Shadowdoom9 (Andi)'s ultimate Pit test
The remaining part of the 80s thrash metal part of my ultimate Pit test is yet another 4.5-star classic album. My time reviewing it makes up for the odd reviewing experience I had with their next album So Far, So Good... So What! a couple years back. Here are my thoughts:
To say that this band is a joke would be blasphemy to any metal community, but fortunately, there's nothing in Megadeth's sacred highlight album Peace Sells... but Who's Buying? that can ever be considered a joke! Without the Big 4, the majority of the next generation of thrash wouldn't have existed. What can be considered a joke is the sh*t that band and Metallica released in the late 90s. Peace Sells... is what got Megadeth into the Big 4, though the success isn't as huge as Metallica's 3rd album that year. Most of the songs here can be considered classics in the thrash realms. The highlights have so much happening, and I really did have the need to explain them in full detail in the review. There's just a lot you can find in the tempos, riffs, solos, vocal sections, you name it! The track I've had the most struggle with is the penultimate track that is the cover but it's better than one in the next album and not a total stinker. The rough weakness is easy to overlook so you can focus on this music that any fan of metal/thrash can't live without. With the young genius minds of Mustaine and crew, they know how to work out their true charm. Well, it has often been suggested that their true charm isn't finalized until Rust in Peace, but I'm talking about the classic 80s thrash era here, an era that's part of my ultimate Pit test, a part that I just finished in the test, with this album of thrashy madness. A true classic winner!
4.5/5
Coming up: The last part of my initially planned Pit test, the 21st Century era of thrash.
It may surprise a few people but I've never found much to enjoy in Destruction's first two releases "Sentence of Death" (3/5) & "Infernal Overkill" (3/5). In fact, I find them to be seriously overrated. It's "Eternal Devastation" (4/5) that's where Destruction begins to be of interest to me as I've always found the added precision & complexity to be a major drawcard. It's a very solid thrash record indeed.
"Peace Sells" (4.5/5) is Megadeth's finest work for mine. It very much represents the soundtrack to my youth with a sophistication that was as yet unmatched for the thrash scene.
Ben, Daniel, Vinny... You guys can't miss out on this melodic yet brutal offering of horror-themed deathly thrash metal. I think it's so amazing, and I'm sure some of you might like it slightly more. I would encourage adding the melodic death metal subgenre to this release due to its common use of European-style melody. Sonny, this can also be for you when you're ready to continue your death metal rediscovery.
Longtime Deceased fans might have discovered them as early as 1997's Fearless Undead Machines, but I've only just found this band via this album As the Weird Travel On, almost two decades after its release. It's a weird yet great and underrated gem that mixes pieces of speed metal, heavy metal, and death metal into their own different brand of deathly thrash, worshipping horror films and literature in their lyrics are aesthetic, while staying more underground than the buried dead. It's amazing how this band can be at the height of their evolution despite not releasing any full albums in the 80s. Though this album is far past when mixing death metal with thrash metal could be considered a milestone, this is quite a timeless sound, one that I have much more leeway for now than in my more melodic teenage years. There's more complex structure in the heaviness and melody, without going technical or progressive. Half the amount of songs each range from 6 to 8 minutes in length. The riffs and different tempos are catchy, though sometimes predictable. Still there are fresh things that often appear like a great rhythm, a tasteful lead, or background keyboards in the gloomy night. Guitar duo Mark Adams and Mike Smith do some grade-A leads and solos that are close to Guardians territory, but you're still reminded about the album's rightful place in The Horde and The Pit. In fact, fans of Morbid Angel might like this more than fans of DragonForce. The intense hyperspeed of some songs is filled with rock-on rhythms while firing away with deathly blast beats, all performed by drummer Dave Castillo (RIP). Throughout these killer deathly thrash albums, King Fowley and co. keep themselves steady in their unique direction of genuine coherence. And they certainly add more fame to the Swedish death metal sound despite being from America. I would've never had the courage to explore this band, album, or metal genres a decade before this review, but now I do. It's great to hear such energetic speed with different ideas of horror, like Helloween but far more brutal. So get ready for this f***ing fright night, metalheads!
4.5/5