Okay true, guess I meant to a lesser extent. For example the hangar 18-style track on the new one is more of a homage than a total remake like before. Maybe I'm a little biased but I would say most of S,D,&D's familiar passages are closer to inspired rather than copied

I was checking out (only last week) the Megadeth albums i wasn't familiar with post Endgame and it was this one that caught my attention purely because of that solo and not much else.Yeah they have long been lost on my radar for the longest time now and i don't listen to bands just for a particular style of lead playing,but don't forget the early albums had plenty of emotion,unhingedness (there's a word) and unpredictability especially in live performance with the playing and this is why i always give them another listen.
When i heard Mission To Mars for example..this is why i gave up on them,i was literally shaking my head.

Agreed. Such a boring album.

The Hu is a great band and I have their two cd’s. They aren’t metal. The music is good, with lots of folk and a bit of rock, but definitely not metal. The guitar is not the leading instrument and the scales/intervals/… used don’t radiate that metal atmosphere.

I am so fucking salty they're opening for Maiden on the US leg of the spoonful of Somewhere In Time helps the Senjutsu go down tour. Rod Smallwood really should have figured out that Iron Maiden fans want younger Iron Maiden opening for them by now (and no that doesn't mean Steve Harris' kids).




I can't help but wonder if I would have loved it if I heard it when I was in my 20s rather than now.

Maybe I've just grown familiar with them over the years but, I feel like Necrophobic have started to sound rather safe since Mark of the Necrogram. Both The Mirror Black and In the Twilight Grey, to me, sound like they'd be great for beginners as a launching pad to delve into their material. My reaction to those two albums has been fairly neutral. I suspect Sebastian Ramstedt has been saving his best new material for In Aphelion and giving Necrophobic the leftovers.

Hardwired... to Self-Destruct and 72 Seasons are better albums than Ride the Lightning and ...and Justice for All. Yes, I'm serious. Also, Kill 'Em All is their best 80's album.

I know plenty of people who consider Kill 'em All Metallica's best 80's album (or their best album period), and I've heard a couple people who don't like Justice say that they enjoy Hardwired and 72 Seasons, but saying that they're better than Ride the Lightning is something I've never seen anybody before you say. I'm not really that much of a Metallica guy and I think Ride the Lightning is a fantastic album.

I'm not really into Metallica, but Kill Em All is pretty much their only album that I play somewhat regularly

Very curious as to why - I like both their last two albums, but they don't have the inventiveness or the complete dynamite songs of the 80s classics at all.

With an unpopular opinion like that, you win this case. Topic can be closed now.

The greatest post of MA history….

Freezing! Can’t move at all
Screaming! Can’t hear my call
I am dying to live
Cry out! I’m trapped under ice

Ok I’m going to relistining Trapped under ice

I have a pretty huge blind spot when it comes to weepy death/doom that got softer over time, so a few years back I ran through the partial discographies of the Peaceville Three + Katatonia. Never felt like I was missing much but it's a huge scene that I simply had basically no knowledge of at all.

My capital lettered Unpopular Opinion after that little adventure is that Anathema had the best early metal period and it's not even close. Brave Murder Day? Turn Loose the Swans? Not really my thing but I get the appeal and I'd call them good albums. Serenades? Great album. Immediately stood out as leagues above its peers and to date has been the only album from that little pocket of bands that I've revisited just because I wanted to hear it again. I don't remember much about any of it anymore without relistening to everything a second time to see where my opinion falls two or three years later, but I definitely remember my main takeaway being "They all got pretty fuckin' boring when they moved away from metal (barring Katatonia who was pretty solid in the aughts) but Anathema crushed them when all four of them were metal at the same time."

Hah, I like some of early Anathema's stuff, but I would never put Pentecost III and The Silent Enigma in the same (semi) classic category such as Dance of December Souls,, As the Flower Withers, Gothic, ect.

