Although the 90s will always be remembered for the sound of the Seattle scene and its rise to become a massive cultural phenomenon whose influence was far more profound than the music itself, it was also the time when heavy music flourished in a diverse spectrum of immensely creative styles.
Bands like Pantera , Dream Theater , Type O Negative , Korn , Tool – to name just a few – have all created their own distinct visions of metal that remain popular to this day.
As a founding member of Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy was one of the people directly responsible for the explosion of creativity that marked that era of metal. However, Mike still believes that the 80s were bigger, as he recently explained in a Cameo where he was asked to choose a favorite decade for metal between the 80s and 90s.
"Well, for metal, I'd have to say the '80s, because the '90s started to decline," said Mike. He also mentions that grunge started around that time as well.
"Honestly, the only thing that mattered for metal, at least for me, in the 90s was Pantera, Sepultura , and Machine Head ; those were the only new bands really making metal. All the other big metal bands of the 90s emerged in the 80s."
“So, for me, the 80s, we have Metallica , Anthrax , Slayer , Overkill , Exodus , Megadeth … That was the whole thrash , and then all the early 80s, you had Rainbow , AC/DC , Accept and Motörhead , plus [Black] Sabbath and [Judas] Priest and [Iron] Maiden . So I think the 80s were definitely the strongest decade of the two,” he concludes.
