Music: Metallica's Load 20 years later

[67 others]

To be fair, Shadows wouldn't have any voice left if he didn't take lessons and clean his vocals up.

It was fraying badly at one point before he committed to learning how to properly sing.

Maybe. Maybe not.
Warner hired the vocal coach(Ron Anderson) of Avril Lavigne, Chad Kroeger, Adam Levine, Britney Spears for him, and the vocal coach actually said the surgery to remove a cyst Shadows had made clean singing more difficult for him as he lost 5 notes and he would have been better off screaming at the time.

But directives from warner are directives from warner. Make the music more alternative friendly.

Still some good songs on albums after waking the fallen. But only 2-3 per album.

Cleaned up the vocals, became more "Mallcore" and while I still usually enjoy a song or two from their albums, I can't listen to them in their entirety like the first 2 albums. I like some of the more prog aspects of certain tracks like MIA, Blinded in chains and Afterlife, but then the lyrics kick in on some songs and ruin it. Afterlife basically starts like an old school maiden tune, then morphs into creed type lyrics. They even did a country twang song.

There are also a lot of instances where while listening to their songs, I immediately realized which songs they were "inspired" by..........I.E completely stole riffs from.


Every time I hear the start of Beast and the Harlot, I first think he is trying to sound like Axl Rose, then I get flashbacks to this video game.


The strange thing is, then another band I like called bloodbound made a song called into Eternity that I found way too similar to the chorus later on.

A little piece of heaven was the song I felt most unique since they switched to Mallcore. yet its hard to explain to casual people why you find a song about ****ing your girlfriends corpse interesting.
My fiancee gets upset when I start singing Ride the lightning to the end of buried alive in the car. or when I sing unforgiven to the start of unbound.

Nightmare was such a meh album to me. The drumming was improved tho since Portnoy was just a better drummer. The Hetfield laugh in Nightmare usually makes me facepalm since it is so obvious he is trying to sound like Hetfield more and more.


Hail to the King was literally a cover album of slightly tweaked tunes.
This means war is such a blatant ripoff of Sad but true that it makes me giggle.

Sheppard of Fire tries too hard to have the intro and breaks of enter Sandman.
And heretic is a poor man's Symphony of destruction.

The 20 second clip they released of their upcoming album seems to have a lot of Malmsteen "Blitzkrieg" feel to it. Maybe it will be more prog? They have been trying to get out of their contract with Warner(Warner is suing them as a result)


Besides, they all admitted they were selling out to become more accessible.
http://loudwire.com/avenged-sevenfold-city-of-evil-anniversary/

“We knew we wanted to write a record that was more accessible than the ones we had done before,” Shadows told me shortly after the record came out. “We changed because we wanted to play the kind of music we liked, but we were smart enough to want to be listenable to more people. We knew the metalcore thing had a cap on it. There’s only so far you can go doing that.”

Often, bands shifting from one musical style to another lose a percentage of their fan base and Avenged Sevenfold circa 2005 is no exception. But what they lost from the diehard metalcore crowd they more than made up for from mainstream


Read More: 11 Years Ago: Avenged Sevenfold Unleash 'City of Evil' | http://loudwire.com/avenged-sevenfold-city-of-evil-anniversary/?trackback=tsmclip

 

[RedWhiteBlackGold]

^^ What? I thought this was a Metallica thread. Have no idea what the above posted is about.

 

[67 others]

^^ What? I thought this was a Metallica thread. Have no idea what the above posted is about.

Sorry. Got diverted talking about how Metallica never sold out as much between 1 album as Avenged did. I saw a thread on "sellout albums" but it is 2 years old and some will hop on me for bumping an old thread(While others would hop on me for creating a new thread when i could have just posted in the old thread. I can't in lol)

But for Metallica reference, listen to the song I posted there and tell me if it sounds familiar

 

[SniperHF]

I liked ..AND Justice for All better.

I flip flop between Justice and Kill'em all as my favorite about every other week

 

[Bobby Orrtuzzo]

I flip flop between Justice and Kill'em all as my favorite about every other week

I'm the same way with the first four albums. It's pretty much a weekly rotation between them for me

 

[67 others]

I'm the same way with the first four albums. It's pretty much a weekly rotation between them for me

Same.

I can pretty much lay their albums out in terms of top 3 songs I like to listen to, sometimes top 5. Mind you my favorites change over the years. but if I were to say which I would want to listen to right now if you put the album on....