Speaking of unpopular opinions: Anathema's Eternity is pretty good stuff. None of the other bands that ditched metal ended up well.

It's great stuff, IMO. (Despite Vincent's early attempt at clean vocals, which were...uneven to put it mildly.)

That is one hot take and tastes are tastes. I can agree that KEA could be their best if you prefer the youthful exuberance and raw power of that album. It is great.

Hardwired is good, though it needs trimming. 72 had little staying power with me but its not a bad album. I'd rank them 70%/55% I'd rank neither even on the same level of Ride, which is to me a top 10 metal album of all time. an easy 100% album in my book. Justice would be more of an 85% album.

To be fair: I do appreciate the fact that their 80's albums are classics, all of them, so it's not that. Master of Puppets is a seminal record, yet only two songs on it ("MoP" and "Battery") immediately grab me. Lightning and Justice aren't bad records of course, far from it. I should have worded that better. It's just that, as I got into Metallica pretty late in life, to me they're more closely associated with their later material (I'm talking post 2000). To me they've always been more of a purely heavy metal band with a side order of speed and thrash (the size of that side order admittedly being larger and more dominant the further back in time you go). What I'm trying to say is I lack the emotional attachment to Metallica as a thrash metal band; maybe that's why I've been more unbiased towards their later stuff. Again, no arguing the classic status of their 80's stuff, it's just that more of their later output speaks to me more than their classic stuff, Kill and parts of MoP being exceptions.

I hope I managed to clear this up somewhat. I was not trying to troll in any way.

Yes. Alternative 4 and Judgement are also great, emotional works that deserve praise.

Well fair enough, I've always found it a faulty premise that all these classic bands just become intrinsically Bad after the 80s... there's easy things to like about a lot of stuff and nothing's ever objective...

Yeah bad taste of course…

Hardwired a decent album nothing more but 72 Seasons is empty and dull(maybe two songs can be sufficient)

The only Escape destroy both albums

That's just weird to me, both of their last two essentially sound like they could've come from the same session more or less. 72 Seasons is more consistent and doesn't drop off like Hardwired does - though there's a few better tunes on the first Hardwired disc.

I love Hardwired and 72 Seasons but, just, like... no, no they're not.

Opinions differ. It's all good.

I do agree with Hardwired and 72 Seasons being too long, but I think they pull it off.

Hardwired is less consistent but has more highlights, especially Atlas Rise, Moth into Flame and Spit Out the Bone, while I think the only dud on 72 Seasons is Sleepwalk My Life Away. But a lot of songs on there could have been edited down; there's a tendency for them to drag out transitions, intros and pre-verses which costs the songs momentum.

I still rank Death Magnetic above both of them though. It's a strange album because it seems like them trying to go back to their roots, but because they changed so much in 20 years, the result is a sort of uncanny valley that stands out on its own. It has the dense songwriting of Justice but with a looser feel to it.

72 Seasons has the same issues as the previous two before it... it's a bit long in the tooth with those sections you mention, where they ride a riff too long or something. But I think 72 Seasons has a different vibe with the lyrics and intent - to be a slightly more personal thing. It's a little more understated and homogeneous, but there's something serious about those songs that I can get into.

Death Magnetic is a strange album sort of at odds with itself trying to be like the old stuff but also with a new identity (same as this year's Sonata Arctica) - but "Cyanide" and "All Nightmare Long" and a few others are legit insanely catchy.

You described exactly why I rank Death Magnetic as my least favourite Metallica album, although I appreciate it as a transitional work and for its high points (My Apocalypse and the Beyond Magnetic outtake Rebel of Babylon). They were still figuring out how to combine the old with current day, which they figured out on Hardwired and continued with 72 Seasons.

Metallica after reload are completely irrilevant…

Four,five good songs in a ocean of boredom..

And I stop here

I found them to be both totally forgettable and bland- with a few exceptions. Unoffensive maybe (unlike St Anger) but forgettable. While I dislike the direction Load went, at least the songs were interesting.

