Metallica or Megadeth?

[Rsmacker]

record labels don't pay anything to indie/underground radios...

In the UK there aren't any real indie/underground radio stations. I prefer listening to Radio 4 than the same 10 songs played day in and day out on Radio 1 or 2, it drives me mental. (Mind you, so does "Woman's Hour" on Radio 4. Not once have I heard them discuss jam-making, darning socks or how to make their tits get bigger.)

OK, JacksonsShred and Endrik can carry on with their pud-slapping contest now.

[Grandturk]

hard to say, my ex-girlfriend's unpopular neighbor wouldn't hear the difference

Hold on - I've lost track. Which one are you stalking? Your ex-girlfriend or her unpopular neighbor?

[Endrik]

In the UK there aren't any real indie/underground radio stations. I prefer listening to Radio 4 than the same 10 songs played day in and day out on Radio 1 or 2, it drives me mental. (Mind you, so does "Woman's Hour" on Radio 4. Not once have I heard them discuss jam-making, darning socks or how to make their tits get bigger.)

you mean there's no boats cruising around anymore who play real music to all the young rebels :ROTF:

anyway... you guys have plenty of radio channels which have many programs which aren't dictated by record labels or Chavs' requests.

The most popular radio over here is also the one which plays the biggest amount of underground music and has most sub-culture oriented shows. Yeah during mid-day they play the usual crap too but during the evenings or weekends they play anything from ug death metal to experimental jazz.

Hold on - I've lost track. Which one are you stalking? Your ex-girlfriend or her unpopular neighbor?

not that you mention it... I guess both... the neighbor just sucks... ex-girlfriend instead of yelling at him to stop the cacophony... tells me "hey he plays guitar too, isn't it cute"

[Tekky]

In the day and age of iPods and other assorted MP-3 players, do people really listen to radio for the music? I certainly don't. In the mornings I listen to my favorite morning radio personality (Johnny B) and then the rest of the day I'm listening to my Treo. If I'm in the car, it's usually news radio for traffic, news, weather, or a hockey game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way insinuating that my habits are typical, but I find it hard to believe that with the proliferation of personal music devices that anyone listens to radio when the music they always want is at their fingertips. Just looking at the radio market here in Chicago gives evidence to that.

[markD]

you guys are STILL missing the point, and this is half joke, half serious - people like songs. nobody but other guitarists care how technical something is. nobody but metalheads care if metallica is better thank megadeth these day.

some people HATE guitar solos. my singer and i are ALWAYS at odds about the solos. she wants fewer of them - like NONE. i won't do that.

end of the day, a shredder does NOT make a band good. songs do. while megadeth has stayed more "metal" it could be argued that metallica went off and spent time writing SONGS for a few albums. who cares if it is METAL!!!!!!! ARRR!!!!!!

"popularity" among the "sheep" doesn't make a band good. usually a SONG does.

so, in summary, if one wants the truth - metallicock AND megadick suck camel dick!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

PS - for those of you jealous over dorky kirk hammett's popularity even though he only uses wah and pentatonic scales - that should tell you something about what people LIKE to hear. joe-schmo doesn't give a fuck if you can sweep through 20 connected scales ranging from natural minor to hungarian major with a flattened 9th. to them, it sounds like noise.

[bratfink]

"popularity" among the "sheep" doesn't make a band good. usually a SONG does.

This was my point exactly. Popularity means nothing about great music.

The pirate radio boats that cruised the north sea off East Anglia in the 60's were put out of business in 66/67 by BBC opening a new station just for the kids called Radio 1. Most of the DJ's that worked those pirate stations were given jobs at Radio 1.

Radio 1 continues to champion new and unsigned acts through shows of the ilk of John Peel back in the day. But Radio 1 has become almost too big to achieve what it was set out to do. It now plays increasing amounts of pop garbage to keep it in line with the commercial stations. However in order not to break its charter it has limits to the amount of recorded singles it can play and therefore does a lot of live recorings of artists which is later aired.

Radio 2 has in recent years started to take on more of the unsigned and new stuff as have the new digital stations like Radio 6 (Bruce Dickinson does a rock show on that).

Pirate radio now really centres on the major cities and seems to be a dance music thing. Bristol is sort of the epicentre of Drum and Bass and you can often hear current and very successful DJ's from the dance music circuit doing sets on pirate stations down there. Ragga FM was one back in the 90's I remember. I don't know of any pirate radio stations doing rock/metal.

In terms of live acts, garage bands are not the same as bands playing the scene every night. I saw and played in bands in UK that followed a circuit of gigs around the country, small and usually rough clubs like the Jailhouse in Coventry (bands Like Bolt Thrower and The Specials got started there). I saw some of the best acts ever on that circuit but most will never get signed because they don't fill a marketable position in the industry. And that is the sad fact of it.

