Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[parm]

They were on Live with Jools Holland last night.

They were fucking terrible. The guitars were out of tune, they were all out of time, and James Hetfield still pulls orangutan faces like its the 1980s when playing guitar solos.

[gospel]

To be fair, it's better than this band I heard in college that consisted of samples produced by scratching a CD and putting it in the CD-player.

[Catacombs]

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOHWA ST. ANGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

[MentallyInept]

They were on Live with Jools Holland last night.

They were fucking terrible. The guitars were out of tune, they were all out of time...

This makes me

...and James Hetfield still pulls orangutan faces like its the 1980s when playing guitar solos.

This makes me . Metallica is from the 80s. I would expect nothing less.

[KvP]

To be fair, it's better than this band I heard in college that consisted of samples produced by scratching a CD and putting it in the CD-player.

I would listen to this band.

[pinkpiche]

Call him a Metallica fan?

[Be My Head]

Man, why can't Metallica make thrash metal like this?

[gospel]

Do you mean: why can't Metallica realize they're no longer relevant and DIE? 

To be fair, it's better than this band I heard in college that consisted of samples produced by scratching a CD and putting it in the CD-player.

I would listen to this band.

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:knfixqwgldhe

[rynne]

Hah, I was gonna say Oval is awesome.  Isn’t Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II supposedly the scratched CD that was the source material?


But back on the Metallica tip, has anyone been following the mastering controversy with Death Magnetic?  Apparently the CD and vinyl masters are compressed to shit, but the same songs in Guitar Hero III are mastered about 10 dB lower and have much better dynamics.  Wired has a good article with crazy waveform pictures to show how clipped the album is.

It's amazing how these guys manage to consistently shoot themselves in the foot.  They finally make what's generally considered their best album in over a decade and then essentially penalize anyone who buys it instead of downloading the superior GH3 audio rips.

[Catacombs]

Hah, I was gonna say Oval is awesome.  Isn’t Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II supposedly the scratched CD that was the source material?


But back on the Metallica tip, has anyone been following the mastering controversy with Death Magnetic?  Apparently the CD and vinyl masters are compressed to shit, but the same songs in Guitar Hero III are mastered about 10 dB lower and have much better dynamics.  Wired has a good article with crazy waveform pictures to show how clipped the album is.

It's amazing how these guys manage to consistently shoot themselves in the foot.  They finally make what's generally considered their best album in over a decade and then essentially penalize anyone who buys it instead of downloading the superior GH3 audio rips.

Jeez, thats ridiculous.

[spoon_of_grimbo]

i don't get why people think the drums are TUNED badly...  sure, they're not the best sounding drums i've ever heard, but it's not the tuning that's the problem - they're WAY too high in the mix, and way too dry (i.e. absolutely no reverb on them).  that mastering problem that's been mentioned also doesn't help, since everything's been compressed to shit, there's no dynamics range to speak of, and the drums and rhythm guitars especially suffer from clipping (distortion, in the undesirable, un-metal sense).

that said, i think the SONGS themselves are some of the best they've done in years, and the vocals are much improved, if only for the fact that hetfield's cut out that annoying "HEY-AH" cowboy twang he's been affecting for the past decade.

[KharBevNor]

I'd still rather listen to Sabbat.

[David_Dovey]

i don't get why people think the drums are TUNED badly...  sure, they're not the best sounding drums i've ever heard, but it's not the tuning that's the problem - they're WAY too high in the mix, and way too dry (i.e. absolutely no reverb on them)

It may be a predictable reference, but Steve Albini rarely uses reverb on anything, ever, and god-danged if he doesn't have some of the best recorded drum sounds around to his name.

It really is the tuning!

[Chesire Cat]

I lose respect for musicians when they get litigious.

I lose respect for musicians when they get popular

[Thrillho]

I lose respect for musicians when they get litigious.

I lose respect for musicians when they get popular

You just won the forum.

