Metallica holds the unique position of being the one band that I liked both before and after I began getting heavily into music. Back in the mid-90's, before I started at IMSA and before I started caring about rock and pop music, my brother was a Metallica fan, and of the various bands (mostly along the lines of Green Day, The Offspring etc) he was into, Metallica was the only one to even slightly impress me. For all the noise, I could still feel a heavy dose of "sophistication" in the arrangements, the busy chord changes and the complicated song structures, and it intrigued me plenty. I wasn't ready for rock in general, let alone for metal, but I liked me some Metallica.

Fast-forwarding to early 2001, when I originally wrote my reviews for this page, I enjoyed the band enough to give them the same 3/5 overall rating that I give them now. The thing is, though, at the time I did not yet own a single Deep Purple or Black Sabbath album, and I had already passed into my "huh, Led Zeppelin aren't as great as I originally thought" stage (which I'm still in). Hence, I was in the weird state of being a fan of rock music, and a serious enjoyer of Metallica, but not liking metal at all. This led to me justifying my like of the band using the argument that they were part of the last wave of true "progressive" bands, and yes, there is a thread of truth there. I mean, the band did have a lot of progressive attributes; not in the outer trappings, of course, but the meat of the compositions was complex and intricate as hell, and besides, the influence of "Heart of the Sunrise" was all over the band's sound.

But that still largely misses the point, I think. Metallica might have qualified as prog-metal, yes, but prog-metal is a genre that tends to give me the heebie-jeebies; I continue to consider Dream Theater one of the most appallingly boring bands I've ever listened to, and (as the endless parade of fans who reach that page from Wikipedia will attest to) I'm definitely no Rush fan. As for the prog part, it is certainly the case that I enjoy many bands of that ilk, but it's also the case that I think that the genre has produced way more than its fair share of garbage, so it's not as if the prog elements are enough to boost Metallica up in my eyes on their own. And finally, while I do tolerate metal far more now than I once did (I love love love prime Deep Purple, and I think early Black Sabbath was very good, if a little too monotonous and inconsistent, which really isn't a good combination), I'm still nowhere near a metalhead.

So why the heck do I still enjoy this band so much, and (arguably) even more now than I used to? After a great deal of thought and consideration, I think that the ultimate reason is that Metallica's artsiness was not the band's main goal. Prime Metallica, in a lot of ways, reminds me of prime Deep Purple, in that its central goal is to take no BS rock'n'roll and do it at a greater speed and with a greater intensity than had previously been done. Yes, Metallica drew heavy influence from all sorts of obscure European metal bands, and yes, Metallica ended up pulling in all sorts of prog influences, but while all these factors helped boost them over the top, they were not at the core of the band. Metallica was, in the end, just a freaking great rock'n'roll band, one whose intensity, ass-kicking ability and riff-writing abilities were all solid as hell. They achieved brief immortality by grafting in the various factors that made them into an insane art-metal machine, but they were not, at heart, an art-metal band. And you know what, this is why, as relatively "primitive" Kill 'em All may sound, or as relatively "commercial" Metallica may sound, I still enjoy the hell out of those two albums as well. But we'll get to that in the reviews ...

Unfortunately, though, all good things come to an end, and by the mid-90's the band became a weird mix of Metallica-style pop-hard-rock, 70's hard rock and 90's "alternative" (as much as I hate the word) rock, and this combination didn't work out so well. There are some good songs to be found in the Load/Reload pairing, just not two double albums' worth, and the end result is a solid single album (app 45 minutes) buried inside mounds and mounds of filler. And then the band made a relatively awkward attempt to get back to its "roots" with St. Anger, which I actually enjoy, but which seems to be hated by the overwhelming majority of Metallica and metal fans. And then the band made one of the most aggressive returns to an old sound that I've ever heard. And then ... a really bizarre collaboration that makes no sense. Who knows what comes next?

As for the lineup - first and foremost (for me, anyways), there's bassist Cliff Burton, a classically trained pianist and, in my opinion, probably the person most responsible for the band's progressive influences. A great bassist too - his lines were always crucial to the quality of the music, even if they weren't immediately audible in the mix (that doesn't mean I can't feel what he's doing, though; a large part of this comes from the fact that he plays in parallel with Hetfield a lot, which makes sense in this kind of music). Eventually, he was replaced by Jason Newsted (and then by Robert Trujillo), but that's a story for later (that you've probably heard a million times anyways). Next, there's lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield, probably one of the ten or so greatest rhythm players ever. Sure, he really only has one gimmick (the non-stop distorted stutter riff) but my goodness he does it well.

As for the other two, Lars Ulrich is a decent drummer whose main claim to fame is a giant record collection (which is a large reason that he got into the band in the first place), and Kirk Hammett, while starting out with a lot of (typical for metal guitarists) love for Van Halen-esque arpeggios in his solos, and ending up with a bit too much love for his wah-wah pedal, has gone down as a really freaking solid lead guitarist. In between the typical 'metalisms' that can be expected from any guitarist of this ilk, he does an awfully good job of going through long stretches of not wasting notes, not to mention that his styles graft in every good guitar method from near Townshend-esque gruffness to angry jazz-prog fusion licks that almost suggest somebody spent some time hiding in the attic and listening to "Sound Chaser" (or early Mahavishnu Orchestra) in their childhood.

What do you think of Metallica?

Awake600.aol.com

Well, I guess creating a Metallica page is even more eternal proof that you and George aren't clones of each other, as if the Yes one wasn't enough already. First Rush, and now the 'Metallicats'. Two of my favorite bands of all time, both in a row, that I'm pretty convinced you two won't have even remotely the same opinions of (if George even ever covers them!). You're the man!

I'm a pretty big metal fan, as if that wasn't obvious from my own page, so I've seen and heard a lot of those acts, but Metallica still stands heads above them all, for exactly those 'intelligence' reasons. I'd probably lean somewhere between a high 3 or a low 4, mainly because of my preference for Master Of Puppets as quite possibly the greatest 'pure metal' album of all time, and Ride The Lightning is nearly as great. As much as I love what I've heard of Black Sabbath and especially their Paranoid album, and as much as they're more influential as the 'Godfathers' of the genre, I think Metallica have them beat as far as their intelligence, musicianship and epic level of their music. Plus Kirk Hammett has always been one of my favorite guitarists, and I really dislike how he gets constantly bashed now. But regardless of what direction they may have taken after The Black Album (both Load albums are highly underrated by fans, even if they're certainly not as great as their classic stuff), I think their 84-91 period and quite a few songs afterwards out of 'The Load Sessions', as Philip Maddox calls them, are quite good and have ensured them a solid place in music history. They may not have been really revolutionary innovators as far as 'first metal band' or even 'first thrash band', but they took it to a level no one else had before approached, much like The Beatles took existing musical genres to another level on The White Album.

My picks for Metallica's 'over-under-best-worst' albums:

Best: Master Of Puppets : 14 (powerfully crafted epics all over the place, with great riffs and excellent arrangements and adrenaline-filled energy - a true saving grace of 1986, without a doubt)

Worst: S&M : 8 or 9 (Metallica with orchestra wasn't the worst idea in the world, as there are some awesome performances, but hardly up to their standard - plus, the vocals aren't that great anymore)

Overrated: Kill Em All : 9 (I once gave this one a 5, but it's probably too influential in the thrash genre for that - the reality is though, this sucker really hasn't aged well at all, and it's too juvenile)

Underrated: Reload : 11 or 12 (so sue me - it may be too long, but I think it's wonderfully diverse compared to the rest of their catalog, and most of the songs are quite good)

Robert Grazer (xeernoflax.jack-the-ripper.com)

Well, while you were in the process of creating the Metallica page, I took what you had written about them elsewhere on your site and wondered what band rating you would give them. I decided that it wouldn't be a four since I doubt you would ever rate them higher than Led Zeppelin and on the same level as Floyd and the Moodies. A two seemed a little low, but I figured that the post-Justice stuff would really drag them down. I was wrong. I personally would give them a three or maybe even a four since I don't despise the more recent stuff as much as some do.

I may never have really given too many hints at this around your site (except some references to Iron Maiden and Paramaecium) so most people might not know that prog-rock is not my favorite style of music. I very slightly prefer metal. Not because of any rebellious nature or anything, but the best metal is better than nearly anything else music has to offer. I will admit it that finding the absolute greatest of the genre may be rather hard, but find it and it gives musical and emotional experiences I have yet to find from any other band (except MAYBE Floyd's Animals and Blackball's Super Heavy Dreamscape).

And Metallica delivers too. They certainly aren't my favorite metal band, nor have they produced one of my top five heavy metal albums. However, there is a single thing that can still make me enjoy their music in spite of some of the recent letdowns. Nobody could pen a better heavy metal instrumental than Metallica. The three instrumentals from Lightning, Master, and Justice are far beyond pretty much anything any other metal band has written. Oh there may be a couple that are as good, or maybe even better, from other bands, but no one has done three of them of such incredible quality. And then those three albums all have their spectacular fourth track, but that is a different matter.

One of my problems with Metallica during their golden 80s years is that every album they released in that time was topped by another from the year. In 1984 Metallica released Ride the Lightning. Also released in '84 was Iron Maidens far superior Powerslave. In 1986 was Master of Puppets. In 1986 Maiden beat them again with Somewhere in Time. (A great many would strongly disagree here, but hey I absolutely adore that release, and I do have a couple big problems with Master.) In 1988 was ...And Justice for All, easily topped by Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime. Well also by Seventh Son. I was trying not to be too repetitive.

Even though I'd rate them a three or a four, I really can't call Metallica one of my favorite bands. Sure they've done some masterwork, but there has most certainly been someone or something better at everything they have done (except instrumentals). As you may have guessed I personally feel that Iron Maiden is one band that easily blows them away in almost everything. Intelligence, complexity, strength of emotion, quality of solos, album covers. But of course I prefer "The Call of Ktulu" to "Genghis Khan" or "Losfer Words (Big 'Orra)."

I've tried to sum up my Metallica opinions here and emphasize a few points. Perhaps I wandered a little at times and for that I apologize. I may have put them down and stressed their weaknesses more than their strengths at times and that it partly due to my rather negative attitude toward them right now. The thing is, well you see, they banned me from Napster. Don't worry; it hasn't affected my opinion of their music. I listen to my burned copy of Ride the Lightning quite often.

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

Ah, Metallica. One of my first musical loves (my cousin saturated me with The Black Album until I caved). Loads of skill, of course, and some extremely complicated, intelligent song structures from a genre that's generally considered simple and stupid (well, Kill 'Em All is simple and stupid, but that's beside the point). They're probably my favorite metal band, as they made more great albums than any other metal band. Plus, Master Of Puppets is the best thrash album I've ever heard, narrowly edging out Megadeth's Rust In Peace and Pantera's Vulgar Display Of Power (which, by the way, is the only decent record Pantera ever made). Sure, their last couple of albums haven't done it for me like their classic stuff, but it's all pretty decent (though large chunks of Reload do absolutely nothing for me).

And I HAVE to comment on the selling out thing - who cares? If the music still sounds good, who cares that the band got a haircut? God, it annoys me when people say they hate Metallica now because they cut their hair. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I'm still anxiously awaiting their next move.

Anyway, here are my picks for their best, worst, overrated, and underrated records (hey, if Nick did it, I can too):

Best: Master Of Puppets (14) - Pretty much classic throughout. Epic and very well structured. The second half isn't quite as perfect as the first, but it still rules. The metal album to own if you only own one.

Worst: Reload (7) - I'm sorry, Nick, but after a couple of years of listening I still don't like this one much at all. A few good songs here (especially "Low Man's Lyric"), but it drags on for too long, and over half of the songs just kinda sit there.

Overrated: Kill 'Em All (8) - I'd rate it a point lower if it weren't so influential. It may have been groundbreaking, but songs like "Jump In The Fire", "Hit The Lights", and "Metal Militia" just sound stupid now. Still, there are a couple of classics.

Underrated: S&M (12) - Again, sorry Nick, but I like this album a lot. A good track selection, I think James's voice sounds good (aside from his stupid asides and pointless profanities), and the orchestra makes the album sound like a fuller, more well thought out afair, rather than just another slapped together cash-in live album. Even some tunes I didn't like that much before ("Devil's Dance", "Bleeding Me") sound good here.

Paul Walker (seraphim7s.yahoo.com)

Well, I can definitely see how Metallica would fit into your general scheme of things since they had pretty clever progressive 'epic' arrangements. But I just don't see how they merit a 3 star rating - the same as Led Zep??? Yes, they were intelligent in the context of the times, but we're talking mid-eighties here. Basically it seems all they did to garner this rating in your eyes was to meld progressive arrangements with thrash metal, not the most startlingly innovative progression I've witnessed to put it lightly. Their mixture of roots rock (chiefly country it seems) with metal later on in their careers was probably more innovative.

You're right that their strengths lay in their arrangements and their melodies, but how many bands can boast that? Answer: a fuckload, and they would certainly get a higher star rating in my book. I mean, as much as I like Master of Puppets I often cringe at the schoolboy lyrics about death and madness. Not exactly Dark Side of the Moon, are they? Add to that the fact that for about 4 albums they remained about as stylistically diverse as Black Sabbath.

Plus Metallica in their 'heyday' (1984-88?) we're not exactly emotionally engaging! If you're a pissed off schoolboy who's mad at his parents and goes upstairs to turn on Metallica to the '10' mark to annoy his parents, then yes, the music is bound to get you going; but there's nothing universally resonant about thus stuff. Whenever they seem about to get it right, they make a song as horrendously bloated as 'One' or something.

Also, how dare you compare them with King Crimson! They're not even in the same league! Shame on you!

Personally I'd give them a one star rating, maybe a wo on a good day. But then again you gave RUSH a two star rating! So maybe this is falling on deaf ears.

(author's note): A few points I want to address here.

1. I never said anything about Metallica's arrangements being progressive - I can't even think of a single song in their catalogue that could claim progressive arrangements. What I said was that, although the form wasn't progressive, the structure, the foundation of the music often was, in that the song cores were extremely non-trivial.

2. The main reason I list Metallica on this page in the first place is not because of their hybrid of two disparate genres - if that were the case, I'd have no choice but to enjoy Kansas. No, the reason I give Metallica this much credit is this - their peak output is enough to convince me that thrash/speed-metal, a genre I normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, might, just might, be a worthwhile musical form. And given how skeptical I am with regards to many music genres, I am always impressed when a group can make such an impressive effort of trying to knock down my biases. THAT is why Metallica gets as high a grade as it does.

3. Even then, though, the 3 isn't solid - I could have easily given them a two, as all three of the best albums will be borderline with their ratings.

4. Dude, how did you interperet the KC reference as a knock on Crimson? What I said was that Metallica can't play 70's hard rock as well as their predecessors. Meanwhile, most people are familiar with Zeppelin, but most don't instantly think of mid-70's KC as examples of great hard rock. And for the record, Metallica never put out an album as good as Red.

Paul Walker (seraphim7s.yahoo.com)

1. Culpa mea. I was vague here. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by arrangements, but I meant that musically (regardless of subject matter) the multi-part structure and complex melodies approximate those of, say, KC 1973-1974.

(author's note): Oh come on, you should know damn well the difference between song-writing and song-arranging. And what I'm saying is, approximately, song-writing = fairly proggy, song-arranging = not really proggy at all.

I really don't understand why you say 'non-trivial' since a lot of prog ('Battle of Epping Forest') was rather trivial in it's 'foundation'.

2. You can't really elevate this band too far just because they convince you that their particular genre is worthwhile. I don't think this is a valid reason.

(author's note): Sure it is. If you don't think that's a valid reason, get your own site. (btw, for those keeping track at home, that's a joke)

Every genre of music can be intelligently interpreted. Just because Metallica were about the only band to do so doesn't mean they deserve laud when comparing them to other bands in different genres. Potentially, thrash metal could have (or has?) been done much better.

(author's note): Well, yes, this is true. But I don't think giving a 3 is excessive, especially if I think that their career truly merits it. Excessive would be giving a 5 for doing the genre better than any other band that I've heard, even though I don't actually like the genre.

3. Ooh, that's a bit cowardly! Sitting on the fence, are we? If you think they deserve a two, give them a two!

(author's note): I never said I think that they deserve a two. I SAID that the ratings for their better albums would be on the low end of the numbers that I give them (ie Ride is a low 12, Puppets a low 13, etc). AND, since ultimately the band ratings are calculated on a purely mathematical basis (though I also make sure to informally check them against what I actually think inside that they deserve), a reduction in the album ratings would, in turn, knock down the band rating.

4. Sorry 'bout that. Been a bit protective over KC since Prindle reviewed them.

But really I don't think you have refuted my main arguements i.e. that Metallica were a) not innovative b) not emotionally engaging c) lyrically AWFUL. THESE are the reasons why I think they deserve less than a three.

In their defence: I think they had a lot of wonderful riffs and I really love their epic song structures.

Egon Kocjan (egon.kocjan.link.si)

metalika sax. blehehaoasdo

(author's note): Ladies and gentlemen, the site has reached a new low.

Pat D. (pd6941.albany.edu)

Heehee, not to start the drummer debate again, but i'm not a big fan of Mr. Ulrich. Most of his drum parts are extremely basic, which may be fine with a bunch of people, but almost every other drummer in Thrash were playing far more complex and interesting drum parts. Did you know that he couldnt play the parts to Dyers Eve all the way through? Flemming and his crew of no talent engineering people had to stop the tape every thirty seconds so Lars could take a breather. That explains why the never play that song in concert. Granted, that particular drumline has one of the faster double kickdrum lines around, but i know a couple of drummers here in this dinky little city that can play that song with no problem. Even James ripped Lars recently in i believe a Playboy magazine interview saying "lets face it, he'll never win drummer of the year".

I think my biggest problem with Lars is that there were plenty of better drummers in his genre. Charlie Benante, Dave Lombardo, Paul Bostaph, Nick Menza, John Tempesta, Igor Cavalera (the lord of heaviness ;-) ). If you listen to any of these, you'll know immediately what i am talking about. Lars DOES have nice snare tone, however, if you listen to AJFA and beyond. But after AJFA, i believe JK Penney or somebody from Chedsey's site put it best: "Ulrich's bush league drumming (what the hell happened to this guy?) is a serious flaw".

As for Kirk Hammett, he may have been a big influence, but i dont think he was that great. A lot of his solos sound extremely similar (i.e. those hammer-ons or fast arpeggios he has a tendency of repeating at the beginning of a LOT of solos) and he had some really thin tone back in the day. Although that improved when Rock took over the production, his playing on TBA didnt have much feeling in it. He did have his rare moments though, like the solos in Sanitarium (although i still maintain that James's technical rhythm parts between kirks last two solos are the most fascinating guitar parts of that song), or One, for example, but other than those and a very few select others, i'm not too impressed by his playing. Now Marty Friedman, THATS an innovative metal guitarist.

I think those opinions above make it all the more amazing that Metallica were as great as they were back in the day. Just shows you the genius of James and Cliff (neither of which i have a damn bad word to say about). I cant say much about Newsted because James and co. never let the dude play what he wanted.

