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One Liner: Screamy emo post hardcore freakout music Wikipedia Genre: Post hardcore, pop-punk, experimental rock, emo, progressive rock Home: San Diego Poster Position: Top Quarter - Line 2 Day: Saturday Weekend Two Only.
T-Mobile Stage at 6:15.
Thoughts: I just laughed out loud when the first track started. This has never been on my radar, and likely for good reason, as my wife would have filed for divorce long ago if I had played their most popular song anywhere near her earholes. I am also intrigued by the fact that this is one of the bigger rock acts on the poster this year, and yet I've never heard a single one of these songs.
Okay. You just have to hear this first song. I just laughed out loud again. "King for a Day" somehow has 535.5 million streams. And I sincerely doubt it was from TikTok videos.
Like Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance and The Used got together to try to make a song without planning beforehand. And I like some hard rock, but you almost always lose me when the screamo crap starts in. Because portions of that song are good enough, but not the whole thing at all. I'm feeling that repeatedly as I listen to these guys - like, "oooh, that riff was sweet!" or "that drum fill was legit," but the overall package is not good for me.
The band was formed in 2006 by two brothers, Vic and Mike Fuentes, who had previously been in San Diego punk band Before Today (which had previously been known as Early Times). The brothers released their first album in 2007, and then not long after that they added a bassist and lead guitarist. Interesting that they have been around for so long. The band name apparently came from a line in a song by their old band. I was kind of hoping that one of them was a recovering lawyer who knew about piercing the corporate veil to get at the assets of bad actors using the corporate form to shield assets. The first album has a much more emo rock, pop-punk sound. The top song on that disc is the unfortunately named "Yeah Boy and Doll Face," with 40.9 million streams.
Like a slightly less poppy Fall Out Boy, maybe. I've really never gotten into this little sub-genre of post hardcore stuff very much, so all of my references are going to be the mainstream ones like FOB and MCR. Like, every band talked about in their Wikipedia - the bands they toured with or collaborated with or whatever - are things I have never heard of like Emmure, or Chiodos, or Mayday Parade, or A Day to Remember, or August Burns Red. I am outside of my zone.
The second album has bigger stream counts, with the hit being "Caraphernelia" at 163.4 million streams.
Got the cookie monster screaming going in there, so I guess they reached their form by now. I looked it up to see if this was a real word, but it is not: ""Caraphernelia" is a term coined by the band Pierce the Veil to describe a broken-heart condition where a person leaves, but leaves behind their belongings, causing painful memories and heartbreak. It's a combination of the name "Cara" (possibly referencing someone the band member knew) and "paraphernalia". " Again, some cool aspects to that song, which are ruined by some other aspects of that song.
2012's Collide With the Sky is their peak - half of their most popular songs are on this disc. Including the main hit up above, but also several others with over 100 million streams. To show just how out of the loop I am, after this album and their touring with it, they won nine categories of the 2012 reader's poll conducted by Alternative Press, including Best Live Band of the Year, Album of the Year, and Artists of the Year. Fascinating. 2016's Misadventures appears to have been less popular, at least from stream count. Funny thing, I might like it better than some of the screamier ones from before. Also around now, the drummer was accused of soliciting nude photos from some minor young ladies, as well as statutory rape, and he decided to leave the band to "concentrate on his personal life." The band claimed to be working on new music in 2018, but it looks like they took a little break until their 2023 album Jaws of Life.
The top song from that recent disc is called "Pass The Nirvana" with 83.4 million streams, and I think I like it.
Oh, that Pennywise girl is not good news. I don't understand how that fella doesn't shred his voice, it is truly interesting how he can sing with a clean voice one line and Satan's disembodied shriek the next. But even with the screaming, the groove of that tune caught me up. That is their best album for sure - they went with a more tuneful and streamlined sound. The intro song definitely reminds me of My Chemical Romance. Still has some screaming, but it is significantly less than the older discs.
Luckily this is weekend two, so I won't even have to worry about whether to line up for The Strokes or go watch this happen. If you go, I would honestly love to hear what you thought.
Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but this is metal and hard rock
Home: Austin!
Poster Position: 23 Weekend Two Only. Sunday at 12:30.
IHG Stage.
Thoughts: I AM SO PLEASED THAT THIS SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE WHAT I WANTED IT TO SOUND LIKE!!! A sloppy White Stripes album is just what I needed right now. Hell yeah. I love when a band makes me actually LOL - because they are funny, or stupid, or so ridiculously hard that the only possible response is either to run away and hide or laugh in the face of the immensely hard riffs. I remember feeling that way about cleopatrick or Red Fang or Amyl and the Night Sweats, and I feel it here. The name, of course, is also ridiculously rad. Gimme more idiocy and less polished, focus-group-tested, anodyne crap.
Anyway, these weirdos are from right here in Austin - Leo Lydon on guitars/vocals, Sean St. Germain on drums, and Aaron Metzdorf on bass and backing vocals. I guess you'd classify this as metal, but it is way more fun and tuneful than most of what I would stick in the metal bucket. It definitely seems fun, like purposefully silly and yet still hard as hell. it also sounds like the guitar is tuned lower? I don't really play the guitar so I have no clue what I am talking about but it feels like when Royal Blood has no guitar and yet makes a bass do whatever they want? The thickness and meat of it is intoxicating.
"Papa Pop It" sounds like Primus and I am here for it. Actually, now that I'm in the thick of it, the Big Dumb Riffs album brings Primus to me because this fella's yelpy singing voice brings to mind one of Les Claypool's styles over the top of some truly big dumb riffs. Dig it. The riffs on "Shoo-In" just made me growl "come on!" at my desk. Gimme that bit at 0:54 all day.
Their first EP is called Burger Time Classics, and was released in 2017. I loved Burger Time, the video game, back in the day, and even got to play it just recently while staying in an AirBnb in Knoxville, TN that had some of those stand up video game machines that offers like 10 classics per machine. I also whipped some ass in Rampage. After that 2018's Beef EP, 2019's Grease Beast EP, 2020's Burger Babes ... from Outer Space!, 2022's Doom Wop, and then 2024's Big Dumb Riffs. It bugs me that they get the shitty noon time slot here - I want the kids who show up at 3 to be like "woah, what the hell is that? Gimme some more."
Top track is "The Cincinnati Tilt" (and I have trouble spelling that word...) with 675k streams. From the Grease Beast EP.
That was the Jack White shizz that I was talking about up top. Long lost outtakes from the White Stripes Elephant sessions. I don't know what the lyrics are on about, but I'd like to think you get the Cincinnati Tilt from eating that scary Skyline Chili stuff. I'm going to give you two more for your education. First, from Doom Wop, you get "Shoo-In" with 260k streams.
Hahahaha. hell yes. Just grind my face off on those riffs and show no mercy to anyone. And then the vocals actually sound kind of tuneful, which makes this more in my wheelhouse than most things you would consider "metal." Next, from the new album, I could give you "1-800-EAT-SHIT" because the title rules, but let's go with "Body Bag" instead with 228k streams.
Did I mention that the album is called Big Dumb Riffs? Just piled up on there like one of those ridiculous Instagram burgers with 7 inches of toppings that will never fit into any mouth ever. Really feels like a perfect moshpit song.
Again, doubt I will be there for the Second Weekend at all, much less the noon-ish time on Sunday, but this pretty much jams. My wife would HAAAAATE it.
Wikipedia Genre: Mongolian folk, heavy metal Home: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Poster Position:12 Both Weekends.
Saturday at 6:30 on the Tito's Stage. Thoughts: WTF man. The top track sounds like a country song in the background, but the vocals are the chants of a group of angry monks. I can't discern whether we are working in English or not. Then the second one also has kind of a cowboy feel, like they should be singing about the tumblin' tumbleweeds, except it is a group of dudes singing in Mongolian and kind of grunting a lot. Wikipedia claims they are heavy metal, but maybe I have a different definition of heavy metal?
The top single, with 23.6 million streams, is "Wolf Totem." Dig into this thing, I'm loving that wide open throat moaning thing.
