'For Whom the Bell Tolls' (live)
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Oh, the shreds.
Lou Reed & Metallica - 'Iced Honey' (live on Jools Holland)
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So the infamous collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica was almost definitely the worst album of the year, and perhaps the worst thing to happen all decade. There's still a part of me that wants to believe that Lou's deliberately trolling Hetfield and friends, though. Watching them perform live together, I'm mostly just confused at how little stage chemistry they have and how poorly their parts coalesce. With that being said, at least it's an interesting turn for the mainstream music industry to take. Fame leads to some weird music. Be the judge for yourself, I guess.
Fue, Fai Dabajabaza
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Diction has never been one of James Hetfield's strong points.
Searchin'...Seek and Destroy
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It's a little bit of a bummer that quality and budget can be inversely related in music. Metallica didn't get the money to start making music videos until after they'd put out their best tunes. But this is the age of the internet now, and we can retroactively create montages of fighter jet stock videos over our favorite '80s metal tracks. The homemade video won't exactly blow your face off, but that lead riff in "Seek and Destroy" still better.
Metallica, "ReLoad"
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The biggest heavy metal band in the world had something different to say
ReLoad (1997) is an odd album to make for a Metallica introduction, but that's my story. One of its songs received the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance; yet ReLoad - following the stormy reception to Load just a year prior - remains a mostly obscure release in Metallica's catalog. Only two tracks find their way into Metallica's live set with regularity, yet the album remains the band's most eclectic and diverse offering.
It's no accident that Load and ReLoad are stylistically similar, but ReLoad takes Load's experiments and explorations into stranger, more unfamiliar places. While ReLoad isn't as intensely personal as its counterpart, the music is a much greater deviation from Metallica's comfort zone than anything they had done in the past. It says a lot that this is the only Metallica album to feature guest musicians, the ultra-rare occasion when the Metallica monster would let anyone else into its lair. You could argue that Garage Inc. also had guest performers, but that was Metallica jamming on Lynyrd Skynryd. ReLoad is Metallica with all the pretense of being the world's biggest heavy metal band stripped away.
There's still the high-octane opener in "Fuel" and the snarling "Better Than You" for the adrenaline, but as with Load, it's clear that Metallica's focus was elsewhere, like on "The Memory Remains". Atypical both for its subject matter and Marianne Faithfull's nasal, haunted vocals, this was Metallica 1997 - no "Master of Puppets" or "...And Justice For All", but tackling new soundscapes, new textures, new demons. No wonder the fans didn't like it.
But while Metallica were definitely onto something with the feel of "The Memory Remains", ReLoad's problem is that they liked that particular experiment so much, they didn't stop repeating it. One midtempo, plodding song, like "The Memory Remains" is fine. It's followed immediately after by "Devil's Dance", a big, dirty, midtempo plodding song. That's followed by "The Unforgiven II", a kaleidoscope of twangy guitars, set to a downtempo, plodding beat. Elsewhere, "Slither" and "Carpe Diem Baby" sound like different takes of the same song. "Where The Wild Things Are", "Low Man's Lyric" and "Fixxxer" show brilliant, multi-faceted sides to Metallica, but all at the same tempo. The fast songs are unremarkable, and there are just too many slow, meandering songs.
I don't want to presume to tell Metallica what they should sound like, but I find myself wishing they'd up the pace. They do, on "Attitude" and "Prince Charming", but your head stops bopping as soon as the tracks are over and neither have a future listen in them.
St. Anger received all the attention for Metallica pushing themselves further and deeper than ever before, but it's really ReLoad that deserves that credit. This is Metallica operating far out of their comfort zone, and sometimes they hit it out of the park - I'll take "Fixxxer" over "Dyers Eve" or "All Within My Hands" or "My Apocalypse" as an album-closer any day. Sometimes the results are less successful, and the meandering, slow feel of the album makes me think of ReLoad as a time bomb that doesn't detonate. It's fascinating, it's complex, it's haunting, it's mesmerizing, but unfortunately, it never takes off.
4.0/5.0: ReLoad is even more myriad and intricate than Load, sometimes to its detriment.
Metallica, "Load"
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The monster looks inwards
I'd be lying if I said I always liked Metallica's sixth album, Load (1996). With its 1997 companion ReLoad, it was always the uncoolest of Metallica's albums (until 2003's St. Anger), and when I timidly entered heavy metal fandom in the late 1990s, that was the takeaway: Load sucks. It wasn't until years later did the musically mature & independent me realize: Load isn't a typical Metallica album, and because of that (maybe in spite of that), it's brilliant.
