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Oh and I LOVED Metallica with a passion. I wore their fucking Master of Puppets shirt all three years in my high school pictures (note I said three years LOLZ).

I never really liked Metallica so this gleefully sounds pretty much the same to me sans the mellowing of the vocals.

It could be worse. It could have the St. Anger snare drum.

popvulture wrote:

jrmy wrote:Argh. It's tough, because Kill 'Em all through the black album meant so much to me (SHUT UP, I'M OLD AND FROM THE STICKS, OK!?!?!?!!), and much of it still does (AGAIN, I'M OLD, WHATEVER), so I get my hopes up every time I hear there's a new one coming out. But yeah, this completely bums me out. It was the lyrics that really killed it dead in this one for me, though I wasn't really loving the riff either.

Sigh.

I'm in the same boat, but I think they've lost me for a while now. Tried to hang on. This song isn't bad (though the lyrics, ugh), but the new album is apparently an 80 minute double album, so there's plenty of time for them to go way worse.

Oh, they fully lost me at Load. But somehow, I keep hanging on... at least until the new album comes out and they lose me again.

I mean, other thrash bands have managed to hang on better... I saw Death Angel, Testament and Anthrax play a few years back and it was damn near transcendent for my inner 14-year old. I dunno. I'm usually willing to give bands lots of room to grow and evolve, but here... <sighs, shakes head> not so much.

I knew that would really suck, but not that much.

Live Sh*t: Binge & Purge was the high note I chose to treat as their farewell tour. When they all got haircuts and flannel shirts for Load I laughed at how nice-attempt-at-post-grunge the whole thing was. Still haven't listened to that album. Maybe I'll do so this year

As for the St Anger snare...it sounds like Lars covered a paper plate with foil as a joke crash cymbal...then decided it was his fav snare.

Over-the-hill musicians who have been living the mansion & yacht lifestyle for 30 years...still trying to make the same angry *edgy music* from their glory days...is a magnificent cringe to behold, more enjoyable than the music itself.

After seeing Some Kind of Monster and getting that impression of the dudes they'd become, to me it became pretty clear that there was no coming back.

They're probably the greatest example of what happens when your band becomes a brand, I think?

Who cares about the new music? I'm waiting for their next board game release.

jwar wrote:Oh and I LOVED Metallica with a passion. I wore their fucking Master of Puppets shirt all three years in my high school pictures (note I said three years LOLZ).

DUDE WTF POST THESEEEEE

D.o.S. wrote:They're probably the greatest example of what happens when your band becomes a brand, I think?

Without digging into the nit-picky glosses, yes.

ALTHOUGH ALSO PLUS TOO: Metallica was a brand from the get-go, and I would say that that was one great thing about them. Strictly speaking in the profession of branding, brand is the sum of all parts, and Kill 'Em All was a perfect execution of brand. They came out fully formed. I would say that all of the Cliff albums continued that brand, and things went awry on ...And Justice, when they clearly tried too hard to take the "loud fast complicated" to its logical extension. The Black Album was an overcorrection, AS WELL AS an attempt at gaining mainstream fandom. The interesting thing is that I think many old-skool fans were willing to embrace about 90% of that vision. It's when they tried to get ahead of The Grunge Train with Load that things started getting nutty.

SO ACTUALLY IF I'M GONNA TRY TO GET ALL INTERNERD CORRECTY, I'd say that they're the greatest example of when your band loses track of their ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY FINE AND ON-TRACK brand.

Every band is a brand.

Sure, but that's not really getting to the heart of what I mean. Metallica 'the band' puts out Lulu. Metallica 'the brand' puts out this sort of stuff.

@Jrms I'd say that's a great way of looking at the distinction between 'brand' and 'band', insofar as Kill 'Em All definitely sounds like a band finding its footing in the weird post-Motorhead post-hardcore Bay Area scene and is I think mostly a launching off point for the band they'd become (nerd glasses on), but it's totally fucking on point as far as the packaging goes. Early Slayer and Sepultura are also great examples of this, to stay within the genre.

D.o.S. wrote:Sure, but that's not really getting to the heart of what I mean. Metallica 'the band' puts out Lulu. Metallica 'the brand' puts out this sort of stuff.

@Jrms I'd say that's a great way of looking at the distinction between 'brand' and 'band', insofar as Kill 'Em All definitely sounds like a band finding its footing in the weird post-Motorhead post-hardcore Bay Area scene and is I think mostly a launching off point for the band they'd become (nerd glasses on), but it's totally fucking on point as far as the packaging goes. Early Slayer and Sepultura are also great examples of this, to stay within the genre.

Totally - every band is a brand, but not every band understands what that means.

To echo & break out further what D.o.S. says, Metallica circa Kill 'Em All was of a piece - they sounded overall like the logo looked (and that logo INSTANTLY looked like something you'd want on a denim jacket), and the album sounded EXACTLY like the cover looked - slightly home-done and janky, but getting at a sound/thing that was definitely pushing the boundaries of mainstream metal of the time.

PreFRIGGINcisely!