Metallica ARE...Hardwired…To Self-Destruct

lars died in the bus crash that killed cliff burton
he was in the afterlife for 3:27 before he was revived
during that time richard simmon's soul transmigrated into his body

Funny you never see Richard Simmons and Lars doing lines of blow at the same time

dylan wrote a song about this

i like the nods to earlier styles. the intro is Dyers Eve-esque, and Lars is at his best when he's unexpectedly throwing fills into the middle of a phrase for no reason (seriously).

second listen and I like this even more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxFFAx3H9NU
^^was this posted? they're in good shape!

Also, do they rehearse in a Guitar Center?

most of that video looks to have been recorded in the same place they recorded the live dvd that came with st. anger.
the same fan made flags etc.
i believe its their own rehearsal space/studio.
there is also reference to the place in the new mojo interview with lars.

:D

Kirk channeling 90s Bob Geldof in the Stern performance.
All signs point to a good album, fingers crossed!

whoa i loooove the new song

All signs point to a good album

Except for the length...

http://i.imgur.com/oXEZiCz.gif

Such a strange feeling to be anticipating a Metallica album.

is kirk stealing hair from lars?

are their heads slightly enlarged in this photo? or is it just the angle?

https://up-1.cdn-fullscreendirect.com/production/photos/7549/original/20160818_193900_7549_939482.jpeg

i can't stop looking at it. lars in particular.

super-wide lens has distorted the perspective, making their heads look fuckin weird and their bodies oddly truncated

also looks like they were shot separately at slightly different angles and composited together, which increases the uncanniness

lars looks like a foreshortened jack kirby drawing

Yeah, it's very phonied-up on purpose. I would say a) extreme angle and super-wide lens; b) heads probably slightly enlarged in Photoshop; c) individual shots composited together. And all those things were done in a deliberately crude manner.

it looks like they were going for the cartoonishly large head effect but didn't go all the way with it.
or, that at one point they had a photo sesh with the boys but all that really came out clearly were the heads, so later on they hired some body doubles to pose and then stuck the shots of the old heads on top.

That got me thinking about whether a Metallica Funko POP toy existed. Doesn't seem to, but I found this:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0552/1401/files/Metallica-Wampa_large.jpg?4264

not to harp on kirk's brave battle with male pattern baldness or anything but he looks noticeably more hirsute in the stern video than he does holding that action figure

are their heads slightly enlarged in this photo? or is it just the angle?

It's the Metallica edition of old-skool Nickelodeon show Weinerville.

I don't think Lars is a total shit drummer, but he always seems to be trying so hard, kind of like Joey Fatone or Lance Bass struggling to remember the moves in an N*Sync routine.

I don't think Lars is a total shit drummer, but he always seems to be trying so hard, kind of like Joey Fatone or Lance Bass struggling to remember the moves in an N*Sync routine.

I don't play the drums, but I am totally willing to accept that Metallica songs are difficult to play. That said, live he always seems to be having a blast.

why do his bass drum hits always have this dry, trebley "tk" to them? at least since ...and justice

His face always seems to be doing twice the work of his arms and feet.

There are technically better drummers in metal than Lars Ulrich and on the classic albums there's a lot of knitting together of takes and overdubbing... BUT, it's always been fun to watch drummers attempting to play 'Dyer's Eve' as it is on the album, which apparently is the hardest song to play drum-wise in the Metallica catalogue.

As for Lars' drum sound, at least on the studio albums it's down to whoever is engineering/producing as much as Lars himself.

okay listening on spotify now and woof man this sounds like compressed ass
but to be expected i guess

why do his bass drum hits always have this dry, trebley "tk" to them? at least since ...and justice

this is the production style for most metal these days, right? got to cut through those guitars, and make sure people hear every double-kick hit that you painstakingly played/triggered/programmed.

what made Lars great is his parts and choices imo, more the creative aspect and how his parts worked with the arrangement than the physical. he was my Ringo basically.