Hell yeah. I'm ready to mount up and go fight for the Mongolian people! I love seeing people try to make a violin look metal. That is super rad. But literally, if the lyrics to this were sung by Toby Keith and about supporting the troops or whatever, you wouldn't bat an eye. The lyrics are metal AF though, all about becoming garuda birds to eat you if you come to me like a snake. I hope the Mongolian Army plays this every morning to wake up instead of like, Reveille.
There is a supremely shitty re-mix of that featuring the singer from Papa Roach adding crappy English lyrics to it. I suggest staying with the O.G. one there.
The second-most popular song is "Yuve Yuve Yu."
Super wide-screen video! This is the one I said sounds like some tumbling tumbleweeds action. I guess you could bang your head to this, it just seems silly, man. "valuable ethics of ancestors!" "hey traitor, kneel down!"
They also do a cover of "Sad But True" that is pretty rad. And actually sounds like metal. Only 3 million streams.
Lightning eyeballs! Gold nuggets! And a LOT of over-emotive singing!
Another new single, which was featured on some sort of Star Wars show or something, it pretty metal. "Sugaan Essena" Kinda groovy and riffage-y. "Shoog Shoog" also has a good groove to it - if my ears squint, I can believe that they're actually singing Shame Shame and there is a meaning to the song.
I wonder why only one of those dudes can't throat sing. What a LOSER. Just has to be the "backing vocals" guy. For educational purposes, the morin khuur is the horsehead fiddle thing they keep playing in those videos. The tumur hhurr is one of those mouth harp things that makes the twangy sound in old westerns. Which is hilarious, that this guy listed that as one of his instruments. The tsuur is "an end-blown flute" with three holes. The tovshuur is a two or three stringed lute. On the Wikipedia page for that last instrument, they show the bro from HU holding his rad axe.
I have no clue what to do with this stuff. I mean, it's definitely different from anything else I'm ever going to see live. Which is kind of fun, or maybe just funny? But it's also, like, mediocre country-rock growled in a language that I can't comprehend? Not sounding too appealing to me? I think I'm okay, unless curiosity gets the better of me.
Wikipedia Genre: Heavy metal, thrash metal Home: San Francisco Poster Position: 1 Day: Saturday at 8:30 pm Both Weekends.
Thoughts: I'll get this out of the way right now, I dig Metallica. This post ended up being ridiculously long (over 7,000 words, apparently, which is insane), and it took me weeks to finalize, but to the extent you want to hear about my Metallica fandom, my thoughts on their albums, my thoughts on American bands in general, and other random topics, then read on. If this is a tl;dr situation for you, then know that I wholeheartedly suggest that you go watch this band. Even if metal isn't your thing or hard rock freaks you out. Seeing them live, feeling the naked aggression and thumping power, just might change your mind. Live a little. Random Discussion of Best Band in America That Came To My Brain as I Wrote This Post:Before I even get to the band itself, as I was driving into the office the other day, I had a mental argument with myself about the greatest American band. This has been debated online for years, but I was curious in my own mind if I might consider Metallica to be the greatest American band. Without researching, I thought of competitors like the Eagles, Pearl Jam, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, R.E.M., Kings of Leon, The Killers, N.W.A., N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Imagine Dragons, Dave Matthews Band, the Grateful Dead, Arcade Fire (although they might be considered Canadian?), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Outkast, and the Allman Brothers Band. Now, after researching, I can add in other contenders like The Beach Boys (duh), the Doors, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Kiss, The Byrds, Talking Heads, Bon Jovi, Guns N Roses, Skynyrd, The Cars, Fleetwood Mac, Green Day, Wilco, Parliament-Funkadelic, and many more. How would we determine this? If just thinking personal preference, then for me, out of that list, it would be R.E.M. and Pearl Jam as the top two. But who cares what I think? Every asshole has his own opinion. If thinking cultural impact, then you are likely going to say Beach Boys or N.W.A. or Nirvana or Metallica - bands who recreated a genre or otherwise changed the course of music. The Beach Boys changed rock and roll. N.W.A. got the whole country paying attention to rap and shifted the tone from party tunes and slow jams to gangsta rap. Nirvana shut down the hair band days of the 80's and reintroduced real rock back to the world with grunge. Metallica took metal out of the basement and to the