Metal Reviews

Ok, everybody loves Rust In Peace, Peace Sells, etc.

But I never see people here talk about Cryptic Writings. What are your thoughts on that one?

To me, it's a HIT. Not thrash, but still a damn good heavy metal album. Trust, She-wolf and I'll get even are such killer tunes.

Miss. Four decent-to-good songs do not a good album make.

Hit. It's different, but I liked it. The Remaster gives the guitars a lot more crunch, and adds some better solos in.

Direct Hit. Trust is one of Megadeth's best songs IMO. The album has a lot of emotion, and it just has this "up close and personal" sound to it that I like. Sure it's not thrash metal (despite a couple failed attempts with songs like The Disintegrators), but it's good heavy metal.

miss and the last 'deth album I bought. Better then the god awful risk but still..........

Putting my deep-seeded hatred of Mustaine aside, this album is still a miss x10.

Hit, not a very solid album from start to finish but the good parts are some of Megadeth's best.

+1

Man, I love these polls. Definite hit. Not thrash, but still a quality metal album.

Hit. Very good album. I love how "FFF" stole the riff from "Motorbreath."

Uhhh, Dave wrote that riff, along with the rest of Kill Em All.

A miss for me... Not a bad album, but nothing really special.

Hangar 18 intro uses the same progression of chords than the intro to "The call of Ktulu". The difference is in H18 it's chords, while in TCOK it's played clean and note by note. Did anyone noticed that?

And of course, Dave wrote both songs.

I realize this, I still love that he "reclaimed" the riff, if you will. Have you ever noticed certain Megadeth and Metallica songs have similar riffs? Obviously I'm not talking about the obvious "Four Horsemen/Mechanix" tracks, but the main riff in "FFF" and "Motorbreath" are virtually identical. The main riff in "The God That Failed" is very much like the bass line in "Dawn Patrol." There are others that I can't think of here at work.

I just wonder how many are old riffs, or if it's just coincidence, or maybe each band does it to piss the other off—which wouldn't shock me!

I'm guessing it's some of all the above.

I never noticed that one. I'll have to go and have a Megadeth/Metallica day tomorrow. I once compiled a list of all the similar songs/riffs. There's quite a few.

Massive hit. One of my favorite by Megadeth. It was actually one of the first Megadeth albums I ever bought, so there was no real let down when I heard it. It just made me want to dig deeper. Of course, then I heard Hanger 18 and had to get RIP.

Here's Hangar 18 intro (each chord struck 16x)

E: --1-- --1-- --1-- --5--
B: --3-- --3-- --3-- --3--
G: --2-- --3-- --4-- --5--
D: --0-- --0-- --0-- --0--

And here's a part of the call of Ktulu:
Played note by note (clean in the intro and palm muted several times throughout the song):

E: ---------1-------------1-------------1----------------5-------------
B: ------3------------3-------------3-----------------3----------------
G: ---2-----------3--------------4----------------5--------------------
D: -0----------0--------------0----------------0-----------------------

Mustaine and Hetfield/Ulrich are the same age, come from the same place, had very similar musical influences, and even started their journey in thrash metal together. So it's kind of expected they write similar stuff once in a while, and certain equal patterns can be found here and there... The difference between them is Metallica gave up on metal 15 years go, while Dave is still out there, putting out decent metal albums.

Well, I don't consider Countdown To Exitinction, Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings to be much different than Metallica's black album. And Risk is surely a Load. Only on the last two albums has Dave gone back to a more traditional Megadeth style.