"When thrash started in the 80s, Thatcher and Reagan were in charge
and for a teenage male – yuck! - you don't wanna live in the same place as them," says Deena Weinstein, one of many U.S. Marxist college professors that have been brainwashing, lying to and dumbing-down the youth of America for the past several decades. Ms.Weinstein uses a classic logic fallacy; she makes a direct cause-and-effect correlation between events A (birth of thrash) and B (Reagan/Thatcher being in office). Two events occurring concurrently does NOT make them interrelated; even a 5th-grader should know better.
Ms.Weinstein says that Metallica broke a golden rule on its "Black Album" by playing ballads. Evidently, she never bothered to listen to Metallica's previous three albums, all of which featured a ballad.
I have no clue what Dunn/McFadyen were thinking in their little minds by interviewing some clueless aging college liberal basket-case for an opinion on THRASH of all things. He might as well have asked Madonna, Granny Dunn, a 5 year-old, or a street wino on their opinion too, and the answer wouldn't have been any more useless.
Don't ever listen to the pretentious hooey drizzling out of the mouths of such deluded old aging-hippie 1969-obsessed misfits – let alone when it pertains to some obscure underground movement that these pompous twits know very little about, except through whatever few snippets they'd vaguely received from headlines in the media. These pseudo-intellectual left-wing knuckleheads (who are rightfully labeled as "intellectual morons"; you have a brain but you choose not to use it) try to give EVERYTHING a proletariat-uprising let's-start-a-Red-revolution slant; they are BS-ing you about how thrash really came about.
How thrash truly came into existence has a far simpler answer. Take a glance at the evolution of rock music. The 50s the 60s the 70s and then the 80s. Notice a trend? The music was getting heavier. The 60s were heavier than the 50s, the 70s heavier than the 60s, and so on. It isn't exactly rocket science; even an ape should be able to figure out why thrash developed in the 80s instead of the bloody 1830s. It had ZERO to do with "social revolt" or any such horses**t. Many of the kids who played in those pioneering thrash and metal outfits came from affluent/middle-class backgrounds, so it's not like they were starving or even wanting/needing much of anything (except excitement and some truly energetic, inventive music) – nor were a number of them even particularly interested in politics i.e. "saving the world" or looking to the Soviet Union - with its millions of corpses stuffed into mass-graves - as a role-model for a "better new world". Even some key figures of the 70s punk movement had rich mommies and daddies to take care of their bills and guitar gear costs. (Don't believe the hype – for once.)
With constantly improving technology - increasingly better amps, guitars, pedals and recording equipment - heavy bands were able to create heavier and heavier music, without their sound degenerating into an unrecognizable hodgepodge of cacophonous noise. It's as simple as that. The Ma and Pa of thrash were improved technology and the hunger of a group of ambitious young prodigies – not Marxist ideology. (Remember: Communists never create anything, they only steal or destroy what is already there.)
Metal's evolution almost came to a grinding halt sometime in the 90s, at roughly the same time when (music) technology pretty much ceased making large leaps and bounds. Coincidence? Hardly. Since the 90s the metal scene has experienced very little evolution but plenty of stagnation and pointless recycling. Since the mid-90s no truly new sounds have been created, nor can they be essentially, and the heaviness levels have already hit their ceiling with industrial metal, death metal and noise metal (no, not black metal; that's a friggin' joke).
Why did thrash peter out? There are several reasons, including selling out and the advent of grunge, but I tend to mostly agree with Bostaph who says that "there are only so many ways you can re-write the same album". While thrash was highly inventive initially, too many bands had played the same chord-progressions too many times, and there was nowhere to go but down. The watering-down effect.
It's interesting how differently people recount the fall of thrash as it relates to their own bands. Lombardo admits to throwing Metallica's overrated "Black Album" down a flight of stairs. Chuck Billy unconvincingly lays the blame squarely on his record company – although I do clearly recall that Testament very eagerly played the game of sell-out at the time; they had dollar-bills gleaming out of their greedy eyes. Exodus's Gary, however, was honest enough to admit that he tried to write music that would please the record label; ironically enough, he went on to criticize Exodus's fifth album, which is much better than the previous two.
Again, as in the 11th episode "prog-metal", Dunn forgot to feature Voivod, which is shameful. Venom is barely even mentioned, in spite of the large part they played in the development of thrash. There is only a fleeting mention of the German wave, not to mention the total ignoring of Violence, one of the best thrash bands of the 80s. Sam should have cut out some of Lars, the pompous dwarf who we'd seen too many times anyway (rolling his tongue as usual) and instead featured Violence's Rob Flynn, who later made another great contribution to thrash by forming Machine Head.
Dunn also fails to mention Strapping Young Lad, just as he'd managed to ignore its brilliant singer/guitarist/song-writer Devin Townsend in the 11th episode.
