Back in the late 80's i wanted to be the fastest guitarist that ever lived,(Malmsteen and so on), then when i formed my own band i wanted to be the fastest and heaviest, well that was then. as i started doing shows more and more i started to notice that if i just wanted to play metal there are just a handful of clubs and thats it , not much money to be made to fund our originals, so i started to notice that the more i started to play for the audience (and not just for myself) the more my repertoire started to widen and the more money we started to make, in other words why drive in one lane in a 7 lane highway, as for your rival band telling you that your not thash enough if ain't all but heavey, i say to you hey, is he going to fill your next event or pay you for your shows. if he has no plans of managing your band, well then his advice or comments are useless, do what you want to do or play, just keep in mind the difference between playing a gig for musician(who always stand around saying they can do it better and in the mean time they dont even have a gig) and playing for non musician who are there to enjoy themselves, good luck