I've actually been thinking about this a lately for some reason, that I would like for bands to stop wallowing in low B-flat any day now and just play everything an octave higher like the ears can tolerate. Listening to old metal, E always seemed to be low enough, right? If you wanted to play a song in D you played the open D and it was fine. Thrash bands didn;t tune down every time they played in something other than E and we never expected them to do so. Now I am not knocking the low end, and I love it, but we've been low for so long that all of a sudden playing in E seems like some sort of new magical approach, almost to the point where I almost went home and clipped the B off my 5-string bass (but I didn't). One day I transposed The Jester Race to standard tuning and the spell was broken (if you thought old In Flames sounded like Iron Maiden before, try this yourself and it will keep you up at night).

I have been listening to stuff from when I was 7, 8, 9 years old lately. Right now the song "Southern Girls" by Cheap trick is playing. I have finally figured out what the fuck is going on. Somewhere my life got completely and utterly screwed up, and while I had simply accepted this fact for years, subconsciously I have been trying to figure out what actually went wrong for a while now. Apparently if I listen to enough of the old music and I do this in the correct order, I should be able to figure out exactly what happened and go back and fix it. Next up: Bob Seger's "Turn The Page." You know, the song Metallica totally fucked up.

Of course, Metallica is also turning back the clock with guitars in standard tuning, and they want to make sure you know it. With unflinching ego, they have opened the website http://www.missionmetallica.com and turned their recording project into a reality series. Now honestly I am glad to hear they are trying the same thing as me and retraced their own plummett by retuning their guitars to E and attempting to party like it's 1985 again, but all this guarantees is that we'll probably get another Black Album. We'll see which one of us straightens out our lives first, me or them, in a few months, but seeing as I haven't even gotten to the J Geils and Bruce Springsteen records yet I would say they have a pretty good headstart. Unlike them, however, if I fuck this up no one has to know

preach it grasshoppa, preach it.




as in,


amen!



although, you did go a little crazy with the j geils. i can somewhat live with cheap trick and segar, but you jumped the shark with j geils.




p.s. i never thought i would ever post this....but i miss jason newsted

Actually this was J Geils well before the Love Stinks album. My dad had an early live album from 1972 or so and it was the stuff from this period and just after that I liked. The later stuff got them the commercial success I always thought the earlier stuff warranted but IMO it really didn't capture what I thought was great about the band, they just started figuring out how to make hit songs. Yeah I guess when I say J Geils everyone thinks "Centerfold," one of their lowest moments

I'd take another Black Album over another St. Anger ANY FREAKIN' DAY.

The Black album was the beginning of Metallica's decent into pop suckiness, and despite being better than all subsequent releases will be remembered poorly for initiating the chain reaction.

The thing is most fans didn't think of it as the start of anything, but rather the end, at the time. I even remember a conversation with a devout Metallica fan, who, weeks before Load (Of Shit) came out, swore up and down it would be a return to greatness, that the Black album was a misstep, and we would all feel really stupid really soon. The only people for which this was actually true were the people who actually bought that album. We pointed at them and laughed, then felt bad and bought them beers to make them feel better.

Now we have the benefit of a Black-level album being a step upward. Something that is "the best album since the Black album" is almost worth listening to - context is everything. I am starting to think this was the plan all along - rather than release the proper follow up to their first pop album in 1996, they waited another 12 years and several half-assed piece-of-shit releases to do it, figuring all of the people they pissed off in 1991 will actually rejoin the fold now, all forgiven.

Since they still owe me $25 from the incredibly shitty concert they put on in support of the Black album, I unfortunately cannot totally count myself among this group. But if the songs are good, I will certainly give them props. I am not going to say something is bad just because they owe me money, when they were just so happy to continue making sucky albums for so long I didn't even need to work at it. And honestly, I truly would like to hear good music coming from their camp. As bitter as you guys have seen me about that stupid fucking show 16 years ago, I would much like to hear them do heavy metal in E again. Who knows, this might actually be the band I am supposed to get to in order to figure out what went wrong in my life...

I am a few years away from this yet, however. Currently listening to Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell, the album that earned me a visit from the preacher of the Baptist church my parents made me go to for a few months. After his visit, I never had to go again. I skipped a year or so because I really didn't want to listen to any Foreigner, but I'll probably backtrack a bit. I just needed a break

i would like to blame bob 'corporate' rock....but he wouldn't have been able to do it without the band very much wanting to go down that slippery slope of mainstream/corporate rock.



as in, its all about the benjamins.

i would like to point out that the post-black album years are now 7 more years longer than the pre-black years.

I'd like to hear that version of TJR.

alright since this seems to be a metallica thread now hehehe

i just got done reading a 'book' of sorts regarding metallica during the period just before load came out and just prior to the release of st. anger. it's a collection of interviews and stuff from their fanclub magazine but whatever it was still interesting and offered a minuscule glimpse into their personal sides.

the biggest issue that a lot of fans neglect is that the main 2 guys in metallica went from being soulless metal machines who operated in a very rigid and sterile fashion in the studio (everything up to the black album) to being fathers. there's no way they could continue to operate the way they did back in 'the good old days'. through becoming fathers lars and james were able to relax a little more in order to allow the other members of the band to contribute equally. while the initial results sucked ass i don't think it's really fair (or realistic) to expect people to drastically change overnight.

besides, if they had just rehashed master of puppets for the last 20 years everyone would be whining about how boring and predictable the band is.

it's cool that they're going back to E but don't try to feed me a line of shit blaming the downturn in metal based on tunings. sabbath was in C# and i'll be goddamned if it didn't sound great. it's really not that hard to have 2 guitars in 2 tunings.