Metallica! Rick Rubin! Death Magnetic! September 16 (-ish)!

^^^all a bunch of dark, maudlin crap

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The second Cash/Rubin record, Unchained, is the only real keeper. There was a band behind him, and he actually rocked out a few times - the aforementioned cover of "Rusty Cage" in particular. For that reason, it's kind of ignored now, because all the super-serious critics who fawned all over the most mournful of the acoustic stuff didn't want to hear a Cash with any life in him.

Rick Rubin hasn't produced a decent album in what, 20 years?

I like his work with System of a Down.

unperson I disagree. His first is the only keeper. Totally stripped down - it's just him.

Cash singing 'Master of Puppets' - that would be a keeper.

>Totally stripped down - it's just him.

Yeah, but can you explain to me why that's a good thing? Cash wasn't a folkie; his first band was a trio, and he always needed accompaniment, rhythm, support.

^^^ding ding ding

yeah God Forbid an artist does something unexpected, amirite guys?

first two cash records are great. if they'd stopped there i'd have no beef.

(first two cash/rubin obv.)

its not that it was unexpected, it was totally predictable! (not to mention boring). What more predictable way to deal with an aging icon than to give him a bunch of shitty "contemporary" songs to cover and act like absolutely nothing is required of the producer than to just record the man and his guitar.

anyway this should all be on some other thread

you predicted that Johnny Cash would sing a Misfits song? that's amazing.

i think your projecting a lot of stuff that happened AFTER the cash records were such a big success shakey...it's predictable now, only cuz those records MADE it predictable

the particular songs don't matter Mr. Que - its like whenever they pair any aging icon with young talent eager to work with their idols (see also: Willie Nelson, that stupid Sinatra duets record, etc.) In principle there's nothing wrong with a little cross-generational miscegenation (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" is amazing, for example) but the lame marketing angle and the overly reverential treatment given the performer rarely result in any good music.

Shakey that's some bullshit, how can Rubin "act like absolutely nothing is required of the producer than to just record the man and his guitar" and then give him an "overly reverential treatment"? And isn't the reverence something an audience gives a performer, not a producer? And lastly: what's so reverential about letting all those voice crackings stay in the mix?

i guess i should add here that i just think records are okay--not great, but an interesting idea. way better than if Cash had just kept making the same record over and over. (and in a way you're right about the dourness-aren't there like five of these rubin records? prolly too many.) i dunno, i think it's good when artists stretch. i didn't really pay attention to the marketing angle. and i think cash should have been revered--who else deserves overly reverential treatment but him?

Euler I think its kinda quintessentially overly reverential to act like a performer is best served by being totally unadorned. (a la "he doesn't need anything else, he's JOHNNY CASH")

no one's saying Cash was "best served" by being unadorned. he did something different at the end of his life--why can't you just say "I think the songs suck," rather than trying to come up with some BS justifcation. you don't like the records, no big deal, right?

and i think cash should have been revered--who else deserves overly reverential treatment but him?

this is a good question... in some ways I think reverence is not a particularly healthy or interesting avenue for artists to travel. I mean there are people I revere, for sure, but it probably wouldn't be helpful to inject that reverence into those people's artistic processes.

and no its not a big deal that I don't like them, I was just thinking out loud about why I don't.

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xpost to Shakey

hmm ok I guess, but I think there are lots of ways a producer can give an artist a "reverential" treatment, like piling on strings for instance.

btw I don't get that reverential feel from the Rubin Cash records...but I already revered Cash so I wouldn't get this extra vibe from Rubin's production.

they could use those cash records to torture terrorists with. ugh. a good producer would have said: "hey, john, we'll try again when you're feeling a little better." it's almost like he was hoping he would get cash's actual death rattle on tape. so that he could sample it for a funky new chili peppers single!

roflz

i only felt that way about the last one. he sounds pretty spry on the first one.

back on topic though: dave mustaine wrote most of the riffs/parts to the songs that would end up on kill 'em all, right? and cliff burton helped write almost every song on ride the lightning and master of puppets, right? and ...and justice for all is really when they started to lose it, if you ask me. it was the first time that they were boring anyway. they should just do albums of covers. they are always good at those even without cliff.

