Should Metallica be in the forum?

 

First Thanks Avantgardehead to pass the tip and looking to some reviews about And Justice for All this catch my attetion, here's:

 

"Done by THE GHOUL on 13 of april of 2008.

 

Let me establish something first: I never considered Metallica anything new or original, even in their glory days. Kill Em' All was raw, beer-fueled aggression, sure, and Ride the Lightening was pure thrash to the core. But it had been done before, by bands better at it, in greater quantities. Most of the riffs that made Ride the Lightening and Kill Em' All great were Mustaine riffs, and you could definitely start to hear the absence of Mustaine on Master of Puppets. And on this, you can REALLY hear the absence of Mustaine, as well as the lack of any bass presence whatsoever (Newsted isn't to blame, it's the band and the producer), lending it a rather one dimensional sound.

I don't hear much of Mustaine type riffs in most early Metallica songs. Jump In The Fire is the only one which comes to my mind. To me this seems like something which a fanatical Mustaine/Megadeth fan would write ... not a very balanced view, to say the least.
 
I have a theory that Hetfield was never really a riff genius. He wrote some great lyrics back in the days when they went through rough times (loser lunch, anybody?), and hell, he's come up with a good riff or two. But most of the good riffs from Kill Em' All and Ride the Lightening were most likely written by Mustaine.

Ridiculous.

Metallica didn't dramatically sell out with the Black Album, Load/Reload, and St. Anger. James/Lars (the other two don't really have any creative control, it seems) have have been sellouts long before it showed any signs, even back in the Master of the Puppets days. Why do I mention that album? Because it's basically a facsimile of Ride the Lightening, but instead of being fresh and innovative, it was tired and boring, the "epic" songs long and meandering and the thrash songs copies of past genius.

The albums are very, very different.

Remember when they went on MTV for the first time, and spent the speech whining and bitching about how they didn't get their MTV? They've always wanted money and fame. It's just that when the tide of music started turning, and metal wasn't so popular anymore, they tried making a modern rock album (Load) and when Numetal was really popular, they made a numetal album (St. Anger).

Nu Metal was long gone when St. Anger was recorded ... again, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Besides - show me one nu metal album with that snare sound ...

What does that have to do with ...And Justice For All? Everything. It was made with the same mentality as the Black Album, Load/Reload, and St. Anger. That is, they write songs for the fans, not themselves. They don't use introspection to create metal that came from the depths of their soul, they just write what they think the fans will like, what will be popular. It shows, here, because even though it's touted as progressive thrash, it's not real progressive, and it's really more heavy metal than thrash metal. More specifically, Metallica wanted to create music that was "epic" and slower than their usual fare. That's a good intention and all, but it's entirely disingenuous if there's no real desire for change. See, Metallica are using the same riffs, Kirk doing the same solos, and Lars doing the same drum patterns as always. They wanted to change for superficial reasons, and because of that, little actual change occured.

AJFA was very different from the previous albums ... not just the sound, but also the attitude, it's much more bitter. And what's that thing about "real thrash" ... please, most fans have their own opinion. To some it's Megadeth, to some it's Slayer ... to some it's Metallica.

Having heard music made around the same time attempting the same thing but doing it several times better, ...And Justice For All can't help but sound mediocre. James is a mostly pentatonic riff writer, and you can't really do "epic" with pentatonic riffs, and that's what he tries to do here a lot, and it comes off sounding cheesy and half-baked. His gruff bark, which works for thrash, doesn't work for epics. His cleaner style sounds forced and rather thin, akin to another heavy metal giant of the period, Jon Oliva. Both are better off barking along to pugilistic heavy metal than singing along to more ballad-y music. As well, the "yeah"s and the "uh-huh"s and other cliche'd rockstar-isms Hetfield uses are annoying as hell, and further detract from the seriousness of what they're attempting.

Stop telling us what sucks, tell us who did it better, and how. 

But it takes much more terrible vocals to ruin good music, but, alas, if ...And Justice For All had good music. It doesn't. It has mediocre riffs with mediocre solos on top of mediocre drumlines. The bass, of course, doesn't factor in at all. Of course, Justice for All is nowhere near as aggravatingly MTV as the Black Album nor is it as downright embarrassing as Load/Reload and St. Anger, as this is years before Hetfield & Co. started scraping the bottom of the artistic barrel."

Wow ... the worst review I've read in - at least a few weeks.