RAVE! Metallica - Death Magnetic review

[scorry]

Listened to it a couple of times now... singing is shite, but the playing is awesome. 7/10.

yeah i would agree with that, espacially track 1, it sounds mint till he starts singing.
i do like unforgiven 3 and the day that never comes

[SlashWylde]

Aaaaarghhh!

I just dragged myself though the second half of this album and made it to the first chorus of 'My Apocalypse' before pressing the stop button. I can't take any more!

OK. So a couple of days ago I scraped together the $22-odd dollars required to buy the CD from JB Hi-Fi (Sorry Real Groovy, I is poor student type).

I like the way 'That Was Just Your Life' opens, tasty use of chorus and flanging so characteristic of 80's 'Tallica. But then the dirty guitars and drums kick in. "Damn! I thought something sounds distorted here, is one of my speakers or amp channels poked?". Nope, tis the CD, but we'll get to that in a minute. The track has the energy and youth of Kill 'em All. It's raw and thrashy which really sums up the whole album.

The main hook in 'The End of the Line' is cool.

"Broken, Beat and Scarred" is a great song. Really infectious groove.

'All Nightmare Long' is fantastic. Great riffs and guitar parts there. The chorus lyrics are cool, and I dig the accompanying guitar parts.

Cool bass lines from Robert in 'Cyanide'.

Don't think much of the rest of the album though there are some cool if somewhat cliched guitar parts in 'Suicide and Redemption'.

Throughout the CD James' vocals often sound strained, though he has more grit and raw power than we've heard from him in a while.

On the whole not a bad effort considering the last 20 odd years of directional shifts. I like the raw crunchy guitar sound with mid-range emphasis.

As a guitarist it sounds to me to be a very 'jammy' album. Lots of fun potentially interesting hooks and riffs strung together, which sometimes work and sometimes not. On the whole the album sounds disjointed and rambling. Also, death isn't a particularly original theme for a metal band to write about, though the album title itself is inspired.

The really disappointing thing about the album is how it sounds. It's compressed all to hell, which is why it sounded distorted when I first listened to it. There is a great deal of discussion raging on the net regarding this issue, with fans sharply divided between loving the sound and hating it. The most bizarre part is the revelation that the version of DM that appears on Guitar Hero III seems to have more dynamic range than that on the CD version. Some fans have already ripped their own versions from GH3 and posted to bit torrent sites. I find this last point bitterly ironic. The band who made such a fuss over fans downloading music from file sharing networks such as Napster may have now forced fans to download illegal copies of their music in order to overcome poor production quality issues. Oh dear...

I understand that the version from iTunes in AAC format has the ability to control the loudness which somewhat ameliorates the problem but apparently it is still noticeable.

More info here and there are plenty more blogs and articles on the net regarding the issue with regards to DM and as an industry wide issue.

Kick-ass energy and thrash on this album, it is clearly recognisable as Metallica but there are only brief glimpses of the inventiveness and technical brilliance of 'Master of Puppets' and my personal favorite, 'And Justice for All...' Seems like Metallica are a different beast these days, so I guess one has to accept them as such and enjoy the music for what it is rather than what one wishes it could be.

For what it is worth there are plenty of other contemporary bands such as Iced Earth, Symphony-X and Opeth who play the kind of interesting and technically brilliant metal that I love. Metal as a genre is stronger than it has ever been and the only real problem is finding the money to enjoy all the myriad different offerings there are out there.

Hmmm, must be about time for a new BLS album surely...

[jrandom]

I've heard that the Guitar Hero audio is superior to the CD - no FM-radio-friendly dynamic compression.

[SlashWylde]

I've heard that the Guitar Hero audio is superior to the CD - no FM-radio-friendly dynamic compression.

Yup, that's the claim. This album is being held up as a casualty of the so-called 'Loudness Wars' where albums are heavily compressed to give the appearance of sounding louder in order to get peoples attention and push sales revenue. Many commentators are also pointing to the iPod and MP3 generation as being the cause of death to Hi-Fi and well produced albums. Dunno if I entirely agree with that, the last few Opeth offerings are glorious, for example. Aggressive, haunting, beautiful.

[jrandom]

Many commentators are also pointing to the iPod and MP3 generation as being the cause of death to Hi-Fi and well produced albums. Dunno if I entirely agree with that, the last few Opeth offerings are glorious, for example. Aggressive, haunting, beautiful.

There's no reason why a purist sound engineer allowed free run of his equipment can't still record a high-quality album, but it's definitely the case that studio recordings of the last decade have degenerated, and tend to cater to the lowest common digital music denominator.