Jaybird6871.aol.com (8/02/01)

What do I think of Metallica?  Well, I'll tell ya.  At the tender age of 15, in the year nineteen hundred eighty-six, Master of Puppets had just come out and I bought it. I was transfixed by this San Fran foursome. I quickly purchased and just as quickly wore out "Kill 'em All" and "Ride the Lightning." Soon after, Cliff was killed.  I stayed with the band in a die hard fashion until "The Black Album" came out.  They lost my allegiance soon after because I hate to listen to a sellout band.  I cannot blame them for going the money route (after all, they have claimed to be extremely greedy) but their style just really blew after "Re-revisited" and "Justice."  The Napster ordeal was truly sickening.  I hate to seem unintelligent, but I must speak what is on my mind.  All that I can say is fuck Lars, fuck James, fuck Kirk and fuck Metallica!!!!!  Poor Jason was smart to jump this sinking ship!

andrew (robinson161.hotmail.com) (5/14/03)

metallica open up very deep issues togerther with the powerful and trashey sound hit home truths thaty are otherwise unpercivable by the world in general you can either accept it or rebel to it to accept it on a deeper level is in harmony with true freedom who is for it cant be against it .

lj wolf (ljakastub.yahoo.com) (12/31/05)

metallica is the best fucking band in the world

Buddy Bacon (metallicamaniac.gmail.com) (02/28/07)

Came across your review searching for ...And Justice And All cover art on Google, well, here's my opinion. Simply put, one of the most badass bands ever. As you could probably tell by my email, I'm a fan. Used to be a complete fanboy, but have grown into liking a bigger amount of music. Sure, St. Anger might not have been the Metallica we knew and loved from the eighties, but seriously, they're still one of the best live. In fact, I'd put St. Anger over most of the screamo garbage played today. Bands like Megadeth, Metallica, Testament just keep on putting out some of the best music in the industry. As for the sell out opinion a lot of people have, I will quote Lars when asked about being a sell out. "Am I a sell out? Sure! Every night on tour we sell out arenas." I am looking forward to their new album this year.

ismaninb.gmail.com (01/13/12)

Metallica is a hard nut to crack for me. The band is important, big, succesfull, has made some excellent stuff. The band had always had some serious flaws too. Perhaps that's why I never could truely love them, only appreciate. It also could be because I already was 28 when I heard them for the first time and that's a lame reason.

Maybe a historical perspective helps. From 1975 on gradually a rift grew between hardrock bands. Blues influences were abandoned. Some tried to make their songs radio friendly, introducing poppy elements. Others tried to become rawer, darker, more aggressive or pompous. Thrash metal obviously falls into the latter category. In the early 80's the rift became unbridgeable. The only two who could have prevented that, Ritchie Blackmore and Gary Moore, lacked the creativity to write enough good songs. It should be noted though that their best output after 1980 was still ánd aggressive ánd melodic. Try Moore's Hiroshima as proof; every fan of Metallica should know that one.

Still both sides had one thing in common: pose became more important than content. I mainly blame Van Halen and Iron Maiden for it. They may have invented new playing techniques, I don't care. It's how they use them. Fingerflashing for the sake of virtuosity will never impress me (see Rush). Indeed this is something I hold against Kirk Hammett too.

Because of this attitude I lost interest in hardrock and metal in 1981. Me discovering classical music also had a lot to do with it. Given the generally negative view of 80's music I don't feel regret at all. Only ten years later Kurt Cobain not only saved rock'n'roll, he saved me too. I don't think very high of Nirvana, but I have to thank Cobain for me discovering Metallica. Predictably I measured them with the standards set by Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

It's obvious that Metallica are the rightful heirs of Deep Purple indeed. The Californians share the same values; only the means are different. Alas comparing does not always work in their favour. Lars Ulrich is a decent drummer, but never adds to the music like Paice did. Hetfield is a decent vocalist, but yeah, Ian Gillan in his prime outshines him. Worse though is that Hetfield is very, very limited in expression. Song after song about his anger, hardly ever relaxing, is very tiring. Together with Hammett's tendency to show off - though he never comes close to the obnoxiousness of hair metal guitarists and his thrash colleagues - this explains my reserved approach. Fortunately Metallica also has a few things to speak in their advantage, especially compared to Deep Purple. The arrangements and the structures of their songs are far more interesting. This has everything to do with the fabulous interplay of the three string instruments. Usually I think assignment of duties between rhythm and solo guitar utterly generic. In Metallica songs not only the melodic bass, which is one strong point already, but also the rhythm guitar plays an essential role. Yeah, Hatfield probably is my ideal for this instrument. The result is possibly the most beautiful ballad intro ever. One is a deserved classic, I rate the intro even higher than Lord's variations at the beginning of Child in Time. Hammett's solo is simply fabulous - exactly because here he puts his skills in service of expression. The result of my ambiguity is that if I like a Metallica song, I think it very good or brilliant. If not it leaves me cold. There is no golden mean.

In this context there is another interesting point. Quite a few Metallica songs have been arranged for chamber music ensembles. These arrangements actually work better imo than the originals. That's quite unique, for instance the arrangement of Purple Haze by the Kronos Quartet doesn't cut it. I think this point says quite a lot about both the strenght (the actual compositions) and the flaws (the way they deliver) of Metallica.

But hey - Metallica at its best equalling both Deep Purple and Led Zep, who after 1980 can boast that? Certainly not Iron Maiden, the most boring successfull hardrock band ever. Thát band wasn't even as fast as Deep Purple, let alone Metallica. The idea that the Californians send the Maidens back to irrelevance is one I foster.

---

Kill 'Em All - 1983 Megaforce
B
(Very Good)

Best song: The Four Horsemen

Oh my, did I ever underappreciate this album when I first reviewed it. Below, you'll see a bunch of comments more or less echoing my assessment that this is a bunch of primitive thrash crap that might have been hugely important back in the early 80's but that doesn't have any overall staying power. Well, five and a half years later, all I can say to the previous me is "screw you." The most important thing to do when listening to this is to try and not compare it to what would come later; a difficult task, yes, but one well worth the effort. Yes, the band hasn't yet matured lyrically; except for The Four Horsemen, the band's lyrical shtick about apocalyptic death, destruction, depression, insanity and anger hasn't yet taken root, and the songs tend to be about, well, kicking ass. Yes, James is in serious need of singing lessons on this album; combined with the lyrical matter, he kinda ends up sounding like what I'd expect Beavis to sound like at age 20 fronting a metal band, except without any AC/DC-style juvenile sexuality (not that I mind AC/DC's juvenile sexuality, but that's for neither here nor now). And yes, the production is thinner than the polished death-and-destruction sound that would come on the next two albums.

So yeah, it's well established what this album does poorly. On the other hand, let's look at what it does well. The riffs range from good to great. The band is insanely tight. The songs chug and thrash mercilessly. The solos are fast and at least mildly interesting. And, a couple of times, we get a clear glimpse at the more "sophisticated" future of the band, particularly in the aforementioned epic "The Four Horsemen," which cycles through a number of terrific riffs and instrumental passages. The descending riff in the "chorus," in particular, could stay in my head for hours and I wouldn't get sick of it. Of course, that riff was apparently written by Dave Mustaine, a former bandmate (and lead guitarist prior to Hammett) who went on to form Megadeth, but who am I to complain? Coming close in "epic" power, though, is "Seek and Destroy," a solid mid-tempo seven minute chugger that would be routinely stretched to 20-minute lengths in concert, and which is a great listen here as well.

Elsewhere, the one track that significantly sticks out is a decently distorted bass-driven (solo for the first half, with drums coming in during the second half) instrumental, "Anaesthesia (Pulling Teeth)" where Cliff mixes arpeggios with shredding his sound something fierce; I might be slightly overrating it, but it's just as fun to listen to as, say, "The Fish," even if for somewhat different reasons ("The Fish" had more arranging talent involved, what with the six layers of bass piling on top of each other). Otherwise, though, the album consists of a mix of mid-tempo thrash ("Jump in the Fire," which has an AWESOME set of riffs, is the highlight of these) and breakneck-tempo thrash (like the opening "Hit the Lights," which shows from the beginning that Metallica had showmanship down to a tee; what an over-the-top great introduction), which all simmers at a pretty solid level. No, I don't consider "Hit the Lights," "Whiplash," "Motorbreath," "Phantom Lord," "No Remorse" or the closing "Metal Militia" to be on par with the band's very greatest accomplishments, but at the ripe old age of 26 (when I'm writing this), I've come to get my headbanging kicks from all of them. No, they're not really sophisticated; the solos, cool as they may be, are more or less tacked on, and the band isn't reinventing jack with these tracks (they're just putting an American gritty slant on European metal). But unlike the younger me, I don't absolutely require "artsiness" in my metal for it to be enjoyable, as long as the more basic elements are effective.

In short, then, this is a really fun, really enjoyable debut, which is a perspective totally unlike my older one. Maybe you'll agree with my previous assessment more than my current one, and I can certainly understand this ... but if that's the case, I can't help but think you need to lighten up a bit. This is one of the best "lightweight" thrash-related albums I've ever heard, and that's enough for me.

Send me your thoughts

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

Amen. This album is SO overrated, and I even like metal quite a bit! Like you said, "The Four Horsemen" kicks ass and lots of it. By far the best song on here (Megadeth even recorded it as "Mechanix" on THEIR debut - everybody involved in that song wanted a piece). I really like "Whiplash" and "Seek And Destroy", too. Both feature killer riffs, and, despite the stupid lyrics, the former is fast and invigorating, the latter is slow and menacing. "Anesthesia" is OK, but it IS only a bass solo, and I find it hard to get worked up over it. It ain't exactly "The Fish". The rest pretty much sucks. Lowlights include the horrible album closing "Metal Militia" (what's the point?), the AWFUL call-to-arms of "Jump In The Fire" (maybe that riff sounded ok in 1983, but it sound dated and stupid now), and James' all around terrible voice, which sabotages some material that I might have liked otherwise ("Motorbreath" in particular loses a lot of its effect). So, I agree with your rating wholeheartedly. It's amazing how fast they matured after this one - most of this release barely even shows promise. And hey, if you haven't heard it, Megadeth's Rust In Peace album might be a good album to check out if you like "Horsemen" - lots of cool riffs and structures on there.

Robert Grazer (xeernoflax.jack-the-ripper.com)

I think it's overrated too, and I also didn't think you would like it too much, but a 5? I'll agree that "The Four Horsemen" is certinly the highlight, but there are a few other good rockers too. I can also enjoy "Whiplash," "Motorbreath," and "Phantom Lord." Sure it's no Ride the Lightning, but I think five is the kind of rating one should give to some of the later nineties stuff (Reload). There are enough good points on the album to earn it a 7 at least.

"Anasthesia" a highlight? That wasn't the kind of thing I consider a better Metallica piece. It is instrumental, but it is not an instrumental. Not by Metallica standards. There really isn't anything to it. It doesn't fit on the album.

You're right with the idea of Kill 'em All being a head banging thrasher. A bunch of the worst of this album like "Hit the Lights," "Jump in the Fire," and "Metal Malitia" are pure kick ass, but not good kick ass. Metallica's (rather short) period of greatness when they didn't necessarily need to kick ass with pure thrash was ready to start anyway, so in contrast to the next three this album does seem truly inferior, and while I can still pretty much enjoy it, I still don't understand why a lot of fans call this their best.

Awake600.aol.com

Yeah, I listen to this one about as much as your average 5 album, which is to say I give the two or three highlights a spin a little less than occasionally, giving my increasingly growing supply of albums to review. My personal favorite is "Seek And Destroy", mostly because of that riff and change of pace come solo time. And "Anesthesia" is really cool - sounds more like a guitar solo than a bass one though. But proof enough that Cliff Burton was a fine, fine player. I also get pleasure out of the cheezy "Whiplash" in all of its' over the top stupidity - that song sounds more hilarious in its' datedness than purely idiotic, and "The Four Horsemen" is the first hint of the epic structure that the band would soon really take hold of done well. A 5 normally, but none of the songs are horrible except for "Metal Militia", which could very well be my least favorite in their whole catalog, and overall this is important enough in metal to up it to a low 6. Things would get MUCH better after this.

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

If anything, I think you overrated it. The album sucked from start to finish.

Langas de los Langas (putolangas.hotmail.com) (11/25/06)

I liked the previous you better...

Mark Nieuweboer (ismaninb.gmail.com) (04/13/12)

This album is a nightmare for me, not because I hate it, but because I like the parts - almost every individual song - and still get completely bored by the overall result. Kill 'em All presents the coolest and most impressive collection of first class riffs since say Made in Japan. Still invariably at some point after Whiplash I lose attention. So I took the logical step and listened to the second half separately. It appeared I was still less thrilled than by the first part and that includes Seek and Destroy with its generic chorus. The highlights for me are Hit the Lights, The four Horsemen and Whiplash - I regard Anesthesia a somewhat lengthy prelude. For once I'm very glad I don't have a reviewing site. I wouldn't know how to rate this album.

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Ride The Lightning - 1984 Megaforce
D
(Great / Very Good)

Best song: Fight Fire With Fire (although Creeping Death is friggin' awesome)

You know, Metallica didn't really have to do this. In another universe, Metallica's second album, Metal 'til You Die!, would have been a typical sophomore slump, filled with tired rehashes of "Hit the Lights" and "Whiplash," and would have been loved by a very small number of fans but rightfully castigated by everybody else. The band would have broken up, Cliff would have gone to the Berkeley Conservatory, the other three would have formed a Megadeth tribute band, and there would have been a flop reunion with Dave in 1989. Instead of that, though, the band members took the raw materials of Kill 'Em All and used them as the starting point to practically create a new form of rock music that combined intensity, speed, group virtuosity, compositional skill and solid rock'n'roll power in concentrations that had never been this high all at once. No, the band hadn't become the absolute greatest in the world at any one of these facets, but in aggregate, Metallica briefly reached a place in rock music whose very existence probably hadn't even been considered by anybody else.

And dang it, the sound, not to mention the album, is still not perfect. James' singing is better than on the first album, but reverbed into oblivion, which makes it a bit hard to hear. The bass is mostly inaudible as a solitary instrument, though that doesn't really hurt things; it instead mostly latches itself onto the guitars to create what is close to the ultimate heavy guitar sound. And frankly, I still don't like "Trapped Under Ice" that much; there's a nice secondary riff that pops up in the middle, and some typically vicious soloing can be found, but it manages to sound kinda rote compared to everything else on the album. Oh, and "Escape," while not even remotely sucking, sounds a bit awkward when it suddenly transitions into a heavy "anthemic" pop song; it's still ok, though. So no, this album isn't going to break my top 100, it's not going to get the nod as Metallica's best, and it's not going to make me into a total metalhead all by its lonesome.

The other six tracks, though, are collectively amazing. I used to not like the title track much at all, and I'm still not blown away by it, but I've come to enjoy it a lot. The vocal melody could be better (though the lyrics are actually pretty good), I think, and the instrumental passages in the song seem a little too stretched out (on the whole) for my taste, but the riffs are definitely top-notch, and Hammett's solos really do a great job (especially in the second half) of creating a menacing, soul-crushing atmosphere. So yeah, it can stick around. And the other five tracks, well, I have no reservations on those whatsoever. The opening "Fight Fire with Fire" has an acoustic introduction (two guitars sounding like they might break into "Scarborough Fair" if we're not careful) that immediately demonstrates a light-years' advancement in maturity from Kill 'Em All, and it's not just the very presence of an acoustic sound (which was nowhere to be found on the debut) that makes me say that. Rather, it demonstrates the band's sudden mastery of contrast, the willingness to use lighter touches as necessary (even to almost comical degrees, as in the introduction to this album) to bring out the power of their heavier passages that much more, to increase the impact on the listener's psyche. Of course, the song could have fared just fine without the introduction, but it's just one more thing to mention. And holy mackerel, this song rules. The ultimate key is not in the speed and power that James, Kirk and Cliff get out of their various guitars, though that certainly helps; it's that they're playing BONE-CRUSHINGLY AWESOME RIFFS with this speed and power, and that the speedy Kirk soloing also throws in some beautiful (yes, I said beautiful) harmonics in the second half. I also love the lyrics; these lyrics take apocalyptic themes to their basest and most ludicrous extremes, and in conjunction with this has-to-be-mechanical-but-somehow-isn't instrumentation, they work amazingly for me.

After the title track, we come to a glorious track (which I sadly first heard elements of in, you guessed it, Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest; I have way too many weird mental associations with that game) that's as sophisticated a pounding heavy metal assault as I can imagine. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" also, in addition to a series of AMAZING riffs and crunchy guitar sounds that Black Sabbath would have murdered for back in the day, contains some of the very best lyrics I've ever heard from a metal band ("For a hill, men would kill; why, they do not know" is my favorite). Also, the Kirk line that first pops up about a minute in gives me a chill every time I hear it, and he's typically magnificent through the whole piece. Following, then, is Metallica's first ever step towards selling out (not that I really care); I mean, "Fade to Black" could have fit on Metallica with only a minimum of editing and rearranging, don't you think? It's one of the very great anthems of wanting to die, with well-used dark acoustic guitars driving the song forward and heavy distorted ones popping up whenever necessary. And guess what, James sounds way, way better on this song than anywhere else on the album. The ending guitar solo passage is awesome, too.

After hitting a bit of a standstill on side two with "Trapped Under Ice" and "Escape," we come to my second favorite of the album. Simply put, whenever I read the passage in Exodus about God sending the destroying angel to slay the first-born Egyptian children for the final plague, I fill the compulsion to listen to "Creeping Death," a brilliant song that glimpses the story from the perspective of the angel himself. The "main" riffs are incredible, but it's the middle riff, the one that goes with the "DIE! BY MY HAND! I CREEP ACROSS THE LAND, KILLING FIRST BORN MAN!" lyrics, that takes the cake as possibly the greatest mid-song (not belonging to the rest of the track, I mean) riff I've ever heard. And the creepiness factor in the solos, oh gosh, stop me before I plotz myself.

Moving to the end, I would say that to merely refer to the closing "Call of Ktulu" as a great metal instrumental is almost to demean it; this just a great piece of music, period. Ok, maybe the main theme goes a little too long before switching gears, but I don't really notice at all when I'm listening to it. All I notice is gorgeous guitar harmonics playing a menacing, tension-laden buildup that almost works like a metal version of the midsection of Yes' "Awaken" or the lengthy passage in King Crimson's "Starless" (though "Starless" is out of this track's league, frankly, great as it may be), culminating in a fine instrumental climax worthy of anybody's attention. Anybody who doubts Metallica's collective intelligence, at least as of 1984, after hearing this track just doesn't see the world as I do.

In short, this isn't a perfect album, but many of the songs are just unbelievable, and the overall sound is truly something to behold. I'd go so far to say that anybody who doesn't rate this as one of the best (at least top 50, come on people) albums of the 1980's, even if they're not a metalhead in general, needs a serious cranial adjustment. And needless to say, this is an essential part of any decent hard rock and heavy metal collection.

Send me your thoughts

Robert Grazer (xeernoflax.jack-the-ripper.com)

First in the trilogy of instrumentals, "The Call of Ktulu" is simply by far my favorite Metallica song. The journey it takes the mind on is incredible, unapproached by anything else Metallica ever did. As a metal instrumental it is pretty damn near the top (second only to "Coming of the Dawn" by Schaliach), and as just a plain instrumental it still hits the top ten.

Hitting my number two (for the album, not the band) spot is "Fade to Black." It is certainly one of the top five suicide songs ever, and something that a good many people do not realize is that it is also one of the greatest ripoff songs ever. There are four main sections to the song, first the opening section, then the second one in which the verses begin, the bridge with the final sung section, then the ending with the solo. Take a look at these four sections:

Intro: Doesn't this sound mysteriously like Pink Floyd's "Good-Bye Blue Sky?" The Wall, 1979

Verses: Maybe it's me, but this stangely reminds me of Iron Maiden's "Children of the Damned." From The Number of the Beast, 1982.

Bridge: Black Sabbath's "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath" anyone? From the album of the same name released back in 1974.

Ending: I haven't found the ripoff here, maybe they actually wrote this part. It has always been my favorite, but if anyone has what it may be a ripoff of, I would love to know.

Now, maybe I'm just hearing things. Or maybe this is something everybody knows and I'm just making a fool of myself. I don't know. It is a wonderful song regardless of the ripoff factor.

I'll agree with the "Creeping Death" lyrics being great, so lets not forget the well-penned words on "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Isn't is interesting how their lyrical style declined so much over the years? One day, "For a hill men would kill whay they do not know" set a a great vocal melody, the next, "Give me fuel give me fire give me that which I desire" set to no melody. Odd, eh? Well, it wasn't actually a day, or even an album or year, but it's hard to imagine that the band is the same. If only Cliff was still there...