MetalliDeth and the whole thrash movement came about to rebel against the hair metal cheese that was coming out of the west coast at the time. It was underground and different. Therefore it wasn't long before it got an underground (therefore cool) following. The problem is that it is cool to be underground, so before long the following was not so small. Now it is so saturated that even girls claim to like them (a surefire method of detecting if a band sucks - to the cool underground people). So now thrash (and metal in general) has become the very thing it despised to start with.

We now get acts signed to labels just because they fit a profile that some marketing exec has decided is what the archetypal metal fan is. RE: Slipknot, Limkin Park etc etc.

Metallica became huge because they gave in and became the monster they set out to kill. Megadeth did not become huge because Dave fought the system and pissed all the execs off. Is he a douche for doing that? Depends on your viewpoint (and that is what this discussion is all about).

Who is better musically, that is entirely down to taste. But any inferance here that musical ability is linked to popularity is a grave mistake.

[Endrik]

Metallica became huge because they gave in and became the monster they set out to kill. Megadeth did not become huge because Dave fought the system and pissed all the execs off. Is he a douche for doing that? Depends on your viewpoint (and that is what this discussion is all about).

not sure about that... Dave seems to cry and bitch awfully a lot whenever Metallica's album sells shit loads more than Megadeth's ... specially when he comes out with commercially successful album + hit singles which are pushed to be played on the radios and videos played for MTV crowd. He seems very happy about that until Metallica comes with another release and then it's either bitch and moan endlessly or H in the vein case.

[bratfink]

not sure about that... Dave seems to cry and bitch awfully a lot whenever Metallica's album sells shit loads more than Megadeth's ... specially when he comes out with commercially successful album + hit singles which are pushed to be played on the radios and videos played for MTV crowd. He seems very happy about that until Metallica comes with another release and then it's either bitch and moan endlessly or H in the vein case.

Agreed, Dave does seem to have been troubled by his Metallica exit and their continued success. And it might be that that is one reason why Megadeth has been less of a comercial success.

This is probably just a symptom of his personality, from the outside it seems that everything with Megadeth must be done 'his way or the highway'. he publicly says that the most successful years of Megadeth are his most unhappy, this would be the time that there would have been the greatest pressure of outside influence on the direction of the band. Therefore the recent return to the 'his way or the highway' format seems to have yielded a spectacular return to form for the bands style.

By the same token I am not sure Metallica could return to form if they even wanted to now.

It's similar if you think about it to the stage where a Millionaire forgets his shits still smells. Metallica have got so big that they think that Thrash is whatever they do. Megadeth still have an idea of what the grass roots of thrash is and can therefore still turn out the material.

[markD]

what IS thrash these days though? there are elements of "thrash", speed metal and death metal in radio-friendly, marketable bands.

how "thrash" was metallica back in the day? every album (minus "kill 'em all") had a power ballad. even megadeth had a bit of a ballad on "so far, so good, so what?" with "in my darkest hour". does THAT seem very thrash?

hair bands and arena rockers had power ballads. sure, the "underground" thrash bands didn't - oh wait, testament had "the ballad" on one of their records (practice what you preach, i think?)

so ultimately, while metallica CAN'T return to "thrash" were they really ever truly an ALL thrash band? i believe i read lars ALWAYS had the intention of metallica being a BIG band....

i don't know. i just remember growing up in that time period, but by the time thrash began gettin watered down (88-89) i moved onto more euro-inspired stuff. american bands got old. that includes metallica, megadeth and all their peers....

[Rsmacker]

In terms of live acts, garage bands are not the same as bands playing the scene every night. I saw and played in bands in UK that followed a circuit of gigs around the country, small and usually rough clubs like the Jailhouse in Coventry (bands Like Bolt Thrower and The Specials got started there). I saw some of the best acts ever on that circuit but most will never get signed because they don't fill a marketable position in the industry. And that is the sad fact of it.

I've had some epic punch-ups in that pub, even back when it was The Greyhound!
What a shit-hole, a Court Black Box PA, the very definition of SHIT. Oh, yes, and the vast majority of bands that played there were SHIT too, a fact made terminal by management putting on 7 bands a night.

They all bring a Transit full of stuff, plus assorted hangers-on. Result is the place is full, but they are playing exactly the same God-awful toss as everyone else there (even to the point of the same covers),to a room full of other bands, who couldn't really give a fuck.
I can only stomach 1 shit band per night, I'm not going to sit through 5 others so I can possibly get a taste of someone promising, especially in a room which is literally the same size as my lounge, full of guitar cases and Emo girlfriends. Oh, and when I see Court Black Box, I go home. Yes, I'm a gear snob, but Court really is the pits.

