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

If you like old school Metallica (the albums before "The Black Album"), you're in for a treat. This ENTIRE album is in the vein of "Puppets" and "Justice" which is what we've all been waiting for. I've been listening to it for about a week now and it is absolutely infectious. It's one to put on, let ride and wonder how 40-somethings can sound this ferocious close to 10 years after the masterpiece that is "Justice." The review don't lie either:

Death Magnetic : Metallica : Review : Rolling Stone

The Allmusic Blog » Metallica - Death Magnetic: Kirk Hammett Has His Revenge

PS - Best Buy has this and all of the other "classic" Metallica albums ("Lightning," "Puppets," "Justice") plus "The Black Album" for $9.99. Not too shabby for replacing old, scrathed up copies.

Does the real CD sound better than the leaked copies? :crossing fingers: Terrible mastering it seems - sounding loud and distorted.

If so, the vinyl release should sound better.

Are there any retailers offering any bonuses like extra tracks or a bonus CD/DVD perhaps? I'd really like to get my hands on the Metallica cover of Iron Maiden's Remember Tomorrow and it seems like something that might be offered as a bonus somewhere.

Metallica is now streaming the entire album on their web site if you'd like to sample it:
http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601231

Not sure which ones you got but the 320kbps stuff sounded great to me. The CD sounds excellent as well.

Came across this elsewhere, had me rollin':

Nope, the cd sounds terrible. Supposedly the vinyl is a tad better but still has terrible distortion. Oddly, the Guitar Hero versions all sound much better.

yeah i have since heard that as well. I really just dont understand how such a poor job of mastering could happen. These guys are professionals. I almost want to say its intentional.

Some say its a tad better at lower volumes. all this aside. It rocks.

I'd like to get ahold of a GHII mix put to CD...

very interesting indeed

Metallica's fury at download reviewer - Yahoo! News UK

These guys have become the very definition of hypocrisy. They stream their album online so anybody with half of a brain can steal a copy, then cancel an interview because the reviewer admitted to downloading a copy.

As for the album, I listened to nearly the whole thing on their website and then again at a local used CD store and I have to say that it did virtually nothing for me. It came off as forced and the production wasn't very good either (What happened to Rick Rubin?). Lars' drumming was weak and Trujillo (one of the best bass players in hard rock) could barely be heard.

Needless to say, I will be passing on this album and cross my fingers that they just give it up and go back to shopping at Armani.

Wow, I feel just the opposite...I really like what they did with this new album and think it is invigorating as hell. I also can't understand what people are talking about as far as the production/sound of the CD...it sounds fine to me; nothing revelatory but then again Metallica has never been known for their good-sound CDs. In fact, it sounds a lot like "Justice" to me...all crunch with no low end.

I wish that I could compare the album with Justice as it's probably my 2nd favorite after Puppets. My main complaint with the sound is that there is still too much of the garbage can sounding drums. Add to this that the drumming is extremely slow (Danzig-ish) and highly uncreative. Then the bass is all but lost in the mix. On top of it all, the songs just feel forced. They tried to hard to go back to the times when there songs were long with multiple riffs, but these new versions just don't flow at all. They sound more like they were running on a clock and after every 2-3 minutes it's time to changes riffs whether they work in that song or not. .....and the topper for me is that nobody has the guts to tell James that he can't sing (Go back to what you can do and that is growl!!)

Ive heard 2 songs in the gym and thought both were really terrible.

I despise the other music played on the sirius station. I hate the drop tuned garbage they try to pass off as metal nowadays. Thing is, it really sounds better than what Metallica is doing. Both in production and arrangement.

And yea,Hetfield vocals are SO bad.

Well now, isn't this a surprise. A Metallica album that doesn't live up to "Master of Puppets", "And Justice for All" or "Black". Really, I've lost all hope of expecting anything good from them anymore. If this was an attempt to recapture their glory days, They have failed. WTF Metallica?

Well, I guess I'm in the minority here, I really like it. I think part of what it is is that I taught myself how to play guitar through listening to Metallica and buying their matching guitar tabulature books for each album so I'm intimately familiar with virtually every note of their albums. So much so that after they changed their style on "The Black Album", I lost interest. During that time, I was like, "if I wanna hear a Metallica song, I'll just hum it" as I knew them that well. Anyway, that was a LONG time ago. I suppose I just wanted some new Metallica that sounded like the old stuff.

