Mike Portnoy, ex-Dream Theater drummer and current member of The Winery Dogs, has some pretty strong opinions about Nineties metal. The world-renowned percussionist responded to a Cameo request that asked whether he preferred metal from the 1980s or the 1990s, and the 54-year-old didn't hold back, throwing his support behind the older decade and saying that the "Nineties started to go downhill" for metal.
"Well, for metal, I would have to say the Eighties," Portnoy said in his response, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. "'Cause the Nineties started to go downhill. Once grunge came around, the Nineties...really, the only thing going for metal, for me at least, in the Nineties was Pantera, Sepultura and Machine Head; those were the only new bands, really, doing metal. All of the other great metal bands of the Nineties all came around in the Eighties.
"So for me, [in] the Eighties we [had] Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, Overkill, Exodus, Megadeth. That was all the thrash scene, and then all the early Eighties stuff, you had Rainbow and AC/DC and Accept and Motörhead and [Black] Sabbath and [Judas] Priest and [Iron ] Maiden. So I think the Eighties were definitely the stronger decade of the two."
There're plenty of metalheads who prefer the thrash and NWOBHM sounds compared to the experimentation that happened in the decade that followed, and Portnoy is definitely one of them. By saying that the "only new bands doing metal" in the Nineties were Pantera, Sepultura and Machine Head, then he's clearly not a big fan of nu-metal, industrial-metal, alt-metal or grunge — which were all hugely popular Nineties sub-genres that helped define heavy music throughout that decade.
Watch footage of Portnoy's Cameo response above via YouTube.