This is my favorite Metallica album. A 13 from the Grazer books, it is a very enjoyable listen. Ride the Lightning is superior to Master, no matter what everyone (except Prindle) thinks.

Awake600.aol.com

Excellent review - this is definitely a huge leap for the band. A 9 (12) is more than reasonable - I'd probably give it a low to mid 13, especially since three of my top five Metallica tracks make their appearance here, including my favorite of their entire career, "For Whom The Bell Tolls". The effect of the song seemingly exploding out of nowhere after the 'tolling bell', the gripping intro, and the overall power of it is just a stunner, and I'd easily say it's one of the greatest songs ever written by anyone. "Fade To Black" is a phenomenally bleak suicidal ballad, and "Creeping Death" has this friggin' great thrash riff and huge adrenaline-rush chant in the middle that I can't get enough of. The other tracks don't quite live up to that trio, but "Fight Fire With Fire" is certainly one of the more creative tracks they ever did - that melody being sung against the speedy riffing is incredibly cool. And I'll definitely stand up for "Escape", the great 'pop' number that it is. I'd give it as high a grade as the next album if not for the fact "Trapped Under Ice" sounds too much like a subpar leftover from Kill 'Em All, though it's better than a lot of it, to be fair, and by this album's standards it's also short. And "The Call Of Ktulu", while being well structured and quite powerful, is too overlong. But nevertheless this is a GREAT album, and easily their second best in my opinion.

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

This is many, many, many times better than Kill 'Em All, like you said, and once again, I agree with your rating exactly - this is a high 12 if I've ever heard one. I've never liked "Trapped Under Ice" at all (seems to be a bit of a regression to the well-played but stupid and simple style of the last album, complete with bottomlessly awful lyrics), but everything else here is a HUGE improvement. I can't even pick a favorite - "Creeping Death", "Fight Fire With Fire", and "The Call Of Ktulu" all qualify (and I feel bad for not mentioning "For Whom The Bell Tolls", now that I think about it). I guess it would have to be "Creeping Death", though, because that has got some of the most awesome, fast, interesting riffs ever played, plus, like you said, those lyrics are great! And "Call Of Ktulu"... wow. I prefer the symphonic version on S&M, but this still kicks - a lot of people think it's dull, but I sure don't - that song is really ominous and scary. I can't really describe all the songs here - I'd go on all day. You know what? Thinking about this album is making me like it more than I thought, so I'd boost that high 12 up to a low 13. This album rules! And hey, the best was still to come!

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

In general a good review, but Fight Fire With Fire and Creeping Death were both lame. Other than that the record was amazing.

Pat D. (pd6941.albany.edu) (12/15/01)

Holy Geez, i have no clue why this album is revered so. I will give you there are a few really good, ripping number on here like your favorite, Fight Fire with Fire, then theres the marvelous riffage of Creeping Death and Trapped Under Ice. But beyond that, this album is duller than dirt. "Escape" like i think Prindle mentioned is a dumb pop song (although he still likes it i think). And why is "For Whom the Bell Tolls" so popular? What a freaking boring riff and overall song. Finally, the two longest songs, "Call of Kthulu" and "Fade to Black" dont live up to their hype. The former is a relentlessly repetitive and overlong instrumental. The latter has some really good lyrics, but the main riffs and outro solo are far from the best James and Kirk have come up with. Easily the weakest of their track 4 epics, IMHO. So, with that in mind i'd give this a 5 (8 by Johns system). Thankfully, the unbelievably better MOP was next.

Pete Anderson (pete.distantearlywarning.info) (12/13/09)

The "chill-giving Kirk line" in "For Whom the Bell Tolls", if you mean what I think you mean, is lifted almost note for note from Yes' "Onward" - I can't believe you didn't notice that.

As for the album itself, it's a little uneven, but the sound is great and "Fade to Black" is my all-time favourite Metallica track.  9(12).

(hours later):

Update: the "Onward"/"For Whom the Bell Tolls" riff can also be detected at the very end of the much earlier "Fairies Wear Boots" by Black Sabbath.  Plagiarism galore!

Mark Nieuweboer (ismaninb.gmail.com) (04/13/12)

Another Metallica album that frustrates me. Hetfields singing hasn't improved. The riffs generally are of lower quality compared to the debut. And I hardly can hear Burton. When I hear him his notes are uninteresting. So forget about no less than five songs, despite all the progressive ambitions. Hammett is as obnoxious as he could get, which fortunately still is not annoying, just boring. Not to mention that Ullrich wants to prove he can drum as stereotypal as Roger Taylor from Queen. Moreover there are too many long sustained power chords to keep me satisfied. Overall the result is a serious letdown. But there are three exceptions. These show that Metallica took a huge step forward indeed. The first one is Fade to Black, with an intro that is a prestudy for One. But it's already good in itself! The two are no more carbon copies than the last few symphonies of Mozart. The band perfectly demonstrates how to create a gloomy mood. Hammett tries to tell a story too in his solo's. A little gripe is that Burton's play is not too interesting, like mostly on this album, but I have to concentrate real hard to notice. And it's the only song with good vocals.

Creeping Death has the finest riff of all songs. Alas there are too many sustained power chords during the chorus that irritate me to call it a favourite of mine.

Much to my surprise - in general I am absolutely no fan of Metallica instrumentals - I love The Call of Ktulu. That's because it's classical music played on electrical instruments! Ktulhu is shaped in the sonata form - intro, exposition, development, recapitulation, coda, with all kind of nice little variations and deviations. I would love to hear this performed by a string quartet or quintet. Just listen what they do around the 6th minute. There is no better way to please my demanding ears. Take that, ELP, Yes and Iron Maiden. Metallica does what you never completely managed to pull off.

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*Master of Puppets - 1986 Elektra*
D
(Great / Very Good)

Best song: Master of Puppets

Well, it's not a huge improvement over Ride the Lightning, but it's an improvement nonetheless, which is why it gets the best album mark. In terms of overall flow, it follows pretty much the exact same formula as its predecessor, with the sole exception that the nine-minute instrumental on side two is the penultimate track instead of the ending one. For that reason, one could very, very easily argue that Lightning should be considered superior, especially when nothing on this album quite reaches the glorious pummelling heights of "Fight Fire with Fire" or "Creeping Death." However, I don't consider any of the tracks on here significantly worse than their Lightning counterparts, and a couple are measurably better. Furthermore, the overall sound is better. They've actually pulled back on the intensity just a whee bit, but that just means that I don't feel like the band is regularly trying to kill me (and besides, this may not be as heavy as Lightning was on an overall level, but that just means this album was arguably the second heaviest American rock album of all time at the time of its release), and that's a good thing. Plus, the production is better than before if only because I can actually regularly hear Cliff's bass as a distinct individual instrument, adding a tangible (as opposed to implied, which was the case on large parts of Ride) counter presence to the amazing guitar interplay. Oh, and James' singing is a lot better than before, if only because there's no excessive reverb attached to his vocals this time around.

And the songwriting, gah. Ok, the album has one duffer on side two, the fairly boring (in the first half anyway, even when taking the cool basslines into account) "Leper Messiah," but even that briefly picks up serious steam in its last couple of minutes in the guitar passages, so it's not a total loss. And with the rest, well, I kinda get the feeling when listening that the band realized in the midst of recording that it was creating a rock classic for the ages; the opening minute of the album and "Battery," with a trio of acoustic guitars morphing into the duel-guitar and bass attack that dominates the rest of the album, doesn't sound to me like the band is just aping its Lightning formula in one more way. No, that opening sounds genuinely beautiful to my ears; it's a stretch of legitimate grandiosity that I've heard few (if any) metal bands pull off succesfully (heck, the only opening instrumental passages in all of rock music that I can think of to match this in anthemic power are "Baba O'Reilly" on Who's Next, "Watcher of the Skies" on Foxtrot and "Where the Streets Have No Name" on The Joshua Tree). And of course, the song itself rules; it isn't cripplingly whomping like "Fight Fire with Fire," but the crisp power and intensity (and the bass, oh the bass), combined with a neat efficient vocal melody, make this a total classic. And that part in the middle where it slows down just a smidge and where Kirk teases the listener before exploding in his typical way, well, that's just great rock music there.

Skipping the title track for a minute, the "For Whom the Bell Tolls" counterpart, "The Thing That Should Not Be," may not have the symphonic bliss of its predecessor, but the riffs are so menacing in their mid-tempo stomp, and the introduction so eerie, and the vocal melody so well written in the way it works its way around the instrumental breaks, that it nearly overtakes "Bell". Anybody who thinks for even a second that 80's Metallica used its speed and noise to cover up a lack of songwriting has to give this track another five or so listens; if you're still unconvinced, then at least shut up for a moment and enjoy the weird-ass noises Kirk squeezes out of his axe around the four-minute mark. And then we have "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" which, as great as "Fade to Black" was, grinds its competitor's bones to make its bread. My favorite part is the dark-yet-shimmery introduction, which once again demonstrates the band's once impeccable understanding of contrast, but the vocal melody and lyrics are both great (again), the solos are amazing (again), the bass adds infinite amounts of depth, and the ending crescendo and acceleration (before the final slowdown) would likely be the band's finest moment were it not for the band topping itself a couple of years later with "One."

The second half can't help but be slightly weaker (especially during "Leper Messiah"), making it into somewhat of a letdown, but the drop still isn't as much as I think some make it out to be. For one thing, I can't really buy into the tiff seemingly everybody has against "Disposable Heroes," which I think rules. Ok, yes, the lyrics are a bit banal and obvious; they're about the way "grunts" in the military are treated, not as human beings with real thoughts and feelings and families, but rather as mere cannon fodder. The thing is, the music ends up supporting the theme to a tee; the main melody has a great feel of angtsy tension, and the chorus, with its "Back to the front!" calls is a perfect manifestation of the calls of an officer who couldn't care less about his soldiers.

After "Leper Messiah," we come to the instrumental "Orion," which I've found from experience can be somewhat overlooked if one's not careful. Don't make the same mistake I did; this doesn't have the same kind of repetitive menace that "Ktulu" has, but this instead has a lot of high quality variation, with lots of high quality riffs and untrivial chord changes and mind-blowingly cool diverse solos from Kirk a little over six minutes in. Plus, it has that one section in the middle that probably qualifies as the only instance of a band playing space-metal blues (!!). The song really sounds like it matches its title in terms of having all sorts of sci-fi vibes throughout, but it also makes it sound like travelling to the stars would make for a really great weekend excursion, and that's a neat combination.

At the very other end of the metal spectrum, we have the closing "Damage Inc.," which shows the band temporarily breaking out of its artsy tendencies and delivering a straight-up speed-metal frenzy, kinda like one would find on Kill 'Em All, only completely pwning the majority of that album (and having an eerie atmospheric opening to boot). Let's see, there's better singing, there are more mature instrumental techniques, and yet when it's time for Kirk to deliver a fast solo, James yells out "GO!" Ok, so it's not a classic on the level of the first half of the album, but it's a great great closer.

For all this, though, the title track is still my favorite of the album, and in my mind completely destroys the title track of Ride the Lightning. From the standpoint of just the music, this thing is totally amazing, from the great intro riffs through the great, slower you-will-bang-your-head mid-section and the intense, no-you-don't-get-it-you-WILL-bang-your-head reprise at the end, blah blah blah you've read all this before. My favorite aspect of the song, though, is that they managed to create an anti-drug song so slick lyrically that it managed to make the PMRC completely miss the point and use the song as one of its prime examples of the evil of rock music by the mid 80's. That's right people: this song, unless I, my brother and others from whom I've heard this are completely missing the boat, is about none other than the horrors of cocaine addiction and the hopeless slavery that comes from it. If you don't believe me, look at the lyrics again; the line "chop your breakfast on a mirror" should be a dead giveaway. Way to go, guys: you managed to make an anti-drug song into one of the greatest heavy metal songs ever.

Sheesh, I'm reading this review, and I'm almost wondering if I shouldn't rate this even higher. Of course, to be fair, it's (like all albums of this kind) a difficult album for me to sit through from start to finish without a break (sometimes a man just needs to hear some ABBA), even though 80% of it completely rules. And "Leper Messiah" is really noticably weak ... and "Disposable Heroes," as much as I like it, really shouldn't be in excess of eight minutes in length. So I'll keep the rating where it is. Make no mistake, the last couple of sentences are just mild quibbles: this album is easily one of my favorites of the 1980's, and a solid inclusion into my overall top 100. Everybody who likes rock music should own this, period.

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About the lyrics to the title track: the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) led by Tipper Gore back in the 80's actually considered this song obscene, and put it on their 'evil' list of other "inappropriate" metal songs like Motley Crue's "Bastard" and AC/DC's "Let Me Put My Love Into You" but considering the title track an actual drug song just proves how little these people actually read into these lyrics (and the former band's "Shout At The Devil" is actually against Satan, but considering their image around that time no one really cared or noticed). It's crap how a lot of metal bands really get unjustified bashings for their lyrics and subject matter. I mean, the 'heaviest album ever made', Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality, has Christian lyrics all over it! I could think of other examples just like these, but I'd be going off on a tangent. And I don't really wanna do that with this album here.

Of course, it goes without saying I think this is Metallica's peak, and definitely the highlight of 1986, which I actually think was quite good for metal (with albums like Queensryche's Rage For Order, Ozzy's Ultimate Sin, Slayer's Reign In Blood, and Megadeth's Peace Sells to go along with Master) even if largely crappy or mediocre for mainstream pop/rock and classic rock dinosaurs. But anyway, this album stands over those on a very awesome epic scale, with basically every song a standout, particularly on side one. I agree there aren't any songs as good as Lightning's best (Bell Tolls, Fade To Black, Creeping Death), but all are consistently high quality, so much so that it's almost impossible for me to pick a favorite. The title track, "Disposable Heroes" or "Damage, Inc.", all three of them brilliantly structured epics, will probably do.

And it's eerie how Cliff Burton really gives his signature performances on the "Orion" instrumental and "Damage, Inc.", the last two tracks on the last album he participated on - and isn't that cover some sort of omen? Even though the band were still able to come out with a lot of solid music afterwards, they unfortunately never came close to this peak again, which probably supports the theory of Cliff being the top musical genius in the band. **10 (14)**

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

I'd up it one more point to make it a big 10(14). I LOVE this album! Sure, it's essentially just a remake of Ride The Lightning, but Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour were pretty similar, too, but you won't hear me complain. This album took the approach of the last album and just hammered it home. I can't even pick a favorite song here, because they're all so awesome (well, I know it isn't "Orion" or "Leper", because they aren't as good, though they still rule). Loads and LOADS of great riffs aboud here, James' voice sounds plenty good, and the lyrics are getting better and better! I can't even talk about the songs, I'd probably go on all day. And I definately agree with you on "Disposable Heroes" not being weak - that's as strong as anything here! That stuttering riff, dark lyrics, creepy "BACK TO THE FRONT!" part... man, that might even be my favorite song here! Rules, that's what this album does. So good that they had to make it one more time for good measure.

Robert Grazer (xeernoflax.jack-the-ripper.com)

Grrr. Man, this sucker is overrated. Certainly on the top five or so overrated metal albums. do you know how many people claim this to be the greatest metal album of all time? Too many. Like you, I also enjoy "Disposable Heroes," and I do find my problem in "Leper Messiah" and "Damage Inc." The difference is that I really hate those songs. I can't stand them. They are a pair of the worst 80s Metallica songs not from Kill 'em All. Furthermore, I find "The Thing That Should Not Be" to be a rather mediocre track. Compared to the others on side one, anyway. I can't call the first side perfect for that reason alone. Maybe they should have switched it around with "Orion" (clearly the best on the album, for me anyway). Then I could have called it perfect. Nevertheless, it is the best Metallica side ever, regardless of the minor flaw.

That said, I need to praise "Orion" a little. After all it is one of those spectacular Metallica metal instrumentals. I'd venture to say it is the most progressive of the three and as such it is an extremely entertaining piece to listen to. Stunning and brilliant all around. Now, it is spectacular, yes, but it is the least of the three. It doesn't have the wonder of "Ktulu" or the feeling of "To Live is To Die." Well something had to be on the bottom, right? It still makes my top ten metal instrumentals and is my number three Metallica song.

I like "Battery" more than "Fight Fire With Fire," "Master of Puppets" more than "Ride The Lightning," but as far as that similarity thing is concerned, those are the only two places in which this one beats RtL. So, beyond the flaws this is a great album, earning a 12 from me.

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

Damage Inc sucked, but other than that I can find no fault with this album.

Pat D. (pd6941.albany.edu) (12/15/01)

This is one of the few albums i can honestly say is darn near flawless. The only problems i can come up with on this release is the slightly repetitive "Thing that Should not Be"---but i still like the song a lot. And some parts of "Disposible Heroes" can sound slightly awkward, but that is absolutely it. Hammett is at his very limited best on both this album and the next one, where you actually hear a little bit of variety in his playing. The solo to Damage Inc, is friggin' incredible. Ditto for the one in the middle of Disposible Heroes. Even the ones in Sanitarium and Leper Messiah are really good. The rest may be mindless generic Hammett noodling, but those tracks (along with a select few from the next album) are probably the best he's ever played.

  Hell, even Lars has some halfway decent drumming on most tracks on here, and he blows most of the time. Check out the cool fill at the end of every "Blood will follow Blood" line in Damage Inc, and his overall decent drumming in the title track, Leper Messiah and Disposible Heroes.

  Finally, the songwriting is at its absolute peak, with cohesiveness and catchiness as well as techincality in every song. Without a doubt, by far the best album the genre has to offer, and maybe even the best metal album ever made. 10(13) .

Mark Nieuweboer (ismaninb.gmail.com) (04/13/12)

Sure in several respects MoP is an improvement. We can hear interesting bass play. When the two guitarists just play sequences of power chords they now and then change the sequences a bit when repeating. I like that. Hatfield throughout the entire album sings as good as on Fade to Black. Even Ullrich plays lots of non-trivial rhythms. It already shows in the opener Battery. My only objection to the title song is that it is better when played by a string quartet, but that only proves how well thought and cleverly constructed the composition is. Hammett has discovered how much more fun story telling is than merely showing off.

Alas MoP in a few other respects is another step down. The first one is The Things that should not be: plodding worse than mid tempo Deep Purple on a bad day, with way too few ideas to keep me awake. Hammetts weird noises are not enough to save the song.

Welcome Home Sanitarium is partly excellent again - who needs And Nothing else matters after this one? I love that little acceleration during the choruses, only to slow down for the next verse again. My only complaint is directed towards the unimaginative arrangement of the first two instrumental parts. Metalica would still improve on that on the next album. Fortunately the coda is brilliant again. What's more, the song feels like it could easily have had another minute or two, three.

I can see nothing wrong with Disposable Heroes either. Great riff, great contrast with the thrashy rhythm in the introduction and the sustained notes of Hammett, catchy melodies, one of Hammett's best solo's ever, what more do you want? Not to mention that it urges me headbang behind my monitor while listening to it with all its clever rhythms. I didn't even realise it was 8 minutes until I checked.

Leper Messsiah has the same defects as The Things tha should not be and a few more. Both songs btw are Metallica's first steps towards the midtempo popthrash so typical of the eponymous album. It's clear that the guys had not mastered that type of songs yet. Call me happy that they would rework the second part for the vastly superior One on the next album.

Orion gets a thumbs down too. It lacks all the clever little ideas that made Ktulu so interesting; it also relies on mere repetition instead of a well-tried classical structure. OK, we get something different (and completely unrelated) after four minutes. It makes me suspect that the guys tried to create a scherzo, but for this its way too long.

