Genres You Got Tired Of

[nightsblood]

Interests in different metal genres ebb and flow. I'll go through periods of playing more/less black metal, or death metal, or NWOBHM, and most genres rotate through. But some styles have kinda fallen by the wayside and rarely get much play anymore.
For me, the genre that has lost the most appeal over time is definitely thrash.

Thrash as a genre just didn't age well with me. As a teen in the late 80s/early 90s I loved lots of it, and my high school years were filled with stuff from Anthrax, Overkill, and Metallica to more obscure thrash acts such as Slaughterhouse, Onslaught, and Dead On. But even 10 years later thrash was sounding very dated. The goofy bands just sounded silly, the 'topical' songs were all out of date, and the music lacked the speed of modern power/speed bands, the catchiness of NWOBHM, and the aggression of modern death and black metal bands, which left thrash as this strange crossroads: it was fast but not THAT fast, heavy but not THAT heavy, etc. If anyone plays CCGs, it became the equivalent of a midrange deck strategy: instead of being the best at a single thing, thrash just did so-so at everything.

Other factors that didn't help: I had played the crap out of my old favorites, so by the early 00s I was pretty tired of hearing them. I just rarely feel the need to ever listen to albums like 'Master of Puppets' or 'Fabulous Disaster' simply b/c I've heard them so many times. Even now, when I consider playing 'Puppets', the very first thing I think is, "geez, how many times did I play that record riding the bus during high school? Maybe I should play something else that isn't carved into my eardrums ". Meanwhile, no new thrash bands really caught my attention; all the retro-thrash revivals tended to produce nothing but weak copycats. Finally, going back and listening to bands I missed the first time around just didn't pan out. For example, I missed a lot of the German thrash material. No one had any Kreator, Destruction, etc albums in my area growing up; my copy of 'Persecution Mania' was the sole artifact of German thrash in at least a 20 mile radius TMK (I also owned the only Napalm Death album in the region, for which I was a minor celebrity among the local headbangers). But when I finally checked out stuff like Tankard and Kreator, much of the material tended to be a tad too sloppy for my tastes.

Today, the Thrash shelf on my CD rack contains one of the shortest stacks of CDs, with only the classics (Puppets, Ride the Lightning, Years of Decay, Peace Sells, South of Heaven, etc) and a few sentimental favorites (Frolic Through the Park, Escape from Pain, Victims of Deception, etc) remaining.

[Cochino]

Well, it kinda happened the same to me with Thrash many years ago, but not to such an extent as in your case I guess. I mean, I think I can spend the rest of my life without ever listening to Testament again, or any Exodus albums beyond Bonded By Blood (which is still a top 5 US Thrash to me), but on the other hand, The Accüsed is still one of my top 10 bands and Hirax's "Immortal Legacy" might be my favorite release of the past 5 years or so (not that I've heard that many anyway).

[bigfootkit]

