Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" and "Master of Puppets" should also be in the Guardians

This time I'm not mistaking it for anything else.  The title track and "Escape" have their typical heavy metal moments and are not limited to pure thrash like "Fight Fire With Fire" or "Creeping Death; they switch from thrash to heavy metal a couple times, and "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and the two longest tracks "Fade to Black" and "The Call of Ktulu" are almost either pure heavy metal or lightly prog metal.  I mean, "Fade to Black" is a freakin' ballad that's only really considered a thrash metal song because it gets a little heavier in the end and it's on a thrash album.  There's some thrashing on "Fade to Black," but not a lot.  It's really just heaviness in general.

I wouldn't put this under anything besides thrash and heavy, though.  The speed and prog influences aren't strong enough for that.

And "Master of Puppets" has as many softer moments and ballad-style parts that ring of pure heavy metal.  It's like a constant switch.  I'm not sure I can really call "Orion" thrash, "The Thing That Should Not Be" is a bit slow on the tempo for that, "Master of Puppets'" middle-section is slow and soft like a ballad, and "Sanitarium" evolves from a slow, gothic ballad to thrash.

I'm hoping these two halls actually attract people to vote, and not some of the less popular stuff like the Symphony X album I submitted.

These two releases have been added to the Hall of Judgement.

I've had to go with NO votes on these two. Despite what most people seem to say, there really wasn't that big an increase in Heavy Metal influence with "Rise The Lightning" in my opinion. It was just that the influences that were already so visible on "Kill 'Em All" (which contained a good half an album of Heavy/Speed Metal if you examine it track by track just quietly) were used in a more accessible & sophisticated way & were better integrated into their sound (thanks Cliff) but at the same time the thrash components were filed down to a razor sharp point. Sure, "For Whom The Bell Tolls", "Fade To Black" & "Escape" have plenty to do with your more classic Heavy Metal model & transcend the basic building blocks of early thrash but I think it's fair to say that those songs don't really sound like the Maidens & Priests of the world either (well... "Escape" might). The remainder of the album represents the pinnacle of what Thrash Metal can be with five of the eight tracks being pure, elite-level Thrash Metal & that's a stronger ratio of thrash-to-heavy/speed metal than "Kill 'Em All" can boast. "Ride The Lightning" has been that influential & readily emulated since that if we're going to claim it as being Heavy Metal then I feel that we're going to be claiming the same with a good half of all the thrash records that have been released since too (I'm looking at you Overkill). I don't think it's a coincidence that I can't think of many heavy metal records that have tracks as intense & extreme as "Fight Fire With Fire" & "Trapped Under Ice" on them. I can say very similar things about "Master Of Puppets" to be honest only probably more so. Just my two cents...

I'm not entirely sure that we can make that claim.  Off the top of my head, Arise, the first five Slayers, Beneath the Remains and Rust in Peace barely have any straight-up heavy metal.  Take an album from this collection and it's 90-100% thrashing.

The heaviness of Metallica's tamer songs and ballads mostly comes from the guitar tone, the production and Ulrich, but it's by far not just thrash.

I'm not entirely sure that we can make that claim.  Off the top of my head, Arise, the first five Slayers, Beneath the Remains and Rust in Peace barely have any straight-up heavy metal.  Take an album from this collection and it's 90-100% thrashing.

I'd dispute that actually. "Rust In Peace" & Slayer's "Show No Mercy" definitely have a classic metal influence in the same way that those Metallica records do in my opinion. What about records like "Spreading The Disease", "Practice What You Preach" & "The Years of Decay"? I'd suggest that they all do too but it doesn't make them heavy metal records or any less relevant to the thrash metal genre. Put it this way, yesterday it was decided in the Hall of Judgement to keep Rainbow's "Rising" under the Heavy Metal banner. Do you think these two Metallica records belong in the same genre as "Rising"?

What I'm saying is those other albums spend more time doing actual thrashing with lots of energy where Metallica spends more time with build-up, melody and slowing down some, especially in MoP's case since it's a bit longer than RtL or Rust in Peace.

And keep in mind that Rising was released in a time when metal itself was closer to hard rock.  We're talking about a ten-year difference during the early development of metal, so the exact standard gets technical.

What I'm saying is those other albums spend more time doing actual thrashing with lots of energy where Metallica spends more time with build-up, melody and slowing down some, especially in MoP's case since it's a bit longer than RtL or Rust in Peace.

