MetalSucks

“That Was Just Your Life” is probably still my favorite track off of Death Magnetic, so I was  excited to watch this footage of the band playing it live that was posted on Blabbermouth this morning.

Unfortunately, not only is the footage shot incredibly poorly (nice vantage point from the 8 trillionth row right as the song is kicking off), but the band just doesn’t sound that great. Hetfield really can’t sing, and Lars seems to be weighing everyone down and just making it sound all sloppy n’ shit. I’m sure some of you will disagree and think I just get off on Metallica bashing and blah blah blah, but really, I just can’t imagine anyone reasonable hearing this performance and thinking “WOW!”

-AR

It may’ve happened 15 years ago, but where we come from there’s no shame in digging up old dirt as the intrepid reporters at Buzzgrinder have, right? In a mid-nineties interview with Kip Winger, the hirsute bassist/singer shared his hatred of Metallica, apparently brought on by an offensive clip in the “Nothing Else Matters” video in which Lars Ulrich is seen removing darts from a pinned-up poster of Winger:

That is why it’s the great irony that we ended up on that geeky guy’s shirt on Beavis & Butthead, because Metallica couldn’t play what we play, they couldn’t do it, they literally – technically couldn’t do it. And I’ll fucking challenge those chumps to a fight any day of the week, but we could play their music with our hands tied behind our back.

And here’s said video. Fast-forward to around the 2:55 mark for the good stuff.

-VN

For seven glorious minutes and eight fantastic seconds, I thought that Death Magnetic might be the record that Metallica should have released after the Black Album – a record that melds the pop-metal sensibilities the band adopted in the 90s with the thrashier, proggier Metallica of the 80s. That’s exactly the length of time it takes the opening track of the album, “That Was Just Your Life,” to play out, full of enough monstrous riffage, catchy hooks, and blistering solos to make up even for Lars Ulrich’s distractingly mechanical drumming. And if the nine songs that follow were as good, Death Magnetic might actually have been the album that restored Metallica to something at least resembling their former glory.

Instead, the nine songs that follow are a mixed bag – not even from song to song so much as within each song.
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To me, Metallica ceased to be relevant ages ago — so much so that I have barely heard any of their last few albums, save the studio recording footage featured in the 2004 documentary Some Kind Of Monster (which I found to be reasonably entertaining), and surprisingly I actually liked the music I heard enough to go acquire said tracks (didn’t say I paid for em tho, wink wink nudge nudge/suck it).

But upon repeated listens of that material, it was apparent even back then that the Metallica of yesteryear, an old school conceptual thrashy metal band that actually pushed new boundaries at one point both sonically and stylistically, was D-E-mf-D. And really…who cared? Shouldn’t the shelf life of once-classic bands that are now repeatedly outputting watered-down versions of their formerly original sound be minimal at best?!? I’m all for old fogies rockin it directly into the grave (hope to myself) but shit man, they best ought perpetually evolve as artists in their middle/old age somehow throughout, doncha think?

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I don’t know about all of you, but Metallica has been and will always be my favorite band in the whole world. I put down the trumpet and picked up the guitar for one reason: Metallica. When I used to draw comic books for 8 hours a day I never did it better while I was listening to …And Justice for All. The first two rock bands I discovered were Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. Why do I say rock? I got into Metallica on The Black Album. Before The Black Album I used to listen to R&B and Hip Hop. It was so bad, I would never say the word “awesome.” I thought it was too white. I called Metallica rock because for a kid like me, metal was too heavy. For a kid like me ,Metallica was the only band to get me in touch with my angry side without being too angry.

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If anyone around here has the right to dissect Metallica, it’s me – the Old Fart.

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You can’t be a rawk gawd if you’re a fucking midget. Think about it: is there a great midget musician in the history of metal? FUCK NO (First person to say that lil’ fucker who used to hang out with Kid Rock gets banned.). Metal is all about being larger than life, and to do that, you can’t be no friggin’ Mini-Me.

So we turned to metal’s ultimate diminutive drummer, Lars Ulrich, and asked him to do a guest blog for us about how to look taller than you actually are. Much to our surprise, even after all the shit we’ve talked about Lars here at MS, he agreed.* After the jump, get Our Little Danish Friend’s pointers on adding inches where it really counts (and not just to your penis).

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MUSIC: Tastes Great
LYRICS: Less Filling

(3 out of 5 shofars)

-AO

It’s bad. The new Metallica album is bad. Let me explain why this shouldn’t be surprising.

