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Your Band Blows
Metallica: Too Little, Too Late
Words: Scott Jenson
When I started writing this column I really wanted to focus on emergent acts that have little or no artistic, emotional or just straight rockin’ value. I saw a hole in music reporting where, once an act had received a little bit of street cred via blogs or Falling Gravel (you might know it as Rolling Stone), nearly every media outlet was on board and sucking the band off like an 18-year-old ecstasy-addicted porn star with an abusive past family life. I find trends like this in the industry to be abhorrent, and the acts, the majority of whom have nothing to offer besides a repackaging of things that have already been done and which need not bear repeating, largely undeserving.
Unfortunately, I recently wasted 74 minutes and 41 seconds of my life listening to one of the worst aural shit-storms ever perpetrated by biped mammals since the early days of rock and roll. And by the early days of rock and roll, I mean thousands of years ago, when what humans considered to be music was pounding on rocks with other rocks and screaming in a guttural non-language. I wanted this month’s column to be about Crystal Castles, but after hearing Metallica’s Death Magnetic and managing to resist the urge to gouge out my own ears with a melon baller for an hour and 15, I feel the need to warn the world.
Do not buy this album.
Do not download it (legally or illegally); do not order it at a discounted rate from Amazon.com; do not add it on Imeem or Rhapsody; do not let your friend burn it for you; do not accept any sort of mix that has any song from this album on it; do not listen to radio stations that playlist it on the off chance that you may hear their single; do not walk into any store that might be playing it over the loudspeaker; and (this one may hurt) do not play Death Magnetic on Guitar Hero. It’s really that bad.
Once upon a time that only exists in VH1 specials, Metallica was a proud group of alcoholics who managed to play harder, faster and more intensely than the majority of their peers. This earned them enough fame to make a crossover record that firmly implanted the band in American culture, and filled their bank accounts with enough looch to keep that self-absorbed little prick of a leprechaun drummer in Basquiat paintings and models twice his height for the rest of eternity. But this is where their journey as musicians should have stopped. Metallica could have walked away after their huge commercial success and subsequent release of a decent covers album, but they chose to soldier on and attempt to maintain relevancy even though they were clearly far removed from what made them a decent band in the '80s, and carrying egos the size of Boeing’s Everett Factory. This is the point in a band’s career where you should either A) start the cycle of retirement/reunion tours where you play your old songs and make unhealthy amounts of money, or
buy a castle somewhere, become a hermit and get really weird. The worst thing that you can do at this juncture is try to make music out of some sick need to relive the times when what you did was fresh and exciting.
Metallica has done it for seven years and two horrible albums.
The worst part about Death Magnetic is not the production values, which brought it to the top of a Worst Offenders List compiled by audio engineers, and sparked a petition among fans demanding a remix. The more saddening and pathetic aspect of a release that's the auditory equivalent of Beverly Hills Chihuahua is that Metallica just doesn’t seem to get it. It’s over, guys. You had a good run. Stop living on past accolades and trying to go harder, faster and more intense, because your bones are probably getting brittle and there’s now a band built around a cartoon that makes better metal than you.
It’s disheartening to see a once-strong band come to the point that Metallica has reached. It’s one thing to suck coming out of the gates, to have one semi-popular hit and then fade into obscurity; at least there is a sense of dignity when you try, fail and accept it. But Metallica seems like that 40-year-old man who still hangs out at his alma mater's football games in his old jersey, talking to the new quarterback about his glory days. Yeah, they may be physically there, and everyone knows about them because they’ve been there so long. But it’s creepy, and deeply depressing, and no one in the game today really gives a shit if they can still hurl a wobbly spiral.
When I started writing this column I really wanted to focus on emergent acts that have little or no artistic, emotional or just straight rockin’ value. I saw a hole in music reporting where, once an act had received a little bit of street cred via blogs or Falling Gravel (you might know it as Rolling Stone), nearly every media outlet was on board and sucking the band off like an 18-year-old ecstasy-addicted porn star with an abusive past family life. I find trends like this in the industry to be abhorrent, and the acts, the majority of whom have nothing to offer besides a repackaging of things that have already been done and which need not bear repeating, largely undeserving.
Unfortunately, I recently wasted 74 minutes and 41 seconds of my life listening to one of the worst aural shit-storms ever perpetrated by biped mammals since the early days of rock and roll. And by the early days of rock and roll, I mean thousands of years ago, when what humans considered to be music was pounding on rocks with other rocks and screaming in a guttural non-language. I wanted this month’s column to be about Crystal Castles, but after hearing Metallica’s Death Magnetic and managing to resist the urge to gouge out my own ears with a melon baller for an hour and 15, I feel the need to warn the world.
Do not buy this album.
Do not download it (legally or illegally); do not order it at a discounted rate from Amazon.com; do not add it on Imeem or Rhapsody; do not let your friend burn it for you; do not accept any sort of mix that has any song from this album on it; do not listen to radio stations that playlist it on the off chance that you may hear their single; do not walk into any store that might be playing it over the loudspeaker; and (this one may hurt) do not play Death Magnetic on Guitar Hero. It’s really that bad.
Once upon a time that only exists in VH1 specials, Metallica was a proud group of alcoholics who managed to play harder, faster and more intensely than the majority of their peers. This earned them enough fame to make a crossover record that firmly implanted the band in American culture, and filled their bank accounts with enough looch to keep that self-absorbed little prick of a leprechaun drummer in Basquiat paintings and models twice his height for the rest of eternity. But this is where their journey as musicians should have stopped. Metallica could have walked away after their huge commercial success and subsequent release of a decent covers album, but they chose to soldier on and attempt to maintain relevancy even though they were clearly far removed from what made them a decent band in the '80s, and carrying egos the size of Boeing’s Everett Factory. This is the point in a band’s career where you should either A) start the cycle of retirement/reunion tours where you play your old songs and make unhealthy amounts of money, or
buy a castle somewhere, become a hermit and get really weird. The worst thing that you can do at this juncture is try to make music out of some sick need to relive the times when what you did was fresh and exciting. Metallica has done it for seven years and two horrible albums.
The worst part about Death Magnetic is not the production values, which brought it to the top of a Worst Offenders List compiled by audio engineers, and sparked a petition among fans demanding a remix. The more saddening and pathetic aspect of a release that's the auditory equivalent of Beverly Hills Chihuahua is that Metallica just doesn’t seem to get it. It’s over, guys. You had a good run. Stop living on past accolades and trying to go harder, faster and more intense, because your bones are probably getting brittle and there’s now a band built around a cartoon that makes better metal than you.
It’s disheartening to see a once-strong band come to the point that Metallica has reached. It’s one thing to suck coming out of the gates, to have one semi-popular hit and then fade into obscurity; at least there is a sense of dignity when you try, fail and accept it. But Metallica seems like that 40-year-old man who still hangs out at his alma mater's football games in his old jersey, talking to the new quarterback about his glory days. Yeah, they may be physically there, and everyone knows about them because they’ve been there so long. But it’s creepy, and deeply depressing, and no one in the game today really gives a shit if they can still hurl a wobbly spiral.
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