Metal Martyr

Are You A ‘Fanboy’?

by Metal Martyr on August 23rd, 2008

Are you a fanboy? Do you buy up every album and all the merch of the bands you like even if they are far less than stellar? I can understand having loyalty to your favorite bands, but there is a line that you have to draw. A line that you shouldn’t step over if you want to be honest with yourself and the music.

These days it’s much easier to hear music before you buy it. With streaming media on bands Myspace pages and their official web pages you can get a pretty good preview of what’s to come before you go to the nearest record store and blow your lunch money on a cd that you don’t like.

I’m not going to touch an obvious band because I’m tired of talking about them. You know who I’m talking about. However, I have a couple of old favorites I will talk about that I have bought cds and have been disappointed with them and others that I know suck, so I will never buy them.

Pantera: The first three Pantera cds are killer. There is no disappointment in any of the first three (Mainstream, after the short lived glam days). The Great Southern Trendkill was one of my least favorite. It had a couple of songs on it that were good but as far as an album, it was less than great. I bought it as soon as it came out. I had no way of previewing it before it hit the stores and it was Pantera so I expected nothing short of awesome. It was noisy but it was ok. Reinventing The Steel was the same case. No way to preview and there are only a few songs on that album that I like. I will never say that either of these cd are great. The band had some problems after Far Beyond’ and things started to slack. I think the main problem was the band trying to keep things fresh and outdoing the last album. When you set the bar as high as they did, it’s not easy to surpass the last…even for Pantera. Sooner or later you are expected to step it up or hang it up.

Megadeth: Killing Is My Business had some production issues that I think if re-recorded these days would sound unbelievable, but that’s what makes me love Killing Is My Business. There was a sheer rawness and ridiculous amounts of killer riffs in that album. A great start for Megadeth and things only got better. Peace Sells, So Far So Good, Rust, Countdown and even Youthanasia. Cryptic Writing is where I really started to wonder what was going on. It all just sounded weak. The World Needs A Hero and Risk were the same way. Weak, yet Dave Mustaine was trying to keep up with the times. He was doing it…but not well. When I heard that Chris Poland was going to be on The System Has Failed I was ecstatic. I thought this would be a new era for Megadeth. I thought that there was no way that this could go wrong. I was mistaken. The System Has Failed had a couple of cool tunes on it, but nothing worth doing a back flip over. Untied Abominations brought me back again and I was very impressed with where Dave was going with this album. Risk and The World Needs A Hero will probably never be a part of my Megadeth collection unless i buy them as part of the remasters set. Even MD.45. I got that as part of BMG music back when it came out back in the late 90’s. I hated it then and I still hate it even with Mustaine on the Vocals. (Which he said he were lost when he went to remaster is. How convenient)

So how many times have you bought a cd that was shitty by your favorite band and tried to convince yourself that it was not that bad, good, or even great? How many times have you defended your favorite band when someone said that particular CD sucked and you told them it didn’t when you knew it did? Sometimes you just have to suck it up and come to realize that your favorite band even has their down days. Sometimes they come back to form and sometimes…they just fade further away. Without being honest and letting the bands know that they are doing a crappy job, they are going to think everything is good and will continue to make crap albums.

Image Source: Amazon.com

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POSTED IN: Bands G Through M, Bands N Through T, Editorials & Announcements