Metallica - Death Magnetic - new album discussion

In my opinion, the clarity of the instruments is much better than Rush's Vapor Trails or Maiden's Dance of Death, so I can with the whole "I'm beating you over the head" approach to the presentation.

-HM

 

All I can say is that I had hopes that they could somehow redeem themselves from the 'st.anger' fiasco musically, there are glimmers on there but overall it is a mishmash of recycled 'Tallica. I will echo the sentiments about the sound, absolute garbage, what the ****, is there a race somewhere to make the most un-listenable album in history? This just might take the prize. It is pretty clear to me that Metallica would just like to continue to rest on their laurels and be a touring band like the Stones and put out mediocre (at best) music so they can continue to be rich rock stars. I should have known better. In the words of Lars "that sounds stock". I will shut up now as I crank Master of Puppets.

 

I am just waiting for the new brickwalled remixes of the old stuff, sooner or later "new mandatory mixes" or some marketing scheme to sell more product. Can't anybody in their inner circle tell them the truth, you guys can't master albums and shouldn't supervise mixes either. This albums levels are bleeding red.

 

I am seeing reviews on amazon talking about how bad the sound is as well. Perhaps I was a little too harsh earlier, but I think it would be much easier to give the album a fair shake if it wasn't so hard on the ears, I can't even listen to it in my car, which is where I listen to the loud stuff that isn't hifi friendly. I think I will start an online campaign to have everyone that was unhappy with the mastering/mixing send me their cds with a letter stating why it is so hard to listen to and send all the cds to the record company COD.

 

I preordered the vinyl from Best Buy and just got an email that it is on backorder. That's pretty lame. Isn't the point of a preorder to get it before it sells out?

 

Coffin Box sold out

 

I'm sorry for your pain Sams, but I'm happy that I don't have to wonder if I should have ordered the coffin box any longer.

 

Not sure what you mean? The appeal to me was the DVD and the demo CD, I don't care for the trinkets.

A little research leads me to believe there may be additional pressings available in the future.

 

After work yesterday, went to the closest Best Buy and was surprised to see the vinyl ($14.99) so I picked it up along with ZZ Top's Collector's Edition of Eliminator. Had some extra time before meeting the wife and kids for supper so I went the mall close by and Hot Topic had the CD for $5.00, so what the heck, I bought the CD too. So far I've only had time to listen to the CD in the car and at work. I should be able to listen to the vinyl tonight.

 

You had a sad face (sad face = pain). I've got the cd and was thinking of getting the coffin box but if it's OOP then it's not something I'm going to be searching for and paying a premium price for.

 

Can anyone tell us if the bonus CD with the 5lp set has the same mastering as the regular CD?

 

No, it was indeed pain, as I wanted to buy it. I guess I didn't understand why you no longer wanted to order it.

 

same old

If you listen to the first couple of songs seems to me there is a lot of sampling from previous works. "from whom the bell tolls" can be heard a bit on "the end of line", and also is very much like "shortest straw" I could go on.

So in saying that I expected a lot more. It's amazes me that this band will allow themselves to be marketed like every other boy / girl band. All the hype of the boys are back and bigger and badder is what is going to sell this album. Not the material thats for sure. again... same old.

It does however prove to be a better album than the last 3 maybe 4. Is that really such an accomplishment?

oh and terrible title to the album... come on guys your all grown up now.

 

Thanks a lot for posting photos of the box set. It looks really terrific, and I have to say that's the definitive album cover for D-Mag. Much more appropriate for Metallica. The standard cover (CD + 2-disc LP) is just bloody awful. It's cheap as hell, like something that was slapped together by some teenager at the community college. Greyscale font? Back cover almost completely blank? It just looks cheap, especially when dealing with the terrible mastering on the songs.

D-Mag is the worst produced album in Metallica's career. There's nothing that even comes close. I spun my older albums and, as always, was amazed at the quality of the sound. Metallica always guarantees a high standard for their sound. Every one of their studio albums, regardless of whether you liked them or not, sounded pristine, heavy, deep, and loud. An honest loud, not this cheap-as-hell brickwalling.

For comparison's sake, I put St. Anger on the turntable. This is an excellent album to compare the production and sonics against D-Mag. I threw on side four and played "Purify," my favorite song from the album. The sound is loud, mean and ornery as hell. Within seconds it becomes apparant that this sounds louder and heavier than anything on Rick Rubin's disaster.