Damage offers a nice contrast indeed, being just straightforward rock'n'roll played faster than ever. And once again Hammett's solo is more than just hollow virtuosity. Btw the closing with its six staccato chords is again a brilliant idea - what a way to end an hardrock/metal album!

So all in all neither MoP is a masterwork like In Rock and Machine Head are. But if any fan points out that a few songs are actually better than anything DP did I won't have counterarguments but my personal taste.

Ivo Samuel Giosa Domínguez (ivosamuelgiosa.gmail.com) (10/13/15)

Actually, the solo that begins at 6:36 at Orion is a distorted bass solo. Did you ever wonder why Cliff is hailed as one of the best metal bassists? There's why (and "For Whom The Bell Tolls", and because he died very early).

Oh, now that I'm here, I might as well tell my thoughts about this sucker. Well, I don't like it as much as Ride The Lightning. I find "The Thing That Should Not Be" as bit annoying, to tell the truth. I mean, it's got 2.5 musical ideas and it drags for almost seven minutes. It never gets offensive but, boy... IT IS BORING. Also, as you mentioned, "Lepper Messiah" isn't very ear-catching. Curiously enough, though, I don't find Disposable Heroes overlong. I don't realise the length while I'm listening to it.

But anyway, there are two tracks here that I don't like very much. In the previous album, only "Trapped Under Ice" evoked those feelings (though "Escape" is kind of annoying). Add that only "Orion" and "Master of Puppets" absolutely blow my mind (even if the others tracks are great) whereas Ride The Lightning had "Fight Fire With Fire", "For Whom The Bell Tolls", "Creeping Death" and "The Call of Ktulu". It's only natural I prefer that one.

Still, that's only in comparison. This is a solid C in your scale.

P.S.: Along with Iron Maiden's The Number Of The Beast, Judas Priest's Painkiller and Black Sabbath's Paranoid; this is one of the Heavy Metal Holy Cows. Did you know that?

---

...And Justice For All - 1988 Elektra
B
(Very Good)

Best song: One

As you undoubtedly know, Cliff Burton died in a bus accident after the release of Puppets. Needless to say, the impact of this was enormous - not only had the band lost a major talent at the bass position, it had also lost (arguably) its only true musical genius and, really, the heart and soul of the band (and I stand by that; the others may have done just as much work in writing the riffs, but the relative lack of "finishing touches" on this album as compared to before can't just be a coincidence). The bass functions would technically be filled by Jason Newsted (though he's virtually inaudible, thanks to a last minute decision to minimize the bass as much as possible, probably in tribute to Cliff), but the latter could not be so easily replaced.

The thing is, many people view this album as a culmination of Metallica's career - the songs are lengthier and more complex than ever, with acres and acres of solid metal riffs. As far as song structures and melodies go, this could easily be considered Metallica's "progressive peak." So isn't that enough to give this album consideration as Metallica's best? Well ... to be quite honest with you, no, it isn't. Ultimately, the fact is that this is primarily a transitional album (heck, even the members' appearances are in transition - doesn't James' picture look like a perfect splicing of his faces from the Lightning and Load eras?) and like any transitional album, it's got its problems.

To better explain myself, I'd like to propose the following idea - this album can be considered the Metallica equivalent of Genesis' A Trick of the Tail. For those not familiar with the history of Genesis, lead singer Peter Gabriel left the band after what many considered the band's best album yet (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), and the remaining members did everything they could to convince the world that the band could put out a good Genesis-style album even without its main creative force. So it is with Metallica on this album - the band members obviously realized that the factor that seemingly made the band most effective was the epic, multi-part structure of many of their songs, and so the band went out of its way to make the songs on Justice as long and as complex as they possibly could.

I know it may seem obnoxious to have heaped such praise upon Metallica's more "progressive" tracks in the last couple of albums and then condemn them for their "progressive to the max" approach on this album, but you have to understand the following (which I alluded to in the introduction, but which I'll stress again) - I don't like music solely because it's complex and multi-part. The individual parts not only have to be fairly interesting on their own, but they HAVE to fit in well with each other. On this album, too often the multitude of riffs simply do NOT mesh well and flow well into one another. The title track is the greatest offender - the riffs are mostly very good, but the manner in which they are mixed together make the song seem horrifically overlong. And the same can be said, to a lesser extent, about most of the other tracks - most of them are overlong by as much as a third, and the ending result is a 65 minute album when we should have at most a 45 minute or so one. It's a very, very good 65 minute album, don't get me wrong; it's just that that's the result of having an amazing 45 minute one smothered in excess.

But again, I'm not knocking this album that badly (this is still a very, very high rating). The lyrics are bitter and pissed with life to an extent never before seen in this band (though maybe a little more banal than some of the metaphorical bliss of the last two albums), and James actually sounds fully grown up on this album (though my guess is that a lot of the maturity in the voice is a product of a ton of drinking after Cliff's death). And some of the songs are just fabulous - Blackened, while essentially a rewrite of Battery (which, in turn, was a rewrite of "Fight Fire with Fire"), still has an ominous intro and a great main riff (and a cool midsection with Hetfield doing a call-and-response with his own vocals). Meanwhile, "Eye of the Beholder" is one of the tracks that does a good job of being lengthy while still feeling compact and not rambling, as the fabulous riffs flow in and out of each seamlessly. Same goes for "Harvester of Sorrow," the closing "Dyers Eve" and, of course, the instrumental "To Live is to Die," with a spoken word tribute to Cliff (and some of the most interesting Hammett work on the album). The rest of the songs, though, are mostly weaker versions of the others (even "Frayed Ends of Sanity," which mostly wastes its fabulous intro). Also, you'll notice that I'm not going into elaborate descriptions of these tracks like I did on most of the last two albums; there comes a point where you just run out of ways to say "great guitar interplay, good riffs, where in the hell's the bass."

But really, who cares about all those songs? This album has "One" on it, and that's all that really matters, isn't it? Any Metallica fans who think it's a crappy song because it produced their first music video can pucker up, because there's some mistle-toe in the small of my back just for you. All of the songs on this album have some flaw, but not this one, no sirree. It's PERFECT, and one of the (if not THE) absolute greatest metal songs ever written. The construction is flawless, from the forboding, ringing opening riff through the introductory section, through the SICK switch to a major key before entering the genius vocal melody, and as the intensity of the song gradually builds, the track demonstrates that James and co. still had a solid dose of inspiration of their own in the wake of Cliff's absence. Plus, the intense, rigid drum and guitar lines that come before the final vocal coda out-"Knife" "The Knife" (an early Genesis song, and BELIEVE me, that there's a major league compliment), while the guitar-interplay that comes afterwards is just beyond anything they'd done to that point, and that says an awful lot. And the lyrics - I'm sure you know them already, no need to say anything about them except that they are absolute genius in their ability to inflict terror on a listener.

So yeah, when you add it all up, it's a very, very good album. That said, it does demonstrate one thing to me; the "progressive" version of Metallica had used up virtually all of its creativity, and while fans may cringe at this, I say that it was actually a good thing that they switched into more of a pop mode. Because, after all, Genesis had their A Trick of the Tail, but they also had a poor followup to it, and let's just say that it's a good thing that Metallica never had a chance to make their own Wind and Wuthering.

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It's almost distressing how many 'real' metal fans put down "One", claiming that it's just a redoing of a song style they already explored better ("Fade To Black", "Sanitarium"). If you ask me, it's more likely a result of the anti-hype in the wake of the video being made and played on eMpTyV. Plus, "One" seems to be structured more effectively than earlier epics, in the lyrics, main melody, and just the right choice of notes and tempo in each section to really convey what the lyrics are saying. It conveys the harrowing thoughts of a man who lost his sight, hearing, sense of smell, arms and legs and yet still lives just as well as the novel it's based on, Johnny Got His Gun, which is a great read BTW. When James screams, 'darkness... has taken my sight...', that's powerful stuff.

Were it not for that song, I'd probably give this a 7, as this is Metallica trying to take their progressive thrash sound as far as it could possibly go, which justify the Genesis comparisons of Trick Of The Tail - the songs are mostly great, but most of them are a little overlong, like for instance, the title track here and "Ripples" on Trick, and the form of the compositions from the previous album(s) in both cases are still there, but not always the same feeling or effective songwriting. But at least Metallica didn't have a Tony Banks to totally overrun the sound with his playing. Though they did virtually mute Jason Newsted here, the biggest victim of a horribly produced album.

A few songs like "The Frayed Ends Of Sanity" (right on about the wasted intro) and "The Shortest Straw" aren't exactly that good, and the songs that are bar "One" (like "Dyers Eve" and "Blackened") have been done in a better style elsewhere ("Damage, Inc." and "Battery" on the last album respectively). But nevertheless, none of the songs are bad overall, and there are a lot of good riffs and great lyrics to be found within, just not always the greatest structures. It seems like they wanted to attempt to cram as many riffs as humanly possible into each song. It was indeed a good thing that they went to a more simplified approach for the next album, simply because they had nowhere else to go from here. 8(11)

Jamie Anthony (jaony.lineone.net)

Hey! Stop slagging Wind And Wuthering!  It's one of my favourite Genesis albums!  Speaking of which, this is my favourite Metallica album.  Not because it's the most progressive (although that probably does have a major influence upon my opinion), but because it's the most consistent.  kill em all was obviously inconsistent, ride the lightning was near perfect, with escape and fight fire with fire and creeping death being highlights, but master of puppets was let down I feel with slightly generic tracks such as leper messiah, and slightly dragging moments like the thing that should not be (speaks for itself really).  The instrumental on ...and justice for all is the most interesting one yet, and the first track is definately the most accomplished "re-write" of fight fire with fire or battery.  This is defintely the last good metallica album, since the black album suffered from severe melody problems, was overlong, and sounded far too much like old guys trying to re-invent themselves.  Speaking of which, I still prefer Crest Of A Knave over naything Metallica has ever done.  They deserved that emmy.  You can laugh now if you want.

(author's note): Well, I'll let others laugh as much as they want, but I want to point out that Tull won a GRAMMY, not an Emmy.

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

I'd boost it up one point, giving it a 9(12). I love this almost as much as I loved the albums before it, and I'd probably like it exactly the same if it weren't for the HORRIBLE production. It's a sign of the band's awesome skill that the fact that there is NO BASS on this entire album and it still sounds awesome. I think all of the riffs on this album gel together quite well - the only two that don't flow as well are "The Frayed Ends Of Sanity" and "The Shortest Straw", both of which are decent, but don't earn their lengths. No complaints about the rest, though. The title track and "One" are my favorites. I think that the title track just drips with killer riffs, and I never get sick of it in all of its 10 minutes. And as for "One"... wow. Great song, maybe the best one Metallica ever did. Everything works absolutely perfectly, mixing beauty with total aggresion. That's hard to pull off, but Metallica did it. I don't know if it quite out-knifes "The Knife" (I LOVE "The Knife"), but its up there for sure. Great album, all in all.

(author's note): Just wanted to point out that I only made the comparison to The Knife in the "soft-area-turns-into-satanic-rhythm" part. I do think that One's intensity is slightly higher at that part (though, I'd probably take The Knife overall).

Robert Grazer (xeernoflax.jack-the-ripper.com)

"One" is certainly Metallica's best non-instrumental, (with "Fade to Black" and "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" close behind) and is pretty much perfection. However, I personally could never call it the greatest metal song ever since I would move more in the direction of Maiden's "Hallowed Be Thy Name," Paramaecium's "Darkness Dies," or Dream Theater's "A Change of Seasons", (and probably more from those bands there) not to mention those three Metallica instrumentals, but I can easily understand and would never condemn anyone calling "One" the best heavy metal song ever. Now, of course, I believe that as great as "One" is I prefer the even more powerful beauty of "To Live Is To Die." But you probably saw that one coming. I'll agree with the 8, mostly for many of the reasons already brought up. And then this really wasn't a Master or a Lightning now was it? More people than necessary call this their best so while not Master overrated, I guess it gets slightly more praise than it deserves. Anyway an 8 from me, at least two of those points coming from "One" and "To Live Is To Die." A very good album, containing two great classics.

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

To high a rating. The songs don't flow at all; it sounds as if they were just sort of spliced together. Of course, One is a masterpiece, and I love Blackened, Eye Of The Beholder, and To Live Is To Die. I can't even stand to listen to the rest of it.

Pat D. (pd6941.albany.edu) (12/15/01)

I have grown to really hate the way this album is mixed.

  There is such a coldness to the tonality of James and Kirk's guitars on here. And the fact that either Flemming had the greatest fuckup of his career or James and Lars were messing with the controls to drown out Jason's bass doesnt help matters. Although Lars has some of the most impressive drumming of his rather boring career on here, the sound almost makes him sound overly sloppy while doing it.

  Despite these facts, this has some killer songwriting on it. Every track is good except for the slightly boring Harvester of Sorrow, which for some inexplicable reason, like For whom the Bell Tolls, is worshipped. Kirk continues his somewhat hot streak with fast, ripping solos on Dyers Eve, Frayed Ends of Sanity, and the Shortest Straw (which i'm pretty sure makes heavy use of Dorian mode scales).

  Oh yeah, and "One" is on here, which is up there with the likes of Pantera's "Cemetary Gates" and In Flames' "Embody the Invisible" as my favorite metal songs ever. Overall,  8(11), but it would get a 9 if it wasnt for the ridiculously bad production.

TheRubberCow.aol.com (1/01/02)

...And Then There Were Three...  whoops!, oh, I guess we can let Jason Newsted count as a real person.  I don't think this album's too much of a step down.  I acutally think in some ways it's an improvement, each one of the songs are very tightly constructed as opposed to a couple tracks on Master of Puppets being slightly less gripping than the rest (Orion & Damage).  But this album definately doens't have the dynamics of it's predecessor (listening to it's almost non-stop frenetic thrashing all the way through is like biting into the slab of concrete on the cover), which in my opinion is enough to make it equal to Master, both of them being great albums with their respective minor flaws.

Langas de los Langas (putolangas.hotmail.com) (07/31/05)

Cliff Burton, the only true musical genius in Metallica...? My God, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? Since the word 'overrated' is so popular in this site, I will tell you about the most overrated bass player in history: Cliff Burton. C'mon, what's so special about the man? I'm a bass player myself, and though I am a big Metallica fan, I've always considered that no one would ever notice if you muted the bass in a great bunch of Metallica songs. His bass parts are as inaudible as Newsted's in most of the tracks. And yes, he wrote that pretty arpeggio part for 'Orion', but that's all!! (Anesthesia, although being a great exercise to warm up fingers before playing, sucks melodically, and the sound of the bass is simply AWFUL) Take a look at the songs in the first three albums and count how many Burton appears in as composer. Not many, huh? I know it has become popular to praise Burton and look down on Ulrich (IMHO, one of the most technically-limited metal drummers, but also one of the most imaginative and brilliant), but think about this: would Metallica have done without James or Lars? Nope. But they DID without Burton, simply because (and now you can get prepared to crucify me) he wasn't essential at all. That's my point.

Mark Nieuweboer (ismaninb.gmail.com) (04/13/12)

Indeed this album is the first step towards a more radiofriendly approach. That's fine with me. My problem is that only few riffs are first class and that melodies are still absent in majority. So I only like four songs, but I like them a lot: the title song, Harvester of Sorrow, One and Dyers Eve are my absolute Metallica favourites. They have everything the other stuff doesn't. In my book they represent the perfect corssover between pure thrash and popmetal, not the classics on the next album. Anger is so much more convincing in music when set on catchy melodies.

The title song has an introduction that's almost as strong as the intro of One. Listen how Ullrich plays the bridge to actual song entirely on his own; this is possibly his finest moment. I can't remember a song on which I so vehemently disagree with McFerrin (Mind Drive perhaps?). To my ears all the parts couldn't fit any better. Listen how smoothly the band slows down when they want to recapitulate the introduction again, which is completely rewritten! And there all those nice little changes when the band repeats the chorus and verse. Perhaps Burton was the genius indeed, but obviously Hammett and Hetfield have learned a few ideas. Also the way the main theme, played by Hammett, is incorporated in several forms is brilliant. Overlong? No second spoiled, I say!

No need to add anything on One, which in its kind only is surpassed by Child in Time and then only in its very best versions and not in every respect. Just listen how they alternate between staccato and legato at the beginning of the second fast second and tell me where in the entire rock catalogue we can hear something similar.

Harvester of Sorrow proves that the band finally has mastered to write mid-tempo songs. Let me not forget to mention Ullrich, who for once actively contributes. Once again there are all those little clever ideas that distinguishes Ktulu from the other two instrumentals. Dyers Eve is one of Metallica's fastest songs and that tells us a lot. But it's not just a fast song as there are several tempo changes. For once the otherwise irritating sustained power chords are exactly in place - they serve as an excellent contrast with the insanely fast riffage and make room for Hetfield's melodies, which deserve full attention indeed. Without any doubt this is Metallica's best album closer ever.

Alas again we can't hear any bass. Fortunately I have found an illegal version with Newsted's bass mixed much more to the foreground. My four favourites clearly benefit, for the others it doesn't make much difference.

The instrumental is a bore; the other songs, as I wrote in my introduction, leave me cold.

This album illustrates best that I either think Metallica brilliant or empty and pointless.

---

Metallica - 1991 Elektra
A
(Very Good / Good)

Best song: Enter Sandman

You can call it "selling out" if you want; I call it "artistic progression." The Ride the Lightning formula hadn't yet come close to failing, yes, but only the most hardened metalhead (in my opinion) would deny that ... Justice showed that the band's mastery of the formula was waning. It was high time for an adjustment to the band's approach; not a radical change, but rather an effective redirection of the band's (still in prime condition) raw tools. Let's face it, it is hardly the case that the band's strengths were only conducive to quality prog thrash; this was a band with masterful guitar interplay and a knack for writing solid riffs and solid vocal melodies, and these are ideal ingredients for the kind of hard pop metal that the band pursued on this album.

Now granted, pop metal is a really easy genre to do badly (then again, thrash is an easy genre to do badly too). The mid-to-late 80's is replete, after all, with bands trainwrecking with the pop metal genre, from Deep Purple to a legion of hair metal bands that made Metallica's brand of metal seem just that much more impressive during the same era. But with Metallica, the band avoids the crucial trap that basically all of those bands fell into; not making the music hard enough to actively drive away pop fans and not making the music poppy enough to actively drive away metal fans. To the contrary, the band sticks to its fundamental guns through most of the album, making the music found here about a hundred times heavier and more legitimately intense than most 1991 bands could, yet the hooks are more explicitly defined than the band had made them previously, which helps explain the huge popularity of this album.

Of the first eight songs, five of them were pretty big hits, and all of the first eight range between good and great. A couple of them, "Unforgiven" and "Nothing Else Matters," are actually full-fledged ballads, but it's not as if the band had completely avoided that track in its previous work ("Fade to Black" and "One" had elements of dark balladry to them, after all). The band never picks up and takes them into the slashing overdrive that would happen on the older albums, but Hammett gets in some nice (albeit slightly generic, which is actually a problem throughout much of the album) solos where the situation merits, the melodies are fine, and James' singing is at least decent (though he's arguably trying a little too hard to sound mildly sensitive on them, which sows the seeds of the bitter fruits that would be reaped half a decade later).

As for the other songs in this group, all of them, with the mild exception of the slightly weaker "Holier Than Thou," absolutely rip; they're not fast (though the excellent "Through the Never" gives a brief flash of the band's thrash selves), but they're intense, and the riffs and hooks are very very strong. "Enter Sandman" is the best known classic, and it has every right to be, but "Sad but True" is a stomping (and catchy!) riot, and "Wherever My Roam" is an effective uptempo riff-fest that makes the darkest use of an Indian guitar sound in majorly popular rock music since (probably) "Paint it Black" 25 years previous. Throw in a slightly goofy (but better for it) rocker in "Don't Tread on Me," and the end result is an extremely well-produced (come on all you naysayers, the guitars sound great on this album, and there's a reasonable bass presence again) collection of hard-rock and pop that no metalhead (unless they define metal solely as thrash) should be ashamed to have.

