1986
1986 as a year is pretty much synonymous with two of the biggest and most important metal albums ever recorded in
Master of Puppets and
Reign in Blood, two albums that rank amongst the pinnacle of metal releases and two albums that every metal collection should have. The year wouldn’t be just about those two albums though, as great albums also arrived from a fired up Megadeth with their second album, the legendary doom debut from Candlemass a real fav of mine and finally from Iron Maiden who carried the weight of expectation after the resounding success of Powerslave two years earlier, did they deliver…… well just wait and see! The bulk of the albums on this year’s list would again be from the extreme metal genre, which as a major force in 1986 meant thrash metal (its muscular arm) but instead of just being an American product, it now showed that Europeans and especially Germans could do it just as well, as great albums arrived from bands like Destruction and the highly rated Kreator. Glam metal still the main commercial outlet for metal, refused to die after a lacklustre year in terms of quality throughout 1985 and it now injected itself with a number of new bands like Poison, Cinderella and Stryper, all bands that would form the ‘second wave of glam metal’ and despite being popular sellers and darlings of the ever expanding MTV, most of these bands just never had the quality of its first wave acts like Motley Crue, Twisted Sister or the criminally underrated Icon. 1986 would also be a great year for mainstream/power metal as metal giants like Iron Maiden were joined by other ‘luxury sounding metal bands’ like Queensryche, Virgin Steele, Crimson Glory and the little known Fifth Angel, in releasing albums that fell into the middle ground between the excesses of thrash and the glitz of glam metal to promote a more power/progressive metal sound overall. The mighty Van Halen now minus David Lee Roth found themselves back on the radar in 1986 with the addition of hard rocker Sammy Hagar who had been pedalling away as a solo artist. Their polished synth-layered pop metal sound would find the perfect listening market, as they along with most of the glam metal bands, would capitalize on the fall of AOR as a major commercial giant, to release singles and albums that were guaranteed to sell regardless of the quality of their product (see glam metal comment above) List absentees would include previous giants like Accept who were totally unfocused on
Russian Roulette, Motorhead had some severe production problems on
Orgasmatron, Judas Priest got bogged down with their synthesizers on
Turbo and a large number of glam metal albums missed the list as they simply just weren’t good enough, despite the fact that the listening public were still lapping up these albums by the bucketload. Whilst at the the other end of the spectrum, Brazilian band Sepultura released one of the most primitive sounding debuts ever, an album which revealed that they still had some work to do. Overall 1986 has proved to be one of the most interesting years I’ve listened to so far, for the simple reason its top end is chocca full of great metal albums, while its bottom has some great albums of quality that are really liked by metal lovers across the world and there’s plenty of material here that is considered cult stuff as well.