But seriously, I get tired of all the "Metallica sucks after x album" crap. Load seems to be the biggest target (although St. Anger really should be...). Load and Reload are absolutely fantastic albums musically. If you can get past the fact that it's Metallica (ie, that they don't sound like they used to) and just listen to the music, it's great. Interesting, layered, deep... and then they started listening to everyone while still holding onto Bob Rock, and made St. Anger. St. Anger shows some flashes of good music, but since it was all apparently assembled in Logic (the program) from jam sessions spanning years, it sounds like it. The fact that they decided to make it sound "garage" didn't help. I still enjoy listening to it sometimes, though.

Garage, Inc., although it's made up of covers, is also a great listen (and some of it is actually well mastered...). And S&M, while certainly a gimmick, is a very entertaining gimmick.

I haven't heard enough of the new album to pass any sort of judgement on it.

Yeah, I copied someone else.


*sigh*

The best thing about my brief excursion to New York City (was visiting an online friend in Connecticut at the time) was going to this place that served Belgian fries. I don't remember the fries themselves, but the sauces stood out. We tried probably a dozen different sauces, and they were all delicious. Does anyone here make their own fry sauces?

Addendum: Lars is out of his freakin' skull if he doesn't think the complaints about compression are worth answering. Also: everyone was right about Justice. It doesn't have any bass. Just because people still liked it doesn't mean it wasn't poorly mixed and/or mastered.

I really hope the criticism for dynamic compression in these albums starts turning things around.

Metallica was never known for audiophile quality recordings to begin with. The last album I owned was load and was not impressed with either the music or the quality of the recording, I can only imagine what the compressed version of Death Magnetic sounds like. Metallica has basically turned into a running joke with me.

I totally agree, some of the quotes from him about it seem nuts... he's a musician, you'd think this would be easily discernible to him (and concerning)... though maybe his eardrums are blown after all these years of rocking.

Jason

I won't share the name because I'm stating an opinion he might not want shared but a rather famous old time rocker hangs out here in PEI for most of the year (escapes the winter) and I asked him his opinion on the whole Metallica sound issue. While he is very disappointed in the mixing trends that he saw developing over the lifetime of his career, what I found more interesting was largely to your point.

To quote him roughly...
"First I stayed out of the mixing booth because I didn't know anything about it. I just wanted to sing on records. Then I got heavily involved because I felt it was part of my artistic development. Then I realized I couldn't hear anything worth sh__ anymore so I stopped getting involved except to try and explain the sound we were looking for."

I suspect Lars is in the same boat. Timing is similar so neither would have worried about or been 'uncool' enough to protect their ears in the early parts of their career.

I seem to remember a public service announcement by some member of Metallica about 15 years ago about being deaf.

Hmm... so I've acquired what says it was the GH3 version, and I've been listening to it for awhile. I've come to the conclusion it still sounds terrible. Anyone else had better results? I've never tried the CD version (just bought it and stuck it on the shelf), so I don't know if I'm actually listening to that.