A lot of people who were around in the 80's will have long lists of bands which they saw as a teenager or young adult who they wish would just come back, even if only for one show. And, in this day and age, a lot of bands are making reunions. To pick the example that springs to mind at the minute, we now have something that could fairly be considered a reunion by Dark Angel.
So, you'd expect me to be happy with all of these developments, right? Well...not really, no. Don't get me wrong, it's great to see the old legends suddenly coming back and giving the dose of old school metal that a lot of people in my age group don't really have today, but I cannot help thinking that most of the reunions are doing nothing more than proving why so many older metal fans won't acknowledge that it's no longer the 80's and that they need to let the past remain the past, as well as doing little to dispel the suspicion that many of the bands are just doing it to cash in on their legacies, as they could feasibly put on what would have been an underwhelming show when the members were young and full of venom and be hailed as having made a great return to form.
...I see a lot of people have already grabbed their pitchforks and torches. So, let's make a deal: I'll say what I want to say and then, after I've done that, you can continue to mob me to death. That seems reasonable?
Let's start by considering how age affects people. Let's be honest, people change as they get older (...well, most of them do!) and this is no exception to their abilities on their respective instruments: even the greatest guitar shredders in the world will probably struggle to play what they could manage with ease when they were twenty. This means that there will almost inevitably be some deterioration of the abilities of the members, even if they've kept in practice with the instruments over the course of their hiatus by, for example, being in other bands. This hits vocalists worse than people playing instruments, as most people's voices get lower over the course of time. This can often mean that a band simply can't perform up to the standards they're being measured up against. Short of a reunion in name only, there's no real way to get a band to reunite and have them turn out to be up to their old standards. While a lot of fans will voluntarily acknowledge this fact, the question is WHY we are letting bands come out onto the stage who simply aren't up to their standards, as lofty as they are. Because nostalgia is a powerful thing, of course: we want them to come out and give us a good show because we know they have a good reputation. When we get that, we're happy. Whether it would have been a good show back in the day doesn't factor into the equation for a lot of people: they just want a good show in general.
The second point is that most reunions usually have to start for a reason: you don't tend to get people who've not seen each other for a decade to suddenly go "Yeah, let's reunite our old band again" upon meeting up, especially if the band broke up due to bad blood between the members and they've not seen each other for most of that time. Which means that there is usually an incentive beyond the music itself. That's not to say that every reunion has been done due to there being an incentive (some bands are bound to have returned because they genuinely wanted to), but there's usually something that will have made the idea of a reunion turn from "Never going to happen" to "Hmm...we're thinking about it". Some bands will have done it for the fans, some will have done it for the money, some will have done it because their other projects aren't working out...you get the point, I'm sure! As much as we'd all like to think that bands have come back because fan demand has been so high that the band have suddenly gone "Our fans still haven't forgotten us! Guys, you feel like doing some shows to thank them for their loyalty?", the sad truth is that, unless demand is high enough to make the reunion truly worthwhile, most bands probably aren't too concerned about having a reunion unless they're harassed about so much that they can't ignore it. So, if a really small band breaks up, you can probably be confident that they'll never reunite in a million years, while a large band that breaks up will inevitably receive so many reunion requests that members of the band will have talks about it at least once every few years, if not months. Requests for classic line up reunions for bands that don't currently have them will also occur, and nearly always will involve a lot of money being thrown at the band until it happens. As you may have noticed, the actual reasons WHY the band aren't reuniting aren't considered by those who want them to return: they just throw larger sums of money at the band in the hopes that it will do something. Of course, the original reasons for a reunion CAN turn into an honest attempt to give the fans what they want and have the members of the band wondering why they broke up in the first place, so that doesn't mean that a reunion is completely a bad thing in and of itself once it gets going, but the reasons that got it started usually don't tend to involve the guys just going "Yeah, let's reunite", especially if they now have lives outside of music that they can't just give up to put the band back together.
