In case you missed it, author and musician David V. Stewart recently did a couple of videos in which he ranked heavy metal albums. One video ranked Metallica’s discography, while the follow up graded Megadeth’s catalogue (on the front end of his Final Fantasy V stream).
Both are highly worth watching.
David and others have noted familiar but troubling phenomenon evident in both bands’ oeuvres. Metallica and Megadeth broke onto the scene in the early 1980s and achieved superstardom in the early 90s. Then both bands put out disappointing late 90s records that precipitated long declines.
This trajectory matches the career path of another megaband whose decline I charted in the original Cultural Ground Zero post.
Before we go any further, it should be noted that David is an educator who’s taught at the elementary-through-high school levels. He’s explained his grading criteria before, and they’re both objective and internally consistent. He’s not evaluating these albums based on their popularity or sales, but on the musicianship and production values evident in the finished recordings.
Taking a cue from David, I charted my quintessential Ground Zero band according to similar standards.
Here’s what emerged when I objectively evaluated every album by Irish rock band U2–at least every one I’ve listened to:
Cryptic Writings, Load, Pop, Reload, Risk–all dropped around Cultural Ground Zero.
These three bands are just some of the most prominent examples. Almost every major rock act that got big in the 80s and 90s stumbled right around 1996-1999. What we have here is a record industry-specific Music Ground Zero.
Why did it happen? How did almost every major band lose its groove ca. 1997?
Some blame rock’s final divorce from its blues roots. Others point the finger at soul-destroying music software like Pro Tools and Auto-tune.
Others argue that the Low 90s were when the Death Cult clinched its hold on the entertainment industry, and even major acts were forced to parrot the party line.
Still others, like David, point out that the advent of the CD prompted bands to clutter their albums with throwaway tracks beyond the inevitable 8 good ones for fear of “wasting space.”
Those are all contributing factors, to be sure. But on the whole, they’re symptoms of the secular West finally exhausting the cultural patrimony it inherited from Christendom.
All of Western music lies in the shadow of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Those guys composed hymns and Masses. The source of their inspiration isn’t hard to figure out.
Revitalizing popular culture will take a revival of Christian art.
Sample my humble offerings here:
The big difference between Megadeth and Metallica, and this is going to anger a LOT of people, is that Dave Mustaine actually has something to say. As a consequence, his band is still relevant while Metallica coasts by on fumes.
The reason Megadeth survived their collapse in the late ’90s unlike every other mainstream metal band is because he took a break, recharged, became a Christian, and became inspired again.
Even look at David’s chart above for Megadeth. Endgame came out in 2009 and Dystopia (it’s about what you think it is) was their most recent album which came out in 2016, both of which ranked near the top of his list. That they are still going so strong 35 years after their debut is miraculous, even more so that they can still perform material on par with their classics.
Metallica, however, has been on a downhill slide since their fifth album, flailing about for anything to say or do, aside from ruin the music industry with their boomer mentality.
I think, if anything, Megadeth’s transformation is one we should keep in mind in order to keep the fire burning, while Metallica should be a warning for those who forget their way.
And yes, this settles the age-old debate. Megadeth is the better band!
You told me something I didn’t know about David Mustaine. Put another mark in the “Christianity is the wellspring of Western culture” column.
You’re also right about which band is better. I’ve been going back and listening through Metallica’s catalogue. Much of it sounds like driving past a construction site with the windows cracked.
Megadeth, Stryper, and WASP, are the most hated bands in metal. All three of them are run by hardcore Christians, and their music is the best it’s ever been.
I think that says something.
Metallica is single handedly the reason that I didn’t get into metal until my mid-twenties. Growing up in a small town and before internet streaming was viable, the only exposure I had to metal was through whatever my friends listened to and it was all Metallica. Caused me to write off the entire genre until I stumbled into years later when (through a series of coincidences) I encountered a bunch of songs I liked by Blue Oyster Cult, Rainbow and Blind Guardian all in the same short timespan.
Even after getting into metal I still stayed away from thrash metal, again due to Metallica. Then someone finally convinced me to listen to Megadeth and all I could do is wonder why my friends didn’t listen to THIS when I was growing up.
This was very similar to my experience, actually. I’m not much of a metal guy, but was recommended Megadeth nonetheless. Peace Sells and Rust in Peace still are two of the best metal records I’ve ever heard to this day. Not sure how Dave Mustaine managed it, but his blend of thrash, hard rock, alternative, blues, and classic metal, really speaks to me in a way Metallica never has.
Also, thanks to David’s video, I snagged myself a few missing Megadeth albums. Those are definite keepers.
In my experience, people who are into overrated metal bands are the same ones who have unhealthy obsessions with pro wrestling.
