to write their first album and a year to write the second. You can only dip into the well so many times. It's the rare artist who can keep up the creativity for an exceptionally long time. Exceptions exist, like Napalm Death, Enslaved, Asphyx, Darkthrone, I'd even argue friggin' Cannibal Corpse is going strong as ever.

To me, though, it's a lot like sports. The athletes of today are stronger and faster than athletes of days past thanks to building on what they had to experiment with in terms of diet, training, and (unfortunately) drugs. Roger Bannister's 4 minute mile rightfully puts him as one of the greatest athletes in history, but running a 4 minute mile isn't a unique feat any more. That doesn't mean that the high school students who can do it today should be held in as high regard, but it means the accomplishment itself is no longer as impressive.

 

[whiskey funeral]

There are dozens and dozens of albums that are every bit as good as those classics, if not better, but the reason they will never be SEEN as classics like those old albums is they didn't pioneer the sound. They had the advantage of adding TO the sound, not CREATING it.

Agreed 100% with you, especially on this part. Also, I'm not getting the Leviathan hate in this thread.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

This is actually one of my favorite things to talk about. I'm a big geek on music and I love kinda "dissecting" things. What makes album X held in such high regard? Is it POSSIBLE to judge things on their own merits? Hell, for that matter, can you review something without your own personal biases coloring them?

Like, nu-metal was the thing when I hit high school. So I'll always look back on those albums more favorably. Similarly, Nine Inch Nails was the first band I bought anything from (Downward Spiral). So that's got such a spot in my heart that it's hard as hell for me to judge it fairly. I know all the songs front to back because I listened to that damn thing until it was unplayable. I'm sure there will be metalheads who have a real soft spot for early metalcore, and later -core for the younger crowd.

 

[matt schrauben]

90s was the best by far in my book. I could elaborate, but SomeGuyDude has already made the case for it pretty much perfectly.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

The problem then is you're ranking the CREATION of the music, not the OUTPUT. You're judging the ARTIST, not the ART. And that's a vastly different animal. You're talking about praising the college junior vs the old dead scientist. I'm not talking about the men and situations BEHIND the creations, I'm talking about the creations THEMSELVES.

Let's say you find some guy who was born deaf but learns how to create harmonies by playing instruments in a sealed room and feeling how the vibrations interact. He builds instruments himself that maximize this effect and after 20 years of painstaking labor creates an instrumental album. Another guy is born privileged, goes to a private school, and is trained by classical musicians. He also creates an album that's just plain better than the first. Are you going to declare his inferior to the first because he didn't have to discover the scales on their own?

You might praise the first musician for his creativity and ingenuity, and marvel at his ability to learn and write melodies and harmonies without anyone teaching him, but that doesn't make what he did BETTER.

I judge music on its own, I judge artists on their context. The 90s were the superior decade because of the who/where/how. But that doesn't mean all the best albums are there. If you build me a car, I'm not giving you extra points because you had to invent the ICE yourself if the thing runs poorly. If you cook me a steak, I'm not going to ignore the shitty quality of the meat because you had to hunt and slaughter the cow yourself.

Rephrase my example slightly to be of the discovery instead of the discoverer and it doesn't really change things. The original discovery is still more impressive than totally derivative ones.

In the rest of this post I actually tend to agree with you, however. If I didn't I'd be listening to Delta blues instead of heavy metal. Your earlier examples seemed far more extreme to the extent that I could see you arguing that simply covering an album with superior production and a more technically able vocalist could make it a better album by your standards, but I definitely agree that not everything that was original was best.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Well you'd have to define "superior" in that case. But look at Burzum. Varg re-did a bunch of his early material that he thought could have been done better, and he was right. Does that mean "From the Depths of Darkness" is a "legendary" album? Not really, but it certainly SOUNDS better.

That said, derivative works are always derivative, and sound like shit. If you listen to a bunch of albums, even if you don't know which ones came first, the derivative works will "stand out" because they sound like paint by numbers with nothing distinct to them. After all, the musicians don't really know how to write, just copy what they've already heard.

But albums that BUILD on the first sound do exist. There's tons, and they're great! And they totally deserve to be considered classics, and frequently just plain make better listening experiences than the ones from before.

All I'm saying is that when people say the best albums are X, Y, and Z, they frequently mean "most important", which is different.

 

[whiskey funeral]

That IS a good point. And there's a famous quote, too: a musician has a lifetime to write their first album and a year to write the second. You can only dip into the well so many times. It's the rare artist who can keep up the creativity for an exceptionally long time. Exceptions exist, like Napalm Death, Enslaved, Asphyx, Darkthrone, I'd even argue friggin' Cannibal Corpse is going strong as ever.

Napalm Death and Enslaved are two examples of bands who are like fine wine: better with age. I swear, the stuff they do now almost eclipses their previous efforts.

 

[CF87]

I like the newer Enslaved stuff I've heard a lot, but I could not get into any of their early material. It's really not my thing.