masses, influencing all of rock. Is it number of albums sold? You have to dig a ways to find an American band on this list, down beyond the Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, and Queen, down to The Eagles at 150 million records sold. Metallica comes in second place (at 95 million actual records sold, although Aerosmith apparently claims to have sold more albums, but those aren't certified). I actually find that to be pretty amazing. I own most of their albums, but I would imagine that if I walked down the hall right now in my office and conducted a poll, the vast majority of people I interact with on a daily basis might own (or have owned in the past) the Black Album and nothing else. I say that, but old Steve the tax attorney probably had stringy long hair, a bitchin' Pontiac Firebird, and a pack a day habit back in the 80's, and cruised up and down Congress back in the day screaming "Creeping Death" at frightened passersby. But then my argument goes backwards when you look at stuff like Pollstar's data on currently hot artists, where Metallica ranks behind trash fires like Florida Georgia Line and Twenty-One Pilots and Chainsmokers. But they are right there, in the top 25 and holding steady in the consciousness of music fans. I'm honestly a little surprised that they would still be that highly ranked right now, in 2018. No new album. Rock isn't the most popular genre right now. But, they are currently on tour. Interesting. I will admit that they are likely not the greatest American band. They should be in the conversation, but too many people are uncomfortable with metal for them to win the crown. I think, from my research here, that title should probably go to the Eagles. Even though the Big Lebowski made it cool to hate on the Eagles, they still seem like the correct choice here. The voting public (or at least the weirdos who would vote on something like this) apparently agrees, with The Doors and Creedence coming in 2nd and 3rd (and Metallica in 9th place).
History of the band: Originally formed in 1981, the original union was between a singer/guitarist answering a classified ad in an L.A. newspaper from a Danish drummer named Lars. Pretty weird to think that worked out. Those two, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich are still here. Soon thereafter, Dave Mustaine was in the band. If that name doesn't ring a bell, then your rock and roll bonafides are in question. Otherwise, you know him as the guy who left Metallica to form Megadeth. About a year later, they recruited a bassist named Cliff Burton out of another metal band (something called Trauma), and the original lineup was pretty well set. However, as the band went to record their debut album, the rest of the band decided to fire Mustaine, apparently based on drug use and violent acts, and replace him with Kirk Hammett (of something called Exodus), who stepped right in for the recording of Kill Em All (originally colorfully titled Metal Up Your Ass). Mustaine apparently really hated Hammett for stealing his job. Their first two albums weren't massively popular, more of underground metal nerd stuff for the weirdos and Norwegians. But then Master of Puppets went gold and the band started booking massive shows. However, in 1986, during the European leg of their tour, Burton was killed in a tour bus accident, which sounds super traumatic. Wikipedia says "members drew cards to determine which bunks on the tour bus they would sleep in. Burton won and chose to sleep in Hammett's bunk. At around sunrise near Dörarp, Sweden, the bus driver lost control and skidded, which caused the bus to overturn several times. Ulrich, Hammett, and Hetfield sustained no serious injuries; however, bassist Burton was pinned under the bus and died. Hetfield said: I saw the bus lying right on him. I saw his legs sticking out. I freaked. The bus driver, I recall, was trying to yank the blanket out from under him to use for other people. I just went, 'Don't fucking do that!' I already wanted to kill the [bus driver]. I don't know if he was drunk or if he hit some ice. All I knew was, he was driving and Cliff wasn't alive anymore." Holy shit, right? Awful. They held tryouts with a bunch of new bassists, including Les Claypool of Primus (which would have been amazing, to hear the bass licks of "Tommy the Cat" interposed into "One") but ended up going with Jason Newsted, formerly of something called Flotsam and Jetsam. Newsted then appeared on their biggest albums, ...And Justice for All and Metallica (the Black Album), as well as Load and Reload, before leaving the group, citing "private and personal reasons, and the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love." And then he went on to join the band Voivod. To play more music. But just in a much less popular band? Which is weird. I think his excuse is bullshit. But