I heard a new Metallica song on the radio! It started off good, reminescent of Master of Puppets-era material, but then I realized a minute or so into the song that there were no lyrics. The song turned out to be a fairly long and decent instrumental with several shifts in style. Ok, fair enough, I don’t like instrumentals that much but it was decent. But I sure hope the new album kicks ass! I didn’t mind Load and Reload that much, but St. Anger was terrible.
YEA! Finally a new album.
I love every album except St. Anger. It’s just meh. I assume it’s not very good because James had just got out of rehab and was trying to focus on his family. So I hope since more time has passed that his creative juices are back and flowing.
My favorites are Load and Reload. I love the change in style and that they still kicked ass in the new style.
Ugh. I hope it’s OK, but I really hold very little hope. In any case, I doubt I’ll buy it. I haven’t really spent money on Metallica since the Black Album (which was horrible,) but I’ve heard every album since then. I despised Load and Reload, and after St. Anger, I thought the band should probably have been put out to pasture a decade or more ago. They’re not hungry any more. They seem to have nothing to say, nor any attitude left with which to say it (or, failing that, fake it.) James Hetfield is doing operatic vocal exercises, for chrissakes. C’mon, Jimmy, your voice was always shitty. You used to more than make up for it in chutzpah; now you’re just phoning it in.
I’ll do my duty and listen to it, but I fully expect to come away even more jaded and disappointed than I am now.
I’ll pick up a copy when it comes out. I was one of three people out there who actually liked St. Anger, so it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll hate this one.
did the song have any trash can drums?
Aha. So there are people like you. Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say this until now 
I’m the second of the three people who actually liked St. Anger. I even liked the Black Album, though Metallica/S&M is still my favourite. The earlier albums - everything except Kill 'Em All and Master of Puppets - are just more air to me.
(Also, screw you friend Ogre, I loved “No Leaf Clover” :p)
You are the only person I have EVER heard say they like load and reload more than the old shit. Congrats to you!!
I’m sure there are many who prefer them. People who don’t like heavy.
I think it is a sad, lamentable state of affairs when people like Metallica because it’s NOT heavy. They were our heavy metal heroes in the 1980’s. Now, they are easy listening.
RIP Cliff Burton-- it hasn’t been Metallica without him!
I think the problem is that old school Metallica fans seem to have the dogmatic belief that heavy = good.
There’s no inherent reason why Heavy Metal is better than Hard Rock or that Hard Rock is better than Pop. All can be great and one band can be great at any of them. I like Kill 'Em All, good stuff, seriously hardcore, but the Black Album (Metallica) is an infinitely better album. Not nearly as hard and smack in the center of the Hard Rock genre, but a much more complete and well rounded piece of work. I think “old school” fans are more put off by it’s mainstream popularity than anything actually in the album. I find it impossible for anyone to reason that it’s their worst album by any other measure.
I’ll be interested to listen to the new album, I haven;t heard the new song yet, perhaps I’ll head over to iTunes and see whats shakin’.
This is probably true in a lot of cases. When I was a teenager I was a big fan of metallica (still am, somewhat, I guess) - and I never liked Kill 'Em All that much, because it was mostly simplistic and not especially interesting music. Ride the lightning through the black album are technically proficient, musically dense (for rock), interesting music - the new stuff, aside from a few songs, maybe, just isn’t interesting. Not only did they lose the edge, but they seem to have lost the ability to craft interesting music at some point.
Otherwise, some people should like St. Anger, right? Since it was supposed to be harder, a return to the old days, and although I only heard 2 or 3 songs from it, none pulled my interest enough to check out the rest.
So it’s partly snobby elitism from metal heads, but part of it is that Metallica simply lost the ability to put out good music.
Me too! I didn’t discover Metallica until “Enter Sandman”, bought the Black Album, then worked my way back to the beginning. I never liked the older stuff as well as BA, then “Reload” came out and I thought “Yeah, this is more like it!” I think my favorite is “Reload”.
I started off aware of Metallica songs like One, but really became a fan with the Black Album. Then I went back and listened to the older albums, they’re great too, especially Master of Puppets. MoP is one of those albums you need to listen to from beginning to end. Kill em All is good but I don’t like Jame’s voice. And Justice for All is also very good but there’s too much bass on it, something went wrong in production.
