Megadeth VS Metallica

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After a rather strenuous 2 hours-ish jam, me and the guys chilled out with a couple of blunts, we had a discussion about metal, that ended up on another kind of Star Wars vs Star Trek, y'know, a longtime rivalry.

Me, I am firmly and proudly entranched in the Megadeth camp. Vocal-wise, I prefer Mustaine over Hetfield any time of the year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second, etc, etc, etc. Mustaine's vocal are just plain great... Megadeth IS Dave Mustaine, and you cannot have one without the other.

Megadeth, for me, was an instant hook. Peace Sells, Good Mourning, Mastermind, Hook In Mouth, In My Darkest Hour, Vortex, Trust, The Scorpion, She-Wolf... I could name kickass after kickass Megadeth track, and hell, I think I'll whip out the freaking vinyls and give a couple of 'em a spin... I'm in the mood for some Peace Sells.

Now, Metallica have made their own share of good stuff, I'll admit... but to me, Metallica has some good moments but that's it, not freaking kickass like Megadeth.

So, which side of the fence do you stand on? Prefer Megadeth, or Metallica? Why? Favorite tracks?

 

Metallica's two albums Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightning are better albums as a whole than any album Megadeth has created, but certain Megadeth songs are better than any Metallica song.

Mustaine may be an ass, but he is damn good. A Tout Le Monde is my favorite track, and I can't pick a favorite album because there are good tracks spread around - the other ones I like a lot are Symphony of Destruction, Countdown to Extinction (song), Hanger 18 (such a kick ass song), umm... those are the best off of the top of my head; I haven't listened to them in a while. Mustaine's arrogance (kicking bands off tours for swearing, kicking band members out because they don't want to do what he does, etc) kind of ruined them for me.

 

Now I know that the Megadeth fans are very passionate and believe that Megadeth has more talent, but when it comes down to the numbers Metallica wins hands down.

Now forgetting about the numbers, Metallica is a band that almost everyone knows, and even the most ardent Megadeth supporter has to realize that the only people who know who Megadeth is are "metal heads". You can go to a dance club and hear Metallica which is one of the few non-pop bands to actually get into the rotation.

Then to seal the deal, there isn't a strip club in the world that doesn't play a heavy dose of Metallica, and I don't think I've ever heard Megadeth at one.

I'm not dissing Megadeth as I like them, but they are really just a niche band.

 

DotW I would have thought you to be more of a Celene Dion kind of guy.

I'm not a huge fan of metal but I prefer the classic stuff: Iron Butterfly, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, BOC, Scorpions, Judas Priest, and a little bit of Slayer. Neither Megadeth nor Metallica ever turned me on.

 

I was about to say something about that b****, but I don't feel like getting scorched by the Pink Dragon.

 

I agree with you, T2. DotW appears to like metal and I would never put metal down. But I would add Uriah Heep and Led Zep to your list. The early hard rock/metal prototype bands of modern metal had close roots to the blues, and the further metal has gotten from those roots, (even nowadays embracing some classical elements), the less it has appealed to me.

 

Snook, Metallica is played in clubs and stuff because they sold out and starting making popular radio-rock. They took Fade to Black and made near exact copies, but without the same soul, in order to become more widely known. Using albums sold is not necessarily a measure of how good they actually are, but rather how popular they are.

 

I would agree with you if they were an overnight sensation. However, they have been doing it for decades. I also take exception to the "selling out" crowd. The artist who is "pure" and never sells a record is nothing more than a noble fool. If Metallica sold out, maybe the corollary is that Megadeath never saw their true potential and chose to stay what they were?

Is Metallica as hard core as they were in the beginning, no, but they have put out some good/great stuff. My only true complaint about them is their destroying of Napster.

 

WARNING: what follows may be offensive to Metallica fanboys.

Sorry Great Snook, but who gives a rat's ass about numbers anyway? I know I don't. Metallica sold more albums because of the name (it has "Metal" in it ) and because for years posers have been buying their albums to pretend that they were listening to metal so that they could look like bad boys in the schoolyard. It became a household name.

Metallica is not that bad but it's definitely a sellout. Nothing Else Matters? Excuuuuse me but is that what you'd call Metal? When Pantera made a slow number they made ***king Hostile. Rest my case.

Megadeth is not what it used to be but it was once GREAT and it is still one of my favourite bands. People tend to get wrong ideas about Megadeth because of its name. I guess having the word "death" in your band's name doesn't look too good for people who judge books by their covers.

Anyway to cut a long story short my favourite albums are Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction and Youthanasia.

And my all-time favourite song is without hesitation Tornado of Souls. Best song ever. Enough said.

 

It isn't about NOT selling an album, it is about Metallica changing their music specifically to sell albums, as opposed to making music that is true to themselves. They are now just bogus attention/media whores. Hell, the drummer even admitted he forgot how to play their earlier songs because they were more intricate than the stuff he plays now.