whatever. Then, the infamous spat with Napster. I don't know if you recall this, but it was a major misstep for the group, as they sued Napster and went to war over their music being freely available on the free peer-to-peer network (before Napster tried to go on the level as a paid streaming service). Pretty much, Metallica killed Napster, and it really pissed off a lot of people who had enjoyed stealing music. "At the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, Ulrich appeared with host Marlon Wayans in a skit that criticized the idea of using Napster to share music. Marlon played a college student listening to Metallica's "I Disappear". Ulrich walked in and asked for an explanation. Ulrich responded to Wayans' excuse that using Napster was just "sharing" by saying that Wayans' idea of sharing was "borrowing things that were not yours without asking". He called in the Metallica road crew, who proceeded to confiscate all of Wayans' belongings, leaving him almost naked in an empty room. Napster creator Shawn Fanning responded later in the ceremony by presenting an award wearing a Metallica shirt, saying, "I borrowed this shirt from a friend. Maybe, if I like it, I'll buy one of my own." Ulrich was later booed on stage at the award show when he introduced the final musical act, Blink-182." Not the best result for a band that came up underground, but I totally understand their stance too. Metallica just ended up being the poster children for the effort to stop illegal downloads. With Newsted gone, they needed a new bassist. After some more bassist auditions, the band ended up choosing Robert Trujillo, formerly of Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne's band. I love the dude. I think he brings a very cool style and energy to the band. And his stance (low to the ground, aggressive) is rad. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. They've influenced countless other bands. They have a day named after them in San Francisco. They have two albums in the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of all time. They have nine Grammy wins (and a bunch of nominations) to go with what Wikipedia says is "82 awards from 125 nominations." One other item to note, they put out this really weird movie that was kind of a concert film, and yet also kind of a narrative movie about a roadie in their crew being forced to fight his way through a city to get something special for the band. I watched it, and it was actually pretty enjoyable. But it did terribly and was kind of embarrassing to the band. Here's a cool section:
YES. "Wherever I May Roam" works perfectly right there. RIOT! Anyway, go check out Metallica: Through the Never if you want to get geeked out before the show in the Fall. Jack and Metallica. As I'll describe more in the discussion about each album, I first came to the Metallica world via the Black Album - which is likely a similar story to 9/10 of the world. After that, I found ...And Justice For All because of the "One" music video (which rules). Then I knew they were releasing new music, but I didn't really do much with it or get into Metallica much until about 2005, when I randomly (or at least I can't recall any burning reason) went onto half.com and bought CDs of all four of the original albums and taste tested those. I've done that with a few bands in the past - Talking Heads, AC/DC, Blur - whereas now I'd just go run through their catalog on Spotify, but back in the day you had to go buy it. Anyway, because I was into their music through those discs, when Death Magnetic came out, I was much more in tune and jumped onto that right away (unlike Load and Reload, which each kind of passed me by except for the radio hits). Fast forward to the summer of 2015, when Metallica came to town for the X Games, when those were hosted here in Austin at the Circuit of the Americas. A friend mentioned that he would go to that show with me, so I went ahead and bought a ticket. That original friend then bailed on me, but I got another buddy to commit, and then he got a crowd of others to commit, and I ended up pre-partying with them all afternoon, watching one of the big horse races and sipping Jack Daniels all day. We ubered to the show with this old man driver in a mini-van, and he gave us control of his stereo to jam metal on, which was hilarious. After some tailgating in the parking lot, we all rolled in together, and I just plain drunkenly wandered off. I seriously like turned around and no one was in sight. And my phone had no service. So, I just found a good spot on the grass to see and posted up for the duration. WHICH WAS AMAZING. I'm telling you, they put on a freaking great show. I just felt every song deep down in the depths of my rock and roll soul. This miniature-Thor-looking guy next to me, shirtless for the whole show, ended up my show buddy, as we kept high