I just looked at the 1990 list and, for me, there's nothing that comes even close to Painkiller. It was, indeed, a very bleak year. Anthrax's Persistence of Time was disappointing, Dio's Lock up the Wolves and No Prayer for the Dying were bad.
Persistence Of Time is amazing, man. That's a great album. Especially after the very weal State Of Euphoria.
And Lock Up The Wolves is excellent too. I remember being really thrown off by it, but it has aged really well. It sounds great, and Rowan Robertson was the last guitarist Dio had that had any personality in his playing. I mean Tracy G had it, but it blew.
Slayer's Seasons In the Abyss was a great 1990 album.
I'll give you Persistence of Time, although I was growing uninterested when they really started incorporating elements of rap into their music. And I've never been into Slayer. After my friends and I got our licenses, we would regularly stop at a record store after school and just browse. We would sometimes agree to buy something unknown just based on the cover (or whatever). I had seen Show No Mercy a few times and thought the cover was funny, so my best friend bought it, which meant we had to listen to it on the drive to and from school.
But Lock up the Wolves is a huge "no." My Eyes is about the only song I can get through. Everything else is plodding sludge. I remember even the concert on that tour was a big stinker. The crowd wasn't into it, and it seemed like RJD was just going through the motions.
Nah, no argument. I'd change that without a peep. I know I'm not all-in on the Cliff hero-worship - he was very good not great, IMO - but that ranking is more a reflection that both Priest and Metallica do not have beasts (no pun intended) like Harris and Butler.
Cliff was great, but, like Randy Rhoads, his body of work was too small to justify the lofty praise he has received and continues to receive. And Jason is better than Lars allowed him to be