To me Load and Reload are sort of like Black Album #2 and #3. Many songs are heavily derived from Black Album songs, but don’t improve on them. They’re good, but not great.
S&M was a great idea when mashups were new, but I found the album degenerated into Metallica playing their songs like normal, with the orchestra inserting some noises here and there.
Garage Inc was an interesting collection, it was partly what got me into The Misfits and Motorhead.
St. Anger, I don’t know what the hell that was. It was just formless disjointed musical noise. I guess they were trying too hard. They should have never cut off their hair to begin with and this never would have happened. 
If you haven’t already seen it, you might be interested in the documentary Some Kind of Monster, about the making of St. Anger. Basically it chronicles how totally screwed up Metallica is now, going through group therapy and personal crap. The portrayal of them is so negative I’m surprised it got released at all. Amusing as hell, but you won’t look at them the same again. It confirmed my already pretty poor view of them, musically and as people.
Well, the good news is that Rick Rubin supposedly produced this album. I would imagine that at this stage what he wants to do with Metallica is get them back to their roots. Fast. Uber-tight. Mad drums with over the top heavy metal guitar melodies.
I’m expecting this to sound much more pre-black than post-black.
I have heard their cover of “Ecstasy of Gold” at the gym. Is that the song you’re refering to?
I was a teenager in the late 90s I was about as big of a Metallica fan as it came and liked all of their albums, even Load and Reload. Sure, I was more of a fan of the older stuff, but as my tastes diverged, I turned out to like Load and Reload more (though still not as much as the older stuff). Since then, my tastes in various forms of metal have spread all over the place and I genuinely find Metallica tame, not only in terms of heaviness, but also in terms of musicianship, themes. Back in the 80s (before I was old enough to be a fan) they were on the bleeding edge of new music, and now, they’re so far behind.
Now, I’ve listened to some ghastly metal albums in my time (Yob, Origin, and Godflesh come to mind :eek: ), but St. Anger was so disappointing I couldn’t even finish listening to the whole album. I thought it was overly trendy, absolutely horrific production (even considering they were going for the poor production sound), no guitar solos, trite lyrics, etc.
That said, I expect I’ll probably buy the album, mostly because I buy just about everything I can get my hands on, but I don’t hold high hopes. If it’s the song I think it is, it sounds like they’ve gone back to their Garage INC./S&M sound, which is definitely an improvement over the audial diarrhea that was St. Anger. Either way, after their whole Napster and St. Anger years… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think of myself as a fan of theirs again.
Nah. I’m only a casual Metallica listener, but old school Metallica records were pioneering. Lots of long-form songs, heavily ornate guitar parts, wacky time signatures–it was both heavy and cerebral. Metallica from Black Album to Re-Load, at least, wasn’t really breaking any interesting ground. Now, I am one of those who think Metallica was good through the Black Album. The Black Album was a great pop record. A very different direction for one of the gods of the heavy metal genre, but it had solid songwriting and a very tight tracklist. Almost every song on that record was heavily crafted and full of hooks.
Load and Reload were, in my opinion, boring crap. Maybe if you cut the best tracks out of both albums into a single album you might have something good, but otherwise they seemed kind of wandering and unfocused to me.
St. Anger was just an unmusical, masturbatory mess.
Well I must clarify something. I like every Metallica song except half of the songs from St. Anger. I do love the four albums before the black album. They are the best heavy metals albums. It is just that I love Load and Reload too. It is totally different music.
Like some of the others I was introduced to Metallica with the black album and then worked my way backwards and loved it.
Then Load came out and I was very disappointed. It was not the Metallica I knew, but a couple months or so later I decided to give it another try and over time I grew to like it. Then Reload came out it was like Load part 2.
If I’m in the mood for some heavy metal I don’t listen to Load or Reload I’ll listen to the first four albums or some early Megadeth.
The documentary Some Kind of Monster shows why St. Anger is their worst album. James was just out of rehab and would only spend a few half-days a week in the studio and would leave when they were getting into something good because his time with the band was up and he had to go home to his family and this seemed to put-off the other guys and it created some tension.
So hopefully since it’s been a year or two and James doesn’t have to follow his program anymore and he is more free to be with the band and with Robert to add some creative input this album will kick ass.