CD is still a great audio format with plenty of potential (I f'rinstance wouldn't be likely to bother with a dedicated SACD or DVD-A etc player if I was building a high-end system), and the kind of music that gets listened to by audiophiles (jazz, classical performances, etc) is still recorded with their tastes in mind.

But the kind of music that's mostly listened to by the iPod Generation is being recorded with iPods in mind. And I guess there's no way you or I can change that; we're stuck in the tiny and unfortunate minority of people who listen to modern pop and rock music and want it to sound good.

[SlashWylde]

In a funny way this latest offering has made me return to the first four albums Metallica put out in the 80's.

I'm listening to 'Eye of the Beholder' as I type this. Damn I love those guitars. So intense, so deep and saturated. Jaymz' vocals and lyrics had such intensity and aggression.

There was a time when I could play all the rhythm parts from AJFA and stylistically it was very influential on me. Once I'm done with my degree studies for the year I think I'll pick up my tab books over the summer and re-learn all my old favourites and a few newer ones to boot.

[98tls]

My favourite band of "there time" sadly the fat lady continued to sing long after it was worth listening to.Can remember watching the doco with there new manager (or whatever he was) ended up changing channels.

[sAsLEX]

But the kind of music that's mostly listened to by the iPod Generation is being recorded with iPods in mind.

And yet this still sounds shit on the ipod or CD with one track in paticular having shocking bass!

No wonder I normally avoid purchasing music, all my illegally downloaded metallica sounds better than the album I paid for, crazy!

Though I hear its available on vinyl? Now to buy a record player, as my uncle just kindly donated a couple of nice amps to play with....hmmmmmm

[jrandom]

Though I hear its available on vinyl?

That'd be... interesting.

See, I think you'd actually lose dynamic range on the vinyl as opposed to a properly mastered CD. A quick googling confirms that at least one internet crackpot shares my view on this:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....le=Vinyl_Myths

Also, re dynamic compression on CDs:

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

Any recording that goes anywhere near an 0xFFFF sample value on a CD is automatically disqualified from being good. Dynamically-compressed digital audio isn't just 'loudness-adjusted' - it's mangled. You're not hearing what went into the microphone, and that's all there is to it.

[sAsLEX]

That'd be... interesting.

See, I think you'd actually lose dynamic range on the vinyl as opposed to a properly mastered CD. A quick googling confirms that at least one internet crackpot shares my view on this:

hmmmm I wouldn't say that to my uncle....... especially not when he is on the turps!

The term "analog", by definition, means that the signal is not and cannot be a perfect reproduction of the original - it is merely an "analogue" of the existing signal, corrupted in the process of encoding.

Some interesting reading on your link, seems they have got all confused.

[jrandom]

hmmmm I wouldn't say that to my uncle....... especially not when he is on the turps!

I learned some years ago that arguing technicalities with vinyl fans is never a good idea, particularly when they're on the turps.

Some interesting reading on your link, seems they have got all confused.

I did say 'crackpot'.

[skidMark]

Just bought it today, giving it its first pl,ay over at this moment - then the new disturbed cd goes in

[outlawtorn]

Ethan Smith of the Wall Street Journal reports that some fans are complaining that METALLICA's new album, "Death Magnetic", has a thin, brittle sound that's the result of the band's attempts in the studio to make it as loud as possible. "Sonically it is barely listenable," reads one fan's online critique. Thousands have signed an online petition urging the band to re-mix the album and release it again.

METALLICA and the album's producer, Rick Rubin, declined to comment. Cliff Burnstein, METALLICA's co-manager, says the complainers are a tiny minority. He says 98% of listeners are "overwhelmingly positive," adding: "There's something exciting about the sound of this record that people are responding to."

But the critics have inadvertently recruited a key witness: Ted Jensen, the album's "mastering engineer," the person responsible for the sonic tweaks that translate music made in a studio into a product for mass duplication and playback by consumers. Responding to a METALLICA fan's email about loudness, Mr. Jensen sent a sympathetic reply that concluded: "Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one." The fan posted the message on a METALLICA bulletin board and it quickly drew attention.

Mr. Jensen regrets his choice of words but not the sentiment. "I'm not sure I would have said quite the same thing if I was posting it to the bulletin board," he says. But "it's certainly the way I feel about it."

Read the entire report from the Wall Street Journal.

"Broken Beat & Scarred" album version:



"Broken Beat & Scarred" unofficial remix using nothing but **six** separated/extracted Guitar Hero tracks:

[outlawtorn]

If you listen to the two different version from YouTube above you can defintely hear the difference, personally it doesn't bother me, sounds fucking awesome any which way you listen to it.......

[jrandom]

Jesus. Even post-Youtube-compression via my laptop's shitty sound card, the difference in audio quality between those two tracks is instantly noticeable.

I really hope they cave in and release a remastered album.