karljant
Ancient Mariner
Same opinion here. I think the only reason some people like it is really the great lead guitar work. Like a tasteless cake with some really refined topping. But when it comes to songwriting, overall I truly concur it's a vulgar album at best.
Once again agreed. And it aged surprisingly good. Perhaps the Megadeth album I listen to more nowadays.
It depends. If you inspect the "recent" revivalist thrash metal bands, most of them take the "let's copy DRI and other crossover bands" route to be honest. Ok... with some sparkles of Bonded By Blood plus Kill 'Em All poured on top of it but that's all. And my opinion on those bands is that they're really subpar and derivative (unlike DRI that made a couple of truly amazing and - by then - groundbreaking albums). And yes some "Thrash" got "refined" into "Death Metal". One can easily see how records such as Altars Of Madness, Left Hand Path, Slowly We Rot, Leprosy or Malleus Maleficarum are indeed refined versions of Early thrash releases (some of them even labelled proto death metal) like Endless Pain, Morbid Tales, Bestial Devastation, Seven Churches, Sentence Of Death and In The Sign Of Evil.
Nevertheless I believe the reason why the "formula" from other great Thrash records from 80's was rarely revived with proper quality is a bit different. Take Metallica and Anthrax as an example. In this cases I believe the reason is these guys released such stellar albums (Ride to Justice and Disease to Persistence respectively) and extended their blueprint to such a diverse song structure spectrum, they ended up making life reaaaaly hard for everyone who came after. Take the case of Metallica: from absolute savagery in tracks such as Fight Fire With Fire, Battery and Dyers Eve, to semi acoustic epics like Fade To Black, Welcome Home and One, passing through proggy stuff like Call Of Ktulu, Orion, And Justice For All and Master Of Puppets these guys have done it all it was to be done. And to a certain extent that's why not even themselves succeeded entirely to make an album in those terms when they tried to rehash some of that fire during the 2010's.
On the other hand there's the myth that thrash metal is a square genre. Some bands were so unique no one could replicate them. Take Sabbat as a reference. Coroner and Mordred also come to my mind. Or even Killing Technology / Dimension Hatross era Voivod (Vektor tried but they had to put some Death on their sound to sound similar). Then there are those that kept on playing roughly the same genre (with more or less tweaks or even doing a hiatus to venture into other stuff only to return shortly after). In this case you have Megadeth: the most time they spent recording "thrashless" (or almost) records was between Countdown and Cryptic Writings (where they penned some Thrash Metal tracks once again) and they returned once again in The System Has Failed to include the genre in their works. Testament, Overkill, Slayer, and even Terrible Certainty onwards Kreator that only left the genre during less than a decade. And it's hard to compete against these dudes at their game (even when they make subpar thrash albums).
Finally there's one more thing: different breeds of thrash metal were created during the 90's. But the 90's and 00's were the decades of "we have to invent a new genre with a stupid name for every fucking band that simply doesn't copy something". So when you had guys like Meshuggah, Nevermore, Confessor and The Haunted rearing their heads they were labelled something else while sounding quite "thrashy". And, yes, to a certain extent we have the case of Pantera (so... it's ok to call Exhorder Thrash metal but Cowboys has to be Groove metal just because it came out in the 90's... see my point?).
Summing it up it's really difficult to pinpoint the absolute influence and distinguish every single distinct trait of two genres that are so close to each other stylistical and chronological wise. Proof is the eternal discussion regarding the 1st Death Metal record ever between 7 Churches and Scream Bloody gore.
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(although I only nominated Meteora).