This is the album that Metallica thought you wanted. This is the throwback to that classic era of the late eighties and early nineties that everyone was begging them to create. This is the album that everyone in that battered-wife fan base was hoping would come out even as the band was raking in millions while the music kept getting worse. We all sat and watched as they stumbled from failure to failure, transforming into a mainstream rock act before our eyes, holding expensive and tasteless concerts with an orchestra backing, and releasing a largely useless collection of covers before finally delivering the audio coup de grace that was St. Anger. It was the final line they had to cross. It was an output without a single redeeming factor that was only defended by the most unreasonable apologists; the sort of people who lack the ability to criticize their heroes no matter what their transgressions – and l doubt any of them have listened all the way through St. Anger in the year 2008.

So here we are at the eve of a new Metallica release and everyone’s talking about it. I bet everyone knows at least a few people who are really excited, and maybe it’s even you. It’s a false alarm though, I assure you, as this only furthers the mountain of evidence that Metallica no longer deserve an instant of our attention, appreciation or excitement outside of a live venue. Death Magnetic is more embarrassing even than their previous documentary that revealed to the world how detached and conceited they’d grown from their own creative process as well as each other. In fact, Death Magnetic is the affirmation of just that. Correction, it is the second affirmation, after St. Anger.

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When considering their latest album, it’s important to bear in mind the lasting power of Metallica’s legacy, especially when taking into consideration the weak efforts of the past couple decades. This is a band that had had a hand in building up the traditional Thrash framework throughout the 80s into an impenetrable fortress. But the castle has crumbled and they’re left with just a name. In the early 90s, they entreated us to take their hand and we would be off to the Never Neverland of mainstream success. But then Metal lost its foothold on radio and MTV, falling victim to the Grunge/Alternative phenomenon. Metallica forged onward but many were forced to ask: were they following their instinct, not a trend? Deep down inside fans felt the need to scream. The band seemed to be putting dignity to shame, with dishonor.

The Metallica of that decade was leaner, more open to pop constructs and, to their credit, this did translate into commercial success, along with a flurry of less-than-flattering press. Yet to longtime fans, when the circus rolled into town, they were playing the lead clown. Welcome to where time stands still. No one rocks and no one will. Hell, they even went country (for only one song, but still!). The band eventually lashed out at the fans and the fans revolted. Hey, honesty was our only excuse. They can try to rob us of it but it’s no use. Load, Re-Load and St. Anger each grew progressively worse. We were left to face the thing that should not be: a flaccid hard rock outfit of aging, emotionally unavailable sociopaths that had long ago lost their hunger and, subsequently, their edge. But please excuse them while they tend to how they feel. They went to therapy, filmed it and foisted it on a bewildered public. Fuck it all and fucking no regrets. Would there be a happy ending in this dark set? Did Metallica drift on numbered days?

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With Death Magnetic, Metallica’s latest attempt at getting back into the good graces/wallets of their fan base, the band officially descends into the realm of the Rolling Stones of metal. The Stones, of course, have the stronger legacy and the better/more extensive catalog of songs. But both bands have four unimpeachable albums to their credit (the Stones have Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Exile on Main Street, and Some Girls; Metallica obviously sport their first four) and, in essence, have only been recording albums as an excuse to tour since the end of their heyday.

The biggest difference, though, is that the Stones are aware of this; though they keep trying, the songs off of anything post-Tattoo You disappear from their setlist after their first supporting tour. They recognize that they’re essentially creatively bankrupt as a band, and just happen to have one of, if not arguably the, best back catalogs of songs in popular music history, so playing live until one of/all of the band members die is both a financial and populous-satisfying maneuver. Metallica, on the other hand, have yet to notice that their best years are now 18-20 years behind them, and that they’ve been making increasingly lazy and uninspired hard rock for more than a decade. Though their fan faithful (this writer included), the ones that were initially saved by their quartet of timeless metal albums, have been waiting for a rousing return to form even after the spectacular misfire that was St Anger, this album isn’t it. In fact, Death Magnetic boils down to one thing: new Metallica playing old Metallica. They’re not unlike a pack of middle aged dudes playing their favorite Motorhead songs at the corner bar, not paying attention to how sloppy they’re performing or that their attempts at recapturing youthful abandon are just really, really sad.

