Metallica Superthread -All Metallica discussion goes in here

hidinginthebush

Two and one wrote: »

I suppose we can't expect much considering their age, the amount of money they have, they are now family men etc etc but from what I've heard I don't really rate their new stuff. Maybe a few more listens might help and they could have some good stuff on the album. The main problem for me is Hetfields vocals.

Yeah I agree with you there, they're not these hungry kids anymore... ~Just one thing though, you mean the lyrics yeah? Cos I think Hetfields vocals are tite!

zcorpian88 wrote: »

I love the heavy/thrashy stuff as much as anyone else, but without a ballad of some sort gives a lot of people an excuse to pan it.

Look how a lot of people reacted to St.Anger, no ballad on that...and no solos. The latter being blasphemy for a Metallica fan ha.

The lack of a ballad doesn't sit well with me, I'll probably like the album regardless but it'll be the very thing everyone will complain about once the whole album has been listened to.

Well I think people reaacted that way to St Anger not due to the lack of solos or ballads, but more that it was poorly produced (that SNARE), and the songs were ridiculously repetitive, and also ****e. I know it's kind of cool for us "real" fans to say it's not that bad an album. But in all complete honesty, it really is, but that's because the songs are ****e. Sure kill em all had no ballads, but it also has no faults.

zcorpian88

rob316 wrote: »

The start of hardwired sounds good but the Lyrics are really bad. It's sad to say but when James was drinking himself into oblivion he was coming out with better stuff. St Anger's lyrics were fairly poor too IMO.

Hardwired was written last apparently because they wanted a thrashy number to open the album, think they were going for like a "Hit The Lights" or even "Fuel" sort of touch to the song. Not so much like the openers on RTL or Master of Puppets. Maybe at the time they couldn't decide on what song should open the album and they had 11 songs they wanted, I'd imagine it's difficult to decide what the fans want to hear first and foremost. So they probably couldn't decide and wrote a f**king song that should break the album open and be just thrashy and in your face, but the lyrics not being really diverse, I did like the wordplay though....the "Once upon a planet burning" bit I mean.

To be honest I miss drunk James too, maybe the drink made him a better songwriter and even performer but when you get married and have children, you can't be drunk all the time, and it became a problem after a hunting trip he did in Russia just after Jason quit and he came back and the heavy drinking continued and the wife didn't want to live with it, doesn't matter if you're mega rich and famous and they have everything, living with someone who drinks too much wouldn't be nice. James is from a broken home himself, so he stepped up and quit so history didn't repeat itself. Fairplay to him for doing it, can't have been easy.

Say Your Number

James is now a fifty-something millionaire who has mellowed with age, it's impossible for him get back into the headspace of a disenchanted twenty year old.

I think the whole substances fuel creativity is a bit of a fallacy, Motley Crue were heavy drug users and their music is bland sh1te, Mustaine was clean when he wrote Rust In Peace and AC/DC and Iron Maiden used very little in the way of drugs and it didn't stop them writing great songs.

briany

Here's the lads talking about Cliff and his dad Ray for the MoP book, "Back to the Front". You can really see how much Cliff still means to them, and indeed what Ray Burton's continued support has also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5psyhFuf5hQ

Lithium93_

Watching that, clearly it's tough for Kirk, knowing it just as easily could've been him..

briany

Lithium93_ wrote: »

Watching that, clearly it's tough for Kirk, knowing it just as easily could've been him..

Kirk has an enviable life in many ways, but one thing you would not envy is the psychological burden he must carry from that fateful night. It's the kind of thing that would keep you awake at night.

Lithium93_

briany wrote: »

Kirk has an enviable life in many ways, but one thing you would not envy is the psychological burden he must carry from that fateful night. It's the kind of thing that would keep you awake at night.

I'd say in the immediate aftermath of the crash & the following years/decades after, Kirk must've had a very bad case of survivor's guilt. Cliff's birthdays & anniversaries must be tough on him.

StaticAge11

Interview with Jason discussing what happened to his solo project!

Jason Newsted shared a lengthy explanation on why he disbanded is project Newsted and completely withdrew from the music world and all social media in 2014.

Chatting with Eddie Trunk, the man explained that it comes down to a mixture of organizational, financial, and personal issues.

He explained: "All that time [with Newsted] was incredible - pretty much from fall of 2012 all the way through making the record, getting Mike Mushok in the band with Jesus [Mendez Jr.] and Jessie [Farnsworth] and making all that music and taking it around the world and going to play Donington again and all that cool stuff happened.

"A couple of different elements came into play. The manager that had taken us on to take the Newsted band around the world, help us get all those gigs and everything, he had gotten on the ground floor with a band called Florida Georgia Line, who became gigantic in the country music world - beyond gigantic, like Grammies and holy business. I think they actually beat Elvis Presley's record for a single being on the charts for the longest of all time.