It makes sense when you consider how rife metal is with backstage drama. No shortage of tales about drug-fueled escapades and ex-bandmates done dirty.
The only thing I know about Metallica is their infamously litigious nature. Hilariously, they were paid to play for Blizzard’s “Blizzcon” annual convention/company celebration/fan meetup (which was digital-only this year), and Twitch’s copyright bots automatically muted them for copyright violations (yes, of their *own* song – learning algorithms are not smart) and instead played royalty-free elevator music over their performance. Many people thought it was fitting justice for their antics with Napster and the like.
I know former Metallica fans who dropped them over the Napster fracas and hold it against the band to this day.
The West’s oldest music can’t inspire you until you hear it in person—performed with the appropriate dynamics and heard through the acoustics of a concert hall. People don’t get Bach or Brahms because they don’t understand that music is more than melody.
You might find interesting this video of a guitar teacher who started teaching in, you guessed it, 1997 and describes a palpable decline in student’s genuine love for music: https://youtu.be/emOJdqsEU0o
Completely off topic, but one aspect of cultural ground zero you will never get people to concede on: Comedy television. Oh sure they’ll admit that Simpsons, SNL, etc stopped being funny in the late 90s, but if you try pointing out shows like Community, Parks and Rec, Sarah Silverman show, etc aren’t funny or at very least are extremely overrated, they will defend them with a burning rage.
Even if these some of these shows shows may have had some good aspects, the lasting damage done by their actors, writers, and producers far negate those good aspects.
Good point. If the enemy’s propaganda wasn’t effective, they wouldn’t produce it.
I find the notion that one can treat something as subjective as musical taste “objectively,” but if Stewart can’t be bothered to get basic facts correct (who is the producer of Death Magnetic? Such a mystery! Hardwired had 12 tracks, not 18 or 20) I don’t know why I should take his “objective” rankings all that seriously. Just saying DM is full of bad songs isn’t an argument or a critique.
The notion of Metallica’s downfall is overblown. Load and Reload had their stinkers, of course, but those records have grown on me. DM and Hardwired are nowhere near as bad as the video claims.
Did “almost every major band lose its groove ca. 1997?” Let’s see.
1) Iron Maiden and Judas Priest stumbled in the 90’s mostly because they lost their singers. After Dickinson and Halford came back, both bands went on to make a series of great records in the 21st century.
2) R.E.M. made their last great record (for a while) in 1996, but then Bill Berry had to quit the band for health reasons. Obviously the loss of their drummer hurt the band for years, as one would expect, but they too eventually recovered to make two great records before calling it a day.
3) Bob Dylan actually got his groove back in 1997!
4) The Replacements and Husker Du had both imploded around the early 90’s, but both Westerberg and Mould recovered to make great music in the 21st century.
5) Foo Fighters released one of their greatest records, The Colour and the Shape, in 1997.
6) Now that I think about it, some of my favorite records came out in 1997.
7) Springsteen lost his mojo in the early 90’s (at least on record) but got it back in 2001.
8) In general, most of the rock bands that got big in the 80’s declined in the 90’s for reasons that have nothing to do with any grand conspiracy about Cultural Ground Zero. R.E.M. is a good example of this. Another is INXS, who were really going in an interesting direction in the early 90’s with Welcome to Wherever You Are before Michael Hutchence died.
David is making value statements, not preference statements.
Musical taste is subjective. Musical quality is objective.
If you can’t grasp that basic distinction, I don’t know why anyone should take your opinions seriously.
His critical analysis is literally “the songs on Death Magnetic are bad.” He doesn’t say what makes them bad, even though on an “objective” level the songs on that record are more accomplished, lyrically and musically, than the ones on Load and Reload, both of which he ranks higher than DM. So there’s nothing to support his statement. I mean, he acknowledges right up front that his ranking of DM is going to cause controversy, which indicates that people will disagree with him. What makes his opinion “right” as opposed to that of some other random guy on the internet? He’s just expressing his own musical preference. Which is fine– as long as it’s not presented as “objective.”
If you want to know David’s criteria, go ask him.
Just curious – why did Joshua Tree get a B from you?
An A grade album can have no throwaway songs. The Joshua Tree has at least two eminently skippable tracks: “Exit” and “Mothers of the Disappeared”. They’re exactly the kind of material that belongs on side B of a single instead of an album.
Then there’s the issue of production quality, which is inexcusably low. Every track on The Joshua Tree sounds murky as mud, even compared to The Unforgettable Fire and War.
Don’t get me wrong. Joshua Tree features some legendary songs. My two all-time favorite U2 songs are on side 1. That’s part of the problem, though, since TJT suffers from the band’s tendency to frontload their records and pad side 2 with filler.
It should be noted that both the vertical and horizontal arrangement of the albums reflects their grades. Joshua Tree is a high B+.