And this comes to the main point, which seeming no one ever deals with or is even aware. Rick Rubin is not a record producer. He has never touched a mixing board, and he doesn't know the first thing about producing or mastering sound. He does have a golden ear for music, yes, and he has been crucial to many artists like Johnny Cash. But the sound quality of his productions are absolutely horrendous. The audiophiles, of course, know this and have been warning us for months. Turns out they were right.

Back to St. Anger's Purify. This album sounds much better on LP, not only because you can digest three songs at a time, but because the infamous "trashcan drums" carry a certain hypnotic ring to them. This song, especially, captures that hypnotic quality that was essential to the early years of hard rock. That hypnotic repetition of guitar riffing with the metal gong really provides a certain mean and cranky, post-psychedelic sheen.

The production is also excellent, despite the bad reputation. Bob Rock has always been an excellent producer. He knows his game, and every band he has worked with - Motley Crue, Metallica, even Veruca Salt - comes out shining brighter, louder, and more immediate than when they began. To my mind, he has been an essential component to Metallica's career; George Martin to their Beatles.

On Purify, the guitars are loud, growly, they have depth in their sound. The decay is steady rumbling, like a good motorbike. The guitars on D-Mag, by comparison, are thin, pressed flat like a pancake. They are light. That's probably the worst insult you could hurl at a heavy rock band. I've heard accoustic guitars that sound "heavy," that have that weight and gravitas. Go listen to Buffy Sainte-Marie's first album and you'll know exactly what I mean. Death Magnetic carries no heaviness whatsoever. It is a thin and tiny sound, one intended for...I dunno. An iPod? A cheap transistor radio? Who can tell when everything is mushy and muddy and bleeding all the damned time?

What the hell happened to the dynamic range? D-Mag has none. Absolutely none. It's the first one-dimensional rock album I've ever heard. St. Anger had dynamic range, kids. It had loud and medium and quiet, all smashed together in that beautiful ugliness. The guitars are given space to breathe. There is air in the room.

Here's another example: the album's final song, All Within My Hands. The beginning with the guitar effects have a certain color, something purple in my head. Notice the loud, heavy guitars rushing in. You can tell a difference in the sound. This was once Metallica's trademark, one of those great tricks cribbed from classic early Black Sabbath. Note the verse, with its spacey rhythm guitar floating in the background. Note the rhythm of the drumming. Note that rumbling bass on your left speaker. It's open and spaced-out, every instrument can be distinctly heard. Then those loud guitar riffs come crashing down, all atonal and sharp angles. Then you get the chorus riff, heavy as hell and greasy to match, which suddenly explodes into chaos.

Folks forget that Metallica was a pastiche of hardcore punk and British metal. That last album was purely from the old punk side. Whine and cry about the rock-star therapy and the lack of solos, whatever. You can learn a lot from that album.

In terms of sheer power and heaviness, St. Anger completely demolishes Rubin's Death Magnetic. It isn't even close. D-Mag is so brittle and small in its sound, like the bones of worn-out old men. The emerging consensus - that the songs are great but the production is terrible - will not hold. In time, the terrible production and atrocious mix will win out. Heck, how many of you could never make your peace with the trashcan drums? Rock albums have been broken for lesser crimes.

Just wait six months. Then let the notion of Rick Rubin's continued involvement with Metallica sink in. This is what all their albums are going to sound like from now on. How long do you think you'll stand for that? Imagine the next album. Now imagine that it will sound even worse. Even more bleeding, even more brickwalling, even more thin, wispy mushiness.

D-Mag is the worst-produced Metallica has ever made. That's a damn tragedy. It's absolutely inexcusable that something this painfully poor was allowed out of a recording studio. Who the bloody hell is in charge here? Did James and Lars simply never learn what production and mixing are all about? Perhaps. They relied upon Fleming Rassmussen for a number of years. Then they relied upon Bob Rock for many more. The only time they were really the ones controlling the knobs on the mixing board was...And Justice For All.

James and Lars are great musicians and great songwriters. They should never be allowed near production ever again. It's like handing a sequin suit to Elvis.

One final thing. I shouldn't make it sound as though I hate Death Magnetic. I've praised the songs before and I still love them. It's just so deeply frustrating for me, like listening through a poorly-made transistor radio. All I get is static and noise, when what I want is the music, the music, the damned music.

 

It wouldn't be very professional of him to do otherwise.

 

I left a little comment on metallica's myspace. I waiting for the hate mail from fans or for it to be deleted.

