As a child of the late 70s and 80s, I find myself still thinking of metal as a young genre. Compared to some types of music, it certainly still is. Still, it has been around for over half a century, and while continuing to evolve, in many ways is as strong now as it ever has been.

That wasn’t always the case, though.

A brief history

With roots in the late 60s, it really was 1970 with the releases of both Black Sabbath and the follow up Paranoid that entrenched heavy metal as a new, darker, heavier style of rock music. Throughout that decade, it continued to grow, and we saw the birth of some of metal’s most enduring and important bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

The 80s saw huge growth in metal, with the genre expanding into the mainstream, and multiple sub-genres arriving on the scene. Hair/Glam bands dominated the airwaves, while underground bands began to flourish as well. And amongst those new, emerging genres was one in particular. Thrash metal took elements of the NWOBHM bands and decided to get angry. Riffs were faster, more aggressive and vocals began to take on a harsh edge. Still singing, the thrash vocalists added distortion to their singing, increasing the aggressive nature of the music. Add to that, lyrically, thrash music often addressed more serious themes such as isolation and alienation, injustice in society, and went after these topics with anger.

This wasn’t mainstream music, and early thrash releases such as Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All, Slayer’s Hell Awaits, and Megadeth’s Killing is my Business… And Business is Good! just added to the stigma against the emerging genre. Yes, the 80s demonstrated both a boom in metal as well as an increase in the criticism levied against the music.

And then came the 90s.

The perils of commercial success

As the 80s wound to a close, the sheen of the Glam/Hair scene was starting to wear off. The sleaze, trash, and outright misogyny of the genre was wearing thin. At the same time, some of metal’s biggest, but still not mainstream, acts were being catapulted into the spotlight. Nowhere was this more evident than on the 1991 release Metallica.

With much more accessible sound, in part powered by the cleaner, much more full production under the hands of Bob Rock, “Enter Sandman” and many other tracks became staples of not just rock radio, but top 40 radio as well. Metallica began to sell out stadiums, and Metallica the album has been certified 16x platinum in the US. That success was sure to have repercussions.

Just under one year later, Megadeth would drop Countdown to Extinction on the world, stripping away much of the aggression and technicality of its predecessor, the incredible Rust in Peace. It, too, would become a commercial success for the band. I don’t know if Dave Mustaine would admit that the change in direction was in response to Metallica’s incredible success from the previous year, but it seems almost impossible that it wasn’t, at least in part.

Suddenly we had some of the 80s most aggressive and influential metal bands releasing music that had so much of the hard edge sanded off. This was metal that was easily digestible. It was widely palatable for the masses, and seemed designed to appeal to those masses. I won’t ever begrudge a band or artist commercial success. But listening to these albums, there just seemed to be something missing, at least to this metalhead’s ears.

But that wasn’t the only force at work here.

A new type of heavy

Amidst these commercial successes from previous niche bands, we saw another change in the music landscape. The early 90s saw a huge surge in the popularity of the grunge movement.

Bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains all emerged, many from the Seattle area, with huge success. Albums such as Nevermind, Ten, and Dirt landed in the early 90s, taking the airwaves by storm. Gone was the polish and glam of the 80s. Here was a raw edge, a sense of frustration at the world, and a desire to expose the ugly underbelly of society with music that was, in some ways, equally ugly.

The coffin lid closed and was slammed shut on the polished, pristine sound of the glam of the 80s.

Gone were the shredding guitar solos. Songs weren’t likely to be about girls or parties. They were more likely to be about relationships falling apart, about people falling apart. While one type of metal was going more mainstream, the mainstream was also actively rejecting the tropes of many other types of metal. The music landscape was changing. Friends of mine who outright rejected metal previously were no sharing copes of Metallica, Nevermind, and Badmotorfinger.

And in the midst of this, much of real metal was fading.

And then things got really weird

The year was 1994. It had been a crazy few years for metal and heavy music in general. Metallica was still riding the success of their self-titled album, touring across the world and still selling out stadiums. Nirvana, despite their insane success only a few years earlier, was dealing with the suicide of Kurt Cobain the spring of that year. Alice In Chains was dealing with Layne Staley’s heroin addiction. Megadeth was preparing to release their most commercial and pop-oriented album to date, Youthanasia

Near the end of October and album was released. It was the debut, self-titled album from a California band. Korn was unleashed upon a mostly unsuspecting populace. It was dirty, felt raw, sort of like grunge. But the vocals borrowed elements from rap and hip-hop, and there were elements such as record scratching that just hadn’t really been part of metal prior to this (excepting things such as the Anthrax version of Bring the Noise earlier that decade).

Subsequent releases from bands such as Korn as well as others (Limp Bizkit, Sevendust, Staind, and culminating in the late 2000 release Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park) would create a juggernaut of musical power that we still see the effects of today.

In the midst of this shifting landscape, we saw some classic metal bands really struggle. Metallica would continue to garner commercial success with releases such as Load and ReLoad, but lose many of their fans along the way, lamenting the metal aspect of the music as it continued on a trajectory of moody hard rock that was highly accessible. Megadeth would do the same with tepid and impotent releases such as Cryptic Writings and Risk. Even the mighty Iron Maiden struggled mightily during this time with sub-standard releases like The X Factor and Virtual XI.

All in all, if you were a fan of metal that was heavy and aggressive, it was becoming difficult to find in what had been some of the most reliable places.

The commercial success of grunge and then nu-metal really threw a wet blanket on more traditional types of metal. There were still some less well known types of metal flourishing, and even really coming into their own. But in many ways, it just wasn’t the same anymore.

Still, in the midst of all of this change, there were some bands continuing, striving, and releasing kick-ass music, sometimes even in spite of the demands from their record labels.

And one of those bands was Bay Area thrash legends Testament.

Next time, we’ll look at how they chose to respond to the winds of change the 90s brought.