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Holy fucking shit, this is fucking disgraceful. The idea to re-record Bonded by Blood was already fucking pathetic, but this just nails the coffin shut on any coolness the “re-imagining” might have had. The cover art for the original Bonded by Blood looked cheap as fuck, but it looked cheap in that totally acceptable DIY-ish way. This just looks like crap. I know that Gary Holt has bills to pay and that, gas prices being what they are these days, staying out on the road, where he can fuck girls his daughter’s age, isn’t the easiest thing in the world; still, there’s nothing about this that doesn’t make me angry.

Gary, if you’re reading this, I just want you to know, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I hope your daughter sucks Lars Ulrich’s dick.

-AR

On August 25, 1988, Metallica released what many consider to be their last great album, …And Justice for All. To my ears, this would probably be my favorite Metallica album of all time if not for the lack of bass (Which, to this day, I think was an idiotic way to haze then-new-now-former bassist Jason Newstead – I mean, why would the band punish themselves by damaging their own album? How does that pay tribute to the memory of Cliff Burton? It doesn’t). Justice features Metallica at their heaviest, and, often, their proggiest. I’ve been trying all week-end to think of words that could do Justice, um, justice – but I just can’t. And I probably don’t need to to: I’m sure you all have your own feelings on this classic recording.

So here’s Metallica performing the title track on the Justice tour in ‘89. After the jump, keep the celebration going with more live clips, the now classic video for “One,” and some other cool shit.

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Eventually, someone is going to adapt Motley Crue’s The Dirt (which I’m still fairly certain is the best book ever written in any language ever) into a movie. There’s too many greenbacks at stake for the project just to sit on the shelf forever.

But I’ve read screenwriter Rich Wilkes’ adaptation of the infamous tome (written by Neil Strauss under the guise of being written by the band members themselves), and it wasn’t going to make a good movie. In fact, I can guarantee you it was going to make a horrible, horrible movie. Wilkes is the writer of such gems as The Jerky Boys movie and xXx, so that news really shouldn’t shock anyone*; in fact, I have to guess that Wilkes got the job ’cause he wrote Airheads, which is probably the last Hollywood movie about metal that is only a semi-embarrassment to the film industry**. Still, Wilkes’ script was all set to go before cameras under the guidance of Borat director/Seinfeld executive producer Larry Charles, who is really way, way, way too talented for this lousy script. At various times, Ashton Kutcher and Johnny Knoxville were rumored to be in talks to play Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx, respectively, and Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer were alleged to have filled the roles of Ozzy Osbourne and David Lee Roth.

In other words, this thing really had about as much chance of being good as Lars Ulrich does of growing to be six five four feet tall.

So lucky for us all that the project, at least as we’ve known it, seems to be in jeopardy.

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It’s been kind of funny to watch Metallica try to be more web-friendly in the years since the whole Napster debacle, hasn’t it? The fucked up part is that they’ve actually done a pretty decent job; I mean, that whole Live Metallica thing is actually a pretty cool idea, regardless of what you think of the band’s output over the past seventeen years.

So now Hetfield & Ulrich Inc. is at it again, and they’ve set up a new website, Mission: Metallica, which will allow fans to “experience the new album before it’s done.” We won’t know what the fuck that actually means (Audio samples? In-the-studio footage? Endless hours of Lars Ulrich contemplating where a Basquiat painting begins and where it ends?) until the site officially launches next month, but hopefully, it will have little to nothing to do with loads, group therapy, Scott Reeder’s alleged lack of skill as a bass player, flushing anything out, or that shitty song from Mission:Impossible II.

-AR

In a recent interview with Revolver magazine, art-aficionado, download-hater and sometimes Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich spewed forth some more “this one’s going to bring back the old sound, man!” bullshit:

“This stuff is certainly a lot more dynamic and a lot more varied than the last couple of go-rounds,” he said. “There’s a lot of light and shade in these songs. There’s heavy, fast, nutty stuff, and then there’s some slowdowns and musical interludes. It’s pretty different from ‘St. Anger’, and it’s pretty different from the ‘Load’ stuff. This stuff is not the one-dimensional punch in the face that ‘St. Anger’ was. This is probably a little more like those couple of albums back there in the decade that begins with an ‘8.’”

Can we really believe anything this man says at this point? Will absentee-producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin right the sinking calamity of a ship that has been the past 3 Metallica albums? What are the chances of this album being about as good as poop in a jewel case?

-VN