1986 was a year that gave us classic albums in the form of "Peace Sells... but Who's Buying", "Somewhere In Time", "Slippery When Wet", "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus", "5105", and "Rage For Order".
It was also the year that gave us "Master Of Puppets" and "Reign In Blood". Enough said.
But not really. Metallica and Slayer set the bar for all metal that would come thereafter, but it isn't clear whether forty years of slow decline is more revealing of how great those high water marks were, or of how willing we are to settle for mediocrity. Both bands spent decades basking in the afterglow of being the ones to set the standard, all the while they stopped jumping to break the barrier again. They became bands content to, like us with our aging bodies, brag about the time they used to be able to touch the rim, even as our knees hurt enough that we never leave the ground anymore.
Metallica and Slayer were the keystones of 'The Big Four', and remained the most important bands of the entire thrash movement straight through the brief attempt to bring all of them together to celebrate the past. Despite it being decades later, it went without much contemplation that few people who were there cared in the slightest what those bands were doing in that moment. Everyone wanted to hear the old classics as if it was the old days, which is both a pat on the back and a knife in it.
"Master Of Puppets" is often cited as the greatest metal album ever made, but it comes with questions regarding how many people saying that have ever listened deeply to the music, because Metallica was not a thrash band by any current definition of the term. "Master Of Puppets" plays with tone and tempo in a way that is more nuanced than an audience that equated cutting of your hair to cutting off your balls could handle. Metallica had speed, but they also had doom, oppression, and a yearning to be something more than mere blinding fingers and blinding rage. The genius of the album is not in its power, but in its ambition.
"Reign In Blood" is the album the common discourse thinks the entire thrash movement was. Thirty minutes of pure speed and chromatic noise, the only nuance Slayer was capable of came in the form of the painting adorning the cover, which was more artistic than metal tended to get. Slayer stripped away all the pretense of the decade, turning their music into a razor-sharp assault, and remaining one of the few records from that time that doesn't sound the slightest bit dated. Slayer made a record that stifled their own career, because it would always sound as fresh as what they would do after, with the shadow never fading.
The same is true of "Master Of Puppets", although in that case there is a degree to which the momentum of already being considered classic has ensured its status will never be questioned. Much like how incumbents in politics have a re-election rate of 90% even when they are terrible, our classic albums remain classic albums on name recognition alone. There is nothing that can be said about "Master Of Puppets" that will change its place in metal history.
That's what makes albums like these interesting to listen to. If we can do our best to put on fresh ears, are they still records we would hold up as classic? In many cases, I find myself saying 'no' more often than I'm sure most people will. When metal was in its nascent stages, we may have had lower standards, because we hadn't yet seen what metal was capable of. These records were pushing the genre to its limits, but we would soon learn those boundaries had plenty of elasticity left in them. What was extreme in the moment is so tame these days Metallica and Slayer are family-friendly entertainment. Think about that... Slayer is a corporate brand. Ugh.
The point isn't to harangue the past, but to ask ourselves why we insist on living in it. I say this without judgment, as I do it as much as anyone. During the lulls in new releases, I am listening to the same batch of albums I have for the last twenty, sometimes thirty, years. When I do that, I like to think I am doing so with the understanding that I am not judging those records to be musically superior to everything that has come after, but with the perspective that they have years of extra emotional weight to hit me with.
As these records turn forty years old, I am looking at them with the same existential questions I faced when I hit that milestone. For as much as "Reign In Blood" has been the album I point to as the biggest outlier among everything would say I truly love, I can just as easily admit it can feel like eight similar scraps throw between the two complete songs Slayer actually cared about. I can say we would dismiss a record that short, that one-note, if it came out today. That's the thing about classics; they are not untouchable, they are not beyond questions and criticism.
It's by asking ourselves if the work holds up that we are able to properly assess if we are remembering our own stories properly, but also if the road ahead is as bleak and dire as it might appear. Another "Master Of Puppets" is not going to be just around the corner, but that's ok if we know it was an album great for its time, but not definitive of all time. We see this when we look as historical figures who did amazing things that moved society forward, but who also were retrograde in ways we consider moral failings today. I'm not saying these records are failures by any means, merely that our perception of what greatness is has evolved as much as anything else.
So after forty years, perhaps the reason Metallica and Slayer lived in the shadow of their greatest moments is our fault, is because we turned the light up so bright they couldn't stand to look up anymore, we couldn't stand to look at ourselves and grapple with the reality of aging.
It's just a thought.
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