fiving and punching each other and yelling together as a new song started. It was all very weird, and yet totally rad. I'll talk more about their setlist below, but they do an amazing job of cherry-picking the best stuff and hammering it. On top of the good setlist, the other great thing about this show was that the crowd was INTO IT. Like yelling along with the songs, roaring with approval after each tune, just ready to get it. Which makes things infinitely more interesting, versus some disinterested crowd there to hear one hit or something. It was weird being separated from my friends during the show, but I still had a transcendent time. Album reviews I'm not going to include the live albums (even the pretty cool one with the San Francisco Symphony, called S&M), or the 1998 covers collection Garage, Inc. That is where they put out that cover of Bob Seger you still hear on the radio here and there, as well as "Whiskey in the Jar." This is just the real deal albums. I'm putting them in order of their goodness. 1. Metallica (1991). Also know as the Black Album, because the cover is just all black with a black snake coiled up in the corner. Easy choice for me for this to be my top album, and likely the same for the majority of folks out there. It might be the most popular metal album of all time. This was Metallica right in between the old world of thrash metal ("Don't Tread on Me," "Holier Than Thou") and a new world of more radio-friendly hard rock ("Enter Sandman" or "Nothing Else Matters"). My older sister took me to the mall to buy this album, probably 1991 or 1992, probably based on me sneaking time with MTV and seeing the video for "Enter Sandman."
Classic video. But I felt like a HUGE rebel for buying this CD. Adding this to my collection of R.E.M. and Midnight Oil CDs was a pretty large departure for me, but I really liked it. Its just such a different feeling you get from the music. Later down the road, I'd discover some of the older tunes, but this was the only Metallica that mattered for a long time. I was trying to recall the name of the records store in the mall where I would have gone, and have no clue. Weird, I bet that was key information in my brain at one time, now I have no clue. Every once in a while, I still throw this on in the car, and it makes me feel like I could drive 200 MPH through the side of a tank and jump out spitting nails. The riffs are thick, and the bass is back (the little bass interlude in "Holier Than Thou" still revs me up), and drumming is, as usual, perfect in its precision and ability to impart a feeling of aggression. Like the jam right after the guitar solo, about 3:03 into "Don't Tread on Me," when the whole band just Voltrons up and grooves a riff. Yes. DON'T TREAD ON ME! "Enter Sandman" is still the most streamed of this disc, at 265.9 million. Second place goes to "Nothing Else Matters" at 236.5 million. But for my money, the tune with the best longevity is the power ballad of "The Unforgiven." 119.4 million streams. I think I associated with the character of the story.
Oh yeah, that build up to guitar solo nirvana is the shit. "They dedicate their lives, to running all of his, he tries to please them all, this bitter man he is." Also, the use of the classical guitar, plus little weird flourishes at the start, before the rock kicks in (which they had actually done before, with "To Live Is To Die," from And Justice For All) rules and makes this a different sound. They also do weird things like the middle eastern intro to "Wherever I May Roam," which also jams. I like those odd flourishes. "Nothing Else Matters" is almost a classical song, with the lovely little plucked guitar intro, then the soft addition of the vocals (well, and then the thunder comes in). Likewise, this is one where all four of the guys are well featured, and have important roles. The bass is heavy and loud enough to hear. The guitar (both lead and rhythm) are solidly necessary in every track and doing some hot fireworks in just about every one. The drums are pounding and crisp and drive the whole bus. The whole picture is just much more clear than on their other albums. Weird factoids from Wikipedia regarding this album: "Metallica—also known as The Black Album—was remixed three times, cost US $1 million, and ended three marriages." The link in the footnotes that proves up the marriages bit doesn't work (BTW, going to the MTV.com website brings up a 30 second video ad popup? Never going to that website again) but apparently Ulrich, Hammett and Newsted all divorced their wives during the recording process. Which is kinda messed up. Also, in an odd twist, the one band member who didn't get a divorce (James Hetfield) is the one who wrote the lyrics for the album, which were dark and very personal. Wikipedia says that
"Enter Sandman" is about "nightmares and all that come with them."
