Master, master… Master of puppets pulling your strings! Master, master!
\m/ headbangs
I was 16 when Puppets came out, and a friend of mine was all into Metallica, King Diamond, Celtic Frost, Megadeth, etc. He played Ride The Lightning and MoP all the time, which got me into them. I was Mr. New Wave 80’s guy who was just discovering Wax Trax and industrial music, so it was weird timing. Anyway, I still love Master Of Puppets. Metallica is definitely a band that blew their load early. After '89, it’s all downhill (though I do like the Black album, despite some of the overplayed songs).
Gotta go with Battery as my favorite off Master. The song just shreds.
1002
Nothing else matters! RARR!!
Take a look to the sky just before you die
It’s the last time you will
I.Fucking.Love.Metallica! Yeaaaaa Yeaaaa yeeuuaeeauhhh
You know… Metallica is one of the bands that got me into metal. I was a new waver also, and doing the Wax Trax thing, and then a friend of mine showed up with Metallica and a bunch of Seattle crap and I was hooked. Between Metallica, Megadeth, Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr. and a few other things it completely threw me in a different direction. And I’m not sure what to think about Metallica… Kill 'Em All is ok. Ride - Justice were, and still are, some of the best damn metal albums of all time and I still love bashing 'em out. I give a nod at the Black Album, but it’s not very good. Load and ReLoad just straight out suck, although as I grow older I find that there are a few catchy songs on them that I can stand to listen to. S&M was absolute crap. ANd I will hate it for eternity. And St. Anger, while it got bashed a lot I find that I REALLY enjoy. I’m actually very much excited to hear what their new album will be like when it’s finished.
Peace!
Krowe
i remember waiting for Justice to arrive… and waiting some more. =/ frigging release date.
Ride/Puppets/Justice of course were great, the 5.98 EP however had more impact on me music wise tho. Killing Joke, Misfits, etc - even their newer cover disc managed to cough up some Discharge covers that weren’t horrible.
Kill 'em All was just fine, but I barely ever reach for any of their discs and if i do it’s Puppets/Justice usually.
Black LP (Sad but True / Sandman) and stuff from Load / Reload has about 8 tracks total I think were solid enough for an LP. Too bad there’s so much filler that would have been better off getting spun into forgettable side-projects or solo lps. =/
and yes fuck S&M. Fucking Micheal Kamen.
I cannot tell if you if St. Anger is any good, cuz I can’t sit thru it. Between Hatfield’s extremely stupid lyrics “frantic-tick-tock” >.< (I can’t believe he wrote the first 4 lps lyrics…) and that fucking SNARE.
-E
st. anger is a piece of shit. i don’t care for their albums after “justice”. all i want from them is to release a properly remixed version of the album with audible bass. that would be good.
justice is awesome. needs more bass.
The only thing I have to say about St. Anger is that they ripped off Bathory (“Requiem”) big time. I have no idea if they intentionally made an album that sounds so similar to Requiem or if it was one big coincidence; however, I am forever going to see the similarity of the two albums, making St Anger difficult to enjoy…
Otherwise, I was never a Metallica fan, even though I am a metal fan. There were just so many better thrash metal bands back in the 80s… And 90s Metallica wasnt really the same thing anymore.
Metallica is something of an anomaly for the likes of me…
ON PAPER everything points towards the kind of band that I SHOULD hate. With a passion. Funny thing is I don’t.
JUSTICE… is one of my favorite albums period. Not just one of my favorite metal albums (and I’m not a big fan of metal) but one of my all time faves from any genre. I think that with that particular album they tapped into something I can really relate to. It’s very…Killing Joke (ie sparse, stripped back production, repetitive riffs, bleak nihilistic lyrics, barked vocals). It’s like NOTHING else they ever did. And nothing else they will ever do. I love it.
PUPPETS is ok, but WAY over rated. The musical arrangements are quite interesting - very epic, almost Wagnerian (Cliff Burton was a big fan of Wagner), but alot of the lyrics are poorly worded and clumsy, not to mention obvious (ie this is our song about war, this is our song about drugs, this is our song about religion…)
METALLICA is better than you remember. The first two songs aside (Sandman, Sad But True) it has some of their best material (The God That Failed, Struggle Within, Unforgiven, Through The Never) of all time. It does adhere to a more standard rock format - hance the detractors - but put it up against other ‘rock’ albums being released around the same time and it blows them away.
LOAD/RELOAD put together have maybe five good songs tops. There’s nothing I have to say about them that hasn’t been said a million times already.
ST ANGER is the Battlefield Earth of metal albums. I dare any self respecting fan of intelligent heavy music to sit through it and not cringe at least twenty times. Maybe they should rename it ‘ST ISHTAR’.