 

[Mort Divine]

Newer Enslaved is mostly garbage akin to Opeth, lacks the spirit and grandeur that made their early work so incredible

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Well you'd have to define "superior" in that case. But look at Burzum. Varg re-did a bunch of his early material that he thought could have been done better, and he was right. Does that mean "From the Depths of Darkness" is a "legendary" album? Not really, but it certainly SOUNDS better.

That said, derivative works are always derivative, and sound like shit. If you listen to a bunch of albums, even if you don't know which ones came first, the derivative works will "stand out" because they sound like paint by numbers with nothing distinct to them. After all, the musicians don't really know how to write, just copy what they've already heard.

But albums that BUILD on the first sound do exist. There's tons, and they're great! And they totally deserve to be considered classics, and frequently just plain make better listening experiences than the ones from before.

All I'm saying is that when people say the best albums are X, Y, and Z, they frequently mean "most important", which is different.

Derivative works aren't always obviously inferior without knowing/realizing the extent to which they copy their influences. Take Aria, the first metal band signed to the Soviet Union's national record label with production about as good as any mainstream Western metal band and fully competent musicians. Ignore the language barrier and I'd bet that if you played a number of songs from their 1987 or 1989 albums, a significant number of people blind to any other influence would enjoy them approximately as much as Iron Maiden. Even just as I was leaving my listen-to-several-Maiden-albums-a-day period, my first few listens to their 1989 album were strongly enjoyable, but when I discovered more and more filched melodies I became increasingly skeptical. Had I no reference to judge them by, however, I would have had no idea they were "paint by numbers". How can something sound indistinct without any exposure to other music?

And the thing is, even the the most heralded metal albums build on others to some extent. You can hear some Sir Lord Baltimore and Wishbone Ash in Iron Maiden, Judas Priest's early speed metal was likely at least partially indebted to Deep Purple's fastest material, Bathory was built on a base of Venom built on a base of Motorhead built on a base of etcetc. If anyone here is arguing that the classics of the 70's and 80's were 100% original they're wrong, but I don't they really are. I'm just saying that neglecting what originality that did exist is misleading.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Well you'd have to define "superior" in that case. But look at Burzum. Varg re-did a bunch of his early material that he thought could have been done better, and he was right. Does that mean "From the Depths of Darkness" is a "legendary" album? Not really, but it certainly SOUNDS better.

You are literally the first person I've heard say this. The new recordings sound cleaner, but they certainly do not sound better. The originals capture the essence of the compositions so much more.

 

[Eligos]

Cool I'm the only person who voted for the decade I did

 

[DBNO]

who gives a fuck about originality
i'm a fan, not a musical fucking historian.

 

[Funerary_Doom]

I'm probably going to say 90s-00 only because the raw angst feeling of this era was something that I really related to back when I was 13-18 years old. I remember in 8th grade being sent to the principal's office (went to a private Catholic school all my life) for wearing a Cannibal Corpse shirt an event that kept happening until graduating high school. Not to mention I was one of those artsy students, so naturally changed schools multiple times for the sake of "being metal."

Their mentalities was something that kind of stuck with me for a really long time, so I'm not sure if this is what SGD is trying to get at with his posts, but if it is I totally get it. The state of mind musicians were in while creating extreme metal is very different from the ones that started in 2000. Sure the music mattered, but the feeling behind it mattered more. In 2000, that changes obviously.

There are obviously great and influential artists in each era, but if I were to pick a second favorite it would probably be within the 2000s era. I think there's a lot of innovated works being produced now and can probably name a ton of artists from this era who would go down in extreme metal history for reinventing or exploring new sounds.

 

[Eligos]

I went with the 2000-2010 because I didn't really start listening to extreme metal until 2003. Be mindful that I was 13 at the time.

This was the decade when I grew my hair out, went to my first show, played in my first band, got my first turntable.

I also honestly enjoy the music of that decade more than the 90's, not to downplay the influence or originality of bands like Burzum, Darkthrone, Skepticism, In the Woods... etc. But it's been my view that metal has aged well with time and its ideas are becoming denser and more expressive as opposed to a mere collection of riffs.

I will listen to DsO or Blut Aus Nord before I reach for Burzum, because I find their music more relatable. I don't have to look back and say, "Shit well, I was still sucking on my thumb when these bands were at their peak."

 

[Lateralus14]

Went with '90s on a whim but fuck, the '80s and the '90s were both such beastly decades.

 

[AllShallFall]

1990s, 2000s, 2010-Present

 

[DyingWorld]

The 80's. In between Wheels of Steel and Altars of Madness, there's a large degree of variety and evolution that went on back then.

The first half of the 90's was just as great. Although I do miss a lot of the "classic metal" but 91 - 95 was a very innovative time for Metal. The last half of the 90's was a bit inconsistent though.

 

[bobba313]

it depends, i mean i like almost every metal genre out there.

i would go with 80-90 for hard rock and glam metal.
and 90-99 for black and Death metal.

but hey, they made good Death metal in the 80's to
and some good glam in the 90's it all depends if you ask me.