In the beginning of the era of Thrash Metal, only four different bands really mattered: Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth. Out of these four, Megadeth was always the more musically technical. Having been thrown out from the Metallica camp in 1983 (accused of kicking James Hetfield's dog), Dave Mustaine decided to form his own band. Mustaine hooked up with neighbour and bassist Dave Ellefson and thought about starting a band. They decided to call themselves Megadeath, since that sounded cool. After a while, they however decided that all cool bands only had eight letters. So they dropped an "e" and all suddenly Megadeth was born. Armed with finger breaking riffs, lyrics about the problems of the world and the angry, spitting (almost laconic) singing voice of Dave Mustaine, Megadeth started building a great business for themselves.

Coming five years after another Greatest Hits collection, "Capitol Punishment", this new collection contains many of the tracks on the latter release. This would have been unfortunate if Mustaine hadn't remastered and remixed his entire Capitol catalogue. If you have listened to any of the re-releases, you know they sound much better than they did when first released.

"Back to the Start" was put together by the fans on the official web page and thus the material chosen is very different. Some classics, like 'Countdown to Extinction' and 'Rust in Peace... Polaris', are sadly missing but earrings like 'Holy Wars... The Punishment Due', 'Sweating Bullets' and 'Hangar 18' fortunately remains as potent as ever.

All in all, "Back to the Start" is a great collection of songs from a really good thrash metal band that constantly developed their musicianship with every album throughout the ages. Highly recommended. I'll be sad to see Megadeth end, but luckily it's on a high note like this.

Guns N' Roses are often said to be responsible for bringing the hard rock back to earth after the hair metal bands had their go on the poor little thing. This is of course true, but what's also true is that Gn'R only released one "back to earth"-album before they started going downhill themselves. That album was "Appetite for Destruction" and is an all time classic. Anybody not having that in their collection does not like modern rock music.

But what next? Well, the boys started to try out new music styles and thus slowly transformed into being both a blues rock band and a grit rock band, which probably, in the end, did more harm to themselves. Suddenly, they had fricking pianos on stage. The songs became less powerful, slower and in the end very boring. In the end, it was really just a matter of time before the original line-up (save for Axl) parted ways. What Axl is trying to achieve right now, I have no idea and I don't even want to know. I don't even want an idea. Guns N' Roses are dead for all I care.

But relax. Guns N' Roses still get that very deserved five star rating.

Yeah, so the headline and classification is a bit parodic. So what? Tenacious D is all about parody.

Supposedly, Jack Black and Kyle Gass started out Tenacious D as a comedy show on HBO and caused enough ruckus to get the offer to record a whole album. The result is a album that deals a lot with humor. Between the songs, which are mostly old school rock and roll with a twist, there are short sketches where the two band members talks about... stuff. Like cock push-ups.

And 'hard f**king'.

These sketches are often hilarious as, hey, let's face it, it's Kyle Gass and Jack Black. I'll dare say there's a lot of great chemisty between the two guys which makes them pull no punches. Especially watch out for the track named "Drive-Thru". That's how you order fast food.

All in all, Tenacious D is a fun gag on rock n' roll. If you have humor, don't miss out on this.

Dave Mustaine often whines about Youthanasia when he's giving interviews, saying things like "it was here it all begun going downhill". Some of his fans agree with him, I don't. I consider it as one of Megadeth's better than best-albums. Sure, the album might not be as good from start to finish like, say, Rust in Peace or Countdown to Extinction, but the good tracks on Youthanasia more than makes up for the more weaker songs.

The reason why Youthanasia became so varied? Mustaine blames this on the others, who wanted more influence in terms of the bands' musical direction. I'd say this is fairly true, but even so many of the better tracks are actually the ones written by the whole band and not just Mustaine. Take the powerful "Reckoning Day" or the disturbing incest story "Family Tree". At the same time, Mustaine has written two of the most weakest songs himself. The boring "Train of Consequences" and the rather silly "Victory", which consists of previous albums' songs. But, yeah, the beautiful and touching "A Tout Le Monde" is Mustaine's own work.

So all in all, don't be prepared to like the whole album. But be prepared to love some of songs to death and ignore the weaker ones.