Criticising The Best: Metallica

[mrbrownstone]

First of all credit must go to The Hamburglar for this, thanks to the success of your series of threads on this topic in the wrestling section I thought it would be a good idea to bring these threads to the music section too, hope thats ok.

Anyway, I am going to be starting a series of threads here in which I will be asking you to find flaws and criticise in some of the biggest and best bands the world has ever known. Not an easy task I know, but every band is bound to have some flaw, perhaps one song by them you don't like, a bad concert, you don't like their live setlist. Whatever it is every band no matter how big and successful is bound to have some flaw and these threads are designed to find them. I'll try to post a new one of these every 2-3 days by the way but I make no promises.

Anyway first up in the series is Metallica. Metallica are one of if not the biggest hard rock bands walking the planet today, they formed in 1981 and are still active today. During that time they have releases nine studio albums; Kill Em All, Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets, ...And Justice For All, Metallica (The Black Album), Load, Re Load, St Anger and Death Magnetic, as well as an array of EP's, Live Albums and Cover Albums. Metallica's line up has stayed fairly consistent over the years, changing only through necessity of original bassist Cliff Burton dyeing and his replacement Jason Newsted quitting. The current line up features James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo. They are also considered to be one of the founders of the genre of Thrash Metal.

Right that is enough of a history lesson, now tell me what criticisms you have of Metallica, if you don't have any then please say why you think they are perfect.

I just want to preface this next bit by saying I love Metallica and that they are my second favourite band ever. I have a couple of different criticisms of Metallica. The first and most major one is their transition from Thrash Metal in their first four albums to a more mainstream hard rock sound in the subsequent ones. For me Metallica went way down hill post AJFA, The Black Album is decent but from there there is a lot of shit with the odd good song mixed in. I do have high hopes for the future though as I think Death Magnetic was a step in the right direction.

The second criticism is a very, very minor one but I feel it should be said. They have never played The Frayed Ends Of Sanity live before, they have teased it for the better part of a year now but they are still yet to play it. That is a great song and deserves to be played live. Like I said it is a very minor thing.

Anyway thats all from me so, what criticisms do you have of Metallica?

 

[Captain Jive]

Same criticism I would give. The music spiraled downhill in the 90's and I think Death Magnetic was the first sign of things changing. I don't ever see them recreating another masterpiece like Master of Puppets, but at least it's a start.

I agree with the setlist, they never play Dyer's Eve, Trapped Under Ice, Escape, Frayed Ends of Sanity, Leper Messiah, or any of the ones I love. They do play Disposable Heroes every now and then though (best song by them in my opinion).

The only other criticism I could have doesn't involve songwriting, it's the way they looked like complete jackasses when the whole downloading music craze first started

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I don't really have much to criticise Metallica for. In their early days they produced some of the greatest albums of all time, in "Master of Puppets", "Ride The Lightning" and "Metallica", but the quality has reduced since then, although still being very good.

I personally can only really put forward the point made by the previous poster in that they handled the whole Napster downloading case really badly, which probably did alienate them slightly from some of their fan base, but I can see where they are coming from. I would be pissed off if people were basically costing me money by stealing something that I had put hours of time into creating (I still d/l for free though!).

Thats about it, I can see why they were pissed off with Napsterm but perhaps they could hanve handled it a bit better?

 

[El Rev sXe]

The biggest critic I can do is about the whole Napster BS. I mean, if they would've taken side for new artists, all would be cool. However they are always saying that "it is stealing money, THEIR money". I'm sorry, but come on Lars, you are a fucking millionaire, there's no need to be so ambitious.

My second critic is around St. Anger, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? Having NO solos? I mean, it worked changing the sound once with "The black album", even to some extent with "load" and "reload", but do it a THIRD time? Guys, you are already legends, you don't need to do that, you just need to do what YOU like. Look at DM, they did what they liked and is a great record.

I don't think that many people are going to agree with me but, Kirk could you turn off from time to time the fucking wah-wah? I don't understand your solos anymore.

Brownstone, man you are kicking ass with you ideas for threads on the music forum!

 

[swamprat37]

Being a Metallica fan for 20 years now, I can not really disagree with anything I've read so far. I sided with Metallica during the whole napster incident, I never cared that they cut their hair, which for some reason offended so many fans.

My biggest criticism would be for St.Anger, by far their worst album. Horrible sound, no solos, just all around bad. The only good things that came out of it, were, they got rid of Bob Rock, and Some Kind of Monster which was fantastic.

Death Magnetic was a step in the right direction, and proved they still have what it takes after all this time. I've seen the guys live 3 times (Black tour, Load/Reload, and St.Anger tours) I will see them again, they are just that good, and have earned everything they have now.

 

[That Other Guy]

I'll agree with swamprat37 on St. Anger being a huge criticism. There was not one good thing about the album. The worst part is that it was my first exposure to the band, which caused me to hate them for a long time. Death Magnetic seems to be a step back towards the old Metallica.

 

[SorgFamily]

My second critic is around St. Anger, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? Having NO solos? I mean, it worked changing the sound once with "The black album", even to some extent with "load" and "reload", but do it a THIRD time? Guys, you are already legends, you don't need to do that, you just need to do what YOU like.

How do you know that they weren't feeling a really garage-y rock vibe at the time. They may have very well wanted to create what became "St. Anger".

Hammett himself said, "We wanted to preserve the sound of all four of us in a room just jamming. We tried to put guitar solos on, but we kept on running into this problem. It really sounded like an afterthought."

The band protested that polishing the songs would mess with the emotion.

Lars said about his drums, "One day I forgot to turn the snare on because I wasn't thinking about this stuff. At the playbacks, I decided I was really liking what I was hearing — it had a different ambience. It sang back to me a in a beautiful way".

Hetfield said it was "so deep lyrically and musically".

(Credit to wikipedia)

It sounds to me that they were very much digging what they were doing and they did like this.

I don't have much to hate Metallica for. I guess the Napster thing and I don't care too much for "Load", "Re-Load" or "St. Anger". But I freakin' loved Death Magnetic and of course I like most of their back catalog.