Keep in mind that I never listen to Metallica for the high production values IE it's not something I put on for critical listening. I put it on to get hyped/pumped for something or when I'm driving or when I just plain wanna rock out.

Yeah, that's really annoying. The CD that I bought sounds like crap but if I want a good mastering I have to illegally download the GHIII version. It's possible the band didn't know about the mastering since they were on tour. My hope is that they do an exchange and fix this thing because it's unacceptable. I'm not one to complain that much about brickwalling, but this is horrible. Luckily, the word is starting to get to the mainstream press. It isn't just the Steve Hoffman message board this time.

Here is a link to an article from the British Newspaper, The Guardian.

As far as the album itself, it's the best record since 1988. The trail of crap that began with the Black album has finally ended.

I'm surprised it took Ron so long to post a review. I thought about dropping a post when they started posting a song a week on Metallica.com a few weeks back.

I think it's become en vogue to rag on Metallica's new material. Load, ReLoad, St Anger, and now Death Magnetic. I think the new has some good points to it, and some bad too.

Good - Overall riffs sound really good. You can tell that they were trying to channel some of the old vibe. It was good to hear Kirk really cutting loose on some of the tracks. Surprisingly, one of my favorite songs is "All Nightmare Long" which is probably the most Load-sounding song on the disc.

Bad - They sound like they're trying a little too hard to sound like old Metallica. Some of the transitions sound a little forced, stretching the songs out a minute or two longer than they really need to be. Lyrically the album has it's ups and downs. The Day That Never Comes is a good example of a song that tries to sound old, but lyrically just isn't strong. That Was Just Your Life sounds pretty good, and is a good example of trying to channel the old (sounds a lot like Blackened).

I've been a fan since Justice first came out and adopted Puppets right after, the rest came during early high school. After Black I thought Load was OK, hated ReLoad, thought St Anger had glimpses and was a good transition record. I've seen Metallica live 4 times and have my floor tickets to see them again in December. This album is a good effort -- The general crowd that likes to rag on the new stuff will be the same people at the shows cheering them play the old.

It's OK to like new Metallica, promise. It doesn't have to be your favorite, but just to dismiss it because it's not Justice or Puppets is the same as those fans that undoubtedly dismissed Justice and Puppets because it wasn't Kill Em All and Lightning. I still remember all the "sold out" BS when the video for "One" came out. Seems pretty lame in retrospect now doesn't it?

Doug

I completely agrees with everything you're saying except for one crucial element. Metallica themselves have admitted that they tasked themselves with writing a follow-up to "Master of Puppets". This was their goal in the studio....and if this was their goal then it was a miserable failure.

Plus there are still some truly great metal bands from their era that are still chruning out great album after great album - Slayer or Testament anyone??

Overkill came back from their dismal 90s efforts with a few strong albums going back to 2000. Havent heard the newer one yet though.

When other bands were packing it in or trying to get more radio play or whatever, Overkill never gave up and kept banging away.

I respect them for it and will buy whatever they put out.

"Plus there are still some truly great metal bands from their era that are still chruning out great album after great album - Slayer or Testament anyone??"

Could anyone have guessed when they heard Hell Awaits back in the day that this band would be not only still going strong in 2008, but would be more popular than ever?

Well, truth be told I would have done one a little while back, but my thread got taken down as I attempted to discuss leaked music.

I've now heard the guitar Hero III mix on CD...
A huge improvement in sound! Someone really screwed up on the CD.

First of all, streaming the album online is the OPPOSITE of hypocrisy. If anyone's a hypocrite, it's the people who download illegal copies even when the band allows them to listen to it over their stream for free.

I am really getting sick of this attitude (not blaming you here; this is just something that I am hearing ALL THE TIME these days) that if it's easy to download something illegally, then there's somehow nothing wrong with doing it. Sigh. . .

Secondly, the reviewer didn't just download the album illegally, he downloaded a bootleg mix of it and then told people they should be acquiring the illegal version instead of buying the official release (I think the article even included instructions for doing so). That's totally unacceptable behavior for a professional critic. (EDIT: I just realized that I basically quoted the Yahoo UK article -- maybe it was subconscious, but I definitely share the sentiment!)

As for whether there are illegal versions out there that sound better than the official CD. . .that's another issue. (I'm still waiting for a release of Vapor Trails that doesn't sound like garbage. :frowning: )