They are no longer being fed the Kool Aid that Bob Rock had been giving them for 12 years.
They knew they had to make an actual metal album again to be relevant in any way shape or form. Load and Re-Load really hit them hard. Then Lars went off the deep end and did what he never ever should do... and that is open his mouth.
When they made St. Anger, I think they realized how far they had strayed from what made them great... but they still had that stupid hair band producer in the studio with them. Bob Rock was their Grima Wormtongue... feeding them lies and telling them how great they were and isolating them from the real world.
I think it's hilarious that within a week or so of Bob Rock announcing he was producing a Britney Spears album, Metallica announced that they were recording with Rick Rubin!
Their reputation would have taken the final hit if they worked with a producer who also worked with Britney. I'm hoping it's the slap in the face, or the boot to the groin that finally wakes these boys up and forces them to look in the mirror.
We as a society have developed this awful notion that artists must struggle... always. They must always be poor and starving as that is the only way that true art is created.
True, art is not highly valued in American society, but without any sort of funding for the arts, what a bland an unlivable society we would have.
Most of Metallica's work definitely is not "art for art's sake". I would say their first three albums are art actually. You may not like it, but those were important albums at the time and still are. They broke the mold when they made those.
Slayer is far more METAL than Metallica ever was or ever will be, but if it weren't for Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets, most of us never would have had the opportunity to hear Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, Alice In Chains, Pantera, etc. They created opportunities for a whole generation of bands to get their music out there. Without Metallica blazing this trail and exposing people to metal and re-popularizing punk... Nirvana might never have hit in the way they did.
How many of you listened to The Misfits or Killing Joke or Budgie before Metallica covered them?
Metallica has veered from their original path for sure and they have ceased to be trailblazers or even really musically relevant in any fashion. For all their transgressions since 1991, what they did between 1983 and 1988 was very very important for music and I would consider it art.
Let's look at another musical artist. Les Claypool.
Les Claypool only plays music he wants to. Music which strays far outside the tastes of the masses. When Primus made a "radio friendly" album... they fell flat on their faces. Primus fans hated it, but it was still too much for the masses to take. They pretty much broke up as a result of Antipop and Les started the Frog Brigade, then Oysterhead (ugh), then the Fancy Band and C2B3. Les works really damn hard and creates unique music AND he makes a ton of money. Not as much as Hetfield and company, but he makes enough to maintain an artistic lifestyle and do things the way he chooses to.
That said, I think Les would be playing in bands even if he wasn't making a dime. He would just be less prolific because he'd have to work a job and do his music on the side. The fact that he does get paid for his music allows him to keep it up. The fact that he's smart about it all and not greedy earns him my ultimate respect and i will call him an artist.
You can make art AND make money... you just need to be driven, smart and prolific.
Metallica made 4 brilliant albums in 5 years. Now they make one piece of crap every 5 years. That's saying something. (In 06 or 07... Buckethead released something like 27 albums!)
Metallica actively promoted bootlegging of shows. Maybe they still do. I don't know. Haven't seen them since 1992.
They VERY actively promoted people copying their demos and even Kill 'em All way back when. It served their purposes very well back then. They wanted to be able to sell albums eventually and by giving stuff away and encouraging people to spread the word... they eventually would go on to sell over 100 million copies of their work.
I bootlegged a Metallica show at the Cow Palace in 1988 and a Slayer show in early 89. I went to Russia for 3 weeks and gave out about 100 copies of those bootlegs to the Russian teens I met. I'm sure they went on and copied that stuff like mad.
In October 89, I went to see Kreator at the Stone in SF and got to hang out with Hetfield for most of the evening. I told him about the bootlegs I handed out. He bought me some beers and asked me all about Russian kids and music and thanked me for doing what I did.
Hetfield himself thanked me for spreading live bootlegs around Russia!
Now, if I had said that I had given away hundreds of copies of Justice... he may have snapped and broken my legs or eaten my spleen. He's as intimidating in person as he appears on stage and television! He's a really nice guy though and took time out at a show to chat with me and even bought me beer when I was 18.