"He came to us honestly and said, 'I'm not gonna be able to be in your corner anymore, because I have to go with these guys and do this. You understand?' I said, 'Yes, I understand.' So that came into play - a little bit of a wobbly situation there in the handling.

"And we booked to do the Australian shows, the Soundwave in February 2014 that AJ Maddah had for, I don't know, a dozen years or so, he had it going.

"It's a very interesting story. AJ Maddah was one of the biggest promoters in the Pacific Rim for the last decade and a half or something like that. He started out as a young man. I didn't know this about him until he came to me at Donington, now called the Download Festival. We were getting ready to play. I was in my last thirty minutes, getting ready for the stage, so all the doors were closed and nobody could come in. The boys were doing their thing.

"The manager comes in and says, 'There's somebody here I'd really like you to say 'Hi' to for a second.' So I come back out and get myself back together and presentable. And he says, 'Hey, man, I wanna take a second of your time. This is AJ Maddah from Australia, and he does Soundwave.' I said, 'Hey, man, nice to meet you.' He goes, 'Well, we've met before.'

"I said, 'Really?' He goes, 'When I was 16 years old, we followed Metallica around when you guys came down to Australia to play. You were so cool to us. You got us passes and backstage and you invited us to the next shows to follow you guys around, and we got to know Big Mick' - our sound guy - 'and all that stuff through time, and you guys were so cool to us. And I remember you asked me, Jason, what I was gonna do, and I told you I was gonna go in the music business.

"'And you said to me, Jason, 'AJ, if you're gonna do that for real, bro, and you're being serious, get behind the lights. Get behind. You'll have a lot longer career if you handle the people going through the lights and you're behind. You'll have a better chance of making something happen.'

"So he was telling me all this, that, 'You were so cool to me, and you told me to go in music that way, and now I'm the biggest promoter in the Pacific Rim.' And he says, 'I'm 40 now. I really like the Newsted band, and I'd like you guys to come down and play for Soundwave for me.' He's looking me in the eyes. And I'm, like, 'Of course, bro. Okay, after that story.'

"I thought this guy was gonna come here and say, 'Hey, my favorite song is this, and my little brother loves the band,' or something like that. But he drops this on me, and I'm, like, 'Dude, what time do you want us there?' That's my attitude right there. I couldn't wait to take Newsted to Australia. He said, 'Man, I'll put you on the main stage. You're gonna be doing this and this and this.' He looked me in my face. And I said, 'All right.'

"In its day, Soundwave would draw 50,000 people to Adelaide and 70,000 to Sydney. And it would always have the most awesome acts of all diverse array of really popping stuff - dance stuff and heavy stuff and everything in between, and it was really successful for a long time, but logistically quite a nightmare.

"And he was trying to always call the biggest bands from the West to come out, the biggest bands from North America, the biggest bands all over the place, to try to get this thing together and get that many people to show up. So as the shows grew closer in February, all the logistics from their side started going quite haywire, and the promise, or the word, of a handshake, of him saying the main stage and all these different things, that was changing rapidly, and I couldn't get straight answers from across the world.

"So getting those answers from that place a day and a half behind or ahead, all this communication became pretty much a headache. And I could not get any real answers of where I was gonna take my boys, when I was gonna take them, and who I was gonna be playing with and what time and on what stage. And I've been in this for long enough that I'm not gonna do that. We're sitting here, and they still don't know, so we're gonna go over there, and what happens when we get there, if they can't tell me now? There was no way I was gonna take my boys into all that stuff, so I just pulled back from it, and they couldn't give me any answers, so I ended up pulling out of that thing.

"So after all of that weird political whatever the heck went on within that hubbub of that show, I got really disheartened. I had the record ready, I had it ready to record, and we were trying to make a decision right there. So that takes me into March of 2014. And I'm trying to decide whether I'm gonna put some more money in, get Mushok back out to live in Cali for another six weeks in a house with us and trying to make the record and do those things, or I'm gonna try to book some more shows or take a minute and get a proper manager.

"The agent was still trying to help in getting those gigs, but he really kind of got blown out because I pulled out of those Australian shows. It was my own money I had to pay back for forfeiting the contract and all that. Everything for the Newsted band or these labors of love is always my dime. I do it 'cause I choose to do it, with my money, but after a while, it gets to the point - 'Hey, man, I need to make sense with the dough for us to get respect, keep the legacy going and all that at the same time, and I always had to consider that.

