Music: Best Albums of the Year Series: 1986

[frisco]

I wish I had time to give "Reign in Blood" a proper write-up. An extraordinary album.

I believe it edged out Graceland at the Grammys...

My Best-Carey

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I believe it edged out Graceland at the Grammys...

My Best-Carey

What's your point - an album can't be great if it isn't recognized at the Grammys?

 

[Osprey]

I missed the voting but would've voted for Bon Jovi. I'm actually surprised that it has 9 votes, but not surprised that it was beaten out by Metallica and Slayer. This forum seems popular with metal fans... or metal fans are less shy about what they like than fans of more commercial stuff. I've often wondered which it is... or maybe it's both.

 

[Cas]

I missed the voting but would've voted for Bon Jovi. I'm actually surprised that it has 9 votes, but not surprised that it was beaten out by Metallica and Slayer. This forum seems popular with metal fans... or metal fans are less shy about what they like than fans of more commercial stuff. I've often wondered which it is... or maybe it's both.

As one of those metal fans, I think you're on to something there.

 

[frisco]

What's your point - an album can't be great if it isn't recognized at the Grammys?

I was trying to be sarcastic. I wonder how many people with Grammy votes had heard the album let alone dare vote for it. Death metal as a whole wasn't exactly as accessible or critically acclaimed among that group that decides the Grammys as something like Graceland.

My Best-Carey

 

[Saturated Fats]

For me, it's So. I'm a huge Peter Gabriel fan, and So is the work that made is... well, so. It's a majestic work of sophisti-pop that somehow has some of the most sophisticated songwriting and production, blended in perfectly with catchy hooks throughout. It's probably my favourite thing Gabriel ever did, and that's coming from a guy who really enjoys Genesis.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I was trying to be sarcastic. I wonder how many people with Grammy votes had heard the album let alone dare vote for it. Death metal as a whole wasn't exactly as accessible or critically acclaimed among that group that decides the Grammys as something like Graceland.

My Best-Carey

No worries - sometimes it's hard to read tone on a forum.

I like Graceland (I wouldn't say it's a personal favourite but it's a bold, creative album). The Grammys are fairly good at recognizing music in certain genres but, to your point, some areas (like heavy metal, or rap until the late 1990's) are blind spots to them.

 

[Bixby Snyder]

I was trying to be sarcastic. I wonder how many people with Grammy votes had heard the album let alone dare vote for it. Death metal as a whole wasn't exactly as accessible or critically acclaimed among that group that decides the Grammys as something like Graceland.

My Best-Carey

Slayer is not death metal it is thrash metal.

 

[kihei]

I had no idea Slayer was that popular.

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

Man, Run DMC sounded dated super quickly. Think of like Eric B & Rakim in the mid 80's alongside them. The advances in rap were crazy.

 

[Sleemans]

I missed the deadline to vote for 1986, but I wanted to post anyway.

1986 was a great year in music for me!

Sting - Bring On The Night ...My first concert was seeing Sting on this tour
R.E.M. - Life's Rich Pageant .. my fav by R.E.M.
David and David - Boomtown .. What an album, too bad there wasn't a follow up.
Peter Gabriel - So
Paul Simon - Graceland
XTC - Skylarking
Ennio Morricone - The Mission OST

 

[Eisen]

I had no idea Slayer was that popular.

Reign in Blood is considered one of the top metal albums. It set the technical standard for a long time. It's like Eddie van Halen of metal. They didn't reach that level again (they have plenty of good ones, though). It's because of that album. None of the big thrashers, including Metallica, had an album like this.

 

[Osprey]

Reign in Blood is considered one of the top metal albums. It set the technical standard for a long time. It's like Eddie van Halen of metal. They didn't reach that level again (they have plenty of good ones, though). It's because of that album. None of the big thrashers, including Metallica, had an album like this.

I hate to give a hot take on an album that's so beloved, but I want to respond to your last sentence. I just listened to Reign in Blood and wasn't impressed, to be honest. It just sounded like a band playing as fast and loud with as dark of lyrics as possible without any mind paid to memorable riffs, changing tempos or meaningful lyrics.

Those are three things that Metallica did incorporate into their music and why I think that, as a non-metal fan (hard rock fan, yes), I appreciate their music the most out of the genre. They may not be as hardcore as Slayer and never had an album like Reign in Blood, but I would say that that's a good thing because hardcore seems to mean one-dimensional and niche. Reign in Blood sold 500K copies, but Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice for All and Metallica each sold over 6M copies. Commercial sales aren't everything, but I think that they're a reflection in this case of how multi-dimensional those albums are (i.e. the songs can be fast, slow, emotional, political, etc.), compared to how one-dimensional Reign in Blood sounded to me.

I'm not trying to put down Slayer, but it seems more appropriate to me to say that they never had an album like Metallica had. Again, I'm not much of a metal fan and don't want to come across as an expert on the genre, but I think that truly great works are those that impress people who don't ordinarily like a genre (like me when it comes to metal). After all, if you need to be a fan of the genre to appreciate something, is it really that great compared to something that gets the attention of the world outside of that genre?

