WHY DO THE 90S GET A BAD REP?

SOME SAY IT WAS THE DECADE WHERE METAL DIED, BUT WE’RE CALLING BULLSHIT. AS WE CELEBRATE 10 YEARS OF AWESOMENESS, WE ASKED YOU LOVELY PEOPLE…

HYDROGRAD It’s because metalheads always disregard nu metal and its importance to the metal as a genre. Just because you don’t like it, it doesn’t make it less crucial to the progress and growth of metal. Anthrax incorporated rap into metal way before nu metal bands did. Even Machine Head had one nu metal album, and they still play songs from it every night. Nu metal is arguably the most explosive metal scene ever, and disregarding that just because you don’t like the bands makes you a hater. NONTHADET BURANASITIPORN Far from being harmful to metal, the 90s actually broadened the scope of what metal is. The parts of the alternative scene that veered closest to metal (Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Tool, Faith No More Jane’s Addiction, Rage Against The Machine) helped to widen the genre’s spectrum and introduced a whole range of new sounds, approaches and looks that were so much more interesting than what the abruptly binned 80s glam set had offered.

MATT PACKER

The 90s had grunge taking the limelight from metal. Stalwarts like Motörhead, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden continued to produce the goods, while the likes of future Hammer champions Orange Goblin were born. Dio continued to prove he had the finest set of pipes in the business, and out of the public eye, metal gigs and festivals continued to swim in a sea of denim and leather. Metal was not high profile in the 90s, but it continued to be written and played, gathering fans despite the sneers of the trendy and fickle.

SPENNY BULLEN

The 90s just weeded out all the wannabe metalheads. Like them or not, Pantera played a big part in keeping a lot of people interested in metal, and by the end of the

90s grunge was dead and metal keeps on surviving!

MARK FOSS

I think the thing the 90s have against them is that the 80s were just too good. There was only ever one way to go and that was down. I like to think metal peaked at Megadeth’s Rust In Peace (in my opinion the greatest metal album of all time) and then declined from there. There were still great records after that, but you just can’t live up to the 80s!

BEN BOYD “The 90s were an amazing time for metal! That’s when bands such as ourselves, Pantera, Biohazard, Fear Factory, Prong and Ministry, among many others, created some very important albums which kept the scene active and strong. It was also a time when metal expanded its realm of influences, incorporating ideas from the grunge scene, rap and tribal music from different cultures. More countries became a part of the metal world map, inspiring bands like Slipknot, Korn, Limp Bizkit and the Deftones to create the so -called nu metal scene that dominated the 2000s.” The 90s were a time when even thrash started to adopt the alternative sound and tried to go ‘melo’. Even Metallica and Overkill started singing power ballads! Bands like Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses, the last remnants of a bygone glam metal era, made headlines, too. Then there was ‘alternative metal’, a cross-genre.

However, while all these changes were going on, the mainstream media somewhat forgot to set their eyes on Scandinavia, which gave rise to an array of genres such as Norwegian black metal, Swedish melodic death metal and Finnish folk metal. THULITHA ABAYAWARDANA

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I believe the 90s get a bad rep because while there were great metal bands during the 90s, the ones that made it really big were the grunge guys from Seattle. The 90s were quite rough in that sense, but you had bands like Pantera, Sepultura, Tool, Korn and Deftones.

MATT ROSE

The 90s were great for me! I was born in 1989, so I grew up with Ozzy, Def Leppard, Green Day and Nirvana. Korn were another big favourite and still are. I loved that music scene. As a kid, all I had was music and the 90s was a great decade for punk and metal. NIKKI RICHARDSON

Unless you were there, you don’t really know. I look back and I now realise that it had to happen. It was a huge paradigm shift. And that’s not to say that there wasn’t some good metal that came out of the 90s, but the scene was never the same again.

JOHN LINAN

The 80s’ thrash and glam bands had more mainstream popularity because they had a closer accessibility to hard rock, but the 90s were a time of innovation for metal. The nu metal and groove metal movements were taking off and gave us bands like Pantera, Machine Head, Tool, Korn, and Deftones. Also, death metal was gaining ground with bands like Death, Cannibal Corpse and Obituary growing in the underground. Metal just changed was all. It definitely didn’t get weaker! DONTE MONTGOMERY