The 90s proved to be one of metal’s more difficult decades. With the sudden rise in popularity of such styles of grunge, alt-rock, and industrial, many of metal’s top acts took a major hit when their singers decided this was the perfect time to flee, while hair metal as a whole was rendered obsolete.
And despite the leading thrash bands issuing some of their best-ever albums at the beginning of the decade, including Metallica’s “Black Album,” Megadeth’s “Rust in Peace,” Slayer’s “Seasons in the Abyss,” Anthrax’s “Persistence of Time,” and Testament’s “Souls of Black,” thrash even took a major hit.
During a recent interview on the Disturbing the Priest Podcast, metal expert Martin Popoff was asked “What really killed thrash metal?” in the ’90s. His reply was an interesting one (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).
“It must be said that most of the bigger thrash bands did continue on and semi-thrived or completely thrived. But a bunch went away, and if you did go away, it was probably just because you were caught in the big net of the backlash against heavy metal in general, led by hair metal, right?”
“So, I guess you were caught in that hair metal net. You were caught in the ‘hairnet,’ if you were just a band that wasn’t big enough yet when grunge took over. So, when grunge took over, it was the new kind of heavy metal. And I still maintain grunge was totally a heavy metal genre. I’ve always thought that.”
Looking back on the early-mid ’90s, quite a few once-thriving thrash bands either broke up or took an extended hiatus, including Exodus, Death Angel, Dark Angel, Nuclear Assault, and Metal Church, among others. Additionally, at least one band of the Big 4 was among the aforementioned veteran metal bands who endured a lead singer switcheroo, Anthrax.
“I guess some of those bands just went away because there was so much ridicule of hair metal, which went on and spread to metal in general. We all know because we were running a magazine [Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles], getting it off the ground in ’94, ’95, ’96, ’97. The topic of conversation in all our interviews we would do with everybody was just complaining about how everybody was putting down heavy metal all the time. So, heavy metal was totally not in vogue.”
“But having said that, all of the Big 4 and all those bands were all making lots of music all through the 90s and 2000s.”