Oh, wait, this album doesn't end after eight tracks and forty minutes of solid rock music. The last four tracks are, in my opinion, the weakest stretch by far that the band had come up with to this point, meaning that this album ends up with a full twenty minutes of relative filler. "Of Wolf and Man" is probably my favorite of these, but that's only because it would improve a good amount in a live setting; it seems awfully awkward to me here. And the last three, gah; "My Friend of Misery" is actually the longest track on here, and the fact that it doesn't interest me much (except for a cool main bassline that I enjoy hearing outside the context of the song) can't help but lead the way in a sag of the rating from where it would otherwise be. The other two aren't even worth a namecheck, for what it's worth.

Still, this (alarmingly) weak ending isn't enough to completely undermine the quality of the great start. It's not a "hard rock milestone" like some reviews at the time raved about it, but it's still a fine inclusion to the band's catalogue. Too bad things didn't improve from here.

Send me your thoughts

Awake600.aol.com

I agree here for the most part. The weird thing is, when I first got into the band I didn't really like this album much apart from the singles, but one morning listening to it on headphones something clicked. I actually like this one better than Justice (which was also hard for me to get into at first), as the songs really benefit from a more compact one riff style, the production is miles better than before - I don't buy the fact Bob Rock ruined Metallica, as it was a natural progression for them to head in a mellower, less complex direction, and if anything, he only helped to make the instruments sound more in your face than before. Kirk Hammett's guitar playing here really impresses me though. More than ever, his solos here have a lot of awesome melodic structure that often works wonders ("The Unforgiven", "Wherever I May Roam", "Nothing Else Matters"), and the riffs are solid ("Enter Sandman", "Of Wolf And Man", and especially "Through The Never", which is another one for my top 5, and my pick for best song - I love that fast riff to death). I actually like two of the songs near the end a heck of a lot ("OWaM", "The Struggle Within"), though I will acknowledge "The God That Failed" and "My Friend Of Misery" are fairly bland. Chop those two off, along with "Holier Than Thou" (which I always found a little dull), and you have a hell of a 46 or 47 minute album, and a really high 9. As it is, a high 8, low 9.

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

Can't disagree on that rating at all - it's definately an 8(11). I kinda want to rate it higher, as it's one of the first records I ever really fell in love with (due to me being completely saturated with it for a long time), but on a purely musical basis, I can't give it any higher. The flaws on this one are: (a) a couple of the tunes are kinda lame ("Through The Never" and "My Friend Of Misery" aren't bad, but I certainly don't love them), (b) the group's songwriting isn't quite as good as the last few records (nothing's quite as good as "One" or "Welcome Home" here), and (c) it doesn't sound as unique as the previous records. Those are all relatively minor quibbles, though, as I love most of this record - James' voice sounds great (gettin' better and better), the riffs pretty much rule (I LOVE "Of Wolf And Man", though it leaves you kinda cold), the instrumental work is still good (these guys were excellent musicians, after all), and the songwriting is tops. Just glancing at the track listing... "Sad But True", "Enter Sandman", "The Unforgiven"... wow. Great tunes, one and all. They don't sound a whit like the songs on the last albums, but I still like 'em a lot (and I CERTAINLY like them more than Kill 'Em All). It signaled that the group might be losing their creativily (which they kinda were), but I can't dispute the results here.

Robert Grazer (xeernoflax.jack-the-ripper.com)

The greatest opening review line I have ever read on the web was Prindle's first line for his review of this album. "Uh oh! This doesn't sound anything like Ride The Lightning!" I expected yours to be a variation of your opening line from Tull's A Passion Play, but I guess not. I would rate this maybe a 6 or so, assuming Kill 'em All drops a point from my 7, and nothing more. There are some really good tracks like "Enter Sandman," "Sad But True," "Nothing Else Matters," "My Friend of Misery," and "The Unforgiven," but most of the others are dull and forgettable. Is it catchy? Sure, but man if there is one thing I have learned from listening to early Stones it's that catchy alone cannot save a song or an album. One of my biggest problems is that Mr. Hammet's solos are no longer the pure pieces of beauty that they were in the 80s. Then again, this is better than some of the things they could have become, and I don't hate this nearly as much as many diehard 80s Metallica fans do. While Metallica is certainly not a bad album, it fails impress on many levels.

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

Smartest thing Metallica ever did; I doubt they'd be around at this point if they'd continued in the "Justice" direction. No, it is not as good as Master Of Puppets, and you almost may as well turn it off after track 8 (except that I can't get enough of The God That Failed), but this may have been the best album of 1991.

Pat D. (pd6941.albany.edu) (12/15/01)

THANK YOU JOHN. Thank you for having the balls to give this one an 8. Of course, it helps that you actually like the album too.

  This album is slower and more concise. So freaking what. The band still knows how to write decent songs. I think the backlash against "sellout" metallica (i am still waiting for somebody to explain exactly how they have sold out) has caused lots people with no backbone to say they never liked this album, and that its the worst one Metallica ever made. Because its NOT a bad album. Yes, it is very accessible for the most part. But so are the Beatles, and yet, nobody ever calls their first 5 or 6 albums "the worst they ever did" for being too accessible. Oh, the analness of the average metal fan.

  Anyways, that aside, great album. Not as good as MOP or AJFA, but its certainly more consistant than RTL in my opinion, and you have to love the near brilliant mixing and production job headed by Bob Rock. No Metallica album ever sounded this good, period. Every instrument is clearly defined, crisp highs, precise bass, decent midrange. Lets see Flemming "Fuckup" Rasmussen achieve that.

Actually the best tracks, IMHO, are the ones that didnt make the radio, like the bouncy "Struggle Within" and the beautifully thrashy "Through the Never". Or the slower, catchy "My Friend of Misery".

  On the down side, Lars' drumming has begun to take a downturn technical wise. Granted, his SOUND is just killer, but he has really let his technique go starting with this album and continuing to the present. Also, Kirk's solos arent very interesting for the most part on here, unlike the fascinating technicality of "Shortest Straw" and "Dyers Eve" off the last album. Overall, same score, 8(11).

Trfesok.aol.com (11/25/06)

Once upon a time, I won a radio station contest and went to pick up the albums that I won. A few weeks later, I got a package in the mail with a bunch of other albums from the radio station, saying they had canceled their relationship with the record store, and these albums were to compensate. Evidently, they had lost track that I'd had already collected my prize! Anyway, there were a bunch of albums that I never would have chosen in the package, including this one.

  I, of course, hated it on first listen. Over the years, though, a lot of it has grown on me.  The band certainly plays, and at least James doesn't shriek a la Robert Plant like a lot of metal vocalists do.  "Enter Sandman" has a great hook. The fast paced "Holier Than Thou" has some great, angry lyrics (Bland? I don't get that!). The highly commercial ballads "The Unforgiven" and "Nothing Else Matters" (Metallica can actually be tender!) are also really nice and melodic. The rather dark lyrics of most of the rest of the songs prevent me from totally getting into the rest, however. "The God That Failed," in particular, is not an uplifting listen.  Still, overall, it's a pretty listenable album, even for someone who isn't a big metal fan.

Sheehan, David (11/13/11)

This was my first exposure to Metallica, as I’m sure it was for countless others. This album came out when I was 11, and until I heard…And Justice For All during high school I thought this was as ‘metal’ as Metallica got. I think this is one of the most polarizing albums ever released. I mean, the critics at the time ate it up and at least some of them (Rolling Stone, for one) immediately hailed it as Metallica’s best album yet (‘Metallic K.O.’—I still remember the headline of their review), it sold a bazillion copies, spawned massive hit singles, videos, never-ending world tours, and catapulted Metallica into the public consciousness for all time (how many times have you heard ‘Enter Sandman’ played at sporting events?), while at the same time older fans were downright outraged at the unabashedly commercial direction this album heralded. I know several older Metallica fans who _hate_ this album and everything on it. Hell, I know one guy who swears this is Metallica’s worst album!

Having said all of that, I of course try to take the middle ground. It is certainly worse than the three albums that preceded it, but it still contains several undeniably good-to-great quality mid-tempo heavy rock songs. The production is pretty darn good, and while Kirk’s guitar tone is ridiculously repetitive (come on, someone please get that stupid wah-wah pedal away from him!), his leads are actually fairly entertaining despite this gripe. James’s singing is good, and his now fully-matured voice is not yet cliché and annoying (“listen to my scary growl-lah! I’m a bad dude-dah!”), and he has not yet started to fully over-emote when in “sensitive ballad mode.” So yeah, overall this approach sounds fresh and artistically it sorta made sense for them to go this route. However, with the streamlining of their sound came the complete dumbing-down of the majority of their riffs and lyrics. How James and Lars could create such an effective martial build-up on ‘The Struggle Within,’ only to follow it with incessant one-note “duh-dut, duh-duhduhduhdut, duh-dut, duhduhduhduhdut” riffing and awkward melody-less verses is completely beyond me. The fact that they completely reversed the staunch anti-patriotism of…And Justice For All for brain-dead boot-stomping flag-waving on ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ has got to be one of the most disappointing ideological 180s in the history of rock music. And really, does anyone else have trouble listening to Hetfield’s ponderous ranting in ‘Through the Never’ without shuddering? “Gazing up to the breeze of the heavens/On a quest, meaning, reason/Came to be, how it begun (sic)/All alone in the family of the sun/curiosity teasing everyone/On our own, third stone from the sun” –James Hetfield, cosmologist. That’s an especially effective rhyme of sun with sun…

Anyway, I agree with your aggregate score, but I disagree about the last four songs (okay, half of them: I’ll concede ‘Of Wolf and Man’ is kinda lame and ‘The Struggle Within’ is a contender for their worst song up to this point). For me ‘The God That Failed’ is a pretty good “sequel” to ‘Leper Mesiah,” and “My Friend of Misery” is one of the album’s best tracks, though it is a little overlong.

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Live Shit: Binge And Purge - 1993 Elektra
D
(Great / Very Good)

Best song: Everything

Oh me oh my, I really like this album. As I'm guessing has been the case with many other Metallica fans, I put off hearing this for a long time due to it being part of a larger, very expensive set; in addition to this 3-CD live album, the set also includes 2 DVD's (originally 3 VHS tapes) featuring two more complete Metallica concerts (one from the Black Album tour, one from the ...And Justice tour). Eventually, though, full-time employment found me in a position to be able to blow gobs of money on sets like this (and not hate myself afterwards), and man am I glad I did.

Now, granted, I tend to look upon metal live albums favorably in general, which might cause some to shrug their shoulders a bit at the notion that I give this the same overall grade as Lightning and Puppets. However, there are a lot of things about this set, which captures Metallica at the point in time where they made the leap from Metal Gods to bonafide Rock Stars, and when they were arguably one of the biggest bands in the entire world, that make me want to come back to it again and again, and they're enough to guarantee this a very high grade. The first of these is that, to my ears, there is no difference in the band's intensity between when they're playing material from TBA and from when they're playing in their "classic" style. In the end, faster or slower, it's all just rock music, and the band is in all-out attack mode the whole time.

The second (related to the first) is the way the band just seems so full of glee at the idea of being able to present its back catalogue to a giant audience for the first time. They were now Rock Stars, yes, but this position was still relatively fresh and novel for the band, and the band seems to relish the chance to have huge numbers of people cheering at hearing "Creeping Death." I've read comments by a few people suggesting that the band named the album Metallica in order to try and fool the populace into thinking they were a brand new band and to make a break with its past; it's difficult for me to give this idea much creedence when hearing the band rip through the aforementioned "Creeping Death," or through 18 minutes of "Seek and Destroy" or "For Whom the Bell Tolls" or "Whiplash." This is what the band had waited for its whole professional life, and they do all they can to make the most of the opportunity.

The third is the way the band is so eager to throw in relative rarities and to goof around with the audience. I love the idea that a band as huge as Metallica was in the early 90's would not only include 4 tracks from Kill 'Em All, but also performances of "Am I Evil?," "Last Caress," "So What?" and (as the final encore, no less) "Stone Cold Crazy." I also love how at one point Hammett starts playing "Third Stone from the Sun," how during the lengthy guitar and bass soloing section the band does a minute or so of "Dazed and Confused," and how at another point the band starts into "Smoke on the Water," with Hetfield joking, "I bet you didn't know we wrote that." I love how the band starts playing "Ride the Lightning," and how after they stop Hetfield says, "You don't know this."

Fourth, I love how much Hetfield relishes the chance to be the biggest redneck he can possibly be as the frontman of a mega-popular rock band. All his swearing is kinda pathetic, but it's quite hilarious, and it ends up giving a goofy levity to the whole set. Plus, some of Hetfield's interludes, even when he's not using every version of f**k that he can, are pretty funny; the introduction to the "Justice Medley," where Hetfield states that, "We took all our favorite parts and threw them into one big pile of shit," has to deserve some sort of award for truth in track introductions.

Fifth, it's fun to hear a young, enthusiastic Jason Newsted having so much fun on stage. The treatment of Newsted by the rest of the band during his tenure with them was pretty shameful, and won't be recounted here, but at this point he was still largely in the honeymoon stage with the band, eager to be on stage with his idols. He's all too eager to make his mark by doing whatever's asked of him; playing a bass solo while the rest of the band takes a rest, singing some verses of "Creeping Death," "Seek and Destroy" and "Whiplash" to give James' voice a rest, and just generally being the band's kid brother. Good times for all.

In the end, then, it doesn't matter tremendously to me that the actual performances don't vary a lot from their studio counterparts. They're all done well enough for my liking, and the amount of live energy and other intangibles is through the roof, so I feel totally justified in giving this a very high grade.

By the way, the two DVD's are also extremely enjoyable, and it's very interesting to see the subtle transformations in the band's stage presence between the ...Justice and TBA tours. It's also extremely interesting to me to hear a remark Hetfield makes in introducing the "Justice Medley" on the DVD that really drives home the point to me that the band didn't change approaches to sell out, but rather because they weren't really enjoying themselves as much as they once had in playing this kind of material. "Rhythm guitar solo," indeed.

Send me your thoughts

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Load - 1996 Elektra
6
(Mediocre)

Best song: Until It Sleeps

Let's get something clear right away: my relative dislike of this and Reload is not for the stereotypical reasons. I can easily forgive the band members for getting their hair cut; if anything, it would be sad if a bunch of guys in their mid-30's didn't finally get rid of their long hair. I can forgive the band's switch in style to something resembling a weird cross between metal, classic rock and early 90's grunge; I'll admit that the genericism irritates me a bit, but it's not a death knell if the melodies and riffs are good. I can forgive James for hamming up and overemoting in almost every song on here; it's something I got used to eventually. I can even forgive Kirk for losing almost all invention and individuality in his soloing style; this and the next album show a ridiculous obsession with his wah-wah pedal, and the rest of the time he apes every stereotypical "rock star" cliche, but even that isn't crippling (and besides, it still comes in the context of good interplay, though much less spectacular than in the past).

But what I cannot and will not forgive is the FILLER. Between this and Reload, I'd say that there is an awesome 45-minute album buried within, and a rock solid 60-minute could be made as well. But there is over two-and-a-half hours of material between these two monsters, and far more of it falls into the "mediocre or worse" bin than not. Just think about it, though; these may be single-CD releases, but 15 years earlier they would have each been double LP's (and heck, you could have fit 5 early Beach Boys albums into the running time of these two CD's). Hey, do you think it's just a coincidence that, between the late 60's and the start of the CD age, 95% of all albums fell into the range of 35 to 45 minutes? There's a reason for that, people; it's hard enough to come up with sufficient quality material to fill that time range, and coming up with more was reserved for instances where, justifiably or not, the artist thought they could make a major artistic statement with a double album. Heck, even Metallica themselves basically stuck in that time range on their first three albums; it was only on ...Justice and TBA where the band had started to have (moderately) significant problems with excess. What the band was exactly thinking in releasing 4 LP's-worth of material in a two-year stretch (the kind of thing reserved in the old days for The Clash in '79-'80 or Frank Zappa in any given six-month period), especially when they had five years of rust built up, is something I'm rather blurry on.

Of the fourteen tracks on here, I'd say half are solid keepers. "Ain't My Bitch" is a worthy successor to the rockers on Metallica, with solid intensity and satisfyingly thick guitar sounds to support a decent vocal melody. "2x4" has a neat slightly discordant set of main riffs that make for a decent moderately bluesy rocker, and rounding out what would be side one of four is the mega-hit "Until it Sleeps," which happens to also be my favorite of the album by a good margin. Yes, the melody is slightly reminiscient of "Nothing Else Matters," but the song would be great if for no other reason than that its main feature is heavy surf guitar, and the fact that it has a lot of tension and a good deal of creepiness only helps things. "King Nothing" may be overlong (it's essentially a three-minute pop song stretched into 5:30), but it's got a winner of a bassline, and the "where's your crown King Nothing" parts are as hooky as a college student scheduled for an 8 am lecture, so it can stick around. The big hit "Hero of the Day" is a little dippy, but it's a pleasant enough heavy happy pop diversion, so I don't skip it. "Mama Said" is a fine downbeat acoustic anthem full of tasty steel guitar bits (I can see why metalheads would absolutely despise it, but at the same time I'm pretty sure there are some chord sequences in there that mirror those in "To Live is to Die"), and the closing "The Outlaw Torn" manages to justify its length (nearly ten minutes) with a great feeling of desperation, not to mention the eerily nice quiet guitar bits that pop up in the middle that contribute to the tension of the slow, rumbling riffage that makes up the rest.

So that's seven tracks, and largely thanks to the length of the last one, it's about forty minutes of good material. And guess what, the rest absolutely sucks. Well, ok, I need to issue a caveat there; there aren't many individual moments that jump out that make me go "wow, this is terrible." No, my dislike of the rest is more of a gradual, nagging sense of boredom, a feeling that something interesting should have happened by now but hadn't. The only truly embarrassing moment is that part in "The House That Jack Built" which features the ugliest case of somebody trying to sing along with a guitar solo that I've ever heard, but there aren't any great moments in the song to counter that, and the rest of the songs are in one ear and out the other. The only song that really has potential to my ears is the bluesy rocker "Ronnie," but it doesn't move much beyond a decent riff.

In the end, Load, as a whole, isn't terrible, but its good moments are balanced almost 1-to-1 by mind-numbing boredom. I really get the feeling that the band hoped with a lot of these tracks that just doing things in a different style was enough to make the album interesting, and that they'd be able to get away with any criticisms with the counter of "you just need to let go of the past" or something like that. But man, I may like a lot of classic rock, but that doesn't mean I need to like Grand Funk Railroad, and I may like a lot of prog, but that doesn't mean I need to like Kansas. The weaker songs may be passable as background music, but I don't think that's what the band would have wanted said when they were making these songs.

Send me your thoughts

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

I actually like this one a good deal. Enough to give it at a 7(10) at least. The album does have some generic bits, and at 79 minutes, it's almost certainly too long. Plus, a couple of these tunes suck (I don't like "Bleeding Me" much at all, mostly due to its length, and "Poor Twisted Me" is horrible by any standards). Still, there are some completely awesome moments on this album. "Ain't My Bitch", "2 X 4", "Ronnie", "King Nothing", and "Cure" are all very good, stomping hard rockers, with loads of great riffs and catchy vocals. "Until It Sleeps" is reaaaaallly creepy, and it works. "The Outlaw Torn", like you said, rules. It's my favorite song on here. It's just so DARK! It's great! And speaking of dark, the completely unexpected country on "Mama Said" is fantastic. The slide guitar in the chorus is pretty damn cool. Sure, not all of the songs work quite as well, and you could probably chop some time out of all of them, but this still ends up working its way into my CD player quite a bit. And no, the group didn't "sell out" in the traditional sense. What other band sounded like this in 1996? This is a 70's throwback! How hip is that? And, like I've said before, it makes me twitch when people say they hate the band now because they got a haircut. People make music, not their hair!