 

[Eisen]

I hate to give a hot take on an album that's so beloved, but I want to respond to your last sentence. I just listened to Reign in Blood and wasn't impressed, to be honest. It just sounded like a band playing as fast and loud with as dark of lyrics as possible without any mind paid to memorable riffs, changing tempos or meaningful lyrics.

Those are three things that Metallica did incorporate into their music and why I think that, as a non-metal fan, I appreciate their music the most out of the genre. They may not be as hardcore as Slayer and never had an album like Reign in Blood, but I would say that that's a good thing because hardcore seems to mean one-dimensional and niche. Reign in Blood sold 500K copies, but Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice for All and Metallica each sold over 6M copies. Commercial sales aren't everything, but I think that they're a reflection in this case of how multi-dimensional those albums are (i.e. the songs can be fast, slow, emotional, political, etc.), compared to how one-dimensional Reign in Blood sounded to me.

I'm not trying to put down Slayer, but it seems more appropriate to me to say that they never had an album like Metallica had. Again, I'm not a metal fan and don't want to come across as an expert on the genre, but I think that truly great works are those that impress people who don't ordinarily like a genre (like me when it comes to metal). After all, if you need to be a fan of the genre to appreciate something, is it really that great compared to something that gets the attention of the world outside of that genre?

I don't disagree with you, Metallica, for instance is a lot more accessible on the ear (especially in hindsight, they were quite heavy when the albums were released) but that's not what I meant. From a technical standpoint, the sheer speed and precision was not achieved by other bands at that time. Sales is not a the question as well, Metallica blows them out of the water, although Kill 'em all was not that great at release either, saleswise. But even in hindsight, while not that commercially successful, Reign in Blood is probably the genre defining album.

 

[Ouroboros]

Reign in Blood is considered one of the top metal albums. It set the technical standard for a long time. It's like Eddie van Halen of metal. They didn't reach that level again (they have plenty of good ones, though). It's because of that album. None of the big thrashers, including Metallica, had an album like this.

Its interesting you say this as I have just recently read an article about some of the albums Rickm Rubin had produced in his career, and he had this to say about Reign In Blood...

That was the first record I ever made in California. We recorded it at this little studio. It's no longer there; it's now a flower shop on Vine in Los Angeles.

The technical things about recording that song stand out to me now. They played so fast. If you listen to any of the really fast recordings before Slayer, they sounded like rock records. There are certain things you do to make a rock record. But because Slayer played so fast, those things that you would normally do didn't work so well. If you listened to any other speed-metal, thrash-metal music that was being made at that time — and there wasn't so much of it — it's not clear. The reason is, technologically, people were recording it more like it was traditional rock music, which it really wasn't. It was this new form. People didn't look at it as its own thing that had to be handled differently. So that was my mission: How do you get across the clarity and articulation and speed and energy?

Dave Lombardo is this incredible, unbelievably great drummer. One thing that we did was make the drums louder. The nature of distorted electric guitars is that they sound loud regardless of how loud they are. Whereas drums, because it's a natural instrument, depending on how loud they are in the mix really changes that feeling of how hard they're being hit. If you're in a room with the drums and somebody's hitting them hard, they're much louder. So, psychologically, by making the drums louder, it made everything seem louder.

I also did away with reverb. With their super-fast articulation in a big room, the whole thing just turns into a blur. So you don't get that crystal clarity. So much of what Slayer was about was this precision machinery.

This was clearly a controversial song. Slayer were kind of the first death-metal or thrash band. I don't know what the right title is. Metallica and they were going on at the same time, but Metallica were so different lyrically than them. Slayer were more blood and guts and Satan. Anyway, this was a song where the record company refused to put out the record. So we had to find a new distributor. It was the first record I did with Geffen Records instead of Columbia Records.

Pretty insightful.

I consider Haunting The Chapel/Hell Awaits/Reign In Blood era-Slayer to be the point at which metal fully became a separate entity from the rock music that preceded it.

Metallica never made that leap. At their core they were still pretty much a rock band with rock sensibilities, which makes their 90's albums [Load and Re-Load] fairly logical digressions in my estimation.

Slayer made a lot of bad records, and were essentially unlistenable after 1990 but they never made a rock and roll record like Metallica. It just wasn't in their blood.

 

[Fantomas]

Um, where is Prince's Parade?

 

[Roo Returns]

Skylarking is nearly a perfect pop rock album. Master of Puppets Metallica's best. The funny thing about that album and because I was very young when it came out, is that the cultural impact didn't occur until after The Black Album. Metallica wasn't on MTV until 1988 so unless you were an older fan or reading Hit Parader etc. back then, this wouldn't have made its way to you until later.

Never cared for Reign in Blood. It's one song and a lot of filler. Slayer became Slayer to me with South of Heaven when they learned to write songs.

Control by Janet Jackson I feel has the opposite vibe of Master of Puppets (haha funny grouping those two together): in 1986 it was a huge story that this young woman who was from a very famous family, gotten out of a terrible marriage, and was in the shadow of her brother arguably the biggest musician in the world and one of the most famous people in the world, put out this incredible pop record produced by two guys from the Minnesota crew. These songs were all over the radio and still are.

Finally, So by Peter Gabriel, that to me is the album that defines 1986; a special year in music, movies, and entertainment.