I remember hearing this version on a bootleg in a used CD store listening station when I was a kid, and realizing that the best riffs are the actually the ones under the solos (maybe because James doesn't have to sing, or even lock in with another rhythm guitarist): https://youtu.be/WAfcp54co4M?t=257
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 20:47 (three years ago) link
I don't hear any double bass on that demo in the verse? Sounds like a simplified drum beat compared to the studio recording? Unless that was the joke...
― pass the cur's dossier (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 21:30 (three years ago) link
Or it could be the shittiness of the recording and my waning hearing. I hear something approximating double bass but it's faint
― pass the cur's dossier (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 21:34 (three years ago) link
I hear something approximating double bass but it's faint
That's our Lars ....
;)
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 1 September 2020 21:36 (three years ago) link
I'm on headphones and can definitely hear it throughout (not a lot of attack on that demo recording), and his time is super tight compared to most live shows.
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 21:40 (three years ago) link
Lars rules
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 21:40 (three years ago) link
Lars is like Ringo: love him or not, I can't imagine anyone else in his place.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 1 September 2020 21:54 (three years ago) link
Or I guess I can imagine it, but wouldn't want it.
Protect Lars
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 23:18 (three years ago) link
Imagine being in your 50s and having legions of lunkheads caring about your double kick skills
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 23:20 (three years ago) link
Seriously, not least because all the young guns trigger anyway.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 1 September 2020 23:56 (three years ago) link
My god the instrumental section beginning four minutes into Eye of the Beholder is tight.
― chap, Friday, 29 January 2021 11:30 (three years ago) link
yeah that's my fav part of the song
― if Spaghetti-Os had whammy bars (Neanderthal), Friday, 29 January 2021 14:50 (three years ago) link
i listened to that tune a lot during Trump's inauguration week lol
Great track.
― chap, Friday, 29 January 2021 14:55 (three years ago) link
the drums on “harvester of sorrow” are so fucking good
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Sunday, 28 November 2021 06:13 (two years ago) link
Best Metallica album. Fuck bass.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Monday, 25 July 2022 23:35 (one year ago) link
otm
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 01:31 (one year ago) link
The way that it's mixed, there are enough bass frequencies between the drums and rhythm guitars. This isn't to say that Jason wasn't shafted or that, if recorded differently with his parts higher in the mix, Justice could have been a different and possibly even better album. Regardless, it's a first-class record that achieved what it set out to do.
― peace, man, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 11:32 (one year ago) link
No one's listening to (this kind of) metal for the low-end rumble of the bass. Even Cliff, he often seemed to be playing fuzzed out co-lead that blended in with the guitars. I assume Jason isn't doing much different. I think the general thinness of the whole recording is pretty beneficial, because god knows how bad it would have sounded had they brick-walled everything like they did later.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 13:13 (one year ago) link
Master of Puppets has great songs but when I listen to it now I just think about how much better it would sound recorded/mixed like AJFH
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 13:20 (one year ago) link
In my old age, I've mellowed my AJFA bass opinions. They're more in line with peace's and Josh's posts – yeah, there's no bass there, but it still fukkin jams.
I disagree with you, man alive. I do think that Masters sounds richer, fuller, thicker. Even that razor-sharp sheen at the end of The Thing That Should Be is, shall we say, more loaded than any similar riffs on AJFA.
Justice still sounds tinny in a lot of places, and my memories of it from a cassette tape that likely had too much tape inside it, it didn't sound great. CDs didn't help it much either.
BUT – despite all that – it's still a classic album.
― pplains, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 14:28 (one year ago) link
the remastered albums feature Cliff loud and clearly, and he added a ton. granted, a lot of the songs, he was just doubling, but he's playing a unique, pulsing bassline on "Jump in the Fire", there's the intro to "For Whom the Bell Tolls", there's his work in Orion, there are the swells that open "Damage Inc", like.....people were listening to Cliff!
― We were clothed, except for Caan, who was naked. Don't know why. (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 14:40 (one year ago) link
MoP still has that '80s reverb-y snare sound (and it's a great sounding classic album, don't get me wrong), but I think of the sound of AJFA as chrome-plated, or like a modernist sculpture.
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 14:55 (one year ago) link
Neanderthal otm, losing Cliff meant losing a creative force. Just so happened that Jamz and Larz were firing on all cylinders at that point, which made up for it
― calstars, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:02 (one year ago) link
Oh, for sure, Cliff was an unusual talent, doubly unusual in that he was probably the biggest and brightest musical star of that era of Metallica. I mean, still not sure people were necessarily listening to Metallica *for* Cliff, other than "Orion," but he definitely added a lot (though again, kinda like a third guitarist). But clearly what he added wasn't 100% essential, because " ... And Justice" rules. The band didn't begin to decline until Lars and James shifted gears.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:24 (one year ago) link
Until they stopped watching CNN together.
― peace, man, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:26 (one year ago) link
Cliff factored a lot more into the writing than Jason did.
he had 9 co-writing credits on RTL/MOP, even had one on "To Live is to Die" on AJFA.
He had 11 total across all albums (including "Anesthesia").
Jason had 3 total across his entire Metallica career.
― We were clothed, except for Caan, who was naked. Don't know why. (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:30 (one year ago) link
I've never listened to the riff tracks discs that came with the boxed set. Are there Cliff riff tracks?
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:33 (one year ago) link
no, but there's a pinup calendar with him shirtless
― We were clothed, except for Caan, who was naked. Don't know why. (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:36 (one year ago) link
Cliff's rack.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:41 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kqTcLwUYj8
― calstars, Monday, 20 February 2023 22:46 (one year ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/FfpCe3A.png
― calstars, Monday, 20 February 2023 22:48 (one year ago) link
I can't accept this album with bass, it feels like less of a cold, steel sculpture.
― change display name (Jordan), Monday, 20 February 2023 22:56 (one year ago) link
I played bass on "One" in my band in high-school, I had to learn the basslines from a transcription book because I couldn't hear them even reading the sheet music. I wonder now if they just made the basslines up (or maybe studied Jason's hands in concert).
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 20 February 2023 23:33 (one year ago) link
they had a cow interpret the frequencies
― waiting for a czar to fall (Neanderthal), Monday, 20 February 2023 23:38 (one year ago) link
The only place on the album it's audible to me is the intro to "Eye of the Beholder".
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 20 February 2023 23:39 (one year ago) link
To live is to jason
― calstars, Tuesday, 21 February 2023 00:00 (one year ago) link
I hit the final stage of Acceptance with the bass on this album long ago.
It is what it is, and at this point, it's like complaining about the lack of bass on "When Doves Cry".
― pplains, Tuesday, 21 February 2023 16:16 (one year ago) link
what's weird about this album for me specifically is that when I was a kid I had a copied cassette version of this album, which was copied from another copied cassette, so I always thought it sounded kind of weird and not very dynamic, but always assumed that's what happened when you listened to a cassette that was a copy of a copy. Then 10 years later as an adult, I randomly buy this album on CD when stumbling upon it in a used CD store and I put it on thinking I would finally hear this album the way it's supposed to sound and it sounds basically the same as my cassette copy.
Still my most listened to Metallica album by far, that shitty cassette copy got a lot of plays.
― silverfish, Tuesday, 21 February 2023 16:55 (one year ago) link