Yeah...I pretty much have the best albums from all of these bands. The last priest album (Nostradamus) was so dissapointing...especially when you listen to Painkiller and know what those guys were once capable of.

Im and optimist and am still waiting for a superior follow ups to painkiller, Rust in peace, master of puppets and Raining Blood... :)

@ mrstickball

Checked out Temple of Blood. Cool band... I'll samlple a few tracks and see if they grow on me. The better news is that while i was looking for Temple of Blood I discovered that Kreator has a new album. This is good news...

I totally agree about Nostradamus. That album, along with A Matter of Life and Death by Maiden were big disappointments to me. As for Slayer, I loved South of Heaven, but it was no Raining Blood, that's for sure. A recording of a song from their upcoming album is on YouTube though, and it sounds really good. Probably not final album version though.

I have been in three different bands if that is something that really has to be told to you in order to look as though I am not completely clueless in your eyes. 

IMO putting a disco beat to anything already makes it non-metal as far as I'm concerned.  You can call it Nu-Metal or whatever you want, but it is not metal.  Also, putting a guitar riff to a disco beat doesn't take any more talent than putting a guitar riff to drums.  Please do not call me close minded.  I listen to more genres of music than most people.  I just happen to like the good things from every genre and modern metal is not very good in my eyes.

You putting everything from the birth of metal up until the 80's is completely wrong.  I don't know how old you are but a lot of that music didn't have the same fan base.  Deep Purple was too light for many Iron Maiden fans which in turn was to light for many Metallica fans.  Also, different types of metal did not have the same fan base.  Someone that listened to Dream Theater was not likely to listen to Motorhead.  Putting everything from Cream until Metallica in the same catagory diminishes the music's worth.  There you go.  Do you think that some that listens to Metallica normally listens to Cream?  Putting all of this in the same group is close minded if you want to call me that name.

Obviously everything from 1990 on deserves two groups though in your eyes.  Maybe it does, but you are ignoring a huge chunk of musical history by making everything from the origins of metal to speed metal in the same group.     

amp - You have a problem with identifying what real metal is, and separating it from pop-metal, which has been around since Van Halen.

You must also ask what makes metal...Metal? I would argue that putting a disco beat to a song doesn't make it entirely non-metal, if the band is smart.

And there are plenty of fantastic post-2k acts that have emerged that have talent and the right kind of chops:

Of course, I'm a big Christian Metal fan, so 80% of what's mentioned is Christian, but there's a lot of fantastic work going on in the midwest metal scene. Lots of fantastic bands coming from Ohio and PA.

Sufficive to say, the post-2k metal scene is fantastic with a lot of great bands. It's hard to look at the route of the more melodic bands like Killswitch Engage, and the awesome guitar and drum work going into modern songs, it's blowing out lots of older stuff.

IMO, my critique of older music is that most metal bands, sans Rush (which wasn't metal) had atrocious drumming. We're in an age of fantastic drummers, and more 'meat' to songs outside of standard riffs and breakneck guitar solos. If you think that's metal, then you should just go buy a wig and spandex, and travel back to the 80's with most of the older metal bands. That's not to say they're bad, but to deny the new guard's awesomeness in the underground scene is a crime. True metal has always been underground, and you can't haul off examples like Korn or Nu-Metal as being pureblood metal as being the sign of metal going downhill. Because if you want to go that route, I could cute some pretty trashy mainstream metal bands in the 80's.

@ mr. stickball I am not asking what makes metal .. metal. I know what does. I know for a fact that anything with disco in it is not metal. I know what metal is and none of the "true metal" bands from the 80's wore spandex as you claimed. That was a completely different genre of music. It was called "glam". Furthermore, I don't need a wig. My hair is long because I grew it.

If you like the modern stuff, then that's fine. You're entitled to your opinion and can listen to whatever you want. I can think that it's trash and that's my opinion, but please don't tell me that I can't seperate the difference between metal and pop music. I do know the difference. Most of those guys in spandex during the 80's were pop music. Not metal as you said. Trust me, most real metal bands back then were not dressing like that. They wore T-shirts, jeans, and leather jackets. They did not dress up like girls.

Also, drumming in a lot of older metal bands was phenomenal. Listen to Slayer or any older death metal band. It puts most of the newer stuff to shame. At least you know that Neal Peart can play drums. I'll give you that. I personally don't consider Rush to be metal though. They're hard rock. I can usually distinguish between the two.

@amp316

So you are a metal purist... which is fine. But there really isn't a point one should say..."ok this is metal" and say all other influences are not welcome. A band like Daath for example...they mix dance and metal a lot and it sounds amazing...cause its fresh and new. check out the song below...its one of the best Metal songs I've heard in the last 5 years easily. Its better and more creative than anything traditional bands like Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica or other classic traditional metal bands have done for many moons

Also, while Dave lombardo and Paul Bostoph are drumming legends for sure. However Andols Herrick from Chimaira and Kevin Talley from Daath are easily just as skilled and technical. Just because they don't play full blast all the time doesn't mean they are not as good...you have to play what the song calls for. Sometimes that takes a lot more skill...

I find it strange how you keep harkening back to this idea that newer band are inherently better than the older ones because they're being 'new' and 'different' while the older bands continue with the same sound. Well right in the sense that older band havn't revolutionised metal recently, largely because they already have. At the time of their inception their sound was vastly different to the other music at the time and this defined their style, and when a band reaches this point they aren't supposed to change it, they're supposed to stick with it and make it their own.

I don't have anything against Nu metal as such. I love SOaD and Toxicity, a record which arguably has revolutionised metal, but if it had been Megadeth on the cover I would have been disapointed, regardless of how innovative it was, because I've come to expect certain things from those groups that I fell in love with and when I put on one of their records I expect certain musical and styalistic choices that ultimatly define their sound, there's no need to go and re-invent it.

And when they do try look how it ends up: Metallica with Load, Megadeth with Risk, Slayer with Diabolus in Musica, Anthrax with Stomp 442 and Iron Maiden with the X-factor, records which alienated a lot of their respective fanbases and when they realised this they each appeard to go 'Ok, we fucked up' and returned to their much loved roots. The exeption to this is metallica who continued with the trend set by Load with eventually accumulated in 'St. Anger' without a doubt one of the most hated records in metal and pretty much the antithesis of everything Metallica built their fanbase around.

The thing is a lot of Megadeth fans were alienated when they released Countdown to Extiction and the more after Youthenasia. these were perfectly solid heavy metal albums, but they did not match the intensity of previous Megadeth work. Thankfully new fans were there to embrace the band...

Same with the Black album. Lots of old fans that were hoping for the next Master of puppets were dissapointed. But millions upon millions of fans embraced metallica while never hearing their older work.

Same way the Wii is evolving gaming. Sure, some old school gamers (like myself) look down upon it...but new fans are here ready to embrace the product.

This thread is partially about me finally realizing that (some) new bands are moving the genre forward with their sound...in the same way Metallica and Slayer did back in the day. Furthermore, a lot of these new bands are doing this while sounding a lot like the classic bands they used as influences. Trivum for example...people tend to ridicule them, but they are awfully close to the sound metallica hasn't recorded for decade...melodic bay area thrash. Chimaira's last few album also sounds a lot like pure death metal that bands like Death and Six feet under used to play.