A brief musical interlude

So I was watching VH1 Classic, and they showed a bit with Slayer where they were asked about '80s hair bands, and they said, "we wanted to be completely different than them."

Well guys, you were, in that you couldn't come up with melodies and hooks like they did, and so you replaced with it really fast guitar playing and growling vocals. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Slayer simply wasn't as good as some (not all, there were plenty of bad hair bands) of those other bands. And while they'd like to act like they're superior because those bands were all image and no substance, what exactly was Slayer about? There are some people who truly like their music, but mostly the attraction to Slayer is the dark, Satanic imagery and anti-authoritarion messages. Slayer's really no different than a hair band, in that they had to create an image to generate a fan base. The only difference is, hair bands made songs that sound good, while Slayer made songs that simply sound fast.

Slayer gets tossed in with Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax as the "big four of '80s speed metal," but that's always been completely unfair to Metallica and Megadeth. They made songs and albums that sounded good, while Slayer and Anthrax made songs and albums that sounded like a whole lotta nothing. There's more to music than just fast guitars, and Slayer and Anthrax didn't have it. Metallica and Megadeth, on the other hand, were talented and were able to play fast and yet have a good song underneath it all.

It just bothers me when bands like Slayer act like they're morally superior to hair bands, when in fact they had to rely on their image just as much as, say, Poison did. The imagery was completely different, but the effect on the fan base was the same. And while Poison wasn't all that talented either, they did write good pop songs that were just heavy enough to please hard rock fans. I just wish that when Slayer goes on a show, that the host would call them on their bullshit. Okay, I get it, you're jealous because those other bands sold millions of records and you didn't. Staying underground didn't make you morally superior, it just made you irrelevant.