Awake600.aol.com

Maybe if the band hadn't decided to release everything they put out since the Black Album over EIGHT SIDES of music (by vinyl standards), they could have released a more concise 45-65 minute album of the best stuff and it would be absolutely fantastic, well worthy of an easy 9. But alas, two double albums with barely enough solid material to fill out one doesn't really qualify. Contrary to popular opinion, I think Load has by far the most filler out of the two. Sure, the first half is quite great, with the gorgeous and crunching all at once "Hero Of The Day", the swaggering "2 X 4", the haunting "Until It Sleeps", the catchy "King Nothing", the desperate "Bleeding Me", the hard-hitting "Ain't My Bitch", and the ominous "The House That Jack Built", but the album really takes a nosedive afterwards in my opinion. "Cure", "Poor Twisted Me", "Ronnie" and "Thorn Within" are pretty much all forgettable and insipid crap, though the other three songs do save the side (especially the ballad "Mama Said" and most of "The Outlaw Torn" - even the generic "Wasting My Hate" has good energy). In all, I'd give the first half a high 8 or low 9, with the second half getting a solid 5 for a total of a low 7(10).

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

This record summarizes, for me, what has been wrong with the music industry for the last ten or fifteen years: NO SONGS!!!! There's a lot of talent running around out there, but nobody has any good songs. Granted, the first 2 tracks are worth the price of the record by themselves, and Until It Sleeps is a great song, but the rest is very underwhelming.

Pedro Andino (pedroandino.msn.com) (07/19/07)

load is a very long record. a long record! did they develop the technology on this motherfucker or what? 79 minutes is super long and I liked it. call me a dumb ass but I like load. you have to understand that the men performed at WOODSTOCK 94'. FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS AH! JAMES HAS HIS EGO UP HIS ASS ON THAT TOUR! IT IS THE SAME LIVE SHIT ENERGY. THIS IS HOW THESE GUYS SHOULD HAVE STAYED!!! then came WOODSTOCK 99' THE WORST TOUR OF THE CENTURY BUT ONE SONG DESTROYED THEM ALL AND THAT IS CREEPING DEATH! THEN THE NAPSTER SITUATION. MORE NAPSTER NAPSTER THAN MASTER MASTER! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA I AM SO CLEVER! THE BAND ISSUED A STATEMENT CLAIMING THE USERS OWN THE SONGS BUT THE BAND DID WANT THIS SO THEY SUE AND THEN CAME A DELICIOUS BACKLASH! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! BURNING CD'S EVERYWHERE!. RIOTS IN THE STREETS. THE HAIRCUTS. THE CLOTHES. THE LONG SONGS. THE RUNNING TIMES AND THEN THE SELLOUT CHANTS. YOU SOLD OUT! YOU SOLD OUT YOU SOLD OUT! AND SO ON!. THE ALBUM MAY HAVE KICK STARTED THE LOUSY MUSIC INDUSTRY AND THEN CAME SAINT ANGER. THEY HAVE JOINED THE LOUDNESS WARS. REMEMBER YOU DUMB SHIT IT IS NOT THE CAPS IT IS THE SOUND. WHENEVER YOU HEAR A GUITAR OR A DRUM IT IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A KICK AND BREATHING ROOM BUT NO THEY COMPRESS THE HELL OUT OF THE RECORD AND MAN DOES IT CLIP LIKE MAD! CLIP CLIP CLIP CLIP CLIP! OUCH! ANYWAY THE LOUDNESS WARS ARE THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC. THAT AND FUCKING REALITY SHIT! THIS RECORD IS NOT LOUD AND THIS AND RELOAD ARE THE LAST RECORDS THAT SOUND GOOD UNTIL 2002. VAPOR TRAILS IS THE VICTIM. HUMAN AFTER ALL IS THE VICTIM. AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE FAULT OF THE RECORD BIZ. IT WAS NASTY. METAL WAS OVER AFTER THIS AND NO NEW OR GOOD BANDS FOLLOW. DRAGON FORCE MAY BE A GOOD BAND BUT I DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE OTHER BANDS THAT FOLLOW I STILL SAY METAL CANNOT WILL NOT EVER DIE THIS WAY AND  I JUST CANNOT COMPREHEND THE LOUDNESS WARS. I HOPE YOU ARE HEARING ME JOHN. MORNING VIEW AND DISCOVERY ARE THE LAST RECORDS THAT SOUND GOOD AND THAT IS IN 2001. I HATE THIS FUCKING DECADE. WHY WHY WHY. THIS RECORD GETS A TEN. I KNOW YOU STUPID METAL HEADS ARE GROANING AND MOST DIME BAG DARRELL ADDICTS ARE GOING TO HUNT ME DOWN BUT DO I GIVE A FUCK NO! BYE NOW JOHN!.

Sheehan, David (11/13/11)

I don’t think I’d rate it as low as you did, but I can certainly understand that nagging sense of boredom that you talked about. There are just a couple of songs that I actually consider bad, but yeah, it’s uninspiring for the most part. The first half is actually pretty good, bar ‘The House that Jack Built’, which is just so overdone with the ridiculously over-emoted vocals and the awful guitar solo (I always thought that was an ugly guitar tone/pedal, not someone singing along). I think I like ‘Ain’t My Bitch’ a little less than you, though it’s passable, even with the already-cliché vocal Hetfieldisms. However, I consider ‘Bleeding Me’ a latter-day Metallica classic, though admittedly the vocals suffer from the same slight cheesiness that plagues 90s-era Metallica. The second half, with a couple of exceptions, is significantly weaker. For starters, I loathe both ‘Cure’ and ‘Wasting My Hate’. I’m not even sure just what it is about ‘Cure’ that bugs me so much, but that line “Everyone seems to need the ccuuuuurrrreeee… precious cure” annoys the daylights out of me. ‘Wasting My Hate’ is just too fake-sounding to take seriously. Blech. Strangely, I don’t really dislike ‘Poor Twisted Me’ though. It seems to catch a lot of flak, but it’s just okay to my ears. ‘Thorn Within’ is just boring, not bad really, but too long and uneventful, and again, the vocals: “So point cheer feeengeeeerzz…” Annoying. ‘Ronnie’ could do without the spoken-word part, but it’s not horrid or anything. The saving graces of the last half of the album are indeed ‘Mama Said’ and ‘The Outlaw Torn’. The former is one that I just cannot dislike: No matter how annoying Hetfield’s vocals threaten to be, I cannot deny the genuine emotion. The latter is slow, paranoid, and contains an incredible (and really noisy) guitar climax that is a great twist on the classic Metallica tension/release formula. I love it.

Overall it’s a 8 or so in my book.

---

Reload - 1997 Elektra
7
(Mediocre / Good)

Best song: Fuel

Believe it or not, I actually like this album more than its predecessor. The actual songwriting isn't that much better (after all, these were recorded in the same sessions), but what sets this album apart is how weird it is. Ostensibly, these are (for the most part) the odder, more "experimental" songs that the group had done in those sessions, and which hadn't been fully mixed by the time Load was ready for release. One thing that comes out of this is that I really don't get how this could possibly be considered a mainstream or "alternative" album - this is not conventional rock music, by any means. If I may make an analogy (analogies are fun!), this can be considered the Metallica version of the Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup (and come to think of it, "Devil's Dance" kinda reminds me of "Dancing With Mr. D"); a weirdly decadent mix of various styles done by a previously "conventional" rock band. Of course, this album is way worse than GHS, with a ton of filler threatening to drown out the best moments, but it still deserves some credit in the grand scheme of things.

The album starts off normally enough, of course. Fuel is a fabulous, powerful riff-rocker, replete with solid vocal harmonies, and its overexposure around the time of release way back when never quelched my love for it. The second song, though, is a weird cross between ultra-mainstream "alternative" rock and the experimentation of the rest of the album. Not that that's a good thing in this case; "The Memory Remains" is close to my least favorite Metallica song of all time, as it's an almost ridiculously repetitive weak, weak attempt at hard rock, complete with a cameo from Marianne Faithful that starts off seeming clever and ends up feeling incredibly stupid and gimmicky. It's followed by a positive number, though, in the aforementioned "Devil's Dance," a mid-tempo stomper with well-produced grumbling, battling guitars and overdone-but-still-enjoyable "menacing" vocals. It's a clear keeper, that's for sure.

"The Unforgiven II," then, is hilariously, offensively bad. It's one thing to ape a previously well-received song for a new number in order to use the good will for that song as a crutch; it's another to prop up its rotting corpse a la Weekend at Bernie's and then rape and desecrate its rotting corpse when you're done with it. There are certain things in rock music that are fundamental offenses against nature, and one of them is not only naming a song "*Already famous song* II" (unless it's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic," of course) but using that full title in the actual lyrics. And that's all I'm going to say about it, else I get angry and blustery while typing.

Aside from a great, great up-tempo 70's-style rocker (with Sabbath-quality riffs) in "Prince Charming," as well as a surprisingly decent seven-minute acoustic ballad in "Low Man's Lyric," the rest of the songs hit neither the highs nor lows of the songs already mentioned. "Slither" stands out slightly both because its main riff is pretty similar to that of "Enter Sandman" and because of its creepy vocal harmonies, "Carpe Diem Baby" has a teeth-gritting, slightly unpleasant (in a good way) set of riffs and some oddly ok vocals, and, uh ... "Where the Wild Things" Are has some pretty ugly (again, in a good way) guitar interplay. None of these are great, but none of them are even remotely bad either. As for the rest of the songs, well, I never feel like I'm listening to a "typical" album when listening to them; I don't really like the other songs, but I like how moderately unusual they are as a whole.

In the end, this is another giant heap of filler smattered with a few good songs, and while this has more low points than Load does, the filler tends to be more interesting on the whole than Load's filler. Again, an hour-long album consisting of the best material from these two behemoths would probably merit a B minimum; as is, the amount of sludge to be slithered through between these two albums makes such an assessment impossible.

PS: If you're interested, my ideal 1-hour Load Sessions album would look like this:

"Ain't My Bitch"
"Until it Sleeps"
"Devil's Dance"
"2x4"
"Low Man's Lyric"
"Fuel"
"King Nothing"
"Prince Charming"
"Mama Said"
"The Outlaw Torn"

Send me your thoughts

Awake600.aol.com

Man, I'm at least glad you appreciate this album more than most people do. Personally, I've loved it ever since first listen the day after it came out, but that's just me. I definitely agree about the strangeness aspect of it - stuff like "Where The Wild Things Are", "Fixxxer" and "Slither" have this weird creepy atmosphere about them unique in their style and in what was going on at the time (I don't even mind the "Enter Sandman" ripoff in the last one), and "Low Man's Lyric" is an actual emotional outpouring of a hurdy-gurdy ballad. From Metallica! And the opening trio of songs ("Fuel", Memory Remains" and "Devil's Dance") are friggin' awesome. Actually, you know what... there are only TWO tracks here out of thirteen I'd consider really crappy filler, and those are "Better Than You" (which perversely enough won them a Grammy) and "Bad Seed", but hey, that's less than ten minutes of the album. And the much maligned "Unforgiven II" may be somewhat of a cheap sequel, but it does put an interesting perspective on the original, and could be a lot worse. But the rest of them, while admittedly not up to earlier standards, are still fine enough. A 9(12) on this scale - that's right. I'm determined to stick up for this album and Caress Of Steel for all eternity in the Underrated Albums Hall Of Fame, even if no one else but me follows that opinion.

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

I never liked this album much, so I listened to it the other day, as I'd read of a lot of people liking this album more than Load and saying that it grows on you. I thought I might like it more. I didn't. I liked it less. There are a few pretty good tunes here ("Fuel" and "The Memory Remains" have cool riffs; "Where The Wild Things Are" is pretty creepy), and one SPECTACULAR tune. Yep, "Low Man's Lyric" is one of my favorite Metallica tunes, and the best song off the Load records by far. It's gorgeous, which is an epithet you don't see applied to Metallica very often. Most of the rest ranges from mediocre to terrible, though. "Devil's Dance", "Slither", "Better Than You", "Attitude", and a bunch of others are built on very similar riffs, and not a very interesting one, either. "The Unforgiven II" is just laughable. You know you're running out of ideas when you write an explicit sequal to an earlier song (and as everyone knows, sequals are never as good as the o! riginals). "Carpe Diem Baby" is hilariously stupid. I crack up hearing James scream "Say Carpe Diem, Bay-beeeeeee". The song still sucks, though. Even the closing "Fixxxer" (complete with stupid title), tha album's attempt at an "epic", leaves me totally cold. The highlights are good enough, but there's WAY too much dreck. I'd give this a 4(7). If you took the best songs off this and Load, I'd give it something like a 9(12), but they decided that ALL 27 SONGS they recorded were good enough for release, which is a shame, since only about half of them were.

Blppthome.aol.com

I'd just like to say to Phil---i know of one sequel that i think is far superior to the original---the Police's Syncronicity II. But agreed, most sequels suck, and unfortunately for Metallica, they dont buck the trend with the slowish, boring, and generic followup to Unforgiven (which is a bit overrated in itself if you ask me).

Gene Kodadek (g_kodadek.hotmail.com)

This is even worse than Load. Yeah, there's some cool riffs here and there, but they never turn into interesting songs, and as many times as I've listened to it I cannot really tell you much about it (and I have a damn near photographic memory for melody). And I disagree with you regarding Unforgiven II; I think it's marvelous. It's the only worthwhile track on the album. 

Pedro Andino (pedroandino.msn.com) (09/29/07)

you know what reminds me of this album? ALICE IN CHAINS!, smashing pumpkins and pearl jam. jimmy cannot sing worth shit but I still liked the drumming by mister sellout. fuel is turned into NASCAR! the memory remains is like a gothic song! say did you know the 50 cent mister west debacle? they fucking suck! I still say classic rock vets can do better. BRITNEY SUCKS COCK! I gave this a 9 for the songs but the filler is a bit too much.

---

Garage Inc. - 1998 Elektra
8
(Good / Mediocre)

Best song: Am I Evil?

Two hours of cover tunes. Honestly, I don't see how anybody can use this album has evidence of Metallica "selling out" - if anything, it shows that Metallica really doesn't give a damn what their fans think of them. Because while this album is certainly good, the fact that there are 27 COVER TUNES ON HERE makes it a real pain in the butt to sit through.

The material is divided into two parts. Disc two comes first chronologically, and most Metallica fans will be happy as hell to be able to hear it (unless, of course, they already own bootlegs of it). If you don't know already, it's an EP from the mid-80's of six covers, plus a few additional bonuses. The best, for me and a lot of others, is their cover of a Diamond Head number entitled "Am I Evil?," which would have been a massive highlight on Kill 'Em All, and which has awesome riffage and one of the funniest opening lines ever. But "Stone Cold Crazy" (Queen), the horribly-obscene-but-still-funny "So What?," and a couple of the others are good, good numbers. At the very least, they show that the young Metallica's awesomeness extended past thrash and back to their primary rock'n'roll roots.

The first disc, then, is what puts a lot of people off. I just want to make something clear right now, though, to anybody who is dumb enough not to know this already; THIN LIZZY, BLUE OYSTER CULT, BLACK SABBATH AND LYNYRD SKYNYRD ARE NOT ALTERNATIVE BANDS. That being said, not all of thse covers are that entertaining; sometimes it's because of the songs themselves, but sometimes it's because the older, slightly bloated Metallica doesn't have quite the transcendent tightness that the younger Metallica did. Hence, in a case like their cover of "Sabbra Cadabra," one of my favorite underrated Black Sabbath numbers (plus, the mid-section of the cover has the band breaking into "National Acrobat," another one of my favorite underrated BS numbers), the results just aren't as enjoyable as I would theoretically hope they'd be. But they're still ok, even when they ostensibly commit a crime against good taste by covering a Bob Seger number ("Turn the Page," which actually sounds kinda nice here). Plus, I like their cover of the Thin Lizzy number "Whiskey in the Jar" (-ah) a lot more than I know most people do. 9 minutes of "Tuesday's Gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd might have been a bit much, though ...

(Also, the second side disc ends with what's essentially an extension of the first; a bunch of Motorhead covers, done while the band was putting together Choad and Rechoad. They're fun!)

I hope I've made myself somewhat clear; I'm not crazy about this album. Heck, I'm not really familiar with or crazy about most of the bands Metallica paid tribute to on this album. But Metallica at least made these songs seem a bit fresh to me. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that it's so unbelievably long (at the least, it was a smart idea to put the better half second to give the listener a chance of suriving all of this), I might even give it a 9 or an A.

Send me your thoughts

Awake600.aol.com

It's weird that you have this one and not S&M, since I would think Metallica performing most of their classics live in symphonic format would be a lot more appealing to you than 27 cover tunes of their influences, but ah well... a 7(10) definitely seems about right for this album. There are several performances on here that are awesome, especially "Am I Evil" (which is a long standing staple of live shows and it's one of their best performances in their whole career, so it might as well be considered a Metallica classic), "Stone Cold Crazy", "Astronomy", "Sabra Cadabra", "So What", "Last Caress/Green Hell", and "It's Electric". Sure, there's tons of filler, perhaps more than either Load album (especially stuff like "Loverman" and virtually the entire Motorhead chunk at the end), but most of the renditions are at least good. And it's SO refreshing to have someone else point out what I've been trying to explain to these 'Metallica sold out' idiots - how in the hell is this stuff alternative??? As far as I'm concerned, this must show a virtual ignorance that hardcore fans must have of classic rock then. I guess this album is another way of making up for the 5 year gap between the Black Album and Load in a series of extremely long releases, especially since their next album (without Jason Newsted, who quit, in case you haven't heard) probably won't even come out until later this year or more likely next.

Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie.hotmail.com)

I definately agree with you that this album is in no way alternative. How "alternative" or "sell-out-ish" is it to release a friggin' double disc of nothing but COVERS? Seems pretty damned un-commercial to me. Still, this IS a covers album, and a really long one at that, so I find it hard to really get into it for the most part. It IS a big improvement on Reload, and the second disc is a nice way to get those rare tracks to the fans, but who needs all these covers? Some of them totally rule - From the first disc, the Mercyful Fate medley kicks ass and lots of it (who says Metallica can't play thrash anymore?), "Astronomy" beats the hell out of Blue Oyster Cult's already good version, and "Whiskey In The Jar" is pretty groovy and unusual to hear from Metallica. From the second disc, the first 7 tracks all kick all kinds of ass, especially "Am I Evil?" and "Last Caress/Green Hell" (though "Crash Course In Brain Surgery" is certainly cool), and "So What?" is at least amusingly funny. A lot of the rest has no real reason to exist. None of it's really BAD (except "Tuesday's Gone" - I HATE Lynyrd Skynyrd!!!), but I never need to listen to them ever again. Especially those damn Motorhead covers - who the hell actually listens to those? I'd give it a lowish 6(9). I'm looking forward to the next album when it comes out (Newstead free, unfortunately), even though I hate that damn "I Disappear" song from the Mission Impossible II soundtrack. Who knows? They might "sell out" even more by doing a Frank Zappa-ish avant noise collage! How much more "alternative" can you get?

---

S&M - 1999 Elektra
9
(Good)

Best song: The Call Of Ktulu

And so Metallica continues its amazing strategy of 'selling out' by making albums that it seems almost everybody hates. Some fans like this quite a bit, but I've found looking around that a lot of metalheads consider this the band's artistic nadir, kinda like lots of people consider the Dylan live album Live at Budokan the bottom of Bob's career. Fortunately, I'm not a metalhead, I'm a musichead, and I think this live album is just fine. I mean, of all the various thrash-metal bands, Metallica is the one whose compositions (at least, early on) would be best suited for orchestral augmentation, and it shouldn't be surprising that the album is mostly fairly interesting.