^^^scott brings true wisdom. the two smartest, most interesting guys in the band haven't been around for a long time.

Scott is wrong though because AJFA is up there with the best riff-wise, and their songwriting was always pretty bad (see Master Of Puppets the song). Never bought the whole Cliff cult anyway.

Backwards day was last week, Siegbran.

I'm with Siegbran. AJFA and the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP are the two Metallica records I listen to most often, with Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets and Kill 'Em All following, in that order. (MOP is way overrated, the title track and "Battery" aside.

mostly justice just suffers from being too long. it WAS the first time i ever found metallica songs tedious. but certainly not the last time! and the drums drove me up a friggin' wall. there is stuff on justice that i like. and cliff did have a hand in SOME of the music on justice as well. just saying: before he died: cool band. after: not so much (garage days and half of justice aside). this might have happened anyway. cliff probably would have left/gotten the boot anyway as lars/james went for the gold. and 3 and a half good records + awesome cover stuff + cool odds & ends is better than most bands can come up with anyway.

d/c

they should just do albums of covers.

Metallica covers.

(MOP is way overrated, the title track and "Battery" aside.

Blasphemy.

Agree with J0hn - from those clips the vocals really stand out as bad. Turn them down in the mix, Rick! The guitars are still so blues/southern rock-ish, too. When did Kirk start doing that shit? I never felt any kind of Blues Hammer vibe in any of their pre-'Black Album' stuff.

I have to say, I don't mind the bluesy guitar. In fact, "I Disappear" is maybe my favorite thing they've done in the last decade outside of S&M. If St. Anger had been along those lines, I probably would've liked it a whole lot more than their "extreme" move. It certainly wouldn't have been thrash, but it would have been a more honest record of what they wanted to do at the time.

As for the Johnny Cash stuff, I only have The American IV, and while it's really good, it's kind of too depressing to listen to. The "Rusty Cage" cover was pretty rad, too.

And yeah, Master of Puppets still held up when I listened to it last night.

what the fuck, anti-cliff revisionism.

seriously

a propos of nothing i've been listening to a fair lot of old metallica on some channel at sirius at work for the past couple of days, maybe it's a new one, so random it's been a while ; I was like 13-14 yo when i discovered their back catalog, but i got into it yeah and have to say it was nice to hear that bit of sample on youtube that sounded raw and original, but maybe not urgent or hectic enough, though, like they could get:pretty crazy. and off i go to start a thread on hard shuffle or ya

Scott is wrong though because AJFA is up there with the best riff-wise, and their songwriting was always pretty bad (see Master Of Puppets the song). Never bought the whole Cliff cult anyway.

These two sentences are crazier than a shithouse rat

I'm a glutton for punishment and will buy Death Magnetic. If the coffin is under $100, I may even buy that too. I still love Metallica, and while this:

Defending Metallica in 2008 is like getting back together with the ex-girlfriend who cheated on you and lied to you the last 4-5 times you were together

is totally OTM, I gotta say, there's still chemistry between us, dude, so save the tears for morning.

As for Johnny Cash - only a fool would hate on him, duh, but I hated the way the media handled his death, which happened to be the same day we lost John Ritter. Cash had been milking his imminent demise for years, decades, even, while Ritter's death was wholly unexpected and somehow, sadder. Media: "Country icon Johnny Cash, beloved the world over, dead at 206. Tomorrow, more of our continuing coverage on the life and times of this American trailblazer. Oh, yeah, and Jack Tripper also croaked today for some reason. Now on to the weather."

Total Groucho Marx / Elvis scenario...

And if they wanted to release an instrumental disc of this, I wouldn't complain."

OTM John. I would buy instrumental versions of every Metallica album since Justice... if they were available.

Maybe if I keep low expectations of Metallica they might surprise me with something decent (and i actually like some of load). But I just cant see it.
Never really liked AJFA. The usual complaints about it..

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Rick Rubin hasn't produced a decent album in what, 20 years?

