Question for (older) Metallica fans

Metallica was in a no-win situation.

They simply didn't have the fire to go back to their old style. If they had tried to simply recreate any of their previous albums, it would have sounded recycled.

From an artistic standpoint, they should have taken more chances, but that would not have been commercially viable. Look how Lulu was received. Try to imagine the reaction to that if it had been released in 1995.

There is big a difference between being a hungry thrash band and being rich rock stars. The motivations and inspirations are different.

I liked the Black Album, and still do, but the cracks were already showing. Two ballads. Too many videos (from the "no videos" band). The live album that nobody could afford to buy. They gained a new audience, but lost a big chunk of the old one.

 

This in a nutshell.

Justice was a bit of a shock thanks to the god awful production. Didn't take long, though, to realize there is about 40 minutes of sublime music on it. The rest of it, however, is not very good. BA was the point where I figured those 40 minutes were all the band really had left.

 

I remember thinking at the time AJFA came out that it wasnt too bad. It had elements of some of the stuff I liked in their other albums. But it was lacking creativity. When MTV kept playing the video for ONE, I couldn't stand that album anymore. The Black album impressed me with the slick production, I liked Wherever I May Roam. The other songs on that album were pretty cheesy though. To me they had become a hard rock band at that point. Last Caress is the only song I liked from them after that. The way they handled the napster mess pretty much killed any remaining interest I had for them. Their new image sucked too.

 

Despite Ride and particularly Master being A+ albums, Last Caress might be my favorite minute and a half of recorded Metallica music!

 

Justice came out where I was a Senior in HS. I remember many, many of us long time fans were disappointed by the release. It wore on me however. It was still Thrash, just a bit boring, more mellow and less creative than their previous 3 releases were. As an aside, the biggest bummer of the time to the Thrash Crowd was Anthrax's State of Euphoria. At least Metallica somewhat sounded like themselves (until the Black Album anyway). So they made it one album further than Anthrax before selling out completely.

 

Last Caress the Misfits cover? It came out in 1987...

 

I still don't own the black album. It represents their fall from grace (to me)

 

I feel pretty confident about the answer to this, as this was the period where I was paying a lot of attention to Metallica. As mentioned above, it was well known that Metallica were listening to the popular "heavy" music at the time, and were not shy about saying how it would influence their upcoming (Load) album. Lars was really in to Alice In Chains circa 1993, and promised the next album would be "more greasy". When we got exposed to 2x4 and Devil's Dance in late summer 1995 (my first download! To a floppy disc!) a few of us that saw/heard knew what to expect. There was also the Fan Can #1 released in 1996, prior to Load, where we got to hear snippets of "Ronnie" and "Better Than You", which wouldn't be released for another 1.5 years via ReLoad. Those song (sections) along with 2x4 and Devil's Dance made the musical direction not surprising at all, and an obvious extension to where The Black Album left off.

Also, keep in mind that MTV was at a height of popularity during 1995-1997, so the "visuals" associated with Metallica's music were likely influencing their musical direction as well. In short, another "Justice" just wouldn't have made sense, given the respective musical and entertainment options during that time.

 

Load is a great album, it's just not a great Metallica album.

 

As a fan since Ride The Lightning I felt that each album up through Load and Re-Load was a natural progression from the one before. They got older, healthier, richer and less angry about the World. While I wasn't a huge fan of L-RL I saw them as natural. When they took a giant step backwards and artificially tried to get their 'old school' sound back on St. Anger, they failed. Be who you are, not who the fans want you to be.

As an aside, L/RL was the product of them using up all of Cliff's old riff tapes.

 

I'd been a Metallica fanatic since shortly before the release of Ride the Lightning, but I knew something was rotten in Denmark when the "Enter Sandman" video hit MTV a week or two before the album dropped...and I didn't dig it at all. I vividly remember when the video ended, my brother and I looked at each other and said, "Uh-oh." Haha. I did buy the CD when it came out hoping that "Sandman" was just a fluke but aside from a few tracks it didn't do anything for me. Too slick, too polished, not enough "thrash" or grit... whatever the reason, for all intents and purposes, The Black Album was where I got off the Metallica train.

Therefore, by the time Load and Re-Load came along I had moved on to other things - so I honestly don't think I had any "expectations" for what those records would sound like. Besides, the Black Album singles had been so thoroughly run into the ground by MTV and radio by that time that even if I'd loved that album, I probably would've needed to take a break from Metallica anyway (haha).

I did pick up used copies of the Load and Re-Load albums years after the fact and I spin them from time to time. If you took the good cuts off of each one you could probably boil the pair down to one good, solid album.

We won't discuss St. Anger. That album does not exist on my planet.

Death Magnetic was a decent effort, it didn't reignite my earlier fanaticism for the band but they didn't poop the bed either. I got to see them live on that tour (for the first time in close to twenty years) and it turned out to be a pretty damn good show. It was nice to see that they could still bring it in concert.

 

I thought they might continue in the sripped-down direction but keep it heavy, along the lines of Helmet or Pantera. Obviously they did not care what I thought. But I have to admit I wasn't paying them a lot of mind at the time, as there was so much else going on in music.

Also: the "Black Album" - pop? Come on. It's been a whlie since I listened to it in full, but IIRC only "Enter Sandman" really skirts "pop" and even then it's sure not Def Leppard or Bon Jovi. Or even Dokken.