I would suggest that what you're referring to is more of a progressive influence than a heavy metal one (admittedly borrowed from Iron Maiden's "Powerslave" as much as anywhere else) but I don't think anyone can accuse tracks like "Battery" & "Damage Inc." of mucking about.

And keep in mind that Rising was released in a time when metal itself was closer to hard rock.  We're talking about a ten-year difference during the early development of metal, so the exact standard gets technical.

I see where you're coming from & it's certainly in line with what a big majority of the metal scene feel on the matter but I actually don't think the period when a record was released should have any impact on its genre tagging personally. It either is or it isn't & that needs to be by the modern understanding of the genre classifications in my opinion. Genre-tags are essentially for directing people to music that they're likely to enjoy so I don't think it makes much sense to use the historical meaning of a term when classifying music, particularly when most of the target audience weren't even born at the time of release. (See First Wave of Black Metal for a prime example of why.) Plus, the differentiator between hard rock & heavy metal is widely considered to be the blues component which "Rising" has plenty of. If "Rising" is heavy metal then it makes the hard rock genre completely redundant as far as I can see.

Anyway... I think we'll have to agree to disagree here but it was good healthy discussion that got me thinking nonetheless. Keep 'em coming! :)

Doesn't a "wave" of something typically determine the common tropes and differences between other waves?  Like the difference between first and third wave ska?  Or the alternative-rock includion differentiating 80's power pop and 90's power pop?  Fans of the later organize that genre by waves; I've seen it in discussion on RYM.  Heaviness itself was an ongoing journey for more than 15 years until black metal pretty much nailed it.  That growth needs to be addressed.  Before Sabbath, no one even used the term "metal."  The term was coined in 1971, and since then bands either tried to match Sabbath or beat them.  In the 80's it was a gradual journey from NWOBHM to thrash to death to black.  Nowadays we have to rely on technology to make things sound heavier than they really are, usually boiling down to production techniques, such as the heaviness displayed on the albums Hell II and Hell III.  Production plays a big roll in those albums.  Basically, the metal scene had to evolve more than most genres did overtime, because it's not dying anytime soon.

I don't consider that production or general heaviness have much to do with genre-tagging to be honest. You can make a metal record that's not all that heavy & you can make a hard rock record that's really fucking heavy. It's the musical tools & techniques that are being used that define a release's genre rather than how heavy it is as far as I'm concerned. If a 70's release is mostly using hard rock tools & not metal ones then it's hard rock as far as I'm concerned. Legitimate metal was being played by a few bands back in the 70's (see "Paranoid", "Stained Class", etc.) so there's a clear differentiator as far as I can see. Black Sabbath & Judas Priest were consistently using metal tools in the 70's & those tools are still the exact same ones used in heavy metal today so it really doesn't matter what era they come from. They'd still be tagged as heavy metal if their 70's records were released tomorrow as we regularly see that in the retro trend that's been so popular in recent times. Rainbow, Scorpions & Budgie only used metal tools very occasionally amidst a predominantly hard rock driven backbone in my opinion & as such don't qualify as metal. As I said, I don't think we're going to agree here.

Personally, I don't consider early Judas to be very heavy at all.  But if Sad Wings of Destiny counts as a metal album, so does Rainbow.  There were too many moments on that album that just don't really match up, and much of the album walks the fine line between hard rock and heavy metal just as Rainbow's Rising did, and part of this is because Halford's voice still needed some maturing.  At that point, Plant and Gillan had more metal voices.  Halford just had the scream (listening to the album now).  Of course, I could say the same thing about most Judas Priest until Painkiller.  It even gets to the point where I don't really consider Sad Wings a metal album (albeit JUST BARELY under the minimum requirement for the time).  Even Machine Head could get heavier and I don't consider that metal, either.

80's hard rock / heavy metal, however, reached an entirely new standard to the point where "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Live Wire" are considered non-metal by metalheads everywhere (although I theorize some of them just want to diss glam and GNR).  Take Powerslave for example.  That was a truly metallic sound, and they could get just as heavy as the songs on those Metallica albums that I singled out.  That right there is the clear factor.  We're essentially covering the level of heaviness increasing between the releases on "Deep Purple in Rock" and "Powerslave."  This was a standard I was taught by a few users on RYM due to heaviness itself having been criticized.  Both the Zeppelin and Sabbath debuts originally got mixed reviews because people weren't used to the heaviness.  The scene was small, yes, but there was one.  The first usage of the term can be traced to '71, and since then there were people seeing how far they could push the envelop until finally we had people blasting music as loud and noisy as possible in Norway.