That said, there are nevertheless plenty of complaints that one could make about this venture. It's unfortunate that Metallica's first cheaply available live album (yeah, Binge and Purge had come out many years before, but that's part of a big mega-expensive set) had to come at this point in their career, because there's a lot of mediocre middle-period material to be found here. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that I enjoy "Wolf and Man" quite a bit more here than I do on TBA (I think I'm the only one, though), and great tracks like "Fuel," "Until it Sleeps" (which rock like mad despite the orchestra not helping that much) and "The Outlaw Torn" (where the orchestra is a perfect addition, elevating the track to near-classic status) can't help but be enjoyable here, yes. But "The Memory Remains" (one of the worst Metallica songs ever, I've easily concluded) is the same stupid crap as before, and the orchestrations sound completely inappropriate for "Devil's Dance" and "Bleedin' Me," helping the album drag badly for an alarming period of time. The first three TBA tracks on disc two also don't move me that much - "Nothing Else Matters" was orchestrated before (and doesn't sound more powerful here), and "Sad but True" and "Wherever I May Roam" seem annoyingly sluggish here.

Everything else is magnificent, though (well, ok, the two new compositions aren't 'magnificent,' but they're definitely alright). Opening with "The Call of Ktulu" was a brilliant move, in my opinion - no other track in the Metallica catalogue has a more symphonic feel, with so much going on in the texture and in the atmosphere and aura of the piece, and as such the orchestra sounds like it's been there all along, inserting all sorts of intricate details that make what was already there seem that much more powerful. From there, we proceed through the rest of the show, where the aforementioned mediocrities are surrounded and buoyed up by great versions of the band's classics ("Master of Puppets," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "One," et al). James' voice sounds different from the studio versions, not always for the better, but not really for the worse either, with a lot of leaden force put into his efforts at almost all times. The instrumental textures may not be exactly as jaw-dropping as they were in the original versions, but they still sound competent, at least to me who isn't a scholar of good and bad metal instrumental sounds. And yes, somebody needs to remind Kirk that there's more pedals than just the wah-wah, but I can ignore that.

So yeah, it's a decent enough live album. I almost gave it an A, until I realized that I dislike too many individual performances on here to merit that, but I still like it quite a bit nonetheless. And besides, there's nothing like the addition of an orchestra to remind me again that the opening to Battery has to be one of the greatest openings ever written.

Send me your thoughts

"Langas de Los Langas" (putolangas.gmail.com) (04/13/11)

Well, good news, you're not alone: I also love "Of Wolf and Man" with the addition of the orchestra (although, to be fair, I love that track in any version). It's James and Lars's performances that make me not enjoying it fully in this disc.

I also enjoy this album quite a lot, and I would also definitely remove "Bleeding Me" and "Devil's Dance" from the setlist (no "The Memory Remains", though; I happen to be the one Metallica fan that likes it). Nevertheless, the best track of this album to me is not "The Call of Ktulu" (which is great), but "For Whom The Bell Tolls". It's almost as if it had been written for this arrangement. I absolute ADORE that track in this album.

Apart from that, I think "No leaf clover" is a great addition to their repertoire (and they regularly perform it live; it doesn't suffer too much from the removal of the orchestra). A classic track.

---

St. Anger - 2003 Elektra
8
(Good / Mediocre)

Best song: Frantic

It's official: I no longer have good taste. Everything I'd heard about this album, both about its creation and about the song quality, set off warning bells in my head that this would suck like mad. You see, after letting Newsted leave (replaced by some guy named Rob Trujillo), word came out that Metallica wanted to get back to its roots and be a thrash band with long songs again. Now, given that they hadn't made an epic thrash metal album since '88, and that they were relatively young then and old now, I couldn't help but brace myself for a disaster. Especially since the band was praising nu-metal bands like Limp Bizkit as great music (suggesting that they'd try to sound like them if given the chance). Then, when I learned that the album would be given the incredibly stupid name of St. Anger, I couldn't help but fear even more. And finally, when I started hearing that the production was the worst on any metal album ever, and that Kirk didn't play any solos on the album, and that the lyrics sucked, well, I was ready to hate this.

So imagine my shock when, get this, I enjoyed this album on first listen. At first, I just suspected that it was an effect of overly-lowered expectations, and that subsequent listens would temper things a bit. And yeah, I enjoyed this a bit less afterwards (it's only an 8, after all), but I found that I couldn't get myself to dislike this album, no matter how loudly all the various forces could bellow about how blindingly obvious the flaws are. The production isn't great, yes - the bass is virtually inaudible, and one of the drums on Lars' kit sounds like he's banging on a steel water pipe (and he uses that drum a LOT on the album). Apparently, the band wanted minimal overdubs and touchups, to preserve the intensity of live-in-studio performance or whatever, but I do have to admit that they went a bit far in their resistance to any cleaning. On the other hand, though, I actually don't hate Lars' drum sound - it's horrid on a technical level, I suppose, but it's so danged novel that I end up kinda liking it, believe it or not.

What matters most, though, isn't the sound, but the songs (well, 'tracks' - these are more of metal grooves than of 'written songs'). Three important things stand out for me on many of these tracks:

1. The intensity is fierce.

2. The riffs often RULE.

3. James doesn't make a total ass out of himself.

You see, what I feared the most going into this album would be that, in trying to reconnect with their thrash past, the band would also make the mistake of trying to pretend to be teenagers (ie turning into a nu-metal band), which is a problem given that they were all around 40 at the time. But while the band (especially James) shows rage that hasn't existed on a Metallica album since Justice, it would be downright wrong to classify this as adolescent rage. No, this is the rage of an old, very pissed-off man, bitter at his struggle with alcoholism, bitter at his own weaknesses, bitter at seeing himself as an ass despite all of his success. James sounds like a man possessed on this album, like a man that believes that, if he roars deeply enough and makes his riffage loud and discordant and piercing enough, he can somehow make scare away all of his demons and be left alone. The rest of the band feeds off of this energy quite well, with Kirk sticking to riffage intertwining with James' instead of detracting from the rage with his generic solos, and while the rhythm section doesn't do that well technically, they definitely add to the roaring intensity throughout.

Of course, energy and intensity can only get you so far - a lot of the songs are a bit too primitive in construction for my tastes, and some parts are quite embarrassing (I do appreciate how it works as a sick album-ending 'breakthrough,' but that still doesn't mean that hearing James bellow "KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL....!!!!" is something that I won't squirm at). But it can get you a good distance, especially when the riffs are good. The opening "Frantic" has some of the fiercest riffage heard on a Metallica album in forever, and hearing James scream, "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle!" and "Frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tock ..." has to be one of the rawest (in a good way), most painfully (again, in a good way) cathartic passages found in the band's whole catalogue. The title track seemingly gets chided by quite a few people, mainly because of the lyrics ("I'm madly in anger with you!"), but given that it seems to be representative of James' alcohol struggle (ie this is his version of an 'albatross' around his neck), and how he's tried to cope with it, it can't help but move me plenty.

As for other highlights, a big one for me is "Dirty Window." Aside from a KILLER riff, with intensity to match, it has one of the most menacing vocal deliveries of James' life, what with the, "...and I slam my gavel DOWN!" and "projector, protector, rejector infector" parts. Plus, that quiet part where he's singing, "I'm judge and I'm jury and I'm executioner too" works as a nice counter to the heavy parts, and helps make it into quite the nice track. The followup, "Invisible Kid," might seem a bit dumb at first, but then I realized that the rhythmic groove of the guitars and vocal melody are actually fairly clever in their simplicity - besides, I can't get "Invisible kid, suspicious of your touch, don't want no crutch, but it's all too much" out of my head, and what's more, I find that I actually like it being in my head. Truth be told, for what seems to be at first a throwaway, it has quite a few interesting parts, whether or not they seem just glued together or actually part of something resembling inspiration.

As for the other seven songs, some are better, some are worse. Truth be told, they all sound kinda alike, and honestly I can only remember a bit of each specific song at the present time. HOWEVER, I can say that except for the very end of the album (and even then, I like the first half of "All Within my Hands," the track that closes things), I'm not disappointed in this at all. It's not what fans will be looking for, but it demonstrates the band's "to hell with our fans, we need to do this this way" attitude in full force, and I can't help but respect (and often enjoy) that.

That album cover really blows, though.

Send me your thoughts

Adam Bowling (abowling1984.hotmail.com) (9/30/03)

This is just some feedback I wrote up for Metallica's latest disc St. Anger, thanks a bunch man and keep up the good work. Here you go:

I know this record has the Metallica faithful divided, much like most everything else they've done since 1989, but I must agree with your assessment of this album as I find it quite an enjoyable listen. On a quick sidenote to John, you should check out some of Rob Trujillo's work with Suicidal Tendencies and the cult favorite Infectious Grooves, even though he was brought on after St. Anger was written, I can't wait to see what he can bring to the band in the future. He's a phenomenal player and absolutely tears it up on stage.

As for the album itself, wow... what a changeup. For those dissatisfied with Metallica's so-called alternative leanings in the '90's, you can't really make that argument anymore as St. Anger is just a balls out metal record, regardless of how good or bad you may regard it. From a distance, it appears Metallica has totally lost it. James' voice cracks and breaks throughout, Lars' snare drum is incredibly too loose and has a loud annoying ring, and Kirk mainly stays in the background supporting the rhythm, and nothing resembling a traditional guitar solo can be found here. The production is very raw, and not exactly in a good way either, as the drums and vocals are pushed to the front of the mix, and the bass very low -- almost inaudible at times. Finally, the lyrics take a dive on this record as well, as all the band members contributed for the first time, as opposed to just Hetfield.

Surprisingly enough, through all of these faults, the album is still a very enjoyable listen... especially when you consider how it was made. It's basically a Metallica jam session, as most of these songs were created on the spot in the studio. The lyrics came purposely in a stream of consciousness mode, written by all the band members and then sung by Hetfield, all within the matter of a few minutes. At the end of the day, what you've got is perhaps the most honest effort ever put forth by this band, an incredibly raw, heavy metal record that just blares through your speakers for seventy-five minutes with no relent, full of anger and rage.

Hetfield's raw, crackily growl is a welcome change from his crooning days in the '90's. He gives some of the best vocal performances of his life on some of these tracks, most notably "Frantic" and "Dirty Window." The quality of the riffs is superb, especially when taken out of the song and put in an individual context. They stand up quite well to any of Metallica's past work. Although Ulrich's snare is quite annoying, it does actually add another element to this record, especially to tracks like "Some Kind Of Monster" and "All Within My Hands," the album's monster of a closer.

However, perhaps the best track on the record is "The Unnamed Feeling," where Hetfield just pours out all of his bottled up emotional feelings for over seven minutes. It's the most well written song on the album, with a superb breakdown for the chorus and a sick guitar tone from Hammett. Lyrically, it's one of the few that's really quite interesting as well, especially since James vocally drives this song home.

All in all, a good effort from the band, especially at this point in their career. It's great to see that even after twenty years, these guys are still exploring new musical territories, and writing whatever music they want regardless of what anyone else thinks of it. Very respectable.

Aprentice (nikus80.hotmail.com) (12/15/03)

To me, this is much more of a sell out than any of the other records. Sorry to say it, but it sounds like they were trying to jump on the bandwagon of Nu Metal.
I don't actually own this record, I've heard Frantic (hailed as the best song in the album) and other song which I don't remember its name. Forget it, I am not going to own it. I really dislike it. I liked Load, although I admit it has plenty of filler (I recall Ronnie and Poor Twisted Me). I haven't heard Reload in its entirety, but I liked most songs (yeah, even The Memory Remains and The Unforgiven II, which I adore). Perhaps I'm just being harsh on it just because it's Metallica, I even liked parts of Frantic (the "keep on searching.." part, not the "FRAN TIC TIC TIC TIC" part). But this isn't for me. Besides, they cancelled the argentinian tour.

Pedro Andino (pedroandino.msn.com) (06/23/07)

SORRY BUT THIS FUCKING SUCKS!! GOD DO YOU PEOPLE RECALL THE LOUDNESS WARS? MAYBE IT WAS THE CAPS BUT THE LOUDNESS WARS ARE KILLING THE BIZ!

Langas de los Langas (putolangas.hotmail.com) (10/05/08)

I hadn't replied to your critic of "St. Anger" because a couple of years ago (after my third listen) I wisefully decided to pretend this... thing... never existed; but, now that Metallica have redeemed themselves with a TRUE comeback to their roots, I feel able to say: yes, "St. Anger" existed. And it SUCKED. I think it's the worst album ever. Not only by Metallica.

If you give "Death Magnetic" a lower rating than this, God will kill a kitten.

Joel M. (10/05/08)

Great review of St. Anger.  I am with you.  I just don't get the fury people pile on this album and, to tell the truth, I like a lot of it more than older Metallica.

I was never a big Metallica fan (familiar with all of their stuff, intimate with none of it) when I saw "Some Kind of Monster."  I loved that movie, both in laughing at the guys, but also at their surrounding lackeys and at times genuinely feeling for their dilemma.  (Which I define as continued relevance in the face of age and family.)  I bought St. Anger then, and was blown away by the "water pipe" drum, James's raw vocals and, most importantly, the non-clichéd structure of the songs.

While they pretty much invented the pop/thrash/metal genre (or at least popularized it) after a while I got tired of songs that started off slow, built predictably and climax with rat-a-tat drums while expressing adolescent rage.  I am just not 13 anymore.  The songs on St. Anger blow open that predictable pattern.  It is almost as if they grouped seven riffs and randomly ordered them again and again until they were each used exactly 10 times in one song, though in no discernable order.  If there is a predictable progression to "Frantic" I haven't pinpointed it yet.  As such the songs often started as intense as they were going to get, a nice change from a routine and staid build-up.  I almost think of Metallica's earlier albums as 'romantic' with their adherence to an established structure and this one as 'modern,' even approaching avant-garde.

And you are right about the lyrics.  I for one have a hard time hearing "Obey your Master!" without giggling.  It is just weak malevolence, in my opinion (though a great song).  The lyrics on Anger are actually interesting.  As you say, a pissed off old man with problems.  That helps tone down the (pretend) malevolence to impotent internal anger.  A nice change from the (tiresome) warlord stance of the prophet that I think they were going for in their earlier songs.  And they are just as much about phonetics and puns as 'meaning.'  FRANTIC-TIC-TIC-TIC-TIC-TOC.  Clever!  I mean, its not Bob Dylan, but if you aren't Bob Dylan, then play word games rather than writing embarrassing poetry.  "I'm madly in anger with you!"  Again, not brilliant.  But simply a word game about opposites.  Same with "My lifestyle influences my deathstyle."  Fine.  Just fine, and I am impressed that they did so well.

But what is up with claims of sell-out?  They just make no sense to me.  This album is far far less accessible than anything since the first album.  Avant-garde, if you ask me.  The guitar is so compressed that at times the melody is completely stripped out and seems like bursts of percussion ("Dirty Windows").  The percussion itself sounds like Einstruzende Neubaten.  Even for the songs that have an accessible melody somewhere within one can hardly predict when it will come back.  For example, the "keep on searching" part of Frantic (which, admittedly, sounds a little like Nu-Metal) repeats at odd measures.  Surrounded by such ferocity it almost sounds teasing.

Maybe if I were diehard before this album, I would hate this.  But as a general music fan, these guys made an intentionally difficult album that rewards repeated listening.  I am a big believer of "to each his own."  But, man, I simply don't understand fans hating this album and calling it a sell-out.  It baffles me.  Like if someone called "Selling England by the Pound" a thrash album.  I guess they are entitled to their own opinions, but I would scratch my head and furrow my brow.  "Master of Puppets" is easy-listening compared to this.  (Though, to be honest, I agree that "Anger" is a bit samey and, like most of their recent albums, toooooo long.  So it is not the tight compact bullet as "Master."  No songs I hate, but a bit of a bear to sit through.  If it were a tidy 40 minutes like "Master" then it would certainly be my favorite album by them.

Looking forward to hearing their next album.  Great reviews!  Am enjoying your new burst of Zappa reviews and check back often for updates.

David Sheehan (davidasheehan.gmail.com) (07/13/11)

I used to advocate for this album more than I do now. I basically agree with your stance, but I find the horrific length and repetition to be practically unbearable. At least, I can kind of understand why so many people hate this album. However, I found an edited, EQ-ed version only that I would strongly recommend to anyone who even kinda likes this album. It is amazing how much more tolerable it is now. Instead of the original's 75 minutes, it is now 58 minutes, which is certainly the maximum length it needs to be, and the overall sound is given more low-end so the sewage pipe drumming isn't quite as headache-inducing. It kinda has more of a Helmet-type sound now, which is okay by me. I'd say the released version, while terribly underrated by most, is probably a 5(8) or so on your scale, while the "remaster" is probably a 7(10). I think you'd enjoy it, John.

---

Death Magnetic - 2008 Warner Bros.
A
(Very Good / Good)

Best song: The Judas Kiss or Suicide And Redemption

The first decade of the 21st century was a rough one for Metallica, to say the least. First came the Napster debacle, with the band becoming public enemy number one in the music industry. Then came Jason's acrimonious split from the rest of the band. Then came all the stuff that happened during the recording of St. Anger, captured in all of its gory detail in the documentary Some Kind of Monster (a fine way to spend a couple of hours, by the way). And then, of course, was the general reaction of all but a small percentage of the band's fans to St. Anger; that it was one of the worst albums ever made by a major heavy metal band. By 2004 or so, the only things keeping the band from becoming an irredeemable joke in the eyes of most of the hard rock/heavy metal world were (a) a strong back catalogue (only through 1991 at absolute latest, of course) and (b) a great live show (mainly featuring, naturally, material recorded through 1991). It pretty much seemed like the band, as well as the majority of fans, was pretty much eager to pretend that its entire history past 1991 never happened. Consequently, it became pretty clear by this point that the only way the world was going to take a new Metallica album seriously was if the band followed the longtime wishes of a large portion of its fanbase to return to its classic sound (these wishes had been made known loudly for years, of course, but the band could afford to ignore them up to this point). Thus came Death Magnetic.

I have mixed emotions about the notion of Metallica returning so closely to its former sound on this album. The band's stated goal while recording the album was, essentially, to create the missing link between Justice and Metallica, and they certainly accomplish that task well. Now, I definitely agree with the idea that Metallica needed a significant change from the sound of St. Anger, and I say that as somebody who enjoys the album far more than other people. Whereas a lot of people seemed to assume that St. Anger reflected a significant change (for the worse) in general music philosophy for the band, I always felt that St. Anger was clearly a one-off kind of affair. More than anything, it was a fascinating look into the psyche of a middle-aged band falling apart at the seams, and it worked for me despite its many weaknessess largely because there's really nothing else like it (maybe others are similar in sound, but vibe is something else) out there. Well, and because I think a lot of the riffs are interesting, but that's another issue. Attempting to repeat that kind of sound, especially with the lack of guitar solos, wouldn't have worked out well at all.

Still, I find it a little disappointing that the band reached a point where it was so terrified of trying something new and failing that it decided to cling so tightly to a formula it hadn't used in a studio album in over 20 years. Aside from the fact that the album almost completely pretends the mid-90's and beyond never happened (apart from some slightly bluesy lines here and there), there's also the matter of the incredible level of blatant self-plagiarism, both on the general level and in specific details. The album apes the structure and form of Justice so closely in places that it even manages to resurrect that album's two greatest flaws: the hysterical undermixing of the bass guitar, and the way some of the songs feel overly stretched out and like they're a bunch of riffs cut-and-pasted together (with this problem coming through strongest in, naturally, the second track). Of course, there's a lot of aping of Lightning and Puppets as well (naturally, since Justice largely aped those albums to begin with), and some strong nods to Metallica in places too. Some fans will be thrilled to hear variations of the same old familiar ideas, but this is definitely an inferior companion to all of those great albums of yore.