If people were trading live bootlegs of shows over Napster... and ONLY live bootlegs... I'm sure Lars would have been thrilled. But when demos of new, unfinished material as well as their published works started getting thrown around for free... well, Lars "monkey Boy" Ulrich flew off the handle and proceeded to tackle an issue that needed to be tackled in the worst possible way; slapping his fans in the face and very seriously tarnishing the band's reputation in the process.
We as fans do NOT have a right to their music. We pay for the privilege to have access to it. If it sucks... we don't buy it. We should be able to listen to it in our car, on our portables, in our stereo and on our computer.
We shoudn't be copying it wholesale and giving it to our friends.
So, in order to protect this from happening, business goes insane with overly restrictive DRM.
People who believe that they deserve music for free clash with business who tries to protect their investments and profits and honest music consumers like myself get caught in the crossfire and have to find a way to ease our conscience, buy music legally AND enjoy it on the myriad playback devices we might own.
No one is ENTITLED to music and if an artists music has merit, they should be rewarded for it. It's the zealots and the music business clashing that causes all the problems.
Yeah, I can't wait for a world where musicians and artists don't have any barriers to using other people's music.
Say Blink 182 runs out of ideas... well, let's see... we're a punk band. At least we like to pretend we are when we're really a pop band. We're kind of in a rut. Hmmm. What do we do? I've got it. To give ourselves some punk cred, let's do an entire album of Black Flag songs, make them a bit poppier and water down the lyrics a bit so girls in the mall can enjoy it. Easy! It's not like there's copyright preventing us from doing so without permission from Henry Rollins! We can make some money off of Henry Rollins legacy and not pay him a dime!
Moral crime? Are you serious? Yeah, they acted like whiny babies, but a MORAL offense? No way. It was bad business practice, bad marketing and disrespectful to their fans, but it was not a moral offense.
By saying that you're just giving fodder to people like myself who think some (repeat... some) OSS people look at OSS as if it were a religion and just as crazy as Fundamentalist Christians and Scientologists.
Yes, they should share the art and have a day job as plumbers and suffer for their art... and we should all benefit from their hard work and suffering at no cost.
Artists need to put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Granted some get to do so in a ridiculously decadent way. Metallica in particular, but to sya that their goal should be to "share the art" is naive and misguided.
Artists are not here to serve the public. Artists create art for essentially selfish reasons... a need to express themselves. If the public views it as worthy of their attention and cash, the band is rewarded accordingly.
If artists are not rewarded for their work, the time, effort they put into it and have no audience, there is little reason to do it. If they are truly driven by the need to express themselves, they will and only their friends and family will get to enjoy it.
That's a VERY damning statement coming from a guy who helped start Testament because Metallica so inspired him.
The best thing Skolnick ever did was leave Testament. After 2 albums they just became another Metallica clone with a really kickass lead guitarist. Skolnick was far better suited to something other than just plain old thrash.
What really pissed me off about Nothing Else Matters was that it would have been a short intro to a song on Ride The Lightning.... the intro to Fight Fire With Fire or something.
A friend of mine listened to Nothing Else over and over one night... just amazed that Metallica would take a song intro and string it out to a 4 minute ballad! It was kind of like watching faces of death. It's sick and disgusting, but we couldn't avert our eyes... just trying to find some logic or something redeeming in it... and found none.
The only redeeming thing about the Black Album was Sad But True live. It was amazingly heavy and a decent opening tune. Not good as opening with Battery or Blackened, but those opening chords were like a punch in the gut performed live.
Puppets, imo, has to be their masterpiece. Ride the Lightning was an amazing album, but it did have a weak spot... Escape. Decent song, but it didn't kick your ass like Trapped Under Ice or Fight Fire with Fire or Creeping Death.
I think you missed the point of that post. This person prefers the Black Album on, but understands why old school fans hated the albums and felt betrayed by the band.
Personally, I think most Metallica was always boring, and I liked the self-title. But if I had been a "Kill 'em All" fan, I would have been mailing them bombs or something.
Finally! Someone who gets it!
I'm an old Metallica fan. Hate everything '91 on. I can understand why someone who was introduced to Metallica in 91 and likes the Black Album wouldn't really like most of their previous stuff. I can respect that. The Black Album is much more suited to a rock radio audience.