"And so, getting into March and April 2014, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

"In the meantime, my mom got real sick. So as those weeks transpired through spring of 2014, everything changed priority-wise, perspective-wise, all that type of stuff, started switching. So everything, including the Newsted second album, including any kind of other things that were gonna come up and any other projects I had or any other plans that I had take the 5th, 12th, 18th-row backburner so that we can do what we need to do.

"I was not interested in letting anybody know about anything. It was nobody's business, really, about any kind of social media things or what was going on within my people or any of that, and so I just didn't really wanna bother with any of that until I had the energy and presence of mind to be able to talk to you today about it and let people know that I always appreciated their encouragement and their positive vibrations they sent to me.

"People just have to understand that when these type of things come in your life that you really do get some heavy, heavy perspective. And so that's what changed for me."

Source: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/newsted_why_i_disbanded_my_solo_band__withdrew_from_music.html

zcorpian88

Lithium93_ wrote: »

I'd say in the immediate aftermath of the crash & the following years/decades after, Kirk must've had a very bad case of survivor's guilt. Cliff's birthdays & anniversaries must be tough on him.

Yeah I'd imagine it's tough, going over and over again in his his mind about the card game and the ace of spades, such a mad story isn't it? Being it was the "death card" Cliff picked and won the game and picked what was Kirk's bunk.

It'll be 30 years since it happened at the end of the month, wonder if any of the guys will/would visit the memorial stone in Dörarp where it happened. Was nice of the fans to set up that fund to make the memorial stone. They put it together 10 years ago for the 20th anniversary.

Lithium93_

zcorpian88 wrote: »

Yeah I'd imagine it's tough, going over and over again in his his mind about the card game and the ace of spades, such a mad story isn't it? Being it was the "death card" Cliff picked and won the game and picked what was Kirk's bunk.

It'll be 30 years since it happened at the end of the month, wonder if any of the guys will/would visit the memorial stone in Dörarp where it happened. Was nice of the fans to set up that fund to make the memorial stone. They put it together 10 years ago for the 20th anniversary.

Cliff's fate sealed by a game of cards, spine tingling, though Kirk probably though nothing of it at the time until the early hours of that fateful morning...

I'd imagine those old enough to remember reading the rock magazines several weeks later and finding out Cliff was gone was quiet a shock.. One of my university lecturers saw Metallica in Dublin 2 weeks before Cliff's tragic, untimely passing, think he said that Dublin show was September 14th 1986 if i remember correctly..

Has anyone here visited Cliff's memorial? I've put it on a "To Do List"..

zcorpian88

Lithium93_ wrote: »

Cliff's fate sealed by a game of cards, spine tingling, though Kirk probably though nothing of it at the time until the early hours of that fateful morning...

I'd imagine those old enough to remember reading the rock magazines several weeks later and finding out Cliff was gone was quiet a shock.. One of my university lecturers saw Metallica in Dublin 2 weeks before Cliff's tragic, untimely passing, think he said that Dublin show was September 14th 1986 if i remember correctly..

Has anyone here visited Cliff's memorial? I've put it on a "To Do List"..

Yeah it's like it was meant to happen, if you believe in that kind of thing, very eery stuff. Yeah in those pre-internet days it took a long time for information to filter through, actually I read in Cliff's biography "To Live is To Die" that his girlfriend was one of the last to find out, she couldn't be reached for ages. I saw pictures of the show they did in Dublin, James was still wearing a cast on his arm after breaking his wrist, and Cliff was wearing a Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt and has his Alembic bass in hand. They were in the SFX theatre with Anthrax back then. I don't think the place exists anymore, I've never been in there anyway, most metal bands play the Ambassador these days or 3 arena if they are big enough.

There were other pictures I've seen, they visited I think it was the Blarney Stone and another picture outside a pub, you can see a Harp beer sign in the background, someone said it was on some road heading towards Belfast for their next show, and I saw another picture showing James and Cliff humourously praying in front of a Statue of Holy Mary. They are on the web somewhere.

A year or two ago, I said to myself, "I must go to Sweden for the 30th anniversary, they'll probably organize some shindig for it" and I said I'd go. But like most plans I consider making, I never follow through for all sorts of reasons, usually it's lack of money, I do fancy going though. Would be great to say you were there if you are a die hard fan.

Hal1

I never knew these existed.

Lithium93_

I'd imagine picking up the "Back To The Front" book would be worth it for the pictures alone, especially for those who never got to see Metallica before September 27th 1986...

Can't imagine what the band went through when they got copies of old fan photos and seeing Cliff, I'd say there was a strong dose of nostalgia in HQ and maybe the odd tear shed.

zcorpian88

Hal1 wrote: »

I never knew these existed.

Yeah those are the photos I was on about, wonder if they made it into the Back To The Front book.

jack presley

That's Blarney Castle is it? I wonder how they ended up there as it's a big detour from Dublin and Belfast where they played on that tour. The other 2 photos are from a town on the old M1 which makes sense as they would have been passing through it on the way between Dublin and Belfast.

