Thrash metal

 

Yeah, but notice that in that case the reviewer's choice of words make it clear that he's terrified of this music - and remember, fear implies respect.

 

Today? Not only is rap causing most of the moral panics metal used to, but a lot of recent trendy "retro-metal" bands have a somewhat parodic vibe (look at the cover of the latest Municipal Waste album, or for that matter its song titles, if you want an example) that makes it look like they don't really respect the genre and its culture. Don't forget how SomethingAwful (and others) routinely dismiss metal as nothing but leftover feedback noise from adolescent testosterone poisoning. It's like mainstream culture has gone from shunning metal because it says something they don't want to hear to shunning metal because they refuse to even understand it.

 

All this becomes even more insulting to any self-respecting metal fan when you remember that - in Denmark at least - conservatives are still as scared by punk as they were back in the eighties.

 

I immediately sought it out as a result, and never read such shallow pop journalism again if I could help it.

 

Indeed. The worst music reviewers are those who are paid to do it.

 

Metal has always had a bad press - I remember reading a review of "Highway to Hell" in a fairly major UK Pop magazine in the late 1970s, which ripped it to shreds, awarding the album 3 stars (out of 10 - one of the lowest I'd ever seen in that particular publication) denouncing AC/DC as "Headbanging horrors", and the music as a cross between "a chainsaw and a piledriver".

 

I immediately sought it out as a result, and never read such shallow pop journalism again if I could help it. I could not believe how right/wrong they were - wrong to award it 3 stars, but right in the "Headbanging Horrors" stuff. I was hooked on AC/DC from that moment! 

 

The variations in rhythm came surprisingly quickly - that was the thing that astonished me when it all "blew up" back in '83, that it was all so very different and that bands were acquiring individual styles that were more radical than those developed by most NWoBHM bands - but those more advanced techniques are not the basis to thrash, just what made the better bands stand out from the simple bands.

 

The trouble is that "thrash" quickly became a dirty word, associated with some kind of mindlessness in playing - and bands tried to get the point across that what they did was more than "thra**". 

 

In my opinion, they shouldn''t have! Thrash was a new technique in itself, that completely revolutionised metal and what could be done with it - and the biggest revolutionaries of this new technique-based style were the bands themselves, especially those who cultivated original styles.

 

It's all progressive.