But someone who got turned on to them later AND understands why the old school fans are upset... that is a rare breed.
Jason is a great bassist, but not nearly the song writer that Cliff was. Add to that the fact that the band constantly reminded Jason that he was not Cliff his entire 15 year career with Metallica.
Cliff was the heart and soul of that band. People go on and on and on about the influence Mustaine had on Metallica, but that was just 2 or 3 songs over the course of 4 albums. Cliff's presence pervaded all 4 of those albums and he was dead for one of them!
Jason never stood a chance in the band. Without Cliff in the band, Hetfield/Ulrich never stood a chance at resisting the drugs in the Kool Aid Bob Rock was forcing on them.
Cliff would not have allowed such an obviously radio friendly album to be made.
Rob Trujillo/Rik Rubin.... could be interesting. Rob is a virtuoso player, but is he as talented a song writer as Cliff was?
You see... that's the crux of what gets people going right there.
In 1983 Metallica changed the shape of what metal was. We had Motley Crue and Ratt and Dokken and all this hair metal garbage posing as metal, but Kill 'em All came out and blew that candy coated garbage out of the water.
1985. Ride the Lightning. 1986. Master of Puppets 1988.... And Justice For All
In the space of 5 years, Metallica radically changed the musical landscape. Those of us that bought the albums when they came out and went and saw the band live between 83 and 90 made that band. We called the radio stations and threatened them with horrible consequences if they didn't start playing at least "Fade to Black" or "Sanitarium".
We got the pit going when they toured with Ozzy.
We MADE that band. We were their marketing team essentially.
August 1991... The Black Album. We all bought it. Put it at #1... then listened to it. It was watered down, radio friendly Metallica. I'm surprised there were no riots.
They let down the people who put them where they were.
Call us washed up 80's headbangers if you want, but if it wasn't for us rabid metal fans in the 80's, you never would have heard of Metallica. The mass audience, radio friendly Black album wouldn't have been blared over the radio and MTV 24/7.
Our band betrayed us not by becoming popular, but by writing a radio friendly rock album that was never going to appeal to us. They made their choice and left us behind for the johnny-come-latelies.
The people that built them up were abandoned, quickly, abruptly and they became no better than the hair bands they helped push to the side just a few years earlier.
Luckily Badmotorfinger, Nevermind and Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out that year to wash the awful taste of the Black Album from our mouths.
I agree that Metallica lost their way a LOOOOOONG time ago. I don't think it's so much selling out as it is a case of George Lucas syndrome. They were the biggest band in the world for a very long time and have been surrounded by yes-men ever since. They are so isolated in their tower that no one is able to speak a word of truth to them anymore.
The honestly... HONESTLY... believe that St. Anger was a real, aggressive metal album despite all the catchy hooks and sing-songy vocals.
They were under the spell of Rob Rock for way too long. He turned them from a metal band to a radio friendly rock band.
With the infusion of Rob Trujillo on bass and Rick Rubin producing, there is some new blood and life in the band. Not saying it will necessarily save them. I honestly anticipate the new album being not all that good, but having new people in the organization could be part of what has caused their change of heart regarding digital distribution and an overall change in attitude.
The best I'm hoping for with their new album is maybe 1 or two tracks that I might find somewhat decent as opposed to their track record of 70 minutes of crap per album since 1991.
With careful use of forced perspective, it could happen.
Peter Jackson's crew actually invented the forced perspective with a moving camera trick while filming LotR, so if anyone could do it, it would be this gang.
Slashdot Mirror
Master of Puppets and Frizzle Fry... my tie for best albums ever.
They are no longer being fed the Kool Aid that Bob Rock had been giving them for 12 years.
They knew they had to make an actual metal album again to be relevant in any way shape or form. Load and Re-Load really hit them hard. Then Lars went off the deep end and did what he never ever should do... and that is open his mouth.
When they made St. Anger, I think they realized how far they had strayed from what made them great... but they still had that stupid hair band producer in the studio with them. Bob Rock was their Grima Wormtongue... feeding them lies and telling them how great they were and isolating them from the real world.