For a band that prided themselves on being hard-hitting and uncompromising, the overnight change in image and music style didn't sit very well, and that sense of discomfort and unease bleeds into the songs. Part of the album's backlash might stem from thrash metal fans not wanting bands like Metallica to write musical autobiographies. Raging against parents (like on "Dyers Eve") is easy; but breaking down your feelings ("Until It Sleeps" and "Mama Said") beyond anything more than anger is going to push a lot of buttons. The music wasn't heavy, but the emotion and honesty from James Hetfield lasts longer than whiplash does.
Exploring and foraging as they were on Load, not every experiment is successful. "2 x 4" plods along aimlessly, and I'm not even sure Metallica knew what they were doing with "Ronnie" (although Hetfield's spoken bridge is sheer badass). The real gold is in the songs that don't sound anything like classic Metallica. The sinister, lurching feel of "The House That Jack Built", the quiet introspection giving way to rage in "Bleeding Me", the towering expanse of "The Outlaw Torn" is what makes Load a grower. Thirteen years into their career, Metallica understood that it doesn't always have to be about what you say. Sometimes it's what you don't say, and it's in those moody, subtle shifts that Load speaks the loudest.
"King Nothing" and "Ain't My Bitch" show the band flexing their muscles, but their attention was elsewhere, like the bitter pill of "Thorn Within" or "Hero of the Day", which must have caused at least one epileptic fit of rage from old school fans. "Wasting My Hate" and "Cure" are both decent and catchy in their own right, but they don't contribute anything significant to the album. "Wasting My Hate" is probably the heaviest song on Load, but unlike most other Metallica albums, Load isn't about being heavy. It is, but not in the musical sense.
Compared to his crisp, sharp sound on the Black Album, Bob Rock's sludgy, warm production contributes to the hazy and distinctly Southern feel of Load. Lars Ulrich's minimalistic drumming complements the deceptively minimalistic guitar approach, letting James Hetfield's maturation as a vocalist come to fruition. Whether it's crooning in "Bleeding Me", unburdening his soul in "The Outlaw Torn", or even the country twang of "Mama Said", Hetfield shows us what he's made of - not only as a vocalist, but as a man coming to grips with a past men like him are supposed to keep buried.
It says a lot that the artwork for Load makes heavy use of Rorschach inkblots, because the album is Metallica taking a deep look inside themselves. It wasn't the full-on therapy session that was St. Anger, but for how unexpected Load was, it was the only thing left to do for a Diamond Head cover band becoming the biggest heavy metal act on the planet. The album twists and turns, sampling every emotion and uncomfortable memory. If, at the conclusion, you're more uneasy than exhilarated, then Load did its job.
4.5/5.0: It's on the record now: Load is one of Metallica's best albums.
Song of the Day: "Enter Sandman"
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As a big sister, I’ve always prided myself on being pretty fair and the general “good example” that my parents always asked that I be. I think a lot of first-borns have the same story. However, like anyone else, I’m not perfect, and while there are less than a handful of things that I’d really take back that I did with/to my two younger sisters, they are each a doozy.
One of the things that I wish I hadn’t done was scare my youngest sister to death with a Metallica song.
I was ten or eleven, so she must have been about three or four—which makes this even worse, I know. She was always in my room—both of them were—bothering me, and I remember this was the year I started watching them both on my own, and boy did I resent it. It was fun at first; I remember making macaroni and totally screwing it up, serving them crunchy noodles. But when it became a daily thing, and my childhood freedom turned to unpaid babysitting, I wasn’t a happy camper.
Anyway, this night, she came into my room, wanting to hang out with me yet again, and I was really into the Metallica black album. I started singing “Enter Sandman” to her, and I made this really scary face, and of course, she started to cry. I immediately felt like the world’s worst sister, and maybe I was.
Well, at least I never told her she was adopted, like my mother did to her own sister.
To this day, she hates the song, and though I know I shouldn’t, I still love it—as well as the rest of the black album. And the joke is on me, since she’s 20 and stuck so far up her boyfriend’s butt she never has time to see her “old” sister anymore, when I would actually like to see her. That old adage to love it while you’ve got it because it won’t be around forever is certainly true.
It’s scary, and it’s got dragons and snow white and monsters under your bed, so what isn’t to like, if you’re old enough to listen to it? Hell, it would make a pretty awesome movie, when you think about it. The music sounds quite different from everything Metallica made before this album; in fact, many “purists” don’t like it at all, though it’s what threw the band into the mainstream, if I remember correctly. I remember being introduced to it while going camping with a friend and, though I don’t think of the said friend in a positive light anymore, I still love the album.
