okay, there’s a lot of stuff here. I’m gonna go through album by album a little bit, then summarize. I feel like the album-by-album tells a story about the band that is important, that is a big part of how I experienced them and how I feel I currently understand them. Sometimes I don’t think it matters quite so much; this time I feel it’s particularly useful for explaining why I feel about them the way that I do. Because at the end of the day, my current way of organizing and judging (which I continue to chafe at and be dissatisfied with) only lets me publish a single highly visible marker to convey my feelings about an artist or band. Metallica, being a storied band with lots of music over a lot of time, has me feeling different things about them at different parts of their career, and yet I am still only equipped to make one facet of my feelings for them “the thing I feel about them”—ie, their place on the tier list, their rank. Going through album by album helps me pull that apart a little
Kill ‘Em All was a little bit of a let down. It started pretty strong, I felt, but after that it felt samey and boring. I was consistent about reading the lyrics for all of the songs in all the albums up to about St. Anger. The lyrics in Kill ‘Em All cracked me up. They feel so much like, “Yes we are metal. Leather death sin metal metal metal”. I can understand how that’s a response to criticisms of this emerging genre, how it’s kinda a tongue in cheek mockery of the things that anti-metal people were characterizing the genre as, but taken at face value it’s just so on the nose, it’s so funny to me.
Ride the Lightning is pretty good, I can get behind it more, it feels to me like a very nice step forward from Kill ‘Em All. I feel like it’s starting to actually say something, to do something with the lyrics. It’s moving the identity forward instead of just claiming the identity as an available bit of conceptual real estate. I also thought it felt a little more thoughtful musically, but maybe I just want that to be true. I did enjoy it a bit more, I dunno.
Master of Puppets again feels like a solid progression, a development and improvement in line with prior work, I like it. The lyrics are more put together, they do work. The music feels more put together, it’s all very much the same but better, I think. Justice for All feels similar, they feel of a kind to me. Master of Puppets seemed to be more thematically centered around following some kind of anti-Christ figure (we are puppets of a master, album is called Master of Puppets, you dig?), whereas this one seems like it’s more anti-establishment in general (album is called …And Justice for All), but in such a way that it’s not much of a leap from one to the other.
The Black Album, Metallica, feels pretty smooth, pretty polished. It pushes farther in more directions lyrically, and I almost feel like it loses some focus for that. Puppets and Justice have smaller scope but have a clearer vision for it. I can understand why this one would have been labelled as selling out, it is a pretty marked move away from the frenzied garage feeling that was so strong in the earlier albums.
Load is funny because I think I personally enjoy the songs more, but I don’t think it’s, like, as good? That’s not right. I don’t think it’s as metal? That’s not really right either. It’s a more sound-good pop-rock groove over the distortion and themes of past Metallica. Well, not pop-rock. It’s hard rock instead of metal, is what it feels like. It’s not frantic like it used to be, even more than Metallica, and I think it loses something critical there even as it becomes something I am more inclined to want to listen to. Reload feels the same. Which checks out, I suppose. It is called Reload.
St. Anger is, I think, the last album that I really found myself able to really care about or enjoy much at all. Lyrically/thematically I think it caught the tail end of a trend I noticed starting in Metallica where the albums were more general and “unfocused”. Not that they’re worse—in a lot of ways I feel like song per song the newer albums have, like, better songs? Even lyrically, even in terms of, like, reading words on the page and thinking about how they were constructed and put together, I feel like these middle albums kinda do a better job than the earlier albums. And yet, they just don’t have the oomph. I dunno.
By the time I got to Death Magnetic I was feeling pretty done with the band. I don’t know that I’d even say that the stuff they put out after 2005 is worse, really. It sounds good, it’s well performed and produced. I’m no expert in composition and arrangement, particularly within the world of metal, but it seems competently done on that front as well. Still, it doesn’t sound… I dunno. I don’t wanna say it doesn’t sound good, I just don’t really care for it. It’s too long and I lose interest. It is not fresh and raw like old Metallica, and while I am again not an expert, I’m not convinced that it’s doing interesting things musically. It’s pretty good, it’s solid, but it’s not also cool, it’s not also interesting, and I don’t think it’s good or solid enough to be worth it to me without being cool or interesting. The last couple albums in particular were just a chore to listen to. A big part of that is that I was just out of patience at that point. I cared less about every album, was less willing and able to give it my attention and genuinely be open to really liking it. That’s telling, I think. Some bands get me more interested in them as I keep listening. I get curious to see what they do next, to see what they become. Sometimes, if I really like it, I’m even just excited to get more of the same. Not so here. I’m pretty ready to be done.
All of that and then I have to give an, “All around, I’d say…”. Tough. I think they never sound bad. I’m not always interested in them, but they never sound bad. At their worst, I am consistently bored and disinterested. I feel that in their most recent stuff. Most frequently, they sound pretty good and are generally enjoyable, though not particularly noteworthy or interesting. I feel that in Metallica, Load, Reload. At their “best”, they are focused and interesting, they sound like they have a fire under their ass and the things they say push and inspire; they’re super focused and evocative in their arguments and are compelling because of it. I feel that in Puppets and Justice.
I can’t put them in the As. I don’t think of myself as a fan; I got bored enough of them that I just can’t muster much excitement for them, as a band, as a whole. I don’t think I want to put them in the Bs for the same reason. When it comes to just listening to them, I like them well enough but I don’t actually like listening to them that much, especially not when taking their whole discography into consideration. The Cs feel too low for them, but the Cs always feel too low for the people who I think fit best there. I think Metallica does fit there, it makes sense. I like the music, but I mostly like the music as a vessel for the interesting things they do with the music, and they only do that in two out of a dozen albums. Musically, I get bored because the songs are long, the harmonies are basic and repetitive, the solos are fast but do not usually interest me, and the hooks do not consistently catch me. There’s good bits in there, there’s stuff I like, but it’s not my favorite most of the time. But Puppets and Justice I do think are pretty cool, and I think I can see how Metallica became a symbol for metal, and metal itself as a symbol of counter-culture and anti-authoritarianism I think is pretty metal, so I give big points for that. Strong C+
Metallica complete, now listening to: Daft Punk
tunafruitsandwitch 