 

One has to wonder, what does the phrase Because Sound Matters actually really even mean. The word Sound is a noun and we really need some adjectives to help describe what type of Sound are we talking about here. One could use adjectives such as: Good or Bad, Loud or Soft, Compressed or Uncompressed, Pleasant or Unpleasant for ex. Maybe by releasing the new Metallica like this they are trying to indirectly tell us something?

Because Loud, Badly Compressed & Unpleasant Sound Matters

 

excellent point.

this recording is intentional imo. gotta be.

They control their music like Dave Mustaine controls his. Professional and exacting. <--- if thats a word...

 

That's interesting when a 39 year old album beats a brand new one.

 

I've been reading through the message boards at the Metallica site, and somebody made a very interesting point. There is a possibility that the Guitar Hero tracks do not suffer any of these compression woes.

I don't know the specifics, so I'm really just asking questions at this point. But it appears that the Guitar Hero team was given D-Mag tracks from a stage before the final mixing. The mix is where the crime appears to have been made, where everything gets compressed and squeezed to death.

So, hey, maybe the album title refers to the mixing engineer killing all the songs...hah!

Another person made an animated .gif to show the comparisons between the retail, promo, and GH versions. It's very interesting.

The reason I keep harping on the subject is to determine if the horrible mix could be somehow repaired. The worst-case scenario would be like Jason Newsted's lost bass on Justice. In that event, the damage would be beyond repair. But if the original tapes are in pristine shape, then D-Mag could be properly fixed and reissued.

This album seriously needs a recall. Any insights?

 

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=27691&view=findpost&p=588138

 

The Guitar Hero people are given the individual tracks. That's how when the person playing the game makes a mistake, only the guitar drops out of the mix.

I wouldn't be so sure yet that it's a lot better. It's undoubtedly DIFFERENT because the Guitar Hero people make their own mix. Heck, there are people that claim the GH version of "One" has bass in it. Which could be if they decided to mix the bass track louder in the game than the rest of the tracks.

But don't expect perfection from GH. I don't know if the tracks are compressed so they can be delivered over the Internet. Or what else they do to them.

They aren't going to recall and fix this. It hasn't been done before, and it isn't going to start now. In my opinion, it's much more listenable than Rush's Vapor Trails or Iron Maiden's Dance of Death. Those records have mushy drums and no space. Death Magnetic at least has some space and I can hear every instrument clearly. Yes, it's too loud, too "in your face" (a production decision, no doubt), and due to the fact that they wanted it hot, too many times it distorts. But somehow, the instruments tend to stay clear, so I can deal with it better than the other two I mentioned.

To be honest, Christ Illusion is a lot like this. I believe Death Magnetic is louder, but the end result is similar. In your face, but generally clear instruments (with a layer of haze beneath).

-HM

 

Here's another question: is it possible to get the D-Mac songs from Guitar Hero? Does the game contain the songs just by themselves, so you can listen to them?

Listening to Day That Never Comes on GH is a surprise. It's much, much better. I couldn't detect any of the distortion found on the mp3, cd, or lp release. Mind you, I'm watching a YouTube video, so it's not the best sound quality. But it was the best version I've yet heard, and does suggest that the final mix is our problem.

If nothing else, if I could rip the GH version and play that....sigh, isn't that sad? But at least I could actually listen to D-Mag. Otherwise, my ears can't take the punishment.

 

Not easily. You can't simply listen to the songs. You can scour the humongously long thread about this on the Metallica forums, but there's no easy way to accomplish this.

-HM

 

Very well said Daniel - I'm quoting these passages because you've chosen my two favorite songs from St. Anger, and I totally agree with your analysis. If anything, St. Anger should be remember for these two songs and the growling guitar tones have always stuck with me.

Like I said before, based on the first track only, this record really isn't "heavy" - it completely lacks impact. It's just constant noise, like Raw Power remix or Times New Viking. To quote Faith No More:
"IF I SPEAK WITH ONE CONSTANT VOLUME WITH CONSTANT PITCH WITH CONSTANT RHYTHM RIGHT INTO YOUR EAR..."

That's not music, that's just irritation, like a vacuum cleaner or a jackhammer.

Another thing that's been nagging at me, since I heard the album's title and song titles - it all comes off and so...fake. I dunno - an affectation, trying to come off as "metal!" again. The silly lyrics, the hyper-compressed sound (of course it's intentional!) - it all looks like desperation to be seen as "metal" again. And you know, this might sound preposterous to many of you, I never felt this in Load and Reload. The songwriting, lyrics and performance was interesting and diverse enough.
I don't think they have anything interesting to say anymore.

I think I'm done with Metallica.