(and a good role model for a not-technically-blessed drummer like myself)

There's a great bit in 'Orion' where Lars accents the riff in a strange way, but it works really well.

the whole "lars is a terrible drummer" thing has been so overblown and is wrong imo, feel like at a certain point metal became so regimented with double bass/trigger machinedrum exactitude that his quirks are perceived as "weak"

slayer worship has a lot to do w/it and the idea of slayer as the "ultimate" metal band

otm. i like that even though i'm sure the performances on this album are many takes Pro-Tooled together (just like everything else, nbd), it feels like it's not to a click and has a certain looseness and character to it.

at live shows on the other hand he rushes like a maniac to the point where i don't know how the other members keep it together, but that is kinda charming too.

lars is a v rigid, inflexible, and unmusical drummer but also his limitations give him a very idiosyncratic style, dude's fills are v much his own. this is super apparently on lulu where he improvises a lot and it fuckin rules. also what he does seems v physically exhausting and he plays two hour shows, etc. i know people love to shit on lars but he's so inextricable from metallica's sound

this is super apparent*

slayer worship has a lot to do w/it and the idea of slayer as the "ultimate" metal band

Which is weird as hell since Lombardo is a super loose drummer, the way he drives the band is much more about groove than relentless machine-gun battery.

There's a lot of moments on ...And Justice For All where certain transitions between certain riffs would be far more jarring if it wasn't for Lars helping to glue it together.

i dunno. I mean, I think it's ok to admit Lars isn't a great drummer. it is true that metal is full of such robodrummers like Flo Mounier, Dave Lombardo, Proscriptor, Pete Sandoval, etc that the expectation do tend to be elevated for metal drummers, but I mean there's a reason that the early Sodom albums are revered despite the horrible drumming. nothing Lars does on disc is embarrassing and complements the music fine.

live, though, he *IS* quite sloppy, he speeds up at weird times, he omits beats. If you listen to a MOP-era bootleg, you could barely tell songs like "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from songs like "Damage Inc" because Lars would speed the songs up to where they sounded like a different animal (fortunately he got over those zips by the AJFA era).

They've always been kind of known for being sloppy live (the Cunning Stunts DVD is one of the worst recorded performances of the band I think you could find). They've definitely taken it more serious in recent years, because on listening to bootlegs from the last 5 years, I don't hear the same complacency that I heard say, when they were half-enthusiastically playing their classics during the Load years.

doesn't impact the enjoyment of their live sets any (I do think it's fair to expect bands to play well live for what you pay, but there's a huge diff between Metallica-esque sloppiness, and the outright DGAF attitude HR gives live in Bad Brains these days)...there are some metalheads that will be at concerts basically counting every gaffe and I feel like that's the wrong way to enjoy a metal show but ymmv

speaking of....I am kind of excited of being able to go to a Metallica show and looking forward to the new stuff. I haven't seen them since 1999 and judging for their 2009 Mexico performance (released on DVD a few years ago)....I'd really like to again.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about ,Cunning Stunts last night and how I haven't seen it (or any of the Live Shit stuff) for years... I don't really remember the quality of the performances sticking out, more moments like Newsted's bass solo and Hetfield's terrible acting during the "burning man" section, which surely must be the most unconvincing "what the fuck?" Hetfield has ever uttered.

In fact, does Hammett cock up the 'One' solo on Cunning Stunts or am I confusing it with a different show entirely? It's been a long time!

lol he butchers it badly. he falls about a measure and a half behind and you kind of see it register in his face and he tries to catch up.

the 'burning man' thing was funny. long before the days of social media, I learned of this gimmick via USENet, so I knew it was going to happen at my show. but most of the fans there were telling me "OMG IT WAS REAL, HE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL". so I kept asking them how it was possible that none of that was staged when the flaming man APPEARED IN THE PROMO VIDEO FOR THE TOUR and I was telling people hours before the show it was gonna happen (i was a dick that didn't care about spoilers).

they wree like "coincidence!"

in a way, I kinda hated that aspect of Metallica live. like, the Load tour show I saw was 2:30 - 2:45, and yet a good half hour of that was pointless Hammett guitar solos, pointless Newsted solos, playing fragments of a bunch of songs without actually *playing* them (I'm not talking the medleys, either - I mean they played the intro for "Sanitarium" and at least 2 other songs and just stopped 20 seconds in.

like, if you're going to put on a 2+ hour show, be Springsteen and keep the music going.

they seem to be doing that now though. I could do without the guitar solos tho. drum solos are fun live because of the athletic nature of them, but when I hear a 2-3 minute disembodied solo I'm kinda like "i'd rather be hearing a tune".

re: lar's drumming, whoever compared him to ringo upthread otm, of course there are better drummers than lars but the guy can swing, and it is not possible to swing when you are playing double bass blast beats the whole damn time

what made Lars great is his parts and choices imo, more the creative aspect and how his parts worked with the arrangement than the physical. he was my Ringo basically.

Yeah, he's not a great drummer, but he's a very good composer of drum parts.

i've never thought of ringo as sloppy or not a good drummer

Lars is weird in Metallica becuz he's actually the lead guitarist not the drummer.