Occasionally I put on the Backstreet Boys and funk out with my junk out.
Occasionally I put on the Backstreet Boys and funk out with my junk out.
I used to adore random stuff like Busted, Scooter and hell even Trivium, now I am saddened by my past. I saw Trivium open for Iron Maiden in 2006 a few years after I grew out of liking the former 2 I listed and realised, they weren't that good at all. I'd call them crap but someone probably likes them and someone's honour will have been insulted thus resulting in naked table top bar boxing.
LET THE HAMMER FALL
Trivium is good stuff.
Eh, they're just another metalcore band doing the whole frash metulz thing tbh. Suppose its good they don't have 100 breakdowns a minute like most deathcore bands do though. I honestly cannot stand -core if you haven't guessed. XD
I'd be here forever if I listed every band I really think is "crap" because of that. So yeeeeeah. Saving the fighting talks til I remember the emoticons for here.
LET THE HAMMER FALL
"Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge" is still a great album as of 11:06 AM EST on 20 August 2012.
I know this is a hipsterish thing to say, and I hate it when other people say this on the interzone, but I actually thought their first album was a lot better. I guess I liked the rougher quality to it. Couldn't really get into anything past that one, though I did try. To be fair, "The Ghost of You" is a pretty cool song. I like the WWII themed video as well.
That is a damn good disc, not gonna lie. Totes saw them at a crappy venue in 03 for like eight bucks.
As with many other bands mentioned here, Metallica used to be not terrible. A strong case could be made that nothing they've released since the eighties has been good, though. (Death Magnetic might have been ok if they hadn't clipped the smurf out of it during mixing/mastering, turning it into unlistenable garbage).
I've heard plenty of remixes of songs off DM and heard them live. Though I think Thrash metal is one of the more primitive, repetitive forms of "heavy" music Metallica's takes on it really caught my ear, Master of Puppets and all that.
I really enjoyed their 90s stuff as their writing really took a step forward, sure it wasn't "metal" but that's just chug chug "frash" fanboy tears talking, Load had songs like Bleeding Me and Outlaw Torn, Reload had songs like Fixxer, Low Man's Lyric and DEVIL'S DANCE! Its not ALL Doom and Gloom for Metallica.
LET THE HAMMER FALL
DM is fine if you listen to the Guitar Hero III mixes. The official releases are all smurfing awful.
My conclusion with Load/Reload is that it would have made a good single disc or double LP. It might even have made a good double CD/triple LP at about two hours. The 160-minute combination, though, just had so much material that it all started to run together. Several of the songs didn't really do much to distinguish themselves from one another, and that's never a good sign.
That said, there were good songs like several of the ones you mentioned (I don't see much special about "Devil's Dance" but I would've mentioned the others as highlights); I'd also throw "Where the Wild Things Are" on that list. It's not a surprise that the longest songs on those albums tended to be the best, because those were the ones where the band really gave themselves the freedom to stretch out and deviate from the formula.
I'd say the Black Album was much the same way, even though it had a lot less material - while you could probably accuse the band of using a formula from Ride the Lightning through And Justice for All, at least on those albums they used enough variation in their songwriting to distinguish the songs from one another. I mean, obviously you can say that the fourth track on all those albums (and DM for that matter) is a ballad, and that the penultimate or ultimate track is always an instrumental, and so on, but the fact is none of those songs sounds the same. With the Black Album, though, that was the point from which a lot of their songs didn't do much to distinguish themselves. The songs that broke from the formula - "My Friend of Misery", "The God That Failed", "The Unforgiven", "Nothing Else Matters", etc. - tended to be the most interesting, although there were a few that managed to be interesting despite obviously being composed to a formula ("Sad but True", "Enter Sandman").
St. Anger, though, was a steaming pile of tit. Seriously I don't know what they were thinking.
Lulu I'll give them somewhat of a pass as they weren't the ones who wrote it. They were basically just Lou Reed's backing band. I don't entirely know what he was thinking though.
S&M version of Devil's Dance is GOAT
Load and Reload were originally meant to be a double album afaik. It might explain where you got that idea from as both albums do sound as if they're supposed to flow into eachother. I should have mentioned King Nothing as well as that bassline is amazing. Shoot me haha, I like Metallica's basslines, I'm a bassist so I'm inclined to like songs that might otherwise be stale.
The Black Album had its moments but the mix was godly, My Friend of Misery is one of my favourite basslines to play as well!
St Anger, felt as if, it was a garage band experiment left unfinished, the songs had that feeling when I listened to it that they weren't quite finished. Some had potential but others didn't have any at all I'd say. That's just being nice.
LET THE HAMMER FALL
I knew Load/Reload was originally intended to be a double CD, but as I said, the problem is that a lot of the material just doesn't distinguish itself from other material on the records. Maybe the band just needed to spend longer working on some of them, but there are just too many forgettable songs as they are. If you're going to release 160 minutes of music, you'd better be sure that all of it is remarkable. Most people just don't have the attention span to listen through that much music on a regular basis, unless it's all incredible.
I guess I could just listen to one album at a time but I am obsessive-compulsive about things like that. I have made cut-down versions in the past that satisfy me somewhat more, but usually I'm lazy and just don't bother listening to them at all.
And yeah, "Devil's Dance" is much cooler on S&M.
I've had a relisten to Load and Reload just now. There's a few more highlights and a couple, "decent" songs but otherwise yes there are very forgettable songs that sadly take up space on them albums that really overshadow the good ones. What would say about songs like Mama Said, Hero of the Day and Unforgiven II which are less rocky nevermind less metal and less thrasy ones?
LET THE HAMMER FALL