MANAGEMENT: METALLICA *NOT* PLAYING BONNAROO
Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 3:56pm by Vince Neilstein
In the “yeah, right” department, Metallica uber-Management firm Q Prime has denied rumors that Metallica will play the 2008 edition of Bonnaroo, the annual 4-day festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The rumor was started by an anonymous tip sent to industry pundit Bob Lefsetz.
Led Zeppelin’s management, meanwhile, is mum on the report.
Who wants to take bets as to how long it will be until Metallica is announced as a headliner for Bonnaroo 2008? I’ll wager my copy of Suck Anger.
-VN
Metalli-ca-ca’s management is obviously lying. Circulating rumors would imply that someone somewhere talks about or cares about Metallica and we all know this is not the case. You heard it here first (or maybe second or third): the next Metallica disc will suck harder than a drunken Catholic H.S. girl on prom night. The last time these guys were heavy was at Woodstock 94 & everything they’ve done since then has just been lame and embarrassing.
I honestly don’t know how to describe how I feel about Metallica anymore. I do remember hearing them when they actually first came out, so I’ve ridden this wave the whole time. I defended The Black Album as being a move in a slightly different direction. I agreed with Hetfield when he said they wouldn’t go back and do another Master album because, “We already did that album.”
I even semi-defended Load and Re-load, only having a problem with the fact that between the two albums they only had about one album’s worth of decent material. I criticized the quality control and releasing too many songs, instead of doing what they had always done – pare it down to the best 10 or so. But I thought that going more hard rock than metal was okay. One only need listen to the few albums Iron Maiden did after Seventh Son to know that continually recording the same exact music just gets boring.
I thought they were right on the Napster thing, theoretically, just the wrong band to wave the flag.
But St. Anger and all the melodramatic bullshit that surrounded it finally soured me. I really no longer know what or how to feel about this band. Their music fucking shaped my taste in music from ’83 on. Hell, I saw them open for Ozzy in ’86 and completely annihilate him. But their recent antics just make me want to hate them.
It truly is like a tale of two separate bands. Metallica 1.0 (1983-94) towered over all other bands, they were a total killing machine live & their albums always contained quality, top-notch efforts. Simply put, they ruled. I had no problem forgiving them for the somewhat heavy-handed commercialism of “Black” after all they’d accomplished and despite not being up to the standards set by their early work, “Black” was not without its charms IMO.
Metallica has always tried to dismiss the criticism from older fans with the argument about not wanting to do “Master” over & over again but that isn’t what alienated those fans. The hardcores like myself were cool with their “musical growth” and we weren’t afraid to hear them challenge themselves and their fans with some diversity. There were two things about those “Load” albums that pissed off those fans and those two things were:
1. They seemingly deliberately removed all the heaviness from their sound
2. The songs on those discs are not good and sound like the work of a lazy, tired & uninspired band.
When I first heard, “Until It Sleeps” my first reaction was “uh-oh”. After hearing “Load” all the way through I can say I’ve never been more disappointed or bewildered by a band before or since. Instantly forgettable drivel, all of it. Honestly, at the time I was stunned, I never thought they had an album that bad in them. Everything about those discs sucked, right down to their updated & gay-ified new logo. I still get nauseous thinking about the “Loads”.
The Napster thing might not have gone so badly for them if a) Lars hadn’t done all the talking & b) they didn’t have a song (some weak “Load” out-take) on a movie soundtrack that they were trying to sell. Regardless of the rights-&-wrongs involved, they ended up coming across as old, out-of-touch & whiny rock stars obsessing over their revenue streams. Notice how their current website features lots of cool MP3’s and such, too bad they weren’t with it enough to capitalize on that kind of approach back then, it might have made them appear cooler to a new generation of fans.
“St. Anchor” only succeeded in pissing me off even more. It was almost as if they said, “OK, let’s just give these heavy metal assholes what they want to hear” & threw together a bunch of half-assed riffs that sounded like bands they thought were considered cool at the time. Once again, it reeked of laziness & it was clearly not the product of a band interested in making heavy music. It’s like “riffing by numbers”, the songs aren’t coherent and just sound completely thrown together. Based on the finished product you have to wonder if they even bothered listening to it after the recorded it. Judging by that infamous production job, it’s possible that no one did. The very worst album by any of their contemporaries is still ten times better than that laughable pile of puke.
I wish they’d do something (or anything) to win fans like me over again. But honestly, I just don’t see it happening. The vibe is gone forever which is sad because I miss ‘em, dammit. Apologies for the length of this post but it’s a topic that really sets me off.