I can totally relate to what you both said about Thrash too, it's a genre i rarely revisit nowadays.
As much as i loved (for example) Nuclear Assault back then, i can't get through more than 3 or 4 songs at a time nowadays. I'll always hang on to those discs as they have so much sentimental value to me, but i doubt that i'll ever again enjoy the music as much as i once did.
It always seemed to me that creatively the thrash movement peaked prematurely, before most of the wider Metal community had really cottoned on & embraced it, and by the time they did all the genre defining masterpieces were already out there.
From the so called Big 4, 'Peace Sells', 'Reign In Blood', & 'Master Of Puppets' all arrived in '86 with 'Among The Living' landing the following year, and although there are worthy moments in all the bands discographies later in their careers, to my mind none of them ever bettered the consistency & vision of those records.
All those records are forever etched upon my synapses to the point where i couldn't tell you when i last dusted any of them off, but i could still sing (and mime) you every lyric, lick & fill on them from start to finish.
What those albums did was raise the profiles of the individual bands significantly, exposing them to a wider audience that had hitherto been unaware of their existence & in turn shone a brighter light on the entire sub-genre.
This brought in major labels who snatched up many lesser acts, raising overall expectations for the movement and the fortunes of the leaders of the movement in particular, but in reality the feeding frenzy just choked out all the individuality and flooded the marketplace. A lot of mud was flung at the wall & very little stuck.
Those that continued to break new ground stylistically, (Voivod, Celtic Frost, Coroner etc.), reaped critical acclaim and loyal followings but it never quite translated into the kind of sales that were now expected and they had to settle for cult status.
The Big 4 of course went on to sell a lot of records and established enduring legacies, but 'the thrill of the new' turned out to be fleeting, and they all struggled for identity in the following years.
For a little while it seemed like these bands had utterly changed the musical landscape, but putting emotion & personal taste aside, outside of the hardcore Metal world their musical & cultural legacy is actually pretty thin if you put them up against giants like Sabbath, Priest, Maiden etc.
Outside of Thrash, i was never really a sub-genre guy, so i'm struggling to think of any other styles i once liked that no longer do it for me.
Death Metal, Black Metal, Groove Metal, Nu Metal, Folk Metal, Grindcore, Metalcore & all the other cores passed me by. I did try to find something that appealed to me amongst these new offshoots, but beyond the very occasional band, (who had usually deviated from their initial style by the time they grabbed me), i came up empty.
I'm sure that somewhere out there there's a Troo Cvlt Blackened Symphonic Pirate Djent Drone Metal band lurking in obscurity that'll blow my socks off one day, but as of now, i've yet to hear them.

[doomedplanet]

Still good underground thrash to be enjoyed here. Was listening to Azrael "Television Slave" last night and simply enjoyed the hell out of it.
I can put on The Overkill demo and 1st 12" on at any time and will love them to the grave.
1st Exodus is simply timeless and fresh every time I hear it.
Listened to both Blessed Death albums recently found them to still be stong and powerful.
Is 1st Anthrax thrash? Because I can listen to that any time.
Tankard "zombie attack" might be by some a step down by some but that one is sort of etched into into my DNA.
Stone Vengeance early stuff I released is another underrated gem to me, just fantastic raw thrash I can enjoy just about any time.
Darkness Descends is in a little pile of records I keep right next to my stereo setup, I use it as a reference standard, along with. The 1st Exciter record any time I make a change to my system.

Quite a lot of deaththrash favorites to I could really get into.

[Prowler]

All Exodus Albums from the 80's imo are quite great Thrash ....
As for Anthrax, I liked them as Teenager and they got huge airplay over here but real Thrash they just started becoming with "Amoung the living". Before that they just have been kinda Power Metal with thrashy parts or Speed Metal. And after "ATL" they changed style again. "State .." (still a bit more thrashier) and "Persistence" had Thrash Sound, but the style was more kinda not the usual style I expect when I think about classic Thrash. I cannot listen to the ladder 2 anymore today.

[Cochino]

Actually, I think that while they might not be bad themselves, post-Baloff Exodus pretty much represents everything that bored me about Thrash. The chugging riffs without any purpose other than buying time, the middle of the road approach, the dull vocals. I remember liking Pleasures Of The Flesh back in the day but now, just thinking about the sound puts me off, regardless of the songs themselves. However, I did listen to Forbidden's debut recently, after many years, and I still love it. It's got some filler here and there but also some really brilliant songs and manages to escape the mundane feel most of US Thrash had back then and put back some of the darkness and epicness that had been lost.

