Would these 5 metal albums have been better received if another band had released them instead?
These metal albums are often criticised for being a sharp shift in musical direction. But would they have been better received by established bands within that genre?
Sometimes a band releases an album and whilst it could be a commercial and critical success, is heavily criticised by the bands established fan base. This can often lead to instant preconceived opinion that it is a terrible album. Or that the band has sold out or shamelessly followed a trendy musical direction.
But what if I was to tell you some of these metal albums are actually decent albums? So throw the preconceptions away and lets explore with 5 common examples.
Metallica – St Anger
Lets start here with one of the most obvious ones. The 2003 holy heap of steaming slime that is St Anger by the mighty thrash metal icons Metallica. Or was it?
After the massive success of the Black Album, Metallica wondered through the rest of the 90s on the back of a well publicised fight with Napster and the also maligned (but successful) Load/Reload era (more on that later). Then in 2003, at the height of the metalcore/nu-metal onslaught, Metallica did the unthinkable.
Drop C tuning, 7 Strings chugging, not a sniff of a guitar solo and possibly the worlds most famous snare drum. A prototypical nu-metal album, at the expense of enormous anger from the Metallica faithful. We all know how much hate nu-metal and metalcore gets from the heavy metal community. So to think of one of the pioneers of thrash metal following the crowd was inconceivable. They might as well have replaced James Hetfield with Sean Paul.
But listen to this album again and forget Metallica released it. What you get is some decent nu-metal riffing and some genuinely decent songs. I guarantee if one of the noughties metalcore leaders had released this album it would have been significantly better received. Who knows maybe everyone would be using ‘that’ snare drum sound now!
Speaking of one of the metalcore leaders of the noughties:
Trivium – The Crusade
Ah I can still hear it now. All the spit and venom that was thrown Trivium’s way on the release of this album.
The Crusade was a major change of direction for Trivium on it’s release in 2006. Their 2 previous albums Ember to Inferno and Ascendancy were popular metal albums. Fired by Matt Heafy’s screaming vocals and some deliciously heavy headbanging riffs. The Crusade threw this all out the window and changed style drastically.
I believe a major part of the issue with this album is the lead single release of Anthem (We Are The Fire). It sounds straight out of the 80s glam scene. Don’t tell me your face didn’t screw up first hearing the “Woah Woahs” in the song. Totally out of place on this album.
However, take this and The Rising out of the album (neither would be missed) and what you have is a decent contemporary thrash album. Well, therein lies problem numero dos, no-one wanted to hear a thrash album in 2006.
When Metallica released the Black Album in 1991, the thrash titans at the time all shifted to either a similar radio friendly approach. Or joined in with the metalcore/nu-metal crowd. Thrash was thereon entirely dormant. Aside from Kreator‘s Violent Retribution in 2001, it wasn’t really until Metallica released Death Magnetic in 2008 and Slayer released World Painted Blood in 2009 that thrash woke from its sleep and was back on the metal map.
So Trivium releasing a thrash album with a couple of glam tracks in 2006 was never going to work. Maybe thrash would have returned to life a few years earlier had this been released by John Bush led Anthrax. Sans the glam nonsense obvs.
Machine Head – The Burning Red
Ah yes the dreaded days of Rob Flynn’s new hair do….see what I did there?
Machine Head started life with an absolute killer album Burn My Eyes in 1994, and whilst The More Things Change… in 1997 had to live in the shadows of its previous master, was still musically similar and a very good album.
Then came The Burning Red in 1999 and Supercharger in 2001. I’m going to focus on The Burning Red here as it came first.
This album took as sharp a change as you can take in musical style outside of Kiss going Goregrind. Just watch the music video for From This Day off the album. It’s as sickeningly late 90s nu-metal as it gets.
You know what though, because Machine Head through their entire weight behind their new direction they wrote not only a seriously good nu-metal album, but a genuinely excellent album overall (if you can get past the dirty word that is nu-metal). Ironically trying to regain a bit of the old supposedly ‘superior’ groove heaviness, mixed with nu-metal on the follow up album Supercharger produced a much weaker record overall.
So what if say Korn or Mudvayne had released this album instead? Being established nu-metal bands this album would have been lapped up.
Anyway all was forgiven when Machine Head recorded Through The Ashes of Empires. Then one of metals all time best albums in The Blackening. But maybe we should remember what a cracker The Burning Red was.
Metallica – Load
As before, I’ve decided to pick Load as it came first, even though this and Reload are essentially 2 parts of one big album. The biggest point to note here, is that within the first 3 seconds of the opening song to Load, Ain’t My Bitch you know the musical direction has really shifted for Metallica, into the realms of big ol’ dirty beer swillin’ southern blues hard rock swagger. All the slow bendy wah-wah-on-toast riffs you could shake a can of Coors Light at.
I think after the backlash of the Black Album from long time Metallica fans, this felt like more following the trend radio friendly mush, which wouldn’t get any better the time St Anger flowed through in 2003. However take a step back and forget Metallica released this album, and you have a very good 90s hard rock come grunge album.
I wonder if an established gloomy rock band like Alice In Chains had released this album would it have gotten such a bad rap? Or maybe a contemporary southern rock band like Shinedown or Black Stone Cherry?
I think a problem that plagues Load (and Reload for that matter) is musically it drastically flips from perky hard rock to sombre grunge almost song to song, making it quite to classify these metal albums at all. It’s almost as if they couldn’t make their mind up exactly which way they wanted to go, possibly trying too hard to pander to the 90s grunge crowd (being the peak time for grunge).
I bet many of you would never give a moments thought to going back to this album, but I encourage you to grow a moustache, stick a battered couch out on the front lawn, grab a six-pack of your favourite swill and embrace the filth. You will be better off for it!
Judas Priest – Turbo
This was an interesting one for me to dig into. I’m not old enough to have enjoyed Judas Priest at their early peak, so I don’t know first hand of the ire this album generated. However, I know (and very much enjoy) much of Judas Priest‘s work, and know some of the songs from this album but never really put two and two together to see this album for what it was – 80s action movie montage music!
Again, as seems to be a common theme throughout this, those that pioneer brands of music, seem to be the ones to catch the most flack for a change in musical direction. Judas Priest here being pioneers of not only speed metal, but heavy metal overall. So from their early work, this is most definitely a significant change in direction.
A huge part of the issue is around the heavy use of synthesisers (for the first time in their repertoire). A question I ask however is who the hell wasn’t experimenting with synths in the 80s! It was a shiny new toy for musicians and you could not get away from it.
However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that had this album been released by Def Leppard it would have been received significantly differently. I mean Hysteria was a critical success at the time and even more now. Who doesn’t like some good ol’ fashioned synthy pop-metal!
So what do you think, would these metal albums have been better received by established bands in that genre, or still cast to one side as a stain on the musical map? Let me know below!
Check out more articles and reviews on this site.
Metallica: https://www.facebook.com/Metallica
Trivium: https://www.facebook.com/Trivium
Machine Head: https://www.facebook.com/MachineHead
Judas Priest: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialJudasPriest
