I was disappointed with the Black album, but that’s ONLY because the first album I‘d ever bought was Kill ’Em All, and LOVED Justice. Black was too slow for me. I wanted thrash.
I’m cool with them growing, I just didn’t like the direction personally, but millions did, so fortunately my opinion didn’t mean much for them haha. I wanted them to find success though, irrespective of how much I wanted another Blackened.
St Anger was a turning point for me. I lost interest in Metallica when that album came out and they let Jason go. Never really listened to any of their stuff post st anger
Its a really good snare in the context of those genres its just that St.anger is pretty much the Polar opposite of those genres. Metallica is playing no last days of humanity or ecchymosis thats for sure
I have a very unfortunate soft spot for St. Anger, but the vocals on it have always been hit or miss for me. Sometimes you get some solid Hetfield OUUUUUUU, sometimes you get stuff like the sad, weak yell on All Within My Hands. Teenage me needed this man to SCREAM down the mic damn it.
Oh, I haven't actually seen this version of it. It's a pretty good performance of it, though admittedly listening to it and the album track back to back to compare is reminding me of how hard it is to sell some of these lyrics.
Like I get the vision behind the "KILL KILL KILL" section, but y'know..
Early in the pandemic, they did a no-audience live show where they took the arrangement from the re-worked, unplugged version played at the Bridge School benefit shows in '07ish, and made it electric. Very Black/Load-meets-AIC, highly recommend.
There really is a great album buried under trash. Bob Rock was not the guy to push them at the moment this was recorded. SKOM proved that many times over. What a wild time capsule that doc is
I’ve always held that opinion. There *is* good stuff in there, it’s just buried in the bad.
They needed TBA Bob Rock that would say “that’s not good enough”, but they were all way too fragile for that at the time and Bob was just hanging on at that point. Like “yeah, sure, whatever you want, man”.
I think letting him be the session bassist was the biggest mistake because he stopped being a voice of guidance and he just started going along with their awful ideas
Yeah, that didn’t help. He was too close and too much of a part of it. Like, I’m not even blaming them because there was so much turmoil and turbulence going on, they were just going with it the best they could. But it definitely had an impact.
Its an underrated album. "Frantic", "Dirty Window", "All within My Hands", "Unnamed Feeling"...GREAT TRACKS! Yes, the mix is weird but they tried to push themselves instead and re-doing Master and AJFA...
Honestly I stopped listening after the black album. I’ve seen them live since then and they are still awesome. But I’m old enough to think Master is the ultimate. It literally changed my life. I went into a record shop to buy “Open up and say aaaah”, they didn’t have it so I bought Master. The end.
It’s no coincidence that these are the same sounds one makes during a particularly intense bathroom emergency or immediately after suffering a traumatic groin injury.
Then you're missing Death Magnetic, their best since Justice!
HWTSD and 72 have some really good songs & moments (and you could probably do the Load/Reload game of combining them into one single great, no-filler album) but DM as a wall-to-wall record stands with the first 5 easy IMO.
St. Anger's lack of guitar solos and poor production quality outweigh any memorable vocal inflections, making it a low point in the band's discography.
thanks so much for listening! Do me a favor and go through and download every single episode for me. I'm completely serious, go and download them all if you can
I always thought it was weird that Hetfield is so universally associated with ouuughhhs and yeeeeaaaaaaahs when those really became a thing when the band was past their prime.
No it's not though... go watch the live shit binge and purge dvds. Take a drink every time he says yeah, you will not be able to pour drinks fast enough. This was before the black album came out literally during their prime.
The Black Album was similar to the White Album in that the echoes of the band's great era were still so loud, you couldn't detect a problem in the finished product yet. But that changed with the next album project for each. Justice to Load and Sgt. Pepper to Get Back are huge drop-offs.
?! You don't seem to understand how analogies work, because in my post, I am using Sgt. Pepper as an example of something very good. It was and is also very popular, so if I didn't like if, a supposed inclination toward pop music wouldn't be the reason.
Isn't Ian Astbury the guy who gave him vocal tips? That kinda stuff might fly with The Cult, but Hetfield started to sound like a pirate on the Black Album, and then just got worse. Lulu legit freaked me out, lol.
One thing about 90s music you only notice in retrospect is how acceptable it was to run out of ideas for lyrics halfway through the last verse and just fill those lines in with, like, ooh ooh ooh whoa yeah yeah. I guess they don't let you do that do that no more.
Lars’ snare sounds like shit on that album in particular. I cannot stand it. It could otherwise be their greatest album, but I will never listen because of that fucking atrocious sound.
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Always liked that album anyway, 2003 was a fine year for me
https://youtu.be/7DQdvXMwYt8?si=5CiQou3tXJBtlLMM
Like I get the vision behind the "KILL KILL KILL" section, but y'know..
They needed TBA Bob Rock that would say “that’s not good enough”, but they were all way too fragile for that at the time and Bob was just hanging on at that point. Like “yeah, sure, whatever you want, man”.
HWTSD and 72 have some really good songs & moments (and you could probably do the Load/Reload game of combining them into one single great, no-filler album) but DM as a wall-to-wall record stands with the first 5 easy IMO.
https://medium.com/@kevinconklin_17818/metallica-yeah-s-visualized-1d1a88981469#:~:text=James%20Hetfield%20sang%20%E2%80%9CYeah%E2%80%9D%20228,mid%2D%20to%20late%2D90s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PosIgmy3S04&pp=ygUOZml4ZWQgc3QgYW5nZXI%3D
Just started listening to Better Offline btw, really wonderful work and also enjoyed your episode on the Hawk Tuah series over at 16tj minute