I say this as someone who grew up on Metallica and Iron Maiden and WANT these bands to continue to be good (and Iron Maiden is)....no rose colored glasses here, but 80s Metallica is on a whole different level. If any other band had put out Hard Wired or 72 Seasons they would be forgotten immediately.

Well I'm not trying to argue the quality, they are what they are and I like the new stuff despite some issues.

That said - I never buy this stuff about "if any other band had put them out"... they're pretty intrinsically Metallica releases, with the band's idiosyncrasies and trademarks, etc.

That whole line of critique I almost never see much weight in personally, for any band.

Yeah maybe. I'm not trying to argue at all really.

As far as "any other band" I just mean if an unknown band put out something like Hard Wired or 72 Seasons it wouldn't have gotten noticed (IMO since it's obviously just conjecture).

Megadeth is a revolving door now - has been for a long time - and it's sad. It's literally Dave & his current hired hands. It's really hard for me to relate to a band like that. I love the Rust in Peace band to deth, but that's it.

Maybe - I just think those albums are too idiosyncratic to Metallica for any other band to have put them out. I think a lot of big bands have such unique sounds that no other band could really replicate them - not saying the quality is always paramount, but still.

Yeah that's true, nobody else has that same sound that Metallica has (that I've heard anyway).

Keeping with the newtallica discussion: why does everyone love Spit out The Bone so much? It's like they weren't expecting to hear double bass in a Metallica album anymore and that alone bought them over. It's just kinda boring to me. A huge, over-long 0-0-0-0 fest without any parts that are too distinctive or anything. Like, how many changes could Metallica cram in a 7-8 minute song back in the day? SotB has none of that, it could've lasted 3 minutes and they wouldn't have needed to remove any sections from it. It's just tedious.

Now Dream No More... That's the real jewel in the album for me.

Compared to the dregs of the B-side like Murder One, Spit out the bone is great. There is a radio edit that cuts out some of the fluff, but I won't argue that the song in a vacuum is necessarily that amazing. Almost every Metallica song on any album post-2000 is too long, (my own guilty pleasure death magnetic included). Dream no more is pretty cool, a sequel done right

I’ve always seen it from the opposite perspective: had a new band released these three albums (including Death Magnetic here), they’d have received significantly more praise from the metal community.

Ha that's interesting. I feel that way about Load and Reload as I mentioned, which disappointed me when they were released but have interesting songs, which (IMO) the newer 3 do not.

I have to admit it's been years since I listened to HW and DM so maybe I should give them a spin.

Hetfield was a good metal vocalist for about 3 albums.
Around the time AJFA came out, or maybe the black album liberally speaking, this hacky, twangy machismo (HUUYEAAAHHHH! URRHGGGH! YEEEYYAAAHH!) he's had for the past 30 years became the focal point of his vocals.
Dave has vocal limitations, that's not a secret, but he can do more with those limitations than James can with significantly less limitations. I do not believe James could do a convincing version of Tornado of Souls if his life depended on it in the 90s.
Dave's the better vocalist.
I promise I'm not secretly Dave Mustaine. Also both bands were great in the 80s so don't take this as some partisan Metallica vs. Megadeth thing.

I like but don't love ...and Justice for All and I don't think I ever need to hear anything from the black album ever again, but I think those albums are where James' voice peaked. His voice was unhinged on Kill em All and Ride the Lightning which is part of their appeal, and on the next three albums, his gruff tone was more controlled where he was able to bring the needed aggression without having to force it.

I'm not sure what you mean by James not being able to sing "Tornado of Souls". Do you mean that James couldn't sing a twisted break-up song like that? At any rate, what Dave singing Metallica songs? Do you think he'd be able to do a song like "One" justice?

I'm happy my little take on the almighty Metallica gave rise to such fruitful discussions.