Metallica‘s mediocre album Hardwired… to Self-Destruct has sold one million copies in the United States according to the band. Hardwired… to Self-Destruct was self released on the band’s own Blackened Recordings label along with reissues of the band’s older, better 1980s material.
Metallica continue to prove that their fans are suckers willing to buy almost anything they shit out. Even their godawful Lulu collaboration with Lou Reed sold tens of thousands of copies in the United States. All of these are excuses for Metallica to tour and play their hits and fan favorite tracks to a never ending crowd of aging fans and fifteen year old boys. Metallica never became God-Emperors of metal (Manowar are the self-crowned kings of metal), they became what teenagers listen to after Led Zeppelin IV.
Tags: cash grab, hard rock, mainstream metal, metallica, music industry
I forgot that new album after awhile, had only maybe 4 or 5 really good sings if you include the 2 cd version.
It was structured like a rock album with a couple hits and padded out with filler. Just like with Maiden and Priest, nobody can tell Metallica to edit themselves now.
They need to edit themselves into obscurity. Lars looks like a cave dweller, should be an easy transition.
*songs
*zero
Sad but true.
“Metallica … became what teenagers listen to after Led Zeppelin IV.”
Accurate.
Why.
As I get older my attitude gets less cynical. All you can hope for from a new album by geriatric bands is that it doesn’t poison the gestalt of their sound–that when played live, the songs seamlessly “whatever” between the songs you’re there to hear rather than hit you like the smell of dog doodoo.
I can’t imagine ever buying a new Metallica album let alone it happening a million times but whatever, let the guys who made Kill ’em All have more yachts…
This should have been »more cynical«: The problem (if one wants to call that a problem) with Metallica is not “they geriatric” (note to every American out there: Please put this paranoia of yours into some place where the sun doesn’t shine. The rest of the world doesn’t and has never cared. Or drop dead now. Whatever you prefer.) but that they’ve worked themselves into a position as very well-loved and extremely successful mainstream rock band (starting from beginnings as fairly poor metal band) while maintaining enough of their erstwhile style to be “a distinctive brand” a long time ago.
Among other things, this implies they’ve enriched the lives of more people than some motley crew of nostalgians (nowadays) who can’t ever get over the fact that it isn’t 1994 anymore. It also implies that they’re no longer creating music I’m interested in the slightest but they were never obliged to do that. Hence, I wish them all the best and ignore them in favour of other (and mostly much newer) band creating music I am interested in.
The first few Metallica albums were and are great, even if derivative. Oddly, it is Kill ‘Em All and the covers EP that have lived on with me the most, because they were the simplest and most direct statements of the contributions of the band. However, then metal rushed past Metallica; how do you go back to all that chugging after you have heard Slayer, Bathory, Rigor Mortis and Celtic Frost?
I used to own Kill ‘Em All (and And Justice For All) and I remember used to like it but while I’ll always retain a soft spot for old Kreator recordings, nowadays anything from the Metallica-album ranges between uninteresting and embarrassing: The music is very simple-minded and really rather slow and friendly and the forced Boesmann-lyrics (compositium of “boese”, evil and “Mann”, man, invented by my brother) just come accross as silly. Teenager-bubblegum-music which is also really close to hair metal and emetics like Guns’n’Roses[*].
[*] I encountered “Paradise City” for the first time when I was on some party in Holzbach,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holzbach#/media/File:Holzbach05.jpg
very drunk and sitting on a wooden table. I remember that I thought “That’s a cool song” and the next thing that happened was I had to run out of the room because of an overwhelming urge to throw up I succumbed to for about a quarter of an hour.
It is possible to have soft spots for older works, but it is interesting which ones endure in our collections, and more importantly, our regular listening.
My take on it is that Kreator wrote better riffs, but Metallica knew how to put riffs into songs.
I like “Boesmann” as a term for all of the dumb posturing metal lyrics out there. Did someone mention Pantera?
Pretty looking town, that Holzbach. I never had a bad reaction to Guns and Roses, but then again, to me it was always hard rock, which means it is best — as Kraftwerk said once about the blues — listened to while doing housework.
Not exactly metal, but appetite was the first tape I bought. Got it when it came out….I was 6 at the time (won’t lie, I’m actually listening to the album right now). Also bought Hysteria or On through the night that day lol. The beige plastic bugged the fuck out of me.
I AM THE TABLE
I AM THE GATE
You’re looking dusty, better spray on some orange oil.