Let's just agree that we have very different understandings of what constitutes metal music & leave it at that, shall we?

*slowly backs out of the conversation*

You sure?  It was a good conversation.  And from what I can tell, neither of us are on edge and the discussion's getting strong points from both parties.

Look, at the end of the day there's a fundamental difference between rock guitar playing & heavy metal guitar playing from a purely theoretical point of view. The hard rock technique utilizes crunchy open-string chords, bluesy pentatonic scales & traditional riff structures borrowed from blues rock. The metal one focuses heavily on the use of power chords, more adventurous chromatic structures & chuggy, palm-muted & much more rhythmic right-hand technique. The same can be said for the drumming which has its own set of theoretical rules. It really doesn't matter how heavy a band's sound is. It's about which techniques they use. GnR & Motley Crue used rock techniques in a heavy way. That's why they're rightfully tied to hard rock. In the mid-to-late 1970's Judas Priest used metal techniques in a way that isn't very heavy by today's standards. It doesn't exclude them from being metal though. That's the point I'm trying to make. The vocal style plays very much a supporting role in this argument in my opinion.

For the record, "Sad Wings of Destiny" was still very much a transitional record in that it was roughly 50/50 but the most significant tracks were comfortably the metal ones which sees it landing in my metal bucket. The same can be said of "Black Sabbath" & "Sin After Sin" actually but "Rising" doesn't get close to meeting that ratio & includes a much stronger blues backbone with tracks like "Starstruck" & "Do You Close Your Eyes" barely meeting the requirements for hard rock, let alone metal.

So are you saying it's impossible for a metal song to sound like a rock song?  Theoretically?

You can play a metal song in whatever style you like by using the musical tools associated with your genre of choice but I believe it stops being a metal song once you remove metal guitar & drum techniques

Not necessarily.  The point of rock and metal is to overcome limits and try new things.  Sabbath didn't use new tech, they just toned down the guitars, which anyone could've done.

I would challenge that actually. Most of the rock & metal bands out there aren't trying anything new or pushing any limits. It doesn't make them any less rock or metal & that's ok. The majority of rock/metal fans don't require it anyway as the real point of the music is simply to let off some steam & have fun. There are those that push the threshold in the interest of art & there's an audience for that too.

Black Sabbath are actually a classic example of a band who openly pushed the scope of metal out further & further by incorporating outside influences (particularly during the mid-to-late 1970's), so much so that they pushed the friendship a bit too far at times & lost their metal status altogether on records like "Technical Ecstasy", "Never Say Die!" & "Seventh Star".

I might give you Seventh Star, but I've never heard anyone say those other two aren't heavy metal.  Plus, those albums sounded like the were more worried about modernizing than anything.  They were still heavier than another influential metal album at the time (and you can't convince me this isn't metal), Deep Purple in Rock.  It also bridged the fine line between hard rock and heavy metal, but displayed a level of heaviness that most early bands had difficulty reaching, and had already included the more melodic nature that would be seen in ballads and symphonic metal songs of the 90's and onward.

While I do disagree, I'm in the camp that considers Metal Church thrash so of course I would, I would like to point out that if Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets are thrash/heavy records, then quite a lot of thrash records should be in thrash/heavy too.

I think it really depends on how diverse the band gets.  Albums like the first four Megadeths are too focused on thrashing front to back for that to happen, and by Countdown the thrash had been largely forsaken.  The same about thrashing front-to-back is especially true for Slayer, who rarely steered into new territory longterm until they made a straight-up punk album with Divine Intervention.  Off the top of my head, bands whose classics are excluded from this combo include Megadeth up to Rust, Slayer, Vektor, Coroner, Kreator, Sepultura, Voivod and Celtic Frost.  Metal Church is a good example of the combo (depending on who you ask), T0urniquet is definitely both and Overkill is a maybe.  And because US power metal is a direct heavy metal subgenre you could also include Iced Earth by technicality.  I'm almost done with Peace Sells, and from front to back the first thing on its mind is thrashing.  It doesn't really exercise diversity until its cover of "I Ain't Superstitious."  I guess in comparison to most thrash bands, there are only a few bands who bridge the gap.