I think it's hilarious that within a week or so of Bob Rock announcing he was producing a Britney Spears album, Metallica announced that they were recording with Rick Rubin!
Their reputation would have taken the final hit if they worked with a producer who also worked with Britney. I'm hoping it's the slap in the face, or the boot to the groin that finally wakes these boys up and forces them to look in the mirror.
All that said... I'm not holding my breath.
We as a society have developed this awful notion that artists must struggle... always. They must always be poor and starving as that is the only way that true art is created.
True, art is not highly valued in American society, but without any sort of funding for the arts, what a bland an unlivable society we would have.
Most of Metallica's work definitely is not "art for art's sake". I would say their first three albums are art actually. You may not like it, but those were important albums at the time and still are. They broke the mold when they made those.
Slayer is far more METAL than Metallica ever was or ever will be, but if it weren't for Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets, most of us never would have had the opportunity to hear Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, Alice In Chains, Pantera, etc. They created opportunities for a whole generation of bands to get their music out there. Without Metallica blazing this trail and exposing people to metal and re-popularizing punk... Nirvana might never have hit in the way they did.
How many of you listened to The Misfits or Killing Joke or Budgie before Metallica covered them?
Metallica has veered from their original path for sure and they have ceased to be trailblazers or even really musically relevant in any fashion. For all their transgressions since 1991, what they did between 1983 and 1988 was very very important for music and I would consider it art.
Let's look at another musical artist. Les Claypool.
Les Claypool only plays music he wants to. Music which strays far outside the tastes of the masses. When Primus made a "radio friendly" album... they fell flat on their faces. Primus fans hated it, but it was still too much for the masses to take. They pretty much broke up as a result of Antipop and Les started the Frog Brigade, then Oysterhead (ugh), then the Fancy Band and C2B3. Les works really damn hard and creates unique music AND he makes a ton of money. Not as much as Hetfield and company, but he makes enough to maintain an artistic lifestyle and do things the way he chooses to.
That said, I think Les would be playing in bands even if he wasn't making a dime. He would just be less prolific because he'd have to work a job and do his music on the side. The fact that he does get paid for his music allows him to keep it up. The fact that he's smart about it all and not greedy earns him my ultimate respect and i will call him an artist.
You can make art AND make money... you just need to be driven, smart and prolific.
Metallica made 4 brilliant albums in 5 years. Now they make one piece of crap every 5 years. That's saying something. (In 06 or 07... Buckethead released something like 27 albums!)
Metallica actively promoted bootlegging of shows. Maybe they still do. I don't know. Haven't seen them since 1992.
They VERY actively promoted people copying their demos and even Kill 'em All way back when. It served their purposes very well back then. They wanted to be able to sell albums eventually and by giving stuff away and encouraging people to spread the word... they eventually would go on to sell over 100 million copies of their work.
I bootlegged a Metallica show at the Cow Palace in 1988 and a Slayer show in early 89. I went to Russia for 3 weeks and gave out about 100 copies of those bootlegs to the Russian teens I met. I'm sure they went on and copied that stuff like mad.
In October 89, I went to see Kreator at the Stone in SF and got to hang out with Hetfield for most of the evening. I told him about the bootlegs I handed out. He bought me some beers and asked me all about Russian kids and music and thanked me for doing what I did.
Hetfield himself thanked me for spreading live bootlegs around Russia!
Now, if I had said that I had given away hundreds of copies of Justice... he may have snapped and broken my legs or eaten my spleen. He's as intimidating in person as he appears on stage and television! He's a really nice guy though and took time out at a show to chat with me and even bought me beer when I was 18.
If people were trading live bootlegs of shows over Napster... and ONLY live bootlegs... I'm sure Lars would have been thrilled. But when demos of new, unfinished material as well as their published works started getting thrown around for free... well, Lars "monkey Boy" Ulrich flew off the handle and proceeded to tackle an issue that needed to be tackled in the worst possible way; slapping his fans in the face and very seriously tarnishing the band's reputation in the process.
We as fans do NOT have a right to their music. We pay for the privilege to have access to it. If it sucks... we don't buy it. We should be able to listen to it in our car, on our portables, in our stereo and on our computer.