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 3 July 2008 16:02 (3 days ago) Link

Besides the Johnny Cash albums:

Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - The Final Studio Recordings
System Of A Down - Toxicity
Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium
System Of A Down - Hypnotize/Mesmerize
Neil Diamond - 12 Songs
Dixie Chicks - Taking The Long Way

I still love AJFA -- probably for nostalgiac reasons, though I can't really tell b/c its influence as one of my formative musical experiences makes it very difficult to reexamine objectively, in the context of the rest of their catalog and all. I got it in sixth grade and listened to it just about every day (alongside Appetite for Destruction) on my walkman while delivering newspapers. The tinny, no-bass production thing probably never occurred to me (A) because I was 11; and (B) b/c the album was almost exclusively taken in through stock headphones.

FWIW I still like the "black album" too, warts and all. It's at least 50% classic to my ears, mostly due those gigantic fucking riffs & a soft spot for Kirk's wah-wah fetish.

The Load/Reload thing was such WTF disappointment that I really, really wanted to accept St. Anger as the take-no-prisoners return to form it was initially trumpeted as in many (the majority?) of its early reviews - kind of like when The Phantom Menace came out and, for a while, no one wanted to admit what a colossal dud it really was. But the album really is almost unlistenable, completely sacrificing memorable songcraft in favor of "kicking ass" in a really pathetic, middle-age-crisis kind of way.

As far as what to expect from new material, I believe that the band are incapable of recapturing the vitality of their best work. Based on their portrayal in Some Kind of Monster, they don't seem conscious of what "it" actually was to begin with. Even if Rick Rubin were able penetrate the Hetfield/Ulrich ego fortress (impossible, I say), all the back-to-basics production in the world won't matter if the tunes simply are not there. And they haven't been, for a very long time.

Some Kind of Monster > The Phantom Menace > The Black Album

The Phantom Menace has nothing on The Black Album. Actually, "The Phantom Menace," had it not already been copyrighted etc., would make a fine Metallica album/song title.

At no point on the Black Album does a Jedi jam his lightsaber into the heart of a giant metal door until it superheats and blows open.

>Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium

When I interviewed these guys, Cedric said he can't even listen to that record anymore. He hates what Rubin did to it/them. I don't agree with him; I'm just reporting.

haha yeah mars volta could have made an even worse record if rubin would have just let the dogs off the chain

although sometimes i fall for their bullshit santana meets mr bungle with an emo singer bullshit!

you know what i just thought of for the first time in a long time...how WEIRD AS FUCK it was that marianne faithful did a cameo appearance on a METALLICA record. you can't make this shit up!

Metallica, hey, if they're enjoying the music they're making now, so be it. I'm not. But to John D's original point, the first four albums were classic (and hell, I still enjoy the Black Album from a

But Metallica seems to be more interested now in putting on a facade of "being heavy" and "returning to roots" that for a lot of their sheep-ish fanbase, it doesn't matter that they actually aren't.

I'll give it a fair listen, just as I did St. Anger, but I hated that album. I could ignore the cringe-inducing lyrics ("My lifestyle determines my deathstyle"), but the music was just bad, other than the title track and "Dirty Window".

Part of me thinks that, lame or not, they probably enjoyed making the Loads more than what they're making now.

sorry if i'm coming off as just a hater, but i worry that any appraisal of this record in any way favorably comparing it to MOP or any of the other older metallica albums is so missing the point of what made those albums great, which was GREAT songs and GREAT guitar sound/creative playing. these things are missing 100% from this record. there is not a trace of that here. and those qualities, while they exist in the past, are what made metallica monstrous and to be feared and huge and awesome, and they are worth standing up for, IMO.

I got overexcited about "wow, a not terrible new metallica album" back then but let's be honest this roxy post was ridiculously OTM. plus I got a long tattoo once when this album was playing in the shop and fuckn' A you do not wanna have to sit through this record during a tattoo sitting.

eternal smdh @ critics racing to out-"surprisingly not that bad!!" each other about a weak album

I stand by my review.