Yet Dunn includes Kahn-Harris, some irrelevant metal "historian", who actually talks about "death metal's complete elimination of melody". Even Dunn mentioned that "death metal was completely void of melody". Is this some kind of a joke? That's the sort of drivel you hear from a 57 year-old librarian spinster!
Ms.Weinstein says that Metallica broke a golden rule on its "Black Album" by playing ballads. Evidently, she never bothered to listen to Metallica's previous three albums, all of which featured a ballad.
I have no clue what Dunn/McFadyen were thinking in their little minds by interviewing some clueless aging college liberal basket-case for an opinion on THRASH of all things. He might as well have asked Madonna, Granny Dunn, a 5 year-old, or a street wino on their opinion too, and the answer wouldn't have been any more useless.
Don't ever listen to the pretentious hooey drizzling out of the mouths of such deluded old aging-hippie 1969-obsessed misfits – let alone when it pertains to some obscure underground movement that these pompous twits know very little about, except through whatever few snippets they'd vaguely received from headlines in the media. These pseudo-intellectual left-wing knuckleheads (who are rightfully labeled as "intellectual morons"; you have a brain but you choose not to use it) try to give EVERYTHING a proletariat-uprising let's-start-a-Red-revolution slant; they are BS-ing you about how thrash really came about.
How thrash truly came into existence has a far simpler answer. Take a glance at the evolution of rock music. The 50s the 60s the 70s and then the 80s. Notice a trend? The music was getting heavier. The 60s were heavier than the 50s, the 70s heavier than the 60s, and so on. It isn't exactly rocket science; even an ape should be able to figure out why thrash developed in the 80s instead of the bloody 1830s. It had ZERO to do with "social revolt" or any such horses**t. Many of the kids who played in those pioneering thrash and metal outfits came from affluent/middle-class backgrounds, so it's not like they were starving or even wanting/needing much of anything (except excitement and some truly energetic, inventive music) – nor were a number of them even particularly interested in politics i.e. "saving the world" or looking to the Soviet Union - with its millions of corpses stuffed into mass-graves - as a role-model for a "better new world". Even some key figures of the 70s punk movement had rich mommies and daddies to take care of their bills and guitar gear costs. (Don't believe the hype – for once.)
With constantly improving technology - increasingly better amps, guitars, pedals and recording equipment - heavy bands were able to create heavier and heavier music, without their sound degenerating into an unrecognizable hodgepodge of cacophonous noise. It's as simple as that. The Ma and Pa of thrash were improved technology and the hunger of a group of ambitious young prodigies – not Marxist ideology. (Remember: Communists never create anything, they only steal or destroy what is already there.)
Metal's evolution almost came to a grinding halt sometime in the 90s, at roughly the same time when (music) technology pretty much ceased making large leaps and bounds. Coincidence? Hardly. Since the 90s the metal scene has experienced very little evolution but plenty of stagnation and pointless recycling. Since the mid-90s no truly new sounds have been created, nor can they be essentially, and the heaviness levels have already hit their ceiling with industrial metal, death metal and noise metal (no, not black metal; that's a friggin' joke).
Why did thrash peter out? There are several reasons, including selling out and the advent of grunge, but I tend to mostly agree with Bostaph who says that "there are only so many ways you can re-write the same album". While thrash was highly inventive initially, too many bands had played the same chord-progressions too many times, and there was nowhere to go but down. The watering-down effect.
It's interesting how differently people recount the fall of thrash as it relates to their own bands. Lombardo admits to throwing Metallica's overrated "Black Album" down a flight of stairs. Chuck Billy unconvincingly lays the blame squarely on his record company – although I do clearly recall that Testament very eagerly played the game of sell-out at the time; they had dollar-bills gleaming out of their greedy eyes. Exodus's Gary, however, was honest enough to admit that he tried to write music that would please the record label; ironically enough, he went on to criticize Exodus's fifth album, which is much better than the previous two.
Again, as in the 11th episode "prog-metal", Dunn forgot to feature Voivod, which is shameful. Venom is barely even mentioned, in spite of the large part they played in the development of thrash. There is only a fleeting mention of the German wave, not to mention the total ignoring of Violence, one of the best thrash bands of the 80s. Sam should have cut out some of Lars, the pompous dwarf who we'd seen too many times anyway (rolling his tongue as usual) and instead featured Violence's Rob Flynn, who later made another great contribution to thrash by forming Machine Head.
Dunn also fails to mention Strapping Young Lad, just as he'd managed to ignore its brilliant singer/guitarist/song-writer Devin Townsend in the 11th episode.
Yet Dunn includes Kahn-Harris, some irrelevant metal "historian", who actually talks about "death metal's complete elimination of melody". Even Dunn mentioned that "death metal was completely void of melody". Is this some kind of a joke? That's the sort of drivel you hear from a 57 year-old librarian spinster!