We shoudn't be copying it wholesale and giving it to our friends.
So, in order to protect this from happening, business goes insane with overly restrictive DRM.
People who believe that they deserve music for free clash with business who tries to protect their investments and profits and honest music consumers like myself get caught in the crossfire and have to find a way to ease our conscience, buy music legally AND enjoy it on the myriad playback devices we might own.
No one is ENTITLED to music and if an artists music has merit, they should be rewarded for it. It's the zealots and the music business clashing that causes all the problems.
Yeah, I can't wait for a world where musicians and artists don't have any barriers to using other people's music.
Say Blink 182 runs out of ideas... well, let's see... we're a punk band. At least we like to pretend we are when we're really a pop band. We're kind of in a rut. Hmmm. What do we do? I've got it. To give ourselves some punk cred, let's do an entire album of Black Flag songs, make them a bit poppier and water down the lyrics a bit so girls in the mall can enjoy it. Easy! It's not like there's copyright preventing us from doing so without permission from Henry Rollins! We can make some money off of Henry Rollins legacy and not pay him a dime!
Moral crime? Are you serious? Yeah, they acted like whiny babies, but a MORAL offense? No way. It was bad business practice, bad marketing and disrespectful to their fans, but it was not a moral offense.
By saying that you're just giving fodder to people like myself who think some (repeat... some) OSS people look at OSS as if it were a religion and just as crazy as Fundamentalist Christians and Scientologists.
Yes, they should share the art and have a day job as plumbers and suffer for their art... and we should all benefit from their hard work and suffering at no cost.
Artists need to put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Granted some get to do so in a ridiculously decadent way. Metallica in particular, but to sya that their goal should be to "share the art" is naive and misguided.
Artists are not here to serve the public. Artists create art for essentially selfish reasons... a need to express themselves. If the public views it as worthy of their attention and cash, the band is rewarded accordingly.
If artists are not rewarded for their work, the time, effort they put into it and have no audience, there is little reason to do it. If they are truly driven by the need to express themselves, they will and only their friends and family will get to enjoy it.
The real problem is actually five words in total.
Bob Rock.... Cliff Burton Dead.
Ouch! From Skolnick no less!
That's a VERY damning statement coming from a guy who helped start Testament because Metallica so inspired him.
The best thing Skolnick ever did was leave Testament. After 2 albums they just became another Metallica clone with a really kickass lead guitarist. Skolnick was far better suited to something other than just plain old thrash.
I still have The Melvins and a Slayer with Dave Lombardo back behind the kit.
That's good enough for me these days.
I hate to say it, but getting a unicorn from them is far more likely than getting a good metal album out of them at this point.
I guess I respect your convictions, but man! I simply could not live without Master of Puppets no matter what.
Then again, I've been a vegetarian before, but couldn't do the vegan thing. Life without cheese is a life not worth living, imo.
What really pissed me off about Nothing Else Matters was that it would have been a short intro to a song on Ride The Lightning.... the intro to Fight Fire With Fire or something.
A friend of mine listened to Nothing Else over and over one night... just amazed that Metallica would take a song intro and string it out to a 4 minute ballad! It was kind of like watching faces of death. It's sick and disgusting, but we couldn't avert our eyes... just trying to find some logic or something redeeming in it... and found none.
The only redeeming thing about the Black Album was Sad But True live. It was amazingly heavy and a decent opening tune. Not good as opening with Battery or Blackened, but those opening chords were like a punch in the gut performed live.
Puppets, imo, has to be their masterpiece. Ride the Lightning was an amazing album, but it did have a weak spot... Escape. Decent song, but it didn't kick your ass like Trapped Under Ice or Fight Fire with Fire or Creeping Death.
I think you missed the point of that post. This person prefers the Black Album on, but understands why old school fans hated the albums and felt betrayed by the band.
Most 91-on fans just don't get that.
Personally, I think most Metallica was always boring, and I liked the self-title. But if I had been a "Kill 'em All" fan, I would have been mailing them bombs or something.
Finally! Someone who gets it!
I'm an old Metallica fan. Hate everything '91 on. I can understand why someone who was introduced to Metallica in 91 and likes the Black Album wouldn't really like most of their previous stuff. I can respect that. The Black Album is much more suited to a rock radio audience.
