Metallica "Death Magnetic" out today (9/12)!!! (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan Peterson]

This album is no Justice but it does have it's moments and is a huge improvement over St. Anger (although I know that doesn't say much). My favorite post Justice album still is ReLoad which I feel is really quite good.

The sound quality issue of the CD though is terrible as others have noted. The sonics of it give me a headache and it is hard for me to listen to more than a couple tracks in a row. It's crazy that the suits wonder why the music industry is in the crapper when they release stuff that sounds this bad.

 

[JonZ]

Especially when you can make GREAT sounding recordings from home studios.

 

[Ron Reda]

Unfortunately, we live in the age of the iPod and compressed music where music is mastered to sound good through tiny and tinny sounding headphones as opposed to decent home theater or 2-channel stereo systems.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I didn't mean to piss you off Aaron, but I guess we'll agree to disagree. If you put it out there, people will steal it. This is nothing new, only the method is new. People recorded from the radio for many decades, copied records to reel-to-reel in the 70s, tapes and records to tapes in the 80s, and this is merely the latest method. I also believe that it is greatly exaggerated as to the lo$$. All of the illegal downloading didn't prevent this album from debuting at number one all over the world, so there's little room to complain.

Personally, I'm very much against illegal downloading and have never done it myself, but to be honest have thought of doing so for this album, but it's not really worth my effort. In fact, I usually preach out against copying. I have co-workers that are constantly offering to copy movies for me and I always turn them down and give them a little lecture as to why I don't do that.

As for the story, I'll be honest that I did not read the whole thing and would agree that she crossed the line if she gave instructions. However, the comment that there is a better mix available and is better than the version that you have to pay for is an extremely valid comment and people need to know about it.

 

[Sheldon C]

The guitar hero III version is indeed soooo much better. Much less clipping - I can' t even listen to the cd with my Grado headphones, there are clicks and pops every 2 seconds.

This is good stuff guys. I didn't think so after the first few listens, but it is a grooooower for sure. It also sounds so much sweeter on the GH3 flac version.

It does not compare with their big 3 albums, but to me nothing ever will. I like it for what it is. If you really don't like it after a handful of listens (GH3 version) cool, but give it a chance.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Well, I DON'T agree to disagree, because I pretty much agree with everything you just wrote.

I just don't think that providing their own music on their own terms makes Metallica hypocrites for being against bootlegged music.

On the other hand, if they're personally responsible for foisting this particular mix on the world, then they're not hypocrites -- they're schmucks!

Sure, we all used to swap mix tapes and stuff. The major difference is that we never had this attitude that taking music instead of buying it was somehow justified rather than mischief. Back then, if I got a copy of an album and liked it, more often than not I'd end up buying it anyway -- the whole point of copying was to hear new stuff, and there was no online venue, legal or otherwise, for that yet. Heck, you couldn't even hear stuff like Metallica on the radio in those days (excepting college stations).

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Rolling Stone magazine chimes in on the poor mix/mastering

 

[Eric Peterson]

Agreed, and don't think that it's a whole lot different these days. Sure there are many more people getting their hands on illegal copies than in the old days because it's much much much easier, but these additional people were never a threat to become a customer in the first place, so I don't see much harm being done. In fact, there may be a small percentage of these additional people who do end up loving the material and decide to buy a legit copy. Yes there are going to be people who take it in order to avoid having to pay for it, but these people are thieves and are not fans. If they call themselves a fan, they are indeed hypocrites. Maybe I'm being naive, but I feel that these two groups of people pretty much offset each other.

Now we can hopefully get back to the album discussion.

Hopefully that Rolling Stone article will draw some attention and a new master will be released, but I won't hold my breath. If they do, I'll give it another whirl, but I have a feeling that Hetfield's singing attempts are enough to dissuade me from a purchase.

 

[Andy Sheets]

I think this has been true of every Metallica album. Especially the bass - Cliff Burton's fame is somewhat ironic because aside from his solos you could almost never hear the poor guy!

 

[Eric Peterson]

For the most part I agree. Lars was never a GREAT drummer, but he was much better than he is now. He used to have some creative fills and changed his patterns more which made it at least an interesting listen. I didn't catch any of that on this new album. As for Burton, you're probably right also, but he was obviously quite a song writer too. He wrote a great deal of their best songs including at least one song on Justice. I'm curious why they would bother getting Trujillo who obivously cost them much more money than some other bass player, especially if they weren't going to let him do much and then bury what he did do in the mix. You could've signed anybody on to do that.

 

[Carlo_M]

+1 to the "Metallica's bassists are never heard on their CDs" club. (obviously solos excepted)

Probably a factor in Newsted bolting. He was like "I'm never heard on the damn albums anyway, so you don't need me!"

 

[Ron Reda]

Probably for his cred in that genre's musical community and for his appearance (younger, kinda wild looking).

 

[Ron Reda]

I thought he factored in pretty heavily on the "Black Album" but that was probably a function of Bob Rock.

 

[Carlo_M]

Agreed on both counts. I was being a little facetious. His departure was probably a combination of factors, including not liking the direction the music was going post-Black-album.

But other than that, the bassist is basically inaudible in Metallica's first five albums (again, other than the rare solos).

 

[Ron Reda]

Nah, I know, Carlos!

Yeah, being the bass player in Metallica is like being in the Witness Relocation Program.

 

[Todd Smigelski]

How come T00L never has any of these issues??

 

[Aaron Silverman]

The fact that he quit Metallica and joined Voivod lends a lot of credence to that idea.

 

[Matt Butler]

It has since been revealed that Jason quit due to the fact that James and Lars (not so much Kirk) treated Jason like crap because he wasnt Cliff and never got over his death. Jason stopped getting along with them and wanted to do his own thing which caused a big fight with James which was the "shortest straw" (haha).

Lars and James now realise that and talked about it in a recent interview.

Also the Guitar Hero version sounds MUCH better than the cd. I hate MP3 though. Death Magnetic is a great CD and deserves the love it gets. Welcome Back Metallica!

 

[Ron Reda]

Cuz Tool just ROCKS, plain and simple!

 

[Ron Reda]

I've obtained the GHIII tracks and did a cursory listen. The first thing I noticed was some bottom-end...amazing this to hear on a Metallica album (aside from The Black Album)!