"The God That Failed" dealt with the death of Hetfield's mother from cancer and her Christian science beliefs, which kept her from seeking medical treatment.
"Nothing Else Matters" was a love song Hetfield wrote about missing his girlfriend while on tour.
Its dark as hell. His mom dying for skipping medical treatment and then he writes a bleak tune about God failing? I mean, "The Struggle Within" is also pretty brutal. But I don't think people even really think about it - they just pump their fists and jam along. The album debuted at number one in ten countries, selling 650,000 units in the U.S. during its first week, and was since certified 16 times platinum in the U.S., which makes it the 25th-best-selling album in the country. Still holds up. Start to finish. Great stuff. 2. Master of Puppets (1986). This is the only one that I own on vinyl (thanks, Noah!) and it rules. The best stuff to me are all of the awesome instrumental chunks. They turn the adrenaline up to 11 and push the aggression forward, and then show their mastery of their instruments and make top notch thrash metal tunes. "Master of Puppets" is the gold standard thrash metal song, an eight and a half minute long opus of screaming guitar solos, chugging rhythm, multiple interludes, and iconic lyrics to yell along to.
YES. The start of that song is enough to cause spontaneous combustion. The crunch and then pause. And then the layers start pouring on, until the lead guitar pops in and then the vocals aren't far behind. If you haven't yelled "OBEY YOUR MASTER! MASTER!" at the top of your lungs to this song, you need to do it now. Just do it. NO one is listening or watching you. 140.3 million streams. This tune was a highlight at the live show. "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" is also a classic. The slow build to the song, plus the guitar work, is so tasty. Also, the ability to chant along to the lyrics as though you too are locked away in the nuthouse. "Sanitarium! Leave me be! Just leave me alone!" In addition to the mental health discussion in there, the band also addresses other heavy topics on the album - war, in "Disposable Heroes" or drug abuse, in "Master of Puppets." "Orion" is cool just for the extended jam session. In fact, come with me down this weird ass rabbit trail of people writing the Wikipedia entry for Master of Puppets as though it was their senior dissertation at a classical music academy. "The opening and pre-verse sections feature fast downstroked chromatic riffing at 220 beats per minute. The persistent and precise eighth-note riffing of the verse is made more intense by switching to an off-kilter 21/32 time signature on each fourth bar. A lengthy interlude follows the second chorus, beginning with a clean, arpeggiated section over which Hetfield contributes a melodic solo; the riffing becomes distorted and progressively more heavy and Hammett provides a more virtuosic solo before the song returns to the main verse. The song closes with a fade-out of sinister laughter. The theme is cocaine addiction, a topic considered taboo at the time." I mean, "chromatic riffing," is that a thing? "Chromatic" apparently means "relating to or using notes not belonging to the diatonic scale of the key in which a passage is written." So now I'm supposed to know what diatonic means? It means "(of a scale, interval, etc.) involving only notes proper to the prevailing key without chromatic alteration." So does that mean that chromatic riffing just means you aren't exactly going up and down the scale? Wouldn't that make almost all riffing chromatic? WHATEVER BRO. I'M JUST GONNA SAY ITS BADASS, YO. RAWKNROOOOWWWWLLL. Another classic. Not that I'm deep into the thrash metal world out there or anything, but this one fires on all cylinders for the majority of the album. And "Master of Puppets" is the shizz. 3. Ride the Lightning (1984). This one is much cleaner than Kill 'Em All. But it also pummels the living hell out of you, chugging riffs and pounding drums, and wicked guitar fireworks flying all around. But they also start doing the frilly intros on some of their songs - the intro to the whole album is 40 seconds of harpsichord-sounding medieval guitar before "Fight Fire With Fire" rips in to mangle your face off. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is the classic from this album, but "Creeping Death," The Call of Ktulu," and "Fade to Black" are all great Metallica songs as well. With just over 79 million streams, here is the classic.
Yes! That gonging bell at the start, and then the band kicks in with that downward dropping riff before the chugging begins