danra wrote:
if they released an album in the old style surely everyone would then slag them off for having progressed absolutely nowhere over a 20 year period? fair play to them for releasing something that sounds like nothing they've released before, and i might add sounds very little like anyone else at the moment. let's see Korn and Limp Bizkit try that. Metallica have re-invented themselves a couple of times now, and i think they deserve credit for a) releasing some genre-defining albums and b) not cashing in on their popularity by releasing what their fans want. can you see todays current chart-topping 'metal' bands releasing an album that was going to kill their album sales?
You're kidding me right? That is such a bogus statement... that's like Heinz saying hey guys, fuck it man...we've been doin this whole ketchup thing for way too damn long. Let's change the ingredients....instead of tomatoes, lets put Mustard seeds in it, YEAH and make it yellow, YEAH!!! and put it in a YELLOW squeeze bottle, YEAH!!!!! But still call it Ketchup.
To me, saying good for them for expanding their ideas in context with the shit they pulled and produced and pushed on us, I'd just as soon give my dad a high five for trying gay man sex and or sex with my pet cat. Way to try it different dad! No...I don't think so.
And if you think differently...how would you feel if Strapping Young Lad did a song about Noisy Pink Bubbles? You'd stop and think wow...that's kinda queer. Imagine an album having a song about being absolutely disgusted with social horseshit going 1000 miles per hour, spit, blood, teeth, anger all over the place, and then just slid right into a ballad about pissing off my girlfriend while sitting in a field of daisys eating lemon tarts... it doesn't really mesh with the idea. This is why we don't celebrate Halloween on Easter, or Christmas on Thanksgiving. Things come to be known as what they define themselves as. And after familiarity develops...you can't define it again without looking like a psycho or an idiot, let alone pissing people off.
When people defend what post 'And Justice For All' Metallica did and is doing then I find it's almost like a foot doctor telling you how to invest in off shore high risk ventures. It doesn't make sense and it's territory that they are TOTALLY unfamiliar with in terms of experience and knowledge. Metallica fell apart, plain and simple...it happens. Stop patting them on the back just because they peaked the interest of the ever strong common emotionless musical try hards of the world. Look at the things that are mass-popular, they usually are supported by lazy, non-committal, short sighted, bored, opinion lacking, needy ambiguous people who would just as soon forget about a band as quickly as the radio station is changed. I don't forget, I give a shit, and know every single note, and appreciate it.
Are those the kind of people you want to defend? The ones that think they are fans just because they wear a shirt and pay 100 bucks to watch the band play? There is something deeper, something more visceral and passionate and personal inside a true fan...and Metallica failed to nourish that in every sense when they turned their backs on a style and quality all their own.
I say give me 7,000 Master of Puppet variations from one band, rather than the top 40 countdown on one CD. In other words, when I want ketchup, I don't reach for the fucking Mustard.