You can listen to “Enter Sandman” here. Just promise me you won’t traumatize a toddler with it like I did when I first bought the album.
And don’t even get me started on the time I traumatized my other sister with the wolf from The Neverending Story. She’s 23 and still can’t watch the movie! I really didn’t mean to do that one on purpose, though, I swear…
Metallica’s Black Album Still #1 in Sales
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Nielsen SoundScan says so.
As originally reported by Gibson, Metallica’s Metallica (“Black Album”) is still the album with the largest numbers in terms of sales of the SoundScan era. The Metallica disc has sold 15,620,000 units since SoundScan began officially tracking sales results in 1991.
Nielsen SoundScan is an information and sales tracking system created by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett that tracks sales of music and music video products for the U.S. and Canada. This information is collected by over 14,000 retail, mass merchant, on-line stores, venues, digital music services to determine the top 10. Anyone who sells music with a barcode can be included in the list.
Metallica has released 9 studio albums, 3 live albums, 2 EPs, 24 music videos, and 45 singles. That is a ton of music! The band has won 9 Grammy Awards, and has had 5 consecutive albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200.
"Metallica: St. Anger"
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There's no easy way to review 2003's St. Anger, Metallica's ninth studio album and their most divisive since 1991's Metallica. On the one hand, this was Metallica sounding revitalized, confident and aggressive; on the other, Metallica sounded confused, aimless and overindulgent. Given the unique circumstances surrounding the writing and recording of this album, as well as what Metallica intended with it, St. Anger is best reviewed from two perspectives: aesthetic and musical.
Let's start with the music. What you'll find on St. Anger is abrasive, punishing, belligerent heavy metal. The tempo rarely lets up, the drums pound and the guitar strings are shredded to dust. The title track speeds across at two hundred miles an hour, while opener "Frantic" is as sharp as a buzzsaw. "Some Kind of Monster" is appropriately titled, as the sinister intro riff explodes into a … monstrous version of the riff, over which James Hetfield spits the song's title. "Invisible Kid", "My World" and "Shoot Me Again" show Metallica pushing themselves harder, faster and further than they did on Metallica, 1996's Load or its 1997 companion ReLoad. The tempo slows, and the mood intensifies on "The Unnamed Feeling", the only song which sounds like it had more than ten minutes' worth of thought put into it. The album closes on "All Within My Hands", a juggernaut of a track that ends with Hetfield screaming the word "Kill!" over and over. Why? No one knows, and your ears are bludgeoned into submission at that point, so it's hard to care.
And that leads us to the aesthetics of St. Anger. Metallica wrote and recorded this album after their bassist of fourteen years left the band, and Hetfield literally walked away from an argument with Lars Ulrich to enter rehab. While Hetfield exorcised his demons, Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Bob Rock faced the possibility of the Metallica machine coming to an end. Hetfield returned from rehab a different man, and St. Anger sees Metallica flex their post-therapy muscles. It's not always pretty, but from-the-heart statements are rarely articulate, or eloquent - anger management quotes were not meant to rub shoulders with zen mantras. Despite the horrendously ringing snare drum and sludgy guitars, there are many nuances to the music on St. Anger, and seeing the Some Kind of Monster documentary and reading Metallica: This Monster Lives sheds light the dark time in Metallica's history that St. Anger exorcised and purged.
St. Anger is not Metallica's best, but when the mood is right, it's really, really good. Much as I loved Load and ReLoad, those albums saw Metallica get comfortable and almost complacent on their heavy metal throne. St. Anger sees them move from the moody and introspective to the uncomfortable and unfamiliar. The result is a band that sounds alive, but very unsure of itself. Mistakes are frequently made, and this is both good and bad: the bad is that the songs are so repetitious as to sound pointless; the good is that Metallica hadn't sounded this earnest in quite a while. If the period around St. Anger was Metallica at rock bottom, the album served its purpose in helping them claw back to the top.
Decade Magnetic
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To understate the issue, the 2000s were quite a decade for Metallica.
Metallica signed off the 1990s with their S&M performances with the San Fransisco Symphony Orchestra (conducted by the late Michael Kamen). The album of the show entered the Billboard 200 at number 2. Not a bad way to end a decade.
But 2000 was a rocky year for Metallica, beginning what would be a (mostly) rocky decade. It started when the band discovered that a demo for their then-unreleased song "I Disappear" received radio airplay. Then came the revelation that it was not just the demo of a new song, but every song Metallica had committed to tape - from 1983's Kill 'em All to the S&M double-album - was on Napster, the file-sharing network. For free. Metallica counterattacked, claiming that Napster had no right to share their music without the band's permission. Napster's users - many of them Metallica fans - felt that this was an attack on them, the power-crazy and money-hungry band targeting a few innocent people trading their favorite music.