If there were one or 2 bands on per night, I might nip in for a pint, decide whether it is worth staying and maybe see the next big thing. Not going to bother sitting through a 6 hour Noise Assault, and I guess no-one else did either, that's why they shut.

Oh for places with PROPER band facilities - like the General Wolfe, and even the Sir Colin Campbell (apart from the fucking stairs. Ditto the Dog & Trumpet). There have been some cracking bands on in Coventry, there was a band who were just like an up-dated Specials a few years ago, and I believe the singer was Terry Hall's nephew. Called The Superheroes, they were genuinely different and should have had a chance with the Specials link, no matter how tenuous, but they soon sank without trace. Shame, their demo was excellent.

Metallica became huge because they gave in and became the monster they set out to kill. Megadeth did not become huge because Dave fought the system and pissed all the execs off. Is he a douche for doing that? Depends on your viewpoint (and that is what this discussion is all about).

Yes he's a douche, and he knows it. He'd love to have that big sweaty corporate cock bobbing about in front of his face, begging to be sucked. He also knows he wouldn't be able to do it, despite him wanting the benefits it would bring so badly. But the reason he's so twisted up is that he hasn't had the offer.

Metallica did, it came when they recorded Metallica. They could have told Bob Rock to fuck off, made "Master of Justice Part 2" and today they'd be playing Rock City, perhaps with Megaduff supporting, to a crowd of sad old cunts like me who yearned for the good old days when we wuz young and Thrash was cool. Instead, they made THE Fucking Huge LP, and got the extended life that brings. So increased fame and fortune and "selling out" came too, but what would you do? I know I'd be gobbling that corporate cock. Yummy.

It must rankle Mustanus that he's probably only still about thanks to Metallica's success. I mean that in the sense of if Metallica hadn't made that LP, the face of the music we listen to today would be very different, and he'd be sweeping the car park at Burger World whilst Lars & Co occupied the top of the Second Division place Megaduff do now. He'd be with Flotsam & Jetsam in the "Who? Oh yeah, I remember the name" bin. That LP gave rock music an extended relevance in the mainstream, whether people like Metallica, Kirk's wah, Lars' big gob, etc. or not.
For that reason, Metallica win.

[Gartron]

They all bring a Transit full of stuff, plus assorted hangers-on. Result is the place is full, but they are playing exactly the same God-awful toss as everyone else there (even to the point of the same covers),to a room full of other bands, who couldn't really give a fuck.
.

That was my 20's right there!!!...spot on sir.. we may be in different parts of the country but obviously the same shit happens everywhere!

[Rsmacker]

Yep, it was MY fucking twenties too, though there were less bands around 20 years ago. Nowadays EVERY cunt and his brother are in a band. A heavy metal band, usually.

[levantin]

Metallica did, it came when they recorded Metallica. They could have told Bob Rock to fuck off, made "Master of Justice Part 2" and today they'd be playing Rock City, perhaps with Megaduff supporting, to a crowd of sad old cunts like me who yearned for the good old days when we wuz young and Thrash was cool. Instead, they made THE Fucking Huge LP, and got the extended life that brings.

Oh come on, metallica and megadeth both had multiplatinum records before the black album.

[markD]

it doesn't matter. they would have ended up in the shit pile with many other thrash bands, like exodus, testament, death angel, etc. yeah, those bands are still sort of around but they are playing club gigs like my band unless they get picked up for a festival or a package show.

metallica did put themselves into "icon" status when they did "metallica". like it or not, they became the "heavy" band of the generation....

[Grandturk]

they would have ended up in the shit pile with many other thrash bands, like exodus, testament, death angel, etc. yeah, those bands are still sort of around but they are playing club gigs like my band unless they get picked up for a festival or a package show.

What about Overkill? Nobody ever says Overkill in the same breath as Exodus, Testament and the other 2nd tier thrash bands. I still listen to Overkill every day and they are still tight, heavy thrash. Their latest, Immortalis is in near constant rotation.

Any other Overkill fans out there?

Anyway, on topic - I think Metallica produced music they liked at the time - I don't think they consciously tried to make music everyone would like, because, quite frankly, they failed at it - Load, Reload and St. Anger were not nearly as successful as the black album, and Death Magnetic is not RTL, MOP or AJFA. So I think they are pretty genuine in making music that they want to make, period - not making music that will sell like crazy. The sales are a representation of how many people like the stuff.