I just completely fail to understand how you can like bands like Mortal Sin and Testament and all that and not like Metallica. The debt they all owe to Metallica is fucking enormous. Particularly Testament... I mean, come on! You can't deny that they just wanted Metallica's sound, and were influenced by them massively in terms of songwriting, production, and vocal and instrumental style...
Why don't you like them? What don't you like about them? Exactly what musical boxes do they NOT tick for you? You must see that to an outsider it looks a bit like pointless, basisless elitism. I mean... have you actually listened to Master of Puppets?! Or Justice? Justice has the same rawness and massive guitarical wall of the first Demolition Hammer album. Given your musical taste I just can't understand what you don't like about them!
Sure, they sold out later, sure Kirk is overrated as Hell, but it is impossible to deny that their songs are awesome and essential pillars of the genre...
I'm not having a go at you by the way, I just think you need to go back and listen to those albums and re-evaluate your opinion...
Believe me bro, I have tried to valiently to liek Master of Puppets and AJFA but I just can't do it. Master of Puppets only has one, maybe two songs that appeal to me (Battery) and the rest is just boring. The title track makes me cringe, it just doesn't sound good to my ears. AJFA is an oddity with me, its one of those albums that I can't make up my mind with - the first time I listened to it I didn't like it, then I listened again later and thought it was okay, then even later on I hated it. Albums that do that to my brain tend to get the no-no treatment from me. The lack of bass is a massive flaw for me, the album seems rather inconsistant with it's songs, and I'm sorry to say it but Hammet's sound and Hetfield's voice are aural torture to me.
I see your point about Testament, but in all honesty there are things that set Testament apart from Metallica - Alex Skolnick for one, who is the best guitar player ever in my eyes. Chuck's voice (and Zetro's) shits on Hetfield's agonising gruff wails, and estament's songs are just.... better. I like to spin the odd few tracks like Jump In the Fire and Pulling Teeth, but I'd take Alone in the Dark and Reign ofTerror over them anyday. Testament developed their own sound through (supposedly) trying to sound like Metallica, thats inevitable. And Testament also tried various new things isntead of just 'selling out ' (so to speak). They realized that The Ritual wasn't what most of their fans wanted, so they changed their direction radically for their following three albums. And Low is one of their best, so they did the right thing. What'd Metallica give us? Load and St. Anger. Look how that turned out.
On a slightly more elitist and maybe immature note, I disagree with everything Metallica has done since Cliff died. This is a band that back in the day went on record saying 'We'll never make a music video or sell out to the mainstream etc.' and look what we got - nearly 20 years of sub-par radio rock crap. Yes, they tried and struggled valiantly to bring some thrash back with Death Magnetic but it didn't work. On a similar note, it disgusts me that they stole a lot of Dave Mustaine's material, essentially stealing their steps to success. Yeah they didn't take like six albums worth of songs, but its still something that really got on my tits.
As with Diddy, I actually heard Megadeth AFTER giving Metallica a go, so this is actually a rather unbiased view. Drawing all these comparisons is rather annoying but its easy to put it this way in the end. I get a LOT of people saying 'You can't call yourself a thrash fan if you don't like Metallica' which will always end in the reply 'Yes I can, a band that releases two pure thrash albums AT MOST and then goes off the rails can't be cited so often in comparison to *insert list of bands*'
As for their songs being 'essential pillars of the genre', I won't deny that a majority of Kill 'Em All is highly influential to a majority of thrash bands. But technically you can say the exact same thing about Motorhead, Venom, Slayer, Exodus, Exciter and Raven.
Theres yer answer matey. Epic rant over
