After St. Anger I had pretty much given up on Metallica. When I heard about six months ago that they were working on a new album, my first reaction was :rolleyes: . I was expecting this to be the death knell of my once favorite band.
I was expecting a solid F from Metallica. Instead, they have delivered a B+/A-. I’ve listened to this album five times already. I’m really enjoying it. A return to their old form. Great guitar riffs, good melodies, although I still don’t care much for Hammett’s solos. The vocals aren’t great, the lyrics are kind of dumb, but somehow it all comes together and works. Overall this is a damn fine album. The instrumental Suicide & Redemption is my favorite song so far. Before I bought this album I hadn’t picked up my guitar in weeks. I don’t even know how long it’s been since I learned a song by ear. I can happily say that for the past hour I have been working through Broken, Beat and Scarred.
My favorite band is back!
Anyone else think the guitar riff in The End of the Line sounds like Vicarious by Tool?
I’ve only had the chance to listen to the first 3 tracks so far, but I like what I’ve heard. No stand out songs out of the first three but it definitely music I can put on and listen to, as opposed to St. Anger which was shit. It definitely doesn’t sound like Load or Reload but I didn’t mind either of those albums, though.
I got that too, I also get some Soundgarden-like rifs in some of the songs as well.
So far, I’ve listened to the CD twice. I love it. This IS the shit. I think people are being too critical of them because of the brain-dead crap they released over the last decade. But this is a return to form for them. If you weren’t exposed to the last decade of garbage you would be just fine with this CD. In fact, I did NOT buy or listen to much of Load, Re-Load, and St Anger. The small bits I heard made me wretch so I never bothered to buy them.
If you listen on a decent system you can pick up the bass of Trujillo, the drums, and all the nuances of a well mixed album. I actually like the vocals on Unforgiven3, the softer side of Hetfield.
This CD is FAST. They’ll have fun playing this shit live. Their older stuff was fast too, but this CD mixes more sounds into the same rifs than the older stuff did. The bass is fast, the lead is fast, the drums are fast, etc and Hetfield uses the guitar more in the solos, less tapping and more sliding.
My goodness, they even opened the Unforgiven with a PIANO! I think that’s a Metallica first, no?
All in all I think this CD ranks right up there with the first four. You could easily pluck songs from this CD and place them on the older albums and they would not be out of place. They’d fit in. Keep in mind you’ve had 20 some years to let the old Metallica age in your heavy- metal loving brain so you need to give this CD some time to sink it too. Go back and listen to the older stuff. Then come back and listen to the new CD. I guarantee you’ll appreciate it more.
Wipe your mind clean of the last decade and give them another go.
I liked the idea for the orchestral album, but it degenerated into Metallica just playing their songs like normal, with some occasional orchestra flourishes.
My favorite tracks right now are Cyanide and My Apocalypse.
This sums it up pretty well. The black album doesn’t have nearly the same pace as this one though, but it was well paced, just not as fast and heavy as this one.
Anyone else think the CD title should be simply “Death Magnet”, dropping the ic??
Broken, Beat and Scarred came on the radio while I was driving on Saturday and I cranked that sucker as loud as it could go and let out a couple “Yeaaaahhhsss” as the “totally sucks now” point never came in the song. James’ voice is totally shot, so that’s never going to be as good as it was, but this was very Black album era sounding Metallica for me, which while demarcating the downward spiral that the band has been in for the last, um, forever, is still better than the stuff that followed. This is probably as metal of music as Rick Ruben can squeeze out of the Metallihusk.
And they did mix Trujillo’s bass well, it’s nice for Metallica to have some bottom end that’s not bass drums or palm muted E chords, but if they were going to pack in the rock and roll shite and play metal again they should have brought Newsted back. He sang a ton of backup vocals live and could provide a bit more “roar” that this style of music deserves.
I think Trujillo is squarely apt to play the bass in this band. We’ll see how he does live. I miss the roar of the bass (as Cluricaun put it) too, but I think that’s simply a matter of mixing and editing. “And Justice for All” had some really heavy, thick bass tracks throughout, on purpose. That doesn’t mean that Newsted was a better bass player than Tru, it just means you could hear the bass more. When I crank up the bass and set the pre-amp levels just right and I can really hear Tujillos bass tracks loud, clear and thick. He’s got some mean action goin’ on there. I’ll try to pinpoint specific songs/parts once I get around to listening to it again. Didn’t have to do that with “Justice” (and Newsted) it was already at the front of the music. Tru’s stuff is leveled back a bit.
When I referred to the “roar” I meant vocally. Justice is one of the most poorly mixed albums of all time, and Newsteds stuff is nearly disappeared in the mix.
I kind of like Trujillo’s playing on the album. He has a little bit more raw, nasty approach than Jason did. Jason was very skilled, note perfect and clean, not without some independant melodic ability, but usually just doubling the guitars. He never seemed really mean or aggressive, he sounded like a consummate professional who could sub in any band, contribute vocals and would probably be a great instructor. but he never really scared anybody.
Trujillo has a little bit of badass in his sound. I was trying to figure out who his sound reminded me of, and it dawned on me that it reminds me of Cliff burton.
It’s the fingers vs. pick thing. Cliff only played with his fingers, Jason only with a pick, and Trujillo can do both but played all fingerstyle on the recording of Death Magnetic. Fingerstyle metal has a filthier sound to my ears, it’s not as clean and precise and has a bit fuzzier tone, so maybe that’s why you’re hearing a bit more Cliff in the new stuff.
I’ll look for that on my third trip around this CD. But I think you may be right. I’d bet that Rubin was trying to replicate some earlier sounds and figured that Burton-esque bass would be a key element in that goal.
I bought it the other day. I’ve listened to it a lot, and it’s a good album. I have to disagree that it’s “a well mixed album,” though. The levels are completely blown, and there’s clipping all over the place. This is a prime example of a casualty of the Loudness War. On every set of equipment I’ve listened on–including earbuds, home speakers, decent PC setup, my car–I can hear the distortion and fuzzing from the clipping of the waveform. It sounds like you’re overdriving your speakers even at low volumes.
That forum link I posted starts off with a ridiculous-looking waveform screenshot. To see for myself that it wasn’t faked or something, I picked two songs, “Broken, Beat & Scarred” and “Master of Puppets,” and imported them both into Cakewalk to compare waveforms:
And this is the song from the thread I linked, “Cyanide”:
It really is almost a solid bar, and zooming in shows flattened peaks and clipping. Also, the meter you see in the bottom left stayed absolutely pegged all the way right throughout the song. When I was a teenager recording on a 4-track tape, I knew what would happen when you consistently put your levels in the red.