Whoever was right and whoever was wrong, the whole incident - from drummer Lars Ulrich speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to outraged Metallica fans destroying the band's CDs, to Napster being forced to close its doors and re-shape itself as a pay-service - the whole Napster incident tainted Metallica's image for years to come. They went from ripped-denim, long-haired guys with guitars to clean-cut rich men in suits, telling people what they could and couldn't do with their songs.
No sooner had Metallica tried to move on from Napster, they received another blow - this one in the form of their bassist of 14 years, Jason Newsted, leaving the band in 2001. Plans to record the band's eighth studio album were put on hold; first, ostensibly to find a new bassist, but then to address the buried issues and conflicts that were unearthed when Newsted left. At the heart of the issue was the tension between Lars Ulrich and rhythm guitarist, main songwriter, singer and Metallica co-founder James Hetfield.
Concerned for the band's future (both professionally and personally), Metallica's management enlisted the services of Phil Towle, a performance-enhancement coach. Metallica were effectively put on the couch, but this was not to be a private session; a stroke of coincidence meant that the fallout from Newsted's departure and the resulting therapy sessions were all committed to film. Originally intended as a documentary to chronicle the making of Metallica's eighth album, the filmmakers now found themselves documenting Metallica sorting out some long-repressed issues of trust, respect and understanding between the three remaining members - Ulrich, Hetfield and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. The Metallica camp was thrown further into disarray when Hetfield abruptly joined a rehabilitation program, leaving the documentary, the band's eighth album, and the band itself with an uncertain future.
The documentary, Some Kind of Monster, chronicled Hetfield's return from rehabilitation and the re-establishment of his relationship with his bandmates (and the legacy that is Metallica). It also looked at Lars Ulrich's almost instinctive deference to his father, and Lars' constant need to prove himself to his the elder Ulrich. Lars also sat down with ex-Metallica guitarist (and Megadeth frontman) Dave Mustaine, to address the unceremonious exit Mustaine was given in 1983.
Fan reaction to the documentary (and the therapy sessions themselves) was divided, to say the least. On the one hand, the world's biggest rock band paid Towle $40,000 a month while they talked about how they felt and their insecurities. On the other, the world's biggest rock band put their hearts on their sleeves and bared themselves to their fans and detractors, warts and all.
From the new-found energy of Hetfield's return and the vibes that the therapy sessions produced, Metallica hit the studio again to re-start work on their eighth album. The result, 2003's St. Anger, saw the band make their heaviest, ugliest and rawest music in decades. But much like the documentary that preceded the album, reception was mixed; some praised the return to the aggression and speed that Metallica had eschewed on their recent releases; others lambasted the rough production, the rambling song structures and lyrics, and the complete lack of guitar solos on St. Anger.
With the documentary, the therapy sessions and the album under their belt, Metallica took to the road, now with new bassist Robert Trujillo. The tour lasted two years, showing a Metallica that had conquered their demons and were celebrating a second chance, a new lease on life.
Metallica took 2005 off, playing only two shows (as openers for The Rolling Stones). The following year, Metallica announced that their producer of the last fifteen years, Bob Rock, would not be behind the controls for the band's ninth studio album. Instead, the guru-like Rick Rubin, who had produced albums for artists as varied as Johnny Cash, Slayer, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Run-DMC, System of a Down and Tom Petty, would be taking over.
The result was Death Magnetic, in 2008. The album captured a clearer, focused, revitalized Metallica, shedding the therapy-induced mantras of St. Anger in favor of creative songwriting and guitar solos. The energy caught on; the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, won Grammy Awards and made Top Ten lists across the world.
Riding the crest of the wave, Metallica found themselves in 3D with the release of Guitar Hero: Metallica, but the greatest accolade came with their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Not only was it a celebration and a tribute to Metallica's nine studio albums, two decades of existence, nine Grammy Awards, and worldwide album sales of over 100 million, the ceremony also marked the band's reconciliation with Jason Newsted. There were two defining moments of the Hall of Fame induction: Newstead playing with Metallica for the first time since his departure in 2001, and James Hetfield enveloping Lars Ulrich in an almighty bearhug at the conclusion of his induction speech. Two teenage boys playing Diamond Head covers in a garage in 1981 had come a long, long way.
Although they started the decade in controversy and turmoil - with Napster, Jason Newsted leaving and James Hetfield leaving the band to go into rehab - Metallica eventually triumphed, releasing two #1 albums, embarking on two mega-successful world tours, and finishing the 2000s at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.