The Abominable Homan

I'M MADLY IN ANGER WITH YOU!

Ok, I agree with most of the other stuff you said, but I found the lyrics on St. Anger were usually just silly.

I feel that musically, it may very well be one of their worst in my opinion, but it's worth respecting simply for being them trying a new thing, even if it didn't always work. The decision make the drums sound like that was a little odd (I know they were going for the garage sound, but that doesn't mean you should intentionally have things sound bad), but at least it made Lars' drumming stand out for once to me (even if it's for the wrong reasons ).

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Hesher

I don't hate the Black Album. And no, it's not a "big f*cking deal" when "underground" bands go "mainstream". Notice that I used prodigious quotation marks because all those terms are bullshit. Metallica was never an underground band except for their very very early days; they were quite mainstream almost all the way up to and including the Black Album, and they were still excellent. The reason I don't forgive their experimentation is because it's fine to change your sound but there is no excuse for producing shitty music when you clearly have the capability to do more. That's what my entire rant was about two pages ago. Instead of getting more technically complex and creative, they adopted alternative rock and decided that would be good enough to keep with the times. That is a pathetic step. Fuck you for suggesting metalheads only like the same album over and over. There are thousands of metal bands doing extremely creative things and changing their sounds radically from album to album; on the other hand, some musicians in the scene like to make a band to do one specific sound, and then start a new one when it's time to change. That's not "exactly what it is". You are just as guilty of attacking metal as a genre as the people you whine about for telling you the truth about how prog is a genre specifically invented for fat nerds by fat nerds (and I LIKE prog). It's a good album if you like throwing up.

I don't think Metallica is responsible for shitty music, I think they released the album based on what was popular at the time, which is a far worse excuse than feeling the need to experiment. But you are very, very incorrect about their skill level. There were tons of metal bands in the 80s that made Metallica look like kids at Best Buy playing Guitar Hero, and even outside of the genre there were tons of far more capable musicians. They were good songwriters, they put on a good show, and they had good lyrics, so they were deservedly popular. But it had nothing to do with technical skill. And a lot of metalheads hate it because it's poorly recorded, poorly mixed, poorly written, poorly played, and overall a bad representative of what metal is supposed to sound like - in fact, it sounds MORE like a wrench in a chainsaw factory than a lot of other metal bands. Have you heard Lars' snare drum? As a drummer it made me want to cry. If you have a paid drum tech you should not sound like that. There is a difference between trying to sound "garage" and sounding lik crap. Calling that sound "garage" was an insult to real, actual, non-record-label garage bands all over the world. We know how to tune our instruments, thanks.

o im sory......... ur rong. It's not a "hipster thing". The people who are the "universal" part of "universal appeal" often have horrible taste and listen to whatever is playing on the radio. Those are the people I saw at the last Metallica show. It has nothing to do with "being here first". It has everything to do with metalheads not putting up with a good band releasing a terrible album when they should have been capable of a lot more. If you can't cut it anymore, quit it and start something else. I think metalheads hold bands to a high standard, and saying that we are obsessed with 'sellouts' is simply a cop-out for people who don't listen to metal enough to know what kind of quality we expect.

I agree with all of this. I would say after Burton died they lost a lot of their skill base. He wrote a surprising amount of material for the band and was especially creative.

When Mustaine stops singing I will check them out, I always said - but after A Tout Le Monde they lost whatever shreds of credibility they might have had. That song insulted good French metal bands like Yyrkoon.

It copped 100% of its flak because it was poorly written, included no solos (which arguably were one of the interesting things about Metallica), had a bass player that didn't suit the band in the slightest, had idiotic, mind-numbing lyrics, and was recorded by a multi-million dollar engineer trying to sound bad. Remember that most highly paid engineers sneer at garage bands and therefore was in fact, in his mind, trying to make the music sound terrible.

That's like saying watching porn is acceptable because it's doing something different than working. A change of tone doesn't necessitate a drop in the level of musicianship or creativity.

The Abominable Homan

No, it's like saying that a band finally doing something different in their career is respectable, even if it doesn't entirely go well. Like I've said before (in a somewhat more eloquent way), I've always felt they were ****, so the drop in musicianship was hardly noticeable. So they stopped playing solos, the solos were rarely any good in the first place. It wasn't a drop in creativity though, I've been saying this whole time that it was finally something different and therefore more creative.

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Hesher

So if I always pee but once in a while I take a shit, that's creative? I think you see where I'm going with this.

The Abominable Homan

So if they just made another MoP clone like they had been doing over and over, that would be more creative? And umm...there's never really going to be any creativity/lack of creativity about your excretions; that may be the worst analogy I've ever heard.

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Hesher

If you seriously think that Ride The Lightning and ...And Justice For All are clones of MoP, you should just stop talking right now. Really. You have little to no basis of comparison as you obviously don't like Metallica enough to listen to them. Death Magnetic is probably the closest thing ever recorded to an MoP clone; it sounds exactly like another band covering old Metallica with different song titles.

I was just being facetious about the excretions.

Wayfarer

How could they make MOP clones "over and over" when they only released one album between it and the black album?

The Abominable Homan

Actually I used to like Metallica and have listened to all of their albums (well, outside of Load and Reload which I fortunately never got) fairly extensively. Are you telling me you decide you don't like bands without having listened to them? I personally decide what I like and dislike after having heard it.

Very good tactic you used there though. "If you disagree with me, you have no idea what you're talking about and should stop."

And of course the amazing "If you don't like a band you haven't listened to them enough and shouldn't talk about them." Wonderful assumption.

EDIT:

Oh, Ride The Lightning came first. I got them mixed up, replace it with RtL clone then. Kill 'Em All at least had a kind of different sound so I'll ignore it.

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Surell

Well damn it, maybe I need to take that Father's Day gift back...

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Hesher

Well then, you have no excuse for thinking that ...AJFA and RtL are MoP clones. They aren't. They are dramatically different, broski. I don't know where the hell you got the idea that I decide I don't like bands without listening to them. Of course, there are some exceptions, but I shouldn't have to subject my ears to tripe.

That's not a tactic, it's the truth

It's not about whether you like them or not, it's fine if you don't - but I won't put up with people saying that any of Metallica's excellent pre-Load albums are in any way "clones" of MoP. That just betrays a lack of understanding in my opinion, which I guess in your case I mistook for a lack of listening.