That is frustratingly true. Whenever I would say I liked Megadeth, people would laugh and automatically assume they were bad. They aren't even that hard.

 

Are you normally pro-piracy...?

I know very little about both bands - just what I've seen on Rage (music video show) and then the memory is fuzzy. From what I recall - Megadeth are atrocious, and Metallica are fairly dull with a few good songs.
My opinion has little weight in this thread though, I think

 

I’m sure I’m dating myself here a little, but I’ll never forget the day I walked into the local music store with ten bucks and change and purchased my first Metallica cassette tape. I had just started 7th grade and Master of Puppets had recently been released. I listened to it on my Sony walkman on the car ride home, and, well, during that car ride my whole perception of heavy metal, music in general, and to some extent, life, changed.

I was instantly hooked, and absolutely in love with Metallica. I quickly added Ride the Lightning and Kill ‘Em All to my collection, and I played these albums over and over and over and over. To my ears, everything Metallica did was perfection.

I purchased my first Megadeth cassette tape, Peace Sells but Who’s Buying, shortly after discovering Master of Puppets. I loved it as well, and played it to death. I added Killing is My Business to my collection shortly thereafter.

I would say that I was a pretty fanatical fan of both bands for a good long time, but I have to say, Megadeth never had nearly the impact on me that Metallica did. Kirk Hammett was like a god to me. Hetfield an Idol. Lars was utterly bad ass. And when Cliff died, I was crushed. Metallica remained my absolute favorite band into the Garage Days Revisited release, and I accepted Newsted with open arms. I was equally fanatical about And Justice For All, and appreciated how Metallica’s music was maturing. Sometime after And Justice for All, I guess my priorities changed as I started getting older. I enjoyed the Black Album when it was released, but it didn’t captivate me the way earlier releases had. Perhaps I was somewhat turned off that the band I used to get cursed at for listening too was suddenly all over the radio. I sort of lost touch with them when they started cutting their hair and taking their music in a different direction, and have not purchased a Metallica album since. They will always have a special place in my heart, though.

But if we’re comparing 80s Metallica to Megadeth, I have much love and respect for both, but Metallica is the king of that battle in my book, hands down.

All time favorite songs:
Seek and Destroy, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Fade to Black, Master of Puppets, Leper Messiah, Dyer’s Eve (“Dear Mother, Dear Father”), One, The Frayed Ends of Sanity.

 

Wow, that is quite a statement. To defend Megadeath you would call millions of people "posers"? Personally I believe they sold all those albums not because people were trying to act tough, but because the music was good and people liked it. Call me crazy if you must.

I agree you can't use numbers to solve everything, but in this case, I don't think you can find a single metric to show Megadeath beats Metallica. The Megadeath fanboy argument is purely based on what they like better.

Yes, but that is for a different thread in a different forum.

 

I respect your preference, Caradhras, but your case for anti-Metallica fanboydom would be a lot more compelling if you weren't such an obvious Megadeth fanboy yourself.

Sorry Caradhras, but that's got to be one of the lamest arguments I've ever seen. You don't think MEGADETH tries way too hard to do the very same thing? Were SUPERKILL or ULTRAMURDER already taken? Was UBERSLAY trademarked elsewhere?

Seriously - you can't knock Metallica's name while defending Megadeth, one of the sh*ttiest band names in history. Thankfully, great bands can transcend stupid names (Smashing Pumpkins being a good example).

In your experience this is probably true. Where I grew up - Utah, USA...poser capital of North America - wannabe bad seeds brandished Megadeth and Slayer fan gear every bit as much as Metallica (in my experience, more so). Poserdom had no single standard bearer. Metallica's image softened quite a bit during the "short hair" era, where they were no longer symbols of the thrash scene. But by this time, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, KORN and the new wave of trailer-trash rap-metal dreck was taking over the "I wanna look tough at school!" demographic, anyway.

I think you're forgetting about Planet Caravan and Cemetery Gates. Your case was just thrown out of court.

This here is what it all boils down to: your preference in the song writing and musical style. These two bands have two very distinct sounds. My preference is and has always been Metallica. I think they are vastly superior songwriters (recent albums notwithstanding). I prefer James Hetfield's barking to Dave Mustaine's cartoon-villain whine (I do like Mustaine's voice, though). I think Metallica have done a much better job of keeping their sh*t together over the years than Megadeth has, and for the most part, I believe their superior popularity to be earned, if not necessarily deserved (which is based on individual taste, of course). I will hand it to Megadeth (and Slayer) for sticking to their formula all these years, though. Metallica has 'rebooted' their sound too many times, and it hurt their brand.

