For the past 15 years, I've been a huge non fan of Metallica...

[bombtek]

nothing they put out really did anything for me, so I completely stopped listening to them. At times to the point of changing the radio station whenever they came on...no matter the song. Well I just got through listening to Kill em All for the first time in I don't know how long. I completely forgot how much of a fun and loose sounding band they were. That album epitomizes that for me. I love "rediscovering" treasures like that! Kill em All ...to me ...MIGHT be their best album.

[FunkyApocalypse]

That's good that you got back on them.

Personally, I am still only really of fan of Kill 'Em All to AJFA, with a couple songs after. Their new shit is horrible.

[CowboyFromHell]

All I will say is welcome back.

[DonP]

Metallica was the greatest band up to AJFA, then were the biggest sellouts and greatest betrayal after.

Thank gawd the kicked Mustaine out so that we continued getting some good stuff after.

[Brandenburg]

metallica is one of several bands i stopped listening too after a certain point.. megadeth, iron maiden and ozzy are the other ones.. I love their older stuff..

megadeth..up to Rust in Peace.. Ozzy.. up to no rest for the wicked.. iron maden.. up to stranger in a strange land or perhaps Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

metalica.. it was also AJFA.. even though.. the last good album imo was master of puppets... kill em all is one of my favorite metal albums of all time...

[DonP]

I pretty much agree.

One band from the past who's making stuff that I like better than there older stuff is Accept.

[Sephiroth]

Metallica was the greatest band up to AJFA, then were the biggest sellouts and greatest betrayal after.

Thank gawd the kicked Mustaine out so that we continued getting some good stuff after.

I don't get the sell-out thing during AJFA. They didn't do anything different than Anthrax, Exodus, Megadeth, and others did with making music videos and pandering to the MTV crowd, and they didn't do it first. Yet everyone I knew accused them of being sellouts. I didn't get it.


To me they didn't really sell out until the black album came out and they wrote intentionally-short songs for the sake of radio/MTV play (plus a certain love song). It was an intentional effort to go "KISS" and make an album for the sake of mass-consumerism.


And the part where it felt like there was no coming back for them was "Load" where they all got haircuts and looked like greasy posers who failed to be grunge while the album had a fuggin country song on it while Hetfield has been singing like a country singer who's only in the band for money ever since.

[RR2772]

The question that nobody bothers to give an answer to is what direction should they have gone in instead of the black album?


Longer and longer songs and more and more progresive from Kill'em'all to Justice with Lightning and Puppets the classics because of Burtons input and Justice being the leftovers with James/Lars running the show.


Without Cliff they are lost for good and can't get it back even how hard they try.

[DonP]

I don't get the sell-out thing during AJFA.

Re-read what I said. I said it was after AJFA that they sold out, i.e. the Black Album.

[DonP]

Without Cliff they are lost for good and can't get it back even how hard they try.

You are likely right. Back to MOP? Back to RTL? Anything else would have been better IMO.

[Sephiroth]

The question that nobody bothers to give an answer to is what direction should they have gone in instead of the black album?

Two words: PANTERA. Word.


In some ways Pantera probably filled the void left by Metallica going mainstream, and they played smaller venues that were more personal and where people could see them without big screens or without being Oprah-rich. Metal really came alive in the 90's, and Metallica missed it while being the first of the "thrash" and "big four" scene metal bands to focus on bigger arenas with tiered ticket prices.

Metal got heavier and nastier in the early 90's. Slayer got meaner and more refined with experience. Anthrax even ditched Belladonna for Bush to try to sound darker and heavier. Even Corrosion of Conformity lost its punk element to become a heavier metal band.

No one was interested in pandering to mainstream audiences (except Metallica and maybe Anthrax).

Re-read what I said. I said it was after AJFA that they sold out, i.e. the Black Album.

I got what you said, but a lot of people where I was at anyway insisted (and some still do) that they sold out with AJFA for pandering to the MTV crowd, and was throwing in my $0.02 from what I saw where I was at.

[Nightbat]

I don't get the sell-out thing during AJFA. They didn't do anything different than Anthrax, Exodus, Megadeth, and others did with making music videos and pandering to the MTV crowd, and they didn't do it first. Yet everyone I knew accused them of being sellouts. I didn't get it.

They had the biggest mouth about never traveling in limos and private jets (the usual crap about 'staying true to...' and such)
You can look at Metallica as The last hope of 'underground trash fans', the last 'Big' name that didn't sell out, that actually DID remain down to earth and proved what they said

.... untill the money came rolling in (Black album)

and yeah, when you're the last of the Mohicans, people believing in you will take it a lot harder than they did of the first surrendering

[CowboyFromHell]

And the part where it felt like there was no coming back for them was "Load" where they all got haircuts and looked like greasy posers...

You forget they got those haircuts as a show of solidarity after James got caught in the pyros. As for them to tone it down some over the years, agreed, but very few can keep it going as long as they have and still retain most of their original fan base. To have stayed rockin' for the past 30 years is an achievement that stands on it's own merits.

[RR2772]

They allready travled by plane on the Justice tour and who cares how the black album took of. It did and they went with it. The fan base grew all the time and somehow they could pull it all of. Money hungry? They sued their record label for the control of their music and made the music themselves without anyone pointing the finger saying to be a succes do this! They did not do a video until the Justice tour remember!

The only thing wrong with Metallica is the lack of Burtons input.

Besides Lars got fed up with the drumming style which he clearly stated in drum magazines and Lars were never a musician by heart anyway. So Pantera took the spot as being the most extreme heavy band which they were at the starting point of with Cowboys from hell and onwards but it drifted apart as the stories now offically go.

