Haha, I thought I was the only one who liked No Leaf Clover!
I have to admit I’m mostly not seeing the fuss around this new stuff. Yes, it’s better than St. Inker, but then so is being anally violated with an unlubricated pineapple.
I find it intriguing (and a little sad) just how much metallers in general want to love every new Metallica release, and yet the band themselves just keep on shitting all over the deliriously loyal fanbase. It’s been twenty years since they last made a good album. Twenty years. A lot of bands turn out a single duff release and their career is over, and yet here are Metallica, shuffling on into embarrassment a full two decades after they should have imploded under the weight of the turd, and somehow they’re still playing festivals.
I guess there’s just a Metallica-shaped hole in the consciousness of most metallers (I can still remember the charge I got from ramming the Congleton library copy of …And Justice For All into the cassette player and hearing ‘Blackened’ kick in for the first time).
It's heavier and sounds more alive, but really lacking focus. The riffs aren't very coherent, they actually sound like drunk jams to me. Imagine trying to learn one of these songs - you'd have to decipher or interpret what they "meant" to play amid all the "I give up" pull-offs and weird handling noise. No real vocal melodies to be had either, just some pitched yelling and unmemorable countryesque psuedo-melodies. Out of the whole album there's probably about 2 solid minutes of decent riffage, which is technically greater quantity than their output in the last 10 years combined, so they get an A for effort.
Did they master the album through a tube screamer pedal?
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I don't mean to come off like the forum prick here, but although I hear a few decent riffs here and there, for the most part this album sounds like shit, song writing wise IMO. I find it hard to understand these people who are so psyched about this album, maybe I'm hanging on to how Metallica SHOULD have evolved, taking other bands of the same era and how they sound now. I just wish they'd evolved ala Exodus, Testament, etc. And not the way they have presently. It's definitely more in the right area than St Anger, but I still think they have a long way to go, to be a competitive thrash band again.
Oh I disagree, there are things Hetfield/Ulrich do that no one else can. It's something they do with the backbeat and the way they transition between riffs. It sounds simple once you've heard it yet it's nearly impossible for most people to do. They've been able to do it since day one and they do it better than anyone.
...I want to hate this record but I can't.