Kill Em All: 4 horsemen, Motorbreath, Phantom Lord(and both Blitzkrieg + Am I evil. My cassette had them)

Ride the lightning: Ride the lightning, Creeping Death, Call of Ktulu
Master of Puppets: Battery, Master of Puppets, Disposable Heroes, Orion

And Justice for all: Blackened, And justice for all, Dyers eve

Black Album: Holier than Thou, Don't tread on me, The god that Failed, My friend of Mysery

Load + reload(just do em together): Ain't my *****, King Nothing, Fuel.......I guess. Fuel being the best of the bunch. None of these albums really say "Play me"

Garage Inc: Sabbra Cadabra, Die Die my darling, Mercyful fate, Astronomy, Whiskey in the Jar, Crash course in Brain surgery, Last Caress/Green hell, Breadfan

Death Magnetic: All nightmare long, That was just your life

 

[Hivemind]

So you're a big fan of track #2.


For those who don't get the reference, google around about the "formula" Metallica followed for their early album structure (especially from albums 2-4).

 

[Augscura]

Honestly the problem with this album isn't that it's not metal or like old Metallica, it's just straight up mediocre and easy listening butt rock. After like 2-3 listens there really isn't anything left to digest.

 

[v-man]

Honestly the problem with this album isn't that it's not metal or like old Metallica, it's just straight up mediocre and easy listening butt rock. After like 2-3 listens there really isn't anything left to digest.

Couldn't disagree more. The only reason it and ReLoad are trashed is because they aren't "metal" and like old Metallica. The songs are for the most part all well written and catchy, although the boogie/blues vibe can get tiring at times. Load isn't an album you go play to get fired up and/or rock out, it's more of a "mood" record you put on to chill out. Either way, there's a lot less filler on it than 98% of the albums that were coming out at the time.

 

[Augscura]

Couldn't disagree more. The only reason it and ReLoad are trashed is because they aren't "metal" and like old Metallica. The songs are for the most part all well written and catchy, although the boogie/blues vibe can get tiring at times. Load isn't an album you go play to get fired up and/or rock out, it's more of a "mood" record you put on to chill out. Either way, there's a lot less filler on it than 98% of the albums that were coming out at the time.

And I'm saying I trash this album because I find it to be uninspired butt-rock, not because it isn't metal or like their old material. I'm aware most people trashed it because of the latter.

 

[McPuritania]

I guess my question to you, Hivemind, is why do you take it all so personal?

I actually think diehard heavy metal fans are interesting. They are the absolute most passionate music fans. But.. 1980 isn't coming back. Heavy metal isn't popular and that era is far from coming back around. That's okay, though. It's the evolution of music. In the 90s, heavy metal music was really losing steam. Some of most interesting sounds became alternative and grunge. Metallica put out one of the best albums of all time. No matter if the person has listened to heavy metal or not, they know Metallica's black album. That should be something we celebrate. A heavy metal band totally took over the music world. That's something to celebrate - not hate on.

But ultimately why do you take their changes so personally? If they tried to make every album like Kill 'Em All, they wouldn't be nearly as good as they are. But why does that actually affect you?

I'm a metal fan, and a lot of metal heads are so incredibly judgmental, and small minded towards their own genre, and fellow metal heads. Even sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres will get the same rigid mentality applied to it. It's incredibly insufferable. I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, but whatever man, music is subjective as hell.

I'm not sure where you're going with the 80's never coming back thing, but metal will never die, matey. It isn't super popular, but there will always be a vibrant audience for the genre. Heck, I'd say metal has come around quite nicely from where it was before. There's a lot of wicked bands doing some really cool **** out there.

And btw, Load has some pretty good tunes on it. Hero of the Day is just a fantastic song. And hell, while I'm at it, Death Magnetic is on the same level as Kill' 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master, and ...And Justice imo.

And I'm saying I trash this album because I find it to be uninspired butt-rock, not because it isn't metal or like their old material. I'm aware most people trashed it because of the latter.

What the hell is butt-rock? I find these pet names people have for music, or fads, or whatever, is more of a "Hey look at how cool, and better I am" sort of a thing, than a valid analysis of the subject they are discussing. Anyway, I can see how people might not care for the Load, and Reload, albums, but to say it's uninspired, or derivative, doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Hivemind]

What the hell is butt-rock? I find these pet names people have for music, or fads, or whatever, is more of a "Hey look at how cool, and better I am" sort of a thing, than a valid analysis of the subject they are discussing. Anyway, I can see how people might not care for the Load, and Reload, albums, but to say it's uninspired, or derivative, doesn't make sense to me.

Butt rock = ****** radio hard rock.

Think of your typical FM hard rock station's ads. "99.99 FM Rock. Nothing But Rock" type sayings. "Nothing But Rock" = Butt Rock.

 

[Augscura]

Other examples of butt rock would be Creed, Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, Default, Seether. It's not a legitimate genre, its just a derogatory term for radio friendly rock.