 

in all fairness I shouldnt say AJFA lacked creativity because some of the motifs were cool. harvester of sorrow and frayed ends of sanity reminded me a bit of creeping death or something from RTL. One had an interesting story line. To live is to die and dyers eve kind of reminded me of stuff from MOP... its just the songs seemed to lack any of the magic their other works had.

I dont know why I said what I did about Last Caress, that song popped in my head when I was closing my post...

 

I guess I'm an "older fan" since I've enjoyed the band since Master of Puppets. I really liked AJFA and the production has never bothered me. TBA was very commercial but I liked the songs. Afterwards it is hit-or-miss though I never got into Death Magnetic (though I do like St. Anger and Lulu ). People and bands change, so I never really expected them to have the same sound as they did in their earlier days.

 

Not much of a Metallica fan...and I don't own the album...but "The Unforgiven" and "Nothing Else Matters" were pretty much pop tunes. Dark ones, but radio friendly nonetheless, IMO.

 

Never understood the hatred for the Black Album. It's still a heavy record even if it isn't as hardcore as the previous four, but I don't get people that say it wasn't Metallica anymore. But hey, that's metal elitism at it's finest, or worst I should say. "Thrash metal or no metal at all, wimps and posers leave the hall"

 

I've told everybody that I know that Metallica went downhill after Justice. The Black Album had its moments, but it was just missing something from where I was sitting. Whenever I listen to Metallica these days, I usually just listen to the first four albums, along with the Garage Days EP. That's what I consider to be vintage Metallica.

 

I think this is absolutely on the money. Hetfield admired CoC so much he even guested on one of their records. It's not an accident that a lot of stuff on Load sounds a lot like something off of Wiseblood.

 

I always liked that Garage Days Revisited ($5.98...do not pay more) EP. It was the sound of the new band having fun together before sliding in the studio to make the ultra-serious Justice album.

 

It takes all kinds.

I knew guys who thought Ride The Lightning was a sell out album because of "Fade To Black" and "Escape".

 

I think the Black album could be great if you could get it down to about 8 songs. Even trimmed right down though it would be a lesser album than the four previous albums.

Holier Than Thou and Through the Never are both terrible. In the Some Kind Of Monster documentary they comment that the Load albums were them taking virtually any idea and making a finished song out of it. That's what Holier Than Thou and Through the Never sound like; insubstantial and should have been left off the album. Actually I'd put The Struggle Within in the same category. So there's three songs that are nowhere near good enough to be on a Metallica album.

The God That Failed and My Friend of Misery are both lesser songs too. I have a really bad relationship with albums that die so badly in the second half. The Black album is the epitome of this.

I love The Unforgiven. You drop that song into Justice or Master of Puppets (like The Thing That Should Not Be) and it would have a way better reputation. I can better see the dislike/hate for Nothing Else Matters but I've always liked it.

As for the Loads, they're half great and half filler. Even still, I look at those albums as being Metallica officially declaring themselves to be Black Sabbath. Biggest metal band in the world, growing pains, the real rehab albums. I hate listening to the St. Anger lyrics because everything seems so "12 step" related even if it isn't. The Load albums seem like James really screaming for help before the fall and it's much more interesting.

 

It does suffer from the same issue that ruins most 90's albums; CD bloat. By the time you pass 45 minutes it starts to wear out its welcome. Surprisingly, it is their shortest album since Master of Puppets and the albums that came after TBA are all much, much longer (to their detriment).

Thanks to this thread I spun "..and Justice for All" today for the first time in a long while and it still holds up - I don't think there was a weak song on the album. Maybe I'll do the same with TBA tomorrow.

 

I'm less adverse to the Black album than I once was. At the time I was young and a music snob. I tried as hard as I could to avoid the album altogether after the Enter Sandman video, and after Justice ... I simply thought Metallica was dead to me.

Ironically I avoided oversaturation as a result and now I kinda enjoy it. Definitely not a thrash record but the songwriting is pretty good IMO.

Load and Reload are just crap.

 

This. Unlike most I loved the Black album on release and still love it now. In retrospect it's the last gasp of the old Metallica. The observation about the videos is spot on. The video for One was truly something special, a great blending of filmed performance of the band intercut with the film footage with the monochrome suiting the track. Other than One it was a case of Cliff 'Em All and that was my lot.

The came what seemed like nothing but videos. Arty, pretentious, inscrutable videos. For a band that prided themselves on not chasing MTV they now seemed to be pursuing it at full pelt.

Their performance at Donington in 91 wasn't the marriage of fury and precious I saw the year before, and wasn't helped by the wind causing the sound to swirl. After seeing them at Donington they disappeared off of my radar until Load came out. I'd no idea of the press stories as to what they were listening to, the bootlegs of new tracks with a southern rock/Pantera edge. I remember seeing Live S**t Binge & Purge in the local record shop and thinking it was a little too expensive to warrant the purchase. I'm tempted to get hold of it now for the video footage of the band I remember seeing in Birmingham '90 & Donington '91. Likewise I never saw the Year and a Half documentaries.

Up to and including the Black album I looked up to them as gods walking amongst us. Their embracing of the video age and by extension their willingness to compromise themselves in pursuit of commercial success was their fall from grace.

 

I was more concerned about the wait for what turned out to be the black album. Seemed to take forever.