But someone who got turned on to them later AND understands why the old school fans are upset... that is a rare breed.
I salute you.
You nailed it right there.
Jason is a great bassist, but not nearly the song writer that Cliff was. Add to that the fact that the band constantly reminded Jason that he was not Cliff his entire 15 year career with Metallica.
Cliff was the heart and soul of that band. People go on and on and on about the influence Mustaine had on Metallica, but that was just 2 or 3 songs over the course of 4 albums. Cliff's presence pervaded all 4 of those albums and he was dead for one of them!
Jason never stood a chance in the band. Without Cliff in the band, Hetfield/Ulrich never stood a chance at resisting the drugs in the Kool Aid Bob Rock was forcing on them.
Cliff would not have allowed such an obviously radio friendly album to be made.
Rob Trujillo/Rik Rubin.... could be interesting. Rob is a virtuoso player, but is he as talented a song writer as Cliff was?
We'll see.
The question is... did you see them play it live in 1988 and 1989? That tour was EPIC!
(Especially when Faith No More opened and they actually played the song Epic. bad joke. I know.)
You see... that's the crux of what gets people going right there.
... And Justice For All
In 1983 Metallica changed the shape of what metal was. We had Motley Crue and Ratt and Dokken and all this hair metal garbage posing as metal, but Kill 'em All came out and blew that candy coated garbage out of the water.
1985. Ride the Lightning.
1986. Master of Puppets
1988.
In the space of 5 years, Metallica radically changed the musical landscape. Those of us that bought the albums when they came out and went and saw the band live between 83 and 90 made that band. We called the radio stations and threatened them with horrible consequences if they didn't start playing at least "Fade to Black" or "Sanitarium".
We got the pit going when they toured with Ozzy.
We MADE that band. We were their marketing team essentially.
August 1991... The Black Album. We all bought it. Put it at #1... then listened to it. It was watered down, radio friendly Metallica. I'm surprised there were no riots.
They let down the people who put them where they were.
Call us washed up 80's headbangers if you want, but if it wasn't for us rabid metal fans in the 80's, you never would have heard of Metallica. The mass audience, radio friendly Black album wouldn't have been blared over the radio and MTV 24/7.
Our band betrayed us not by becoming popular, but by writing a radio friendly rock album that was never going to appeal to us. They made their choice and left us behind for the johnny-come-latelies.
The people that built them up were abandoned, quickly, abruptly and they became no better than the hair bands they helped push to the side just a few years earlier.
Luckily Badmotorfinger, Nevermind and Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out that year to wash the awful taste of the Black Album from our mouths.
I agree that Metallica lost their way a LOOOOOONG time ago. I don't think it's so much selling out as it is a case of George Lucas syndrome. They were the biggest band in the world for a very long time and have been surrounded by yes-men ever since. They are so isolated in their tower that no one is able to speak a word of truth to them anymore.
The honestly... HONESTLY... believe that St. Anger was a real, aggressive metal album despite all the catchy hooks and sing-songy vocals.
They were under the spell of Rob Rock for way too long. He turned them from a metal band to a radio friendly rock band.
With the infusion of Rob Trujillo on bass and Rick Rubin producing, there is some new blood and life in the band. Not saying it will necessarily save them. I honestly anticipate the new album being not all that good, but having new people in the organization could be part of what has caused their change of heart regarding digital distribution and an overall change in attitude.
The best I'm hoping for with their new album is maybe 1 or two tracks that I might find somewhat decent as opposed to their track record of 70 minutes of crap per album since 1991.
Now that you've explained yourself, I can totally see where you're coming from.
I might not agree, but respect your opinion nonetheless.
None of the theatrical releases of LotR were 5 hours long either.
Which means that he pumped in some cash to the production and probably bought the insurance policy.
With careful use of forced perspective, it could happen.
Peter Jackson's crew actually invented the forced perspective with a moving camera trick while filming LotR, so if anyone could do it, it would be this gang.
I call those films "Movies to eat popcorn to" and I love popcorn, so any reason to eat popcorn works for me.
Fall '02 is when they were introduced.