Albums like the first four Megadeths are too focused on thrashing front to back for that to happen, and by Countdown the thrash had been largely forsaken.  The same about thrashing front-to-back is especially true for Slayer, who rarely steered into new territory longterm until they made a straight-up punk album with Divine Intervention.  Off the top of my head, bands whose classics are excluded from this combo include Megadeth up to Rust, Slayer, Vektor, Coroner, Kreator, Sepultura, Voivod and Celtic Frost.  Metal Church is a good example of the combo (depending on who you ask), T0urniquet is definitely both and Overkill is a maybe.  And because US power metal is a direct heavy metal subgenre you could also include Iced Earth by technicality.  I'm almost done with Peace Sells, and from front to back the first thing on its mind is thrashing.  It doesn't really exercise diversity until its cover of "I Ain't Superstitious."  I guess in comparison to most thrash bands, there are only a few bands who bridge the gap.

With the exception of Megadeth, you seem to be listing bands from the more extreme end of the thrash scene there Rexorcist so I don't think that's a particularly good case study but even if we stick within that group you'll find that there were plenty of obvious heavy metal & speed metal influences on a record like Slayer's "Show No Mercy". Take "The Antichrist", "The Final Command" & "Crionics" for example. None of those are technically thrash metal tracks. They all have a lot more to do with speed metal & the NWOBHM in my opinion but we don't ever look to claim "Show No Mercy" as anything other than thrash. The same can be said for Megadeth's "Killing Is My Business... & Business Is Good!" as I'd suggest that there's a few tracks on that tracklisting that are closer to a speed/NWOBHM sound too. Look at "Chosen Ones" for example. I'm not saying that either of these albums should be tagged as speed metal or heavy metal but I don't think they're all that different to "Ride The Lightning" & "Master of Puppets" in this regard.

For the record, Slayer's punk record was "Undisputed Attitude".

I'm of the opinion that it's best to keep the amount of genres attached to releases to a minimum. For second or third genres to be attached to a release, they should be required to correctly attract the right audience. That's what genres are for after all. To let people that like release X know that they may also like release Y.

Metallica's first few albums are unquestionably thrash metal albums that sit very comfortably alongside all the other unquestionably thrash metal albums of the time. People that enjoy one thrash band are very likely to enjoy Metallica's early albums. Are there heavy metal influences on them? Sure there are! But attaching these albums to the same genre that bands like Iron Maiden, Dio and Accept belong to is, in my opinion, not really helpful.

It would also feel very wrong to see Master of Puppets on top of The Guardians chart here at Metal Academy.

But that's all just my opinion. Carry on!

Well, I'm careful about debating speed metal as it is a loose term on RYM and can vary depending on the online community.  But I'd attach it to Seventh Son and Black Hand Inn at any time.  Running Wild goes hand-in-hand with Metallica for how brutal their music can be.  Around the internet these guys are tagged as heavy metal.  Metal storm doesn't even consider them power metal.  But Metallica attracts metal fans of various types, and that's why the albums are so special.  We can't deny that the general heaviness of both albums compositions lower and in side A.  Yes, the guitars are heavy, but the band isn't always "thrashing.". On top of that, the bands I tagged are many of the most popular bands in the thrash scene.  I'd even include Annihilator, Pantera and maybe Artillery.  Obviously I'm not counting early Pantera.

Well, I'm careful about debating speed metal as it is a loose term on RYM and can vary depending on the online community.  But I'd attach it to Seventh Son and Black Hand Inn at any time.  Running Wild goes hand-in-hand with Metallica for how brutal their music can be.  Around the internet these guys are tagged as heavy metal.  Metal storm doesn't even consider them power metal.  But Metallica attracts metal fans of various types, and that's why the albums are so special.  We can't deny that the general heaviness of both albums compositions lower and in side A.  Yes, the guitars are heavy, but the band isn't always "thrashing.". On top of that, the bands I tagged are many of the most popular bands in the thrash scene.  I'd even include Annihilator, Pantera and maybe Artillery.  Obviously I'm not counting early Pantera.

Interesting perspective. Personally I'd suggest that "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" is a heavy metal record with some progressive influences & "Black Hand Inn" sits somewhere between heavy metal & power metal. I wouldn't say that Running Wild come close to being as thrashy or brutal as Metallica's 80's classics & I've never considered them to be speed metal, despite them being commonly referred to in that way.

In regard to the bands you've added there, Annihilator & Artillery certainly have releases that include as much heavy metal influence as these two Metallica records. Pantera's "Cowboys From Hell" offers a bit of that too with plenty of Judas Priest influence in particular. I'd highlight tracks like "Psycho Holiday", "Cemetary Gates" & "Shattered" as examples of that, particularly "Cemetary Gates" with that classic Randy Rhoads style riff.

True but they aren't a very diverse band and their hot albums steer way too close to groove.  I think we're debating different definitions of heavy metal by accident.