Topic: ReLoad

Am I crazy or is Metallica's ReLoad like significantly worse than than Load... like way, way worse? There's a charm that seems present on Load, and at least the band seems inspired, even if their sound is a shell of what it used to be here. But on ReLoad, it just feels so bland and apathetic I dare call it a straight up "bad" album. Ugh.

It's worse than Load. I really liked Load in the 90s, listened a lot to it. Definitely A-Tier for me. ReLoad I haven't listened to enough to form a definitive opinion. I have literally a thousand releases to listen to before I'll get to ReLoad ;-)

yeah i pulled the plug on it after a few minutes. just felt like a waste of time tbh. Load I could comfortably sit through again, maybe; ReLoad, I'll probably ultimately pass on

Gonna do Lulu in the future, sometime, idk when. That one is 87 minutes long, which is too much for me at the moment.

Just did their poll... hmmm, it seems I have Load below Death Magnetic and St. Anger, which feels weird. Will give it another listen in the future and see if I stand by it. idk

I'm wondering though how to look at your rating scale. If the best that Metallica can do is a B, which would be examples of A or S tier releases in early Thrash Metal?

Early thrash isn't really my thing. The 80s in general is rough for me, statistically the decade with my lowest ratings on average across all genres. I'm not a huge thrash fan these days, and the Metallica trio really is among the best in its offering so there aren't many As in the style tbh, and I would not be surprised if there isn't a single release I'd award an S to... I'm also a lot more critical than you are, it seems, so my bar for such a high rating is very high. And Justice for All is pretty close to borderline A, but I just can't ignore the poor mixing with the swooped guitar sound, lack of bass, sterile drum sound, etc. even if it isn't horrible, which keeps it from hitting that tier.

Looking through my big Excel spreadsheet of music ratings (which I started in 2022), my highest rated 80s thrash album is this one (weak A, possibly B): https://awesomeprog.com/releases/81000, and that's an EP lol I must have been in some kind of trance or something when listening to it, because I would not score it that high right now as I'm revisiting it (more like high C). I'd have to relook at The Years of Decay, that could also be in the A realm. Possibly Reign in Blood by Slayer, and possibly Seven Churches by Possessed. I am looking at potentially trying out Voivod and Venom when I get a chance. Remember I grew up in the 2000s, so I only really know of the big names from the 80s as it was before my time, and I don't tend to love the super mainstream acts, so I'm not that deeply familiar with the style. The fact that Metallica, a leader of the style, breached B tier is actually very good for me.

My love for the metal genre starts in the mid-90s after the downfall of grunge and rise of progressive metal as a refined genre and stylistic expansion of death and doom metal. Was never a huge fan of thrash.

Edit: Nah, looking at some of the thrash I listed above, ...And Justice For All may actually be the best for me in the genre, Dyers Eve, for instance, is incredible - that seems to be my favorite of all of them. It may just not be possible for me to award an A to anything in this time period of thrash.

I don't think you're necessarily much more critical than me. You have a radically different set of criteria and see the rating scale much more linearly. To me only A/S level ratings are actual recommendations, whereas you seem to think that everything above 50 is a compliment to the artist. I could be wrong, but this is what I "glean" from your ratings. And it's fine, we all have different approaches. :-)

The adjective for scores of 50-59 is "Decent" which is a positive word so surely a compliment of sorts!

I've actually just re-adjusted how I rate things (not for the first time) trying to make things make sense for my own way of looking at things between Prog Archives 5 stars rating and the S-F tiers here (plus my own mark out of 20 which is pretty linear to PA). I think what its showed me is there's not a completely universal way it works!

I've ended up with:

5 stars = S tier

4 stars = A tier, but something that is 'only just' 4 stars is the upper half of B tier

3 stars = C tier, and 'almost 4 stars' is lower half of B tier

2 stars = D tier and upper half of E tier

1 star = F tier (for things I genuinely can't listen to for even a minute) and E tier (for something just not to my taste but I can recognise some talent)

Think it at least reflects that the border between 3 and 4 stars on PA is one I regularly find myself judging between so that covering the whole of the B-tier seems to make sense to me

^ "Decent" is a euphemism in this case. You could also call it "slightly above average", and I doubt that artists would look at that and think "cool! thanks a bunch!" ;-)

This is the mapping to PA 5 stars that I implemented for the snippets:

• 5 stars: 90+ (S-Tier)
• 4 stars: 80+ (A-Tier)
• 3 stars: 50+ (B,C,D-Tiers)
• 2 stars: 30+ (E-Tier)
• 1 star: 0+ (F-Tier)

So three stars is everything that's not exactly bad, but also less than awesome.

I'm trying Rust in Peace in now. I see why people like it so much, but it really isn't for me, just not my vibe.

Edited comment to change subject (found out it's Mustaine that plays that opening riff), but you replied before I saved it, so I I brought the gist oft the original back. btw a "recommendation" from me is a 7.5 or higher.

^ Rust in Peace is one of the most iconic Thrash Metal releases ever, but of course that does not mean you have to like it. It just means that many, many people do. I never got into Slayer as much as other people have, and I really like World Painted Blood, which many, many other Slayer fans think isn't that good. Different strokes ...

Depends if you're a glass half empty or a glass half full kinda guy - "slightly above average" is still "better than most" :D

Good to know the way I've been doing my ratings is at least close to how you've planned it. Hopefully it also means I'm not over-generous or over critical... have just checked and where I've given a rating out of 20 to over 1500 albums broadly in the progressive genre, they average out at 11.8 (a high 3 stars or right on the boundary of the C/B tiers) which seems reasonable given its my comfort zone of music, covering most of the more universally popular artists, but also still listening to subgenres I'm generally less fond of.

^ Of course one scheme is not going to fit everyone perfectly :-)

About your average: Of course this really depends on which releases you choose to rate. For example, one of the (few) other users here who consistently returns to rate releases focuses on the really good ones. There the average will be substantially higher, and from the numbers alone you cannot tell whether the user is just much more generous or simply does not care about rating bad/mediocre releases.

I lean towards focusing on the really good ones as well :-)

on my big excel spreadsheet of music ratings, i'm averaging a 2.95-3.075 out of 5 with a standard deviation of 0.448-0.487 depending on if i use 0.25 or 0.5 rating increments.

so basically for me, on here anything over 5.9-6.2 is above average for me and anything under is below average

^ What would be the minimum rating that you'd give to a release that you really enjoy listening to?

there isn't really a "minimum" as i factor different elements into the rating such as production, originality, etc.. There are some 6.0 ratings I can really enjoy, but it suffers from bad production, or whatever. But again, a 7.5 is where my "recommendations" begin as at that point there aren't too many major flaws. For instance, I really enjoy Subterranean Masquerade's Mountain Fever, but the Jens Bogren production really drags down my score. I had it at C tier for a while before putting it in low B tier as it felt wrong to not have it under that, so while I "really enjoy" it, it's a hard recommendation to make because the engineering is really not good imo

So C or B i guess; i can really enjoy things in a low C, but i don't usually fully recommend something until a mid B.

Edit: looking the site here, there seems to be a big divide between a 6.9 and 7.0 in terms of whether I like the release or "really like" it. So 7.0, or B, is where I really start liking albums, though some items in high C I really like, but in general the answer would be B.

^ That sounds about right - I think for most users that cut-off point from which you start really enjoying a release is somewhere in the 7.x range (B-Tier). Which matches the adjective ("great").