The new one should be interesting, when it’s FINALLY released - aparently it will be out sometime between now and the instalment of a working democarcy in Iraq. Or so I’ve heard.
!!!
st. anger is a piece of shit. i don’t care for their albums after “justice”. all i want from them is to release a properly remixed version of the album with audible bass. that would be good.
I wonder if it was here that I had the link, but a guy tried and successed in remixing Justice with more bass. the result was very good.
Blackened for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJweUcdPvOQ
i have that boot, it’s called ‘and justice for jason’. and i listen to it, instead of original, yes, sounds good. but i think professionally done it would be much better, bit more polished.
can someone fill me in on the deal with the bass levels on that album? something to do with cliff/jason i gather?
or possibly, something to do with the guy who produced it being confused 
can someone fill me in on the deal with the bass levels on that album? something to do with cliff/jason i gather?
some sources (like wikipedia) have several versions; first one is “the bass is not there because it follows guitar very closely” - this is most untrue and only idiots say that. bass almost always follows the root notes, especially in rock/metal songs, it’s not jazz or progressive rock for fuck’s sake, so “bass copying exact guitar riff” version is utter shit. and besides, anyone who knows the bass parts (i mean, look at Blackened) for that album will tell you that the album has alot of small cool bass fills, but you can’t hear them AT ALL on the record.
another one is that jason didn’t attend the album mixing session thus being unable to voice his opinion on bass levels. he didn’t attend them after all it seems.
third one is that hetfield and ulrich deliberately mixed his bass track so low to ‘intimidate’ him, sort of like he was the newbie, etc.
it’s all fucked up - i mean they recorded a small EP of covers before the release of Justice and you can hear and feel Jason’s bass fine and clear, and it was “not produced” (i.e. recorded hastily in a crappy studio in six days, rough mixing and then the release), so why would they kill bass in the next release which is a whole album?
i think the reason was hetfield’s ego because as it was stated he used some heavy processing on his guitar sound so it sounds dry but heavy (having a lot of bass on the equalizer in the processing line), and since he and ulrich are the biggest ego-maniacs among “rockstars” ever, i suppose he listened to a proper mix and said “fuck it, where’s my guitar! make it louder!”.
in any way, Jason was very upsed with that, and still probably is. metallica themselves said they wish to re-release it in the remixed form, i just hope they won’t make Rob re-record all the bass tracks like it was made on Ozzy’s Blizzard Of Oz rerelease.
as for new album i think it’s going to be shit, i mean, have you seen “Some Kind Of Monster” movie? they are so lame now. and i was glad that Jason left at the right time, because the band was going down really fast. and then i found out that he joined Rock Star Supernova… ew.
i’d gladly be surprised if the new album is going to be at least good. that’s a good move actually - release extremely boring crappy album, with no solos (fans are angered) and drumkit that sounds like garbage cans, release the movie about how hard a millionaire rock star life is and the whole album was a therapy blah blah blah and now they say “yeah its all gone now we’re rock the fuck out, lars got his good drums back and kirk will bring back solos”. whoopie. what a shitload of fuck.
…third one is that hetfield and ulrich deliberately mixed his bass track so low to ‘intimidate’ him, sort of like he was the newbie, etc.
this is possible - after watching Some Kind Of Monster I wouldn’t put it past them.
i think the reason was hetfield’s ego because as it was stated he used some heavy processing on his guitar sound so it sounds dry but heavy (having a lot of bass on the equalizer in the processing line), and since he and ulrich are the biggest ego-maniacs among “rockstars” ever, i suppose he listened to a proper mix and said “fuck it, where’s my guitar! make it louder!”.
So…why did they hire a new bass player in the beginning then if they didn’t wan’t bass on the album? Makes no sense.
as for new album i think it’s going to be shit, i mean, have you seen “Some Kind Of Monster” movie? they are so lame now.
Which makes this new release all the more interesting. Will they be able to pull themselves out of this 10 year plus creative slump? Who knows, but I’m really looking forward to hearing the results.
They couldn’t possibly go any lower though. It couldn’t possibly be worse than St Anger. Could it??
yes it could be. and i don’t think they’ll be able to “rise” again. just doesn’t feel like it.
I think making bass inaudible in the mix for reasons of animosity within the band is absolutely a ridiculous concept. Am I the only one who heard other 80s thrash records? 95% 80s thrash records have inaudible bass, Slayer/Rick Rubin being most notorious of this…
Thrash is supposed to be blasted thru the speakers at top volume and if that is done the bass magically becomes audible 