Fortunately, the album has a lot of strengths to compensate for these flaws. It may be somewhat to the band's detriment that they returned so forcefully to the formula of yore, but at the same time it's really impressive that they managed it so well. The album's biggest coup is the complete rebirth of Kirk Hammett, whose soloing is more diverse and more inspired than it's been in years. There's still heavy use of the wah-wah pedal, of course, but it's mixed in well with other tones, and thus it has stronger impact in the moments when it's brought out. Hence, the band's greatest strength, its marvelous guitar interplay, shines just as well here as it ever did. I should also give credit to James' lyrics; one of the reasons I feared the band's return to thrash was that I thought that the lyrics would betray the band's rust more than any other feature, bordering on self-parody, but there aren't many moments that sound obviously awful, and that pleases me. The jury's still out for me on how I feel about James' singing on this album, though; he's got a lot of power here, as usual, and he hits the notes fine, but his usual over-emoting/hamming starts to grate on me a bit. Only a little, though.

And, of course, the songs are mostly just fine. Of the ten tracks here, only two seem obviously second rate to me. "Cyanide" has an interesting enough basic pattern to make for a good three minute track, but it gets repeated incessantly until the song becomes an almost seven minute bore. Then, of course, there's the one track that veers much closer to Metallica than to Justice: "The Unforgiven III." It's much better than "The Unforgiven II," but it's nowhere near as good as the first version, and the lengthy piano, string and horn introduction makes it feel like an overblown Guns and Roses ballad than a classic Metallica song. Plus, it doesn't really do anything well that the original version didn't do better, aside from a rather rousing build into a nice solo in the sixth minute.

The rest is quite nice, though. The opener, "This Was Just Your Life" sounds a bit too close to "Blackened" in a couple of spots for my taste (some of the vocal lines sound like they're lifted straight from that song), but it does a marvelous job of showing right away that the band had rediscovered that groove they'd left behind so long ago. The various riffs are magnificent, the vocal parts are genuinely memorable, and there's a solid solo right on schedule. "The End of the Line" reminds me a lot of the title track to Justice in some ways, but the main riff is a lot bluesier than anything from that album, and once again the other parts are done with flair. Were I in charge, I'd have shut down the song after the energetic, pounding climax with a couple of minutes to go, rather than letting the song go through a quiet bridge before returning to the main riff, but that's a relatively minor quibble.

"Broken, Beat and Scarred" is a solid mid-tempo stomper, driven by a tight groove and some nice work in the backing vocals. And, of course, there's a nice mid-song solo. The next track, then, falls squarely into the mold of "Fade to Black." I don't just mean in general similarities: I mean that the opening of "The Day That Never Comes" sounds almost EXACTLY like the opening of "Fade to Black," just with louder production, and the general flow of the song is basically a clone of that track. The track would be almost insulting, were it not for the fact that the guitar interplay in the thrashy climax is TOTALLY AWESOME. It's not quite on the perfection level of the corresponding section of "One," but it's close: there are ideas here that I've never come close to hearing from the band previously, even if I certainly recognize the general vocabulary of what they're doing. The only other track in my collection where there's quite this level of disparity between how I feel about the main song portion of a track and the extended instrumental coda would be "Every Day," from the Steve Hackett solo album Spectral Mornings. Overall, the song turns out pretty awesome.

The next track, "All Nightmare Long," starts off with another bluesy intro riff, before turning into a weird mix of the band's history. The delivery of the first vocal line is definitely reminiscient of the delivery of the first vocal line in "Wherever I May Roam," and the chord sequence in the chorus seems awfully Load-ish (the good parts, not the bad parts) to me, but the main attraction of the song is definitely the hardcore up-tempo instrumental parts (kinda reminding me of "Disposable Heroes"). It definitely sounds to me like what I'd have expected the band to sound like in the 90's had it explicitly stayed more in a thrash mode. Two tracks later, after "Cyanide" and "Unforgiven III," comes one of my two favorite tracks of the album, "The Judas Kiss." It has some of the most interesting tempo and meter changes on the album, but when it settles into a solid groove, it does that aspect as well as anything else on the album. Plus, it has some of Kirk's most varied and most interesting soloing on the album, which says quite a bit for this album. Two tracks after that comes the finale, "My Apocalypse." It won't make anybody forget "Damage Inc." or "Dyers Eve," but it's still a decent enough stab at tapping into the "angry speedy finale" part of the classic formula. James doesn't sound anywhere near as menacing as he's clearly trying to, but the riffs are ok, and that helps make the album leave a good taste in my mouth.

In a nice gesture, completing the throwback to the 80's format, the second to last track of the album is a ten-minute instrumental, "Suicide and Redemption," and I like it enough to name it as my other favorite. No, it will never surpass the three great instrumentals the band did in the 80's, as this seems a lot more like "combine a bunch of leftover riffs" than "write like we would any other track," but it's a great and varied bunch of leftover riffs, and that makes me happy. Plus, one of the sections features Kirk playing one of the loveliest lines he's played in forever, and other parts actually let the basslines shine through, a rare occurrence on this album indeed. Kudos must be given to the band for not only trying but actually succeeding in making an instrumental that (ideally) should become as much of a live staple as any of the other instrumentals.

Overall, I'd have to say that the aspects which make this album quite enjoyable are also largely the same aspects that prevent me from having any chance of really loving it. Aside from the near constant sense of "yup, I've heard this before, even if it's still kinda awesome," there's also the overly loud production, which makes the album jump out very easily but which also limits the presence of any serious contrast (a shame, because Metallica did contrast awfully well back in their hey-day). Good songs must be given their due in the end, though, and this album definitely delivers. A shorter version of the album, whether through edits to individual songs or through lopping off the two tracks I'm not really fond of, would probably squeeze a B out of me, but what's here is good enough to get nearly the same grade. I definitely recommend it for longtime fans, and if this doesn't satisfy them, I don't know what could.

Send me your thoughts

Langas de los Langas (putolangas.hotmail.com) (12/13/08)

While I agree with you that it's a little sad that Metallica has to go back into its roots so deeply that this album is formulaic and basically a re-write of ...and Justice for All, I think that, after 17 years of doing whatever thay wanted and taking risky chances (which, I think, is a good thing for a band to do) but getting results that range from tolerable (Load, Reload) to utter garbage (Guess what I'm talking about? Yes, of course it's *beep* St. Anger), it's OK that they give the fans what they want. This record could be seen as the biggest 'sell-out' in their entire catalogue, but I look at it in a more innocent way, like the product of a band that has reached a point when they say "OK, enough trying new things; let's do what we are the best at". And while Metallica is not the best hard rock band around, they ARE the best thrash metal band ever. And they still kick ass at that, as evidenced in this album.

It's not perfect, but I mostly agree with your score (I would have lowered both scores a grade, only because I find Metallica superior to this; then again, I would probably have given Metallica a 9(12)).

What I don't agree with (apart that the fact that I enjoy "Cyanide" quite a lot) is your complaints about the production. Meybe it's because, as an avid Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, I LOVE Rick Rubin. In fact I knew that this could be a great album as soon as I heard that he was in charge; and I think Metallica fans (who are very pleased by now) have a lot to thank him.

BTW, I don't think that much of "Judas Kiss" or "Suicide and Redemption"; they're OK, and I don't think of them as fillers at all, but my absolute favorite is "That was just your life", closely followed by "The day that never comes". The great thing about this album, I think, is that every people I've asked has a different favourite track (my brother's favourite is "All nightmare long"); that proves this is a solid album, likely to grow into you in time, and with no fillers.

See you in Madrid in July 2009, James & co.!!!

"7RHA-I-BC (Howell, Benjamin Maj)" (04/13/10)

I would agree with your review of this album ... broadly. I am surprised that you didn't make more of The Unforgiven III, in my view unforgivable. My main comment on the album would be in which the way I think Metallica wrote it. To me it feels like an album written on Pro Tools. I remember seeing Lars Ulrich playing with Pro Tools on "Some Kind of Monster" and maybe that has influenced me in my thoughts. But the first Track on DM, That Was Just your Life, seems to recycle its ideas in a way that makes me think they had a bunch of ideas and they lined them up and stitched them together. I'm not saying Pro Tools is bad, it's how you use it that matters. I couldn't shake this through listening to the rest of the album. Overall I found it disappointing.

But you are right, it is aping MoP or AJFA. A pale imitation and certainly not as enduring as albums 2, 3 and 4. But to give them credit they tried, you might say they caved in - in a way they said they never would. But how would you feel and what lengths would you go to if you all knew that your best work was behind you?

---

Lulu (Lou Reed And Metallica) - 2011 Warner Bros.
3
(Bad)

Best song: Oh wait, you were serious. Let me laugh even harder.

"Waggle my ass like a dark prostitute; coagulating heart, pumping blood. Come on James!"

At least nobody's dense enough to accuse Metallica of trying to sell out with this album. In early 2009, in the midst of touring Death Magnetic and doing whatever else, Metallica found itself at a celebratory event for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and while there they made the acquaintance of the aged Lou Reed (the former frontman of The Velvet Underground and a well-established solo musician in his own right, in case you're somehow a reader of this page who doesn't know that). After spending a couple of years mulling over the idea of collaborating, the two parties got together and made an album that's definitely more Reed than Metallica (they do all the instrumental work, and James sings from time to time, but this is clearly Reed's vision). The bulk of it consists of Reed reciting poetry (with occasional forays into singing) based around a pair of plays ("Erdgeist" and "Die Büchse der Pandora") from the early 1900s by a man named Frank Wedekind. It may have been an interesting idea on paper, but it's every bit as abominable as advertised (I'm writing this a couple of weeks after it came out, and while it's possible that, somehow, time will mellow people's reactions towards it, I'm not holding my breath). The marriage between the two sides is as awkward as can possibly be, and while there are certainly some lyrical gems from Reed (I admit thinking that "I wish that I could kill you but I too love your eyes" is a really inspired line) and some snippets of potential goodness from the band (the beginning riff of "Frustration" is a good one, and there are parts of "Pumping Blood" that I wish could be transplanted elsewhere), the overall effect is abysmal. The band basically disappears for most of the last track, the 19:29 (!!) "Junior Dad," which turns into endlessly droning strings by the end. Funnily enough, I actually think this album could have worked somewhat as either a pure Reed solo effort or in collaboration with a less established, more "indie-ish" band, but as is, it doesn't work at all.

So the album sucks, and a track-by-track dissection is pointless. The much more interesting question is why this happened. I can't really figure out the enigma of Reed (this is the man who made Metal Machine Music and by this time seemingly joyously reveled in the idea of not having any fans since then), but while I might be wrong, I think I have a glimpse into what happened with Metallica. See, I've never been able to shake the idea that the band couldn't have been entirely satisfied with Death Magnetic. Oh, I don't mean that they had anything against any of the individual songs or against the flow of the album or the production or anything specific like that. What I mean is that, deep down, James/Kirk/Lars (Rob didn't have enough history with the band for this to be a major issue) couldn't have been thrilled at the idea that the only way to satisfy such a large contingent of their fanbase was to unearth a decades'-old formula they'd avoided for a while. It was pretty much inevitable that, for the sake of their collective sanity, whatever followed DM would have to be a major stylistic detour from what the band had done thus far. And Lulu is definitely a major stylistic detour; while there are certainly moments that (as mentioned) could have been reworked into more standard fare, the overall approach is very different from anything the band had done before. Hammett, for instance, doesn't come close to his standard soloing style (there might be one somewhere on the album but I'll be damned if I'm going to go back and listen yet again to hunt it down), and a lot of his parts seem to be going for a sort of static-y metallic textural approach. The others all similarly do things that sound interesting on paper but come out clumsy and boring on the album.

What's slightly more alarming is that seemingly nobody involved saw fit to stop this trainwreck while it was still in progress, yet I'm not sure this development is surprising either. I mean, it's almost certain that they recognized that some, and probably even a lot of fans and critics would hate this, but I'm not sure they cared. And honestly, I'm not sure I blame anybody in Metallica for not caring. I mean, their entire career after 1983 (maybe earlier?) has been defined by fans complaining about every change they made away from what they were "supposed" to do. They complained when "Fade to Black" had elements of dark balladry. They complained when Master of Puppets became a surprisingly popular album. They complained when "One" had a music video. They complained when the band got bored and made a smash hit with Metallica. They complained when the band got its hair cut. They complained when the band decided to make its fondness of country explicit through "Mama Said" and the "Tuesday's Gone" cover. They complained when the band played with an orchestra. They complained when the band had the audacity to air its problems in film. And so on. Point is, if everything past, sheesh, the first 3-5% of your career involved large amounts of people complaining at you every time you defied their expectations and demands, wouldn't you eventually drown them out and not treat anything they said or thought as worth acknowledging? What essentially happened, in my mind, is that Metallica's fans cried "wolf" so many times that the band decided it was easier just to launch a pre-emptive strike of ignoring its fans when they'd complain about this album ... except that this time, thinking about what the fans would think would have been a really great idea. So you, you still wearing a faded Kill 'Em All shirt and still complaining to anybody who will listen about how awful "Nothing Else Matters" is: you are to blame for Lulu. I hope you're happy.

Anyway, this album does have some interesting bits here and there, which is why I give it a grade slightly better than the worst I could give ... but if ever there was an album that deserved to be the dictionary definition of "artistic blunder," this is it. Neither Reed fans nor Metallica fans need bother with this.

Send me your thoughts

Pat Leonard (munkimunkey.gmail.com) (02/13/12)

I've got to disagree here. The strange "singing" and lyrics as well as the obviously incomplete melodies and riffs all work together and sound like some sad old man's nightmares, mainly towards the middle of the album. Junior Dad is a beautiful closer, especially coming after the feverish, delusional Dragon. All in all the whole thing comes together quite well, and it for sure has a sound no one else has matched; not even Lou or Metallica have made anything close to this sound.

---

Hardwired ... To Self-Destruct - 2016 Blackened
9
(Good)

Best song: Hardwired or Atlas, Rise!

Despite Metallica never having made an album quite like this before, this album sounds like Metallica had been making albums just like this for decades, and that's both a good and a bad thing. Not only is this a "pure" heavy metal/thrash metal album that lacks any diversity to anger the hardcore faithful that had grown tried of justifying Metallica and later "betrayals" to themselves (and I say this as somebody who enjoys both Metallica and a good deal of what came after), it also finally shows the band making a thrash metal album that shows no hint whatsoever of the structural pattern, introduced on Lightning, that had lasted through Justice and that ultimately shaped Death Magnetic. The band sounds completely comfortable in its own skin as the old man godfathers of thrash metal, and this album is a full-blown celebration and glorification of that style, without needing to rely on past successes as a crutch. So what's the bad news? The bad news is that, as wonderful and amazing as it is that the band has finally found its way back to what, in a certain sense, it probably should have been all along, they've gotten back to it so late in the game that, frankly, they're just not that great at it anymore. The album is filled with riffs and performances that sound great in 15-second increments, but as nice as many of the individual segments are, they don't ultimately get cobbled together into especially great songs. It doesn't help that Hammett is weirdly flat and subdued on this album; he doesn't have any writer credits on here, and while I don't entirely know what went into that, I do know that there isn't a really iconic Hammett solo anywhere on the main album (there's one in "Atlas, Rise!" that comes close), and that's a disappointment. It also isn't great that the main portion of this so ridiculously long, stretching over two CDs and lasting nearly as long as Load (and longer than Reload); I kinda regret that they couldn't find a way to rework and combine the better sections of the various songs to make a stronger 45 minute album as opposed to this somewhat weaker 78 minute one.

There are a few songs that require special mention beyond "this is enjoyable thrash metal when on and you'll forget about it 10 seconds later," fortunately. The opening "Hardwired" is the shortest song on the album by a mile (only 3:09) and makes incredibly effective use of its time, combining break-neck speed with a nice riff built around a downward phrase followed by an upwards rolling one, and the brief Hammett solo, while a pale shadow of earlier efforts, is rousing in context. The following "Atlas, Rise!" has some clear differentiation in the two main guitar parts and a number of dramatic moments that take a good stab at hearkening back to the band's peak, and it's full of interesting rhythms and harmonies that make it into at least a minor classic. Later on, "Halo on Fire," which closes the first disc, is the longest track on here (8:15), and in addition to some especially rousing instrumental parts it has the album's best "chorus" (to the extent that this album has choruses) when James sings "Turn out the light, halo on fire!" I can't really say if the various riffs in this song are really that much better than the individual riffs that appear on the bulk of the rest of the album, but I can say that they fit together better here than the riffs fit together on most of the other songs.

That leaves nine other songs on the main album and ... oh boy ... hmm ... umm ... hmm. I like every one of them when they're on! I remember almost nothing about them when they're done! "Confusion" has an opening that alludes to the "Am I Evil?" single, and I like the churning riffage that emerges from that introduction. "Here Comes Revenge" has an anguished screaming guitar sound over the pummelling main riff that I like. "Am I Savage?" features a peculiar Hammett guitar sound over one of the main riffs that I think sounds pretty neat. "Spit Out the Bone" has a lot of speed and energy in the grand tradition of speedy energetic Metallica thrash closers, and it's nice. And the rest is fine, I guess. One thing I find interesting was that I received a comment from someone soon after this came out mentioning that they thought that I might end up liking the second disc a lot because the lack of clear structure and organization of the riffage makes it more "progressive," but ultimately I don't really feel that way at all.

So that's the main album, which has lots of enjoyable aspects but ultimately doesn't come together in a fully satisfying manner. The good news, then, is that, upon initial release, this album was easily obtainable in a 3-CD "deluxe" addition (I honestly don't even remember seeing the 2-CD version available, or if it was the cost difference wasn't enough to convince me not to get the larger one), and I'm glad that I got the deluxe version, because the third disc is an absolute delight. The first track, "Lords of Summer" was released as a single in 2014, so I guess they decided it wouldn't be a good idea to include it on the proper album, but that's too bad, because it's better than anything on the main album other than the first two tracks. The main riffs are a great combination of memorable and powerful, and there's a great slithering Hammett solo that grows into something really cool, and this one really feels like it could have belonged on one of the band's best albums. The next few tracks are covers, and while I could see a Metallica fan rolling their eyes at these and thinking these are a waste of time, I find them a blast. There's a nice cover of the Deep Purple B-side ballad "When a Blind Man Cries," and the studio cover of "Remember Tomorrow" (from the first Iron Maiden album) and the live cover of "Helpless" (a Diamond Head song that kicked off Garage Inc. way back when) are both lots of fun, but the most fun comes from a medley of Rainbow songs (called "Ronnie Rising Medley") that the band had previously recorded for a Dio tribute album. "A Light in the Black," "Tarot Woman, "Stargazer" and "Kill the King" are referenced here, and while Rainbow-purists might be horrified by this (how many Rainbow purists are there anyway??), I absolutely love this.

And then there's a truckload of live stuff! In April 2016, in honor of Record Store Day, Metallica put on a brief concert at Rasputin Music in Berkeley, CA (a fine establishment that, along with Amoeba, was essentially my home away from home during grad school) that only included songs from Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning, and oh how I love listening to this. The Lightning choices aren't especially shocking (the title track, "Fade to Black," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Creeping Death"), and to be honest it's not that shocking to hear them do "The Four Horsemen," but hearing the band tear through "Hit the Lights," "Jump in the Fire" and "Metal Militia" makes me believe in the power of music to keep somebody young, and I would have loved to have been present for this. And finally, the disc closes with a perfect bookend, the first live performance of "Hardwired" (which, again, starts the album) before release, and my feelings towards the set finish up pretty positive on the whole.

Still, as great as the bonus material here might be, that doesn't change that I find the main album a bit of a slog, so I can only go so high with the rating. There's no reason for a Metallica fan not to buy this, but there's pretty much no chance that it will convert somebody who doesn't already really like the band. This will go down in history as a second-tier Metallica album, and honestly, there are much worse things in the world than that.

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