Listening to Metallica

I’ve been listening to a lot of Metallica recently and in the past week I’ve played every album at least once.  Maybe it’s the winter gloom or maybe it’s some recent work stress getting me down, but I find pounding out some heavy music on the way into work gets me fired up and ready for the day and when things get hard during the day the extra aggression and oomph keeps me going.

It’s pretty much acknowledged amongst metal fans that whilst Metallica may still be metal giants, they have gone off the boil on recent albums.  The latest album, ‘Death Magnetic’, is a solid album, but it’s nowhere near as good as ‘Master of Puppets’ or even the lack lustre (and unfairly maligned) ‘Load’ and ‘Reload’ albums.  After the heights of the ‘Black’ album they have steadily declined and I find myself going back to their early albums again and again when I need that Metallica fix.

Master of Puppets

The main difference in the early and later albums is the song length.  The early albums had songs with more punch and immediate impact.  They’d run in, smack you in the face and run out again before you knew what had hit you.  Don’t get me wrong, the early albums had long songs as well, but they had structure and built to a crescendo.  The later albums have lots of long songs, but they plod aimlessly along and I often find that a decent riff or song idea is killed by it’s overblown length.  I’m not the only one to think this and a friend of mine always says if Metallica stopped their new songs after 4 minutes then each song would be a solid affair, but the extra 3 minutes ruins it.  As a music fan I love a long album from an artist or band I like, but only if it warrants it.  Quantity doesn’t equate to quality.

One thing I always hope for is a remastered version of ‘…And Justice for All’ where Jason Newstead’s bass work is given a decent production and the album sounds less muddy.  This is one of my favourite albums of theirs and I think it would benefit from a remaster and I’d happily snap it up if they ever did one.

...And Justice for All

If you are new to the band then I’d suggest you start with the early albums and the ‘Black’ album is their biggest selling for a good reason, but make sure you give ‘Master of Puppets’ a try soon after.  Their album with the San Francisco symphony orchestra, ’S&M‘, is also an accessible introduction to the band and is the closest you’ll get to a ‘best of’ at the moment.  If you want to hear them interpret some other bands work then seek out ‘Garage Inc’ which is an excellent double covers album.  And if you’ve already heard ‘St Anger’ and it turned you off then give another album a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

It’s been great fun revisiting all of Metallica’s albums this week and each one has something to offer and whilst I have my favourites and some are obviously better than others, on the whole they still offer up a decent body of work.  Their music has certainly helped me get through this past week, who knows maybe I’ll be doing it all again on Monday!