...And Justice

Hal1 wrote: »

I never knew these existed.

Yeah they were on there way to Belfast, the next gig was Stockholm in Sweden, cliff died after that gig, I heard he died in that t-shirt. Metallica stopped by the memorial on lyguby road last year, kirk was an emotional wreck , apparently, so this ties into his tears on back to the front

jack presley

I think I've said this before on here but my brother met them outside the SFX before the gig and got them to sign his Creeping Death 12". Cliff signed it 'Drugs'. Unfortunately I've no idea where that 12" is now. Probably lost in some mass clear out by my parents when he moved out.

...And Justice

Yeah they were drinking on the steps of the Gresham hotel with the fans and Scott Ian bought everyone a beer. James said " well Duck you I I've 3 amazing albums and I'm only 24"

zcorpian88

On that leg of the tour I read that they did in this order... Cardiff on the 10th, Bradford on the 11th, Edinburgh on the 12th, Dublin on the 14th, Belfast on the 15th, Manchester on the 17th, Sheffield on the 18th, Newcastle on the 19th, Birmingham on the 20th, London on the 21st, Lund (Sweden) on the 24th Lillestrøm, (Norway) on the 25th and the last with Cliff in Stockholm on the 26th...next day they were supposed to play in Copenhagen.

Mad that they had to swing from Sweden to Norway and back to Sweden again that week.

Thought you'd find this interesting, at beginning of this you can hear Lars telling the crowd (in Danish) at Roskilde, Denmark in July 86 that they'll be back in Denmark on September 27th....they wouldn't make it to it.

jack presley

What if Metallica kept their old tone? I think the black album is stretching it a bit but the first 4 sound alright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE2rgWFAO2A

briany

The picture with Metallica standing in front of the Harp sign was taken in Kilsaran, Co. Louth, just before you come into Castlebellingham. If you take a left at that Harp sign you would be standing in front of the Crowing Cock Inn, which is still there today. The photo with them mock praying to Mary was taken directly across the road in St. Mary's Church which also still remains.

So, there you go. A reasonably handy Metallica pilgrimage for anyone living on the eastern sea board, maybe?

zcorpian88

jack presley wrote: »

What if Metallica kept their old tone? I think the black album is stretching it a bit but the first 4 sound alright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE2rgWFAO2A

Christ those sound awesome, I do think their tone is missing something, doesn't have that same dirtyness that made them great, it's too clean or something now if that makes any sense, even their live sound just doesn't have as much gain.

briany

Why doesn't that video include the Load tone? Seems odd to omit the meatiest guitar tone they ever committed to record, and that tone's 20 years old. I'd think it qualifies as classic at this stage.

jack presley

briany wrote: »

Why doesn't that video include the Load tone? Seems odd to omit the meatiest guitar tone they ever committed to record, and that tone's 20 years old. I'd think it qualifies as classic at this stage.

Metallica stopped being relevant after the Black Album.....



.......(runs for cover)

briany

jack presley wrote: »

Metallica stopped being relevant after the Black Album.....



.......(runs for cover)

More relevant then, and still more relevant now than every one of their Thrash cohorts.

zcorpian88

jack presley wrote: »

Metallica stopped being relevant after the Black Album.....



.......(runs for cover)

3...2.....1......kabooom!

Wrongway1985

briany wrote: »

More relevant then, and still more relevant now than every one of their Thrash cohorts.

So let me get this straight in terms of this century for instance you seriously consider St. Anger,Death/Beyond Magnetic & Lulu above and beyond the releases from other thrash bands?

hidinginthebush

Wrongway1985 wrote: »

So let me get this straight in terms of this century for instance you seriously consider St. Anger,Death/Beyond Magnetic & Lulu above and beyond the releases from other thrash bands?

Dang that comment made me remember how much I love the "God hates us all" album by slayer

briany

Wrongway1985 wrote: »

So let me get this straight in terms of this century for instance you seriously consider St. Anger,Death/Beyond Magnetic & Lulu above and beyond the releases from other thrash bands?

I said more relevant, talking about their public appeal and general influence, and record sales (and I don't see any other band in this forum in need of a superthread to contain all the chatter about them). A Metallica release will always be the more hotly anticipated thing in heavy music circles, and music press generally than any other band Metallica have been lumped in with.

jack presley

briany wrote: »

I said more relevant, talking about their public appeal and general influence, and record sales (and I don't see any other band in this forum in need of a superthread to contain all the chatter about them). A Metallica release will always be the more hotly anticipated thing in heavy music circles, and music press generally than any other band Metallica have been lumped in with.

All based on their 1983-1991 output though