I will say that I agree with Snook completely on their hand in destroying Napster, but possibly for different reasons. No, Aik, that doesn't make me pro-piracy. Napster represented the pioneering of a new way for people to share music and form communities. All Lars Ulrich saw was a shrinking of his bottom line, however minimal. I always found this profoundly hypocritical on Metallica's part considering how they established themselves: encouraging fans to tape their shows, make copies, and spread them around. This is what built Metallica into one of the biggest metal bands in the world with NO radio air play, NO music videos, and virtually NO promotion from the record label. Napster was merely the evolution of this kind of marketing, and this is precisely the driving force behind many independent record labels today: word of mouth and fan appreciation. I think this evolution of the music industry was inevitable, but Metallica's greed certainly set things back several years. Today they more or less acknowledge that they were on the wrong side of history on that one, which is commendable.

But in the end, it all boils down to preference. And mine is playing ...And Justice For All right now. You're probably rocking out to Hangar 18. The great thing about music is, neither of us are wrong.

 

I was a youngster when these bands hit the scene, but as they got huge, I was in my teenage years. Metal was my genre of choice as a teen. I can say that I loved Metallica, liked Megadeth.

But when it comes down to the music, I have always thought the early Metallica albums to be the best. Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightning were great albums. I also like Garage days re-revisited. Megadeth was good, but I never thought of them as great.

 

Not defending them as much as stating the obvious. Metallica sold a large number of albums and derived products to people who had no clue whatsoever about that kind of music and only wanted to show off. I'm not saying all people who bought their albums were posers, I'm saying a very large number of people did it since it was the fashionable thing to do.

IMO your points about "metric" data or "numbers" doesn't mean anything in that context because you can't rely on that to evaluate the artistic value of a song, a book or a movie. If it were the case then Harry Potter would be the best book ever written and Titanic the best movie ever made.

I had already finished school when all these bands became popular in France so in my experience the posers were essentially Metallica fans. In the early 90s you would have been hard pressed to find any other band that was used as a standard for posers.

Trust me, I couldn't type what I think about any of those bands you've mentioned without violating forum rules (but we'd probably agree since you used the word "dreck").

By the way I didn't mention the Load and Reload stuff for the very same reasons.

Objection sustained due to my personal bias (I admit).

Still, IMO Nothing Else Matters is softer than any of these and it was certainly a very popular song with teenage girls when it was released which should tell a lot about Metallica's shift. At least I'll concede that this song was useful to pick up chicks (which in that regard made Metallica the second best thing next to Marvin Gaye). So while it sucked it had its uses (it would have been quite hard to use any song by Pantera to do the same thing since the very name of that band would have scared them away).

The only song that in my experience was as useful as Nothing Else Matters with the ladies was Du Hast. Go figure.

 

Hey man, just look at KISS (who I saw live in concert for the first time a month ago...my God was it a great show, even for a bunch of old coots). KISS is known as a hard rock band through and through, but their best-selling and most-played single ever? Detriot Rock City? Rock & Roll All Night? Lick It Up? You'd think so, but no. It's...

Beth. Friggin' Beth. Sappy, cuddly, guitar-less, drum-less, chesthair-less Beth. Go figure. And Gn'R? Sweet Child O' Mine.

Every band's gotta write one for the chicks, I guess.

 

You're probably right DR but it's no excuse for selling out as girls who are into metal don't fall for that kind of crap anyway. The ones I know are more hardcore than most guys when it comes to musical integrity.

Anyway this discussion reminds me of some lines from the Big Lebowski:

It always makes me laugh.

 

Perhaps. But I guess I don't consider doing a single slow song to be "selling out."

Changing one's musical philosophy, formula or image from one album to the next, just to appeal to a current trend or whatever to increase album sales, is what I consider selling out. Papa Roach did this (I like them better now, actually). Christina Aguilera (yes she sucks and she's not rock, but bear with me) probably did this the most shamelessly that I've ever seen when she did her atrocious "Dirrty" album (where she tried way too hard to out-whore Britney Spears). Vanilla Ice did this when he went all Reggae/Rap Metal. MC Hammer did this by going Gangsta Rap. But the best example in rock today is probably Nickleback, who used to have an interesting voice but have since deliberately tailored every song on every album for lowest-common-denominator, maximum radio play appeal.

Doing a single melodic, down-tempo ballad-ish song on a record full of balls-and-chunk metal does not, in my view, equal selling out. Led Zeppelin (among others) did that, and they were the better for it. I think if done well a formula-deviating slower song can show breadth and maturity in a band, and make you view the rest of their material in a new light. Hurt by Nine Inch Nails does this very well. But that's me.

EDIT: I'm not arguing, mind you, that Metallica didn't EVER sell out. I'm just arguing that Nothing Else Matters was by no means their 30 pieces of silver.