[Rsmacker]

Metal really came alive in the 90's, and Metallica missed it while being the first of the "thrash" and "big four" scene metal bands to focus on bigger arenas with tiered ticket prices.

Metal got heavier and nastier in the early 90's. Slayer got meaner and more refined with experience.

Metal only really went that way BECAUSE Metallica "sold out" and were so popular. If they hadn't made that move into becoming Megastars they would have just produced another so-so LP which would have been almost un-noticed by the mainstream, and would have just become another band playing to more and more "selective audiences" until they disappeared, along with all the rest of the HM bands, good and bad who were all fighting for a share of the market (all our favourites from the 80's in other words).
They could have had Fleming Rasmussen help them make another Master of Puppets, but you, the record buying public wouldn't have been happy - there'd be nothing new to grab any new fans, and the old fans would still say, "Yeah, but Puppets was better". The result would have been a stagnating band, playing to a dwindling audience of people getting older, having families, moving on, while they became that band you used to love before they became a yawn, the upstarts doing things their way who became run-of-the-mill and conformist.

The most important thing to remember is they wouldn't have been able to sustain the band as a business with another Puppets or AJFA, revenue would only have gone downwards, and we all know how record companies like that sort of thing. One sniff of that and they would be cut loose.

How many bands with declining sales ever get the critics' attention again? Most wouldn't even get a listen once they appear to falter and have peaked. There are plenty of fucking fantastic LPs, incredibly good music, from bands after a mediocre LP halted their climb to the top, meaning the blinder was critically ignored. It's a fickle business, once you have had a bite at the cherry, you don't often get a second chance, you become invisible to the people that matter - the people who keep the machinery running and the money rolling.

With the running costs of a band in their position after AJFA, it's probably harder to survive than when deciding whether to jack in the full-time job and go pro. There's a downward spiral that is inevitable if sales don't keep improving, (particularly true back when the Black album arrived and HM was a large, but still very niche market, nothing like the self-sustaining genre that it it now.)
If members start deciding they are "stars" and want to up their lifestyle (and that's human nature, to want shinier, newer, better toys than last year), they need to be increasing their income accordingly. Difficult when for every new fan you win, another decides they are too old for that shit any more and buys a Dire Straits LP instead. Any band on the up only remains "relevant" for a period of months before they are eclipsed by the "next big thing".

Let's say they did compose stuff superior to those early LPs, we probably wouldn't have got to hear it!

Bob Rock had a monumental task, it was actually the critical point of their career, forward into mega-sales or round in a circle and disappear up their own bumhole. Their momentum had propelled them straight through the Cliff Burton tragedy, which would have finished most bands (including them, if they'd not had that huge following carrying them forward), it was this LP which would make or break them. He had to beat practical sense into Metallica, took them from being a very good band with a hardcore following and some healthy album sales into being an unstoppable colossus. Their business spreadsheet nowadays would make their AJFA accounts look like loose change.
And, as much as people will decry the Black LP now, I'll bet nearly every single one of you bought the fucking thing back in 1991, loved it when "Enter Sandman" came on the radio, and nearly drove the neighbours insane trying to get that "Sad But True" heaviness from your own music, or just blasting the CD out over and over. Feel free to deny it, but you know the truth! How many times Platinum has it sold? (16 according to wikipedia). It's one of those LPs you KNOW you will find on any/every rock fan's shelf, whether he was a thrasher or Jethro Tull fan (hur hur). You'll find it in the collections of people who you wouldn't think would go anywhere near the heavy end of rock. I reckon people have it on their shelf but have absolutely no idea where or when they bought it, it was just an essential album for the rock fan in the 90s.

Metallica went from being a metal household name, to being a household name like U2 or Queen or Pink Floyd. That is not easily done and sustained...look at the other heavy rock band who were seemingly unstoppable back around then - G'nR with their grand piano and turning up 2 hours late for shows. Are they even comparable?

Personally, I think Metallica did well to survive and prosper in an uncompromising position - they were never going to keep everyone happy all the time. They matured, as did their music, in a difficult profession where one wrong step could mean slithering down the snake back to Club-land.

I'd love them to still be the edgy rebel kids they were back when they were cancelling UK tours due to poor ticket sales (yes, I DID have a ticket and only found out the gig was off when I got to fucking Birmingham Odeon), back when they were OUR band, our secret, just like us, drinking beer and swearing, ripped jeans, leather jackets, mullets and zits. By the same token, I wish I was still like that, and not the fat 44 yr old with no hair and dilemmas about putting money into my pension fund.
I try to forgive them the atrocities like St Anger and that Lulu abortion, but after years of brown-nosers telling you your shit doesn't stink, I'm sure it's easy to lose touch with real life, and think that singing about being a table is a good idea.

I know one thing, that without Metallica's leap into the BIG-time, Slayer wouldn't be still trundling around playing the same old shite (yeah, they peaked at Reign in Blood), Mustaine would have disappeared into obscurity (he's close now) and Diamond Darrell would be knocking out Kiss covers in bars with Pantera Mk42. Metallica gave the whole metal genre room and exposure to blossom and take on all the different forms it does today, rather than being a noisy row that only antisocial Grebos listen to. At the end of the day, as much as you think that metal took on a "nastier" turn in the 90s, it was BECAUSE of Metallica, not as a reaction against them. Without them, no sane businessman would have gambled on the sustainability of any metal band, let alone the healthy record sales of more and more extreme material and a self-sustaining live scene (look at the festivals full of metal bands every year in Europe now, there are almost too many to choose from, without having to have Def fucking Leppard on the bill just to attract enough paying customers to make it worth it)

I'd still like to punch that fat-faced fucker Lars in his smug mush though, if I got half a chance.

TL;DR? Fuck off, pleb.

Um, where did the last 45 minutes go to...?