The third thing is that a reunion often has a set of expectations attached to it by the fans and, depending on how long the band has been away for, the standards the band has to live up simply cannot be met, even if the band could perform up to the standards that they held in their prime. If a band has been away for at least a decade, you can expect expectations for their reunion to be sky high and, if the band don't meet up to them, you'll often find fans picking the reunited band apart for flaws that should have been obvious to anyone who had been paying attention to other projects by the members (assuming they have any). As an example that springs to mind, a lot of people don't like Sanctuary's return due to Warrel Dane not being able to pull off some of the band's classics any more. However, if you'd been following Nevermore's career after Sanctuary broke up, you'd have known that Dane had been dialling down the falsetto screams for a good while since the band had been around, which should have been taken as a sign that he couldn't do them as well as he used to be able to. In that aspect, it's hard to feel sympathy for the Sanctuary fans acting like Dane's ruining the reunion through not being up to the high standards he set for himself on Sanctuary's debut, as he was both about twenty five years younger on that album AND he's been around with another band for long enough that it's really their fault for not noticing the warning bell that should have been going off in their heads (also, his voice sounds VERY different now compared to that album, so what were you expecting, the guy to suddenly do his old Rob Halford impression?). That said, I'll admit that I'd really be interested in seeing what Sanctuary's next album will sound like, so I can't deny that I'm somewhat caught up in some degree of hype regarding them in the studio! Live, though...well, there's a reason why I'd like to see a Nevermore reunion after this album is released and not see Sanctuary continue, even if the next Sanctuary album turns out to be brilliant!
The fourth issue is whenever a new album is going to be made by a reuniting act. Let's be honest, this should have EVERYONE worried when it's announced, especially if the band's been apart for over a decade. People change and what might have been an amazing idea when you're twenty might look rather dumb when you're thirty, so you can usually expect a reunion album to fail to match the high standards that fans will place on it. That doesn't mean there haven't been good reunion albums, of course, but most of them usually tend to be rather safe albums, as the band is in a position where it needs to regain support from the old fans, but can't afford to do something too drastic for fear of people saying stuff like "They shouldn't have reunited if they can't deliver a good album". This leaves a tricky balancing act to try to play: write enough material that is recognisably in their old style to impress the old fans, but throw in some experimental stuff to suit where the band are now to prevent accusations of retreading on past glories. The end result is usually a good, if unexceptional, album that gets hyped through the roof just because it's not as bad as people feared it would be. And that, to me, feels like rewarding mediocrity, as we're basically going "Well, it didn't suck, so it's good!" THIS DOES NOT MEAN BANDS CANNOT PULL OFF STRONG REUNION ALBUMS! Some bands have done it, but most have not done it after over a decade of not doing anything. In those cases, expectations usually are on the level of expecting a godlike album from a rusty band who likely is still trying to pull itself together again to see whether it still functions properly. It's like asking Robocop to hunt down a crime lord when you've only just reactivated him after over a hundred years of him falling apart in a garage: you know that they're out of their depth, but you're still expecting them to do what came naturally to them while they are getting used to culture shock, rust and things not working the way they used to. When put like that, a bit unreasonable, isn't it?
The last issue is that, well, sometimes memories are best left as just that: memories. With all that I've said in the last four paragraphs, it's fair to say that, sometimes, leaving the book closed is honestly the best idea for a band if they want to protect their legacy. There's nothing stopping the members from doing the songs live (and I'm sure an agreement could be drawn up if necessary to allow all of the members to do that if they wanted to with their projects), so there's often little point in a reunion unless the band had made a rule basically saying "You can't play any of our songs if you aren't in the band". Yes, it's nice to see the old guys get on stage and give it a go, but, really, do you want to do that if they can't deliver the material any more? Would you not prefer to hear someone do the song properly, even if it's not with all of the guys in the band performing it?
Think about that...
You may now continue organising the lynch mob if you want to.
(Also, a funny meta fact for my readers: after writing this article, I sent this article off to a friend who is my unofficial second opinion provider/proofreader/quality assurance guy and, after he read it, he mentioned that what I'd brought up was basically what happened with him when Black Sabbath announced their reunion. I would like it to be known that Black Sabbath genuinely did not cross my mind while writing this article and it was only when he mentioned them that I realised that what I'd said could apply to them for all of my comments. When I was writing this, the only bands that crossed my mind for definite were Dark Angel, Death Angel and Sanctuary. Goes to show, though: sometimes, it takes a second pair of eyes to realise just how much you managed to hit the mark!)
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