[spoon_of_grimbo]

i don't get why people think the drums are TUNED badly...  sure, they're not the best sounding drums i've ever heard, but it's not the tuning that's the problem - they're WAY too high in the mix, and way too dry (i.e. absolutely no reverb on them)

It may be a predictable reference, but Steve Albini rarely uses reverb on anything, ever, and god-danged if he doesn't have some of the best recorded drum sounds around to his name.

It really is the tuning!

true, but i'm sure i heard that he uses delay to thicken the drum sound considerably.  the drum sound he got on "in utero" is absolutely skull-fuckingly immense.  lars' sound here sounds like he's really close to you in a small practice room, while the rest of the band are further away.  a bit of revery (or delay) would fix it to a large extent.  i'm not saying he couldn't do with a re-tune, but that's not the biggest problem there, that's all i'm saying.

[Touch Me Im Sick]

true, but i'm sure i heard that he uses delay to thicken the drum sound considerably.  the drum sound he got on "in utero" is absolutely skull-fuckingly immense.

I can hear the delay too, especially on the intro to "Scentless Apprentice"

[David_Dovey]

Actually the main problem for me with the drums on Death Magnetic are (predictably) that they are just way too compressed. Particularly the snare drum, which when compressed reasonably hard can change the tone noticeably, give it a great "crack" and just generally improve it. I do it all the time. But there is a fine line to be drawn between where the tone is changed pleasingly and where it begins to get abrasive.

I'm going to guess that Lars' snare drum was compressed quite hard to begin with before getting the ole' brickwall treatment at the stereo buss with the rest of the instruments, thus crapping it up good and proper.

[spoon_of_grimbo]

Actually the main problem for me with the drums on Death Magnetic are (predictably) that they are just way too compressed. Particularly the snare drum, which when compressed reasonably hard can change the tone noticeably, give it a great "crack" and just generally improve it. I do it all the time. But there is a fine line to be drawn between where the tone is changed pleasingly and where it begins to get abrasive.

I'm going to guess that Lars' snare drum was compressed quite hard to begin with before getting the ole' brickwall treatment at the stereo buss with the rest of the instruments, thus crapping it up good and proper.

this is true, and it's laughable that a producer or sound engineer would do something so monumentally fucking stupid - i started a music tech course two years ago with absolutely no prior experience in the subject, and this was one of the first things they covered, and damn if they didn't emphasise it a LOT.  i hope the studio fired whoever did this.  and if it comes out that it's rick rubin's doing, maybe it'll help prove the point that the guy is hideously overrated as a producer.

[philharmonic]

and he should be. I've downloaded "The Day That Never Comes" from ptp chat room. Heard "Cyanide" on the radio yesterday. Might just pick up the CD next payday. Real fans usually buy the cds eventually. I might even pick up "Ride the Lightning" while i'm at it. Mabey they should take a page from AC DC and market the back catalogue... cheap yes but they still get a cut.

[Brian Majestic]

MY complaints with the album are more that the drums are TUNED like shit, that has NOTHING to do with Lars. That is his drum tech's fault for making it sound like shit.

If Lars can't tell his drums sound like shit when he's playing them for days on end at a studio, it's completely his fault.

[Caspian]

I kind of liken this album to a blowjob by a cheap hooker. It's cheap and shameless, but you're still jizzing everywhere. Production is horrible (although the guitar hero version does sound pretty good), lyrics aren't too hot, but Metallica have pandered to their fans in a massive way with all the other musical elements and damn, it works, and it works well. Sure there's no integrity to this album, but look what happened last time Metallica bared their souls to everyone! Tl;dr? I really like this album, despite it's faults. I would also say that Hetfield sounds terrific, but then again I'm a raging Hetfield fanboy.

[Caspian]

Oh, also, regarding the production: There's talk that it wasn't the mastering engineer's fault, and then it was all brickwalled and distorting when he got it. He's "not proud to be associated with it" or something.

[Chesire Cat]

Oh, also, regarding the jizzing:  While it might feel good at the time, you will assuredly feel guilty about it later.  Its not something you would be "proud to be associated with".

[Caspian]

Well, I've never really cared about being particularly classy or well respected (as is obvious from my many posts here,  ) so I doubt it's something that I'd worry about. But it's not the perfect metaphor, I guess.