[bigfootkit]

chugging riffs without any purpose other than buying time, the middle of the road approach

You totally nailed the problem with many of those bands in that era right there Cochino. There was a sameyness & a lack of creativity that crept in around '87 that showed up the lack of imagination & direction in a lot of the emerging & more established bands alike. It was no longer enough just to be able to play fast & as expectations were raised a lot of the bands just failed to raise their game.
As there were so many bands & releases at that time many truly promising acts just got lost on the racks amongst all the substandard fare and didn't receive the attention that their efforts merited. Either that or they were so poorly distributed that you couldn't get their records.
Dark Angel were a good example of that problem. I saw them live around the time 'Darkness Descends' came out and they were a force of nature, just devastating, but it was years before i could find any of their records despite my best efforts.
I finally snagged a used copy of 'Darkness Descends' on the same day i got Soundgarden's 'Badmotorfinger' which had just come out at the time, which means i'd had to wait 4 or 5 years to find a Dark Angel record.

[bobo]

Some bands I can't get tired of like Overkill, Razor, Testament, but others do wear off after some time
Some stuff is so boring, even then it was a struggle like Dark Angel's Time does not heal or late 80's Slayer.... Time has so many pointless riffs, songs are long and boring. At one point I didn't know what I was listening to.
It's also pity that majority of thrash fans in the 80's chose to listen to boring Reign in Blood or South of Heaven instead of killer Violent Restitution.

[Ernest Thesiger]

boring Reign in Blood

That's like saying "Boring chase through the woods by a maniac with a chainsaw."

[bobo]

boring Reign in Blood

That's like saying "Boring chase through the woods by a maniac with a chainsaw."

On Reign in blood only two songs I find interesting. Everything else is unfinished to me. I'm not a fan of 1.33 minutes songs.
Metal Blade years of Slayer I always return to. Hell Awaits is their pinnacle, perfect in every way. Their best song is Haunting the Chapel. Everything after 1985 I find average or boring . Metal Blade Slayer is for me. Leave Scars is better than Reign in Blood if I must put a compariosn.

[Cochino]

I know that taste is personal and blah blah blah, but I'm really having a hard time understading someone calling Reign in Blood boring while saying he doesn't get tired of Testament

[nightsblood]

Actually I never really 'got' 'Reign in Blood' either; the ultra-short song lengths were a turn-off for me too. There are some good tracks on it, but I much prefer 'Show No Mercy', 'South of Heaven' and 'Seasons'.

kit- as usual we seem to be on pretty much the same page. Cheers!
And the pattern you describe seems to apply to almost every musical style (and maybe even every pop culture phenom) over the years. Start with something new, it grows in it's own subculture, eventually catches on a bit, then next thing you know the scene drowns in 1,000 copycats while the originals continue on their own, different path.
BTW How's that royal wedding going today? The US media is completely clogged with it. I'm always amazed at how much press the royal family gets in the US. I've nothing against them, but I'd rather sit through a 98 Degrees reunion concert than read about what dress the Duchess of Yorkenshirehamptonsex wore.

Rob- that's always been a fair question regarding 'Fistful of Metal'. Same applies to 'Feel the Fire'. Those albums predate 'real' thrash and the bands clearly changed their formula a bit later so I get NOT calling them thrash albums.... but then again Black Sabbath predates 'real' doom metal yet lots of people retroactively assign their early albums to Doom, so.....?

[nightsblood]

Oh, and another old favorite that at least deserves mention here: 'Eternal Nightmare'. Man that album cover creeped me out as a kid!

[Khnud]

I've grown completely tired of late 90's - early 00's progressive metal. Dream Theater, Symphony X and the likes. Why should I have to suffer through 70 minute long albums just to hear 5 minutes of awesomeness wedged in between infinitely long passages of "key and tempo changes just because the hell of it"?

I also avoid modern "power metal" like the plague nowadays. I know it's accessible, light weight and easy to listen to. But it's sooo full of cheese as well.

I still love thrash. Can listen to it all day long.

[Herkus Monte]

Thrash in my case as well, but it happened pretty recently that I grew out of it when at one point I just felt tired of monotonously aggressive music. Occasionally I listen to some Razor songs, but that's about it.
Also, I used to love albums like "Campo do Extermino" and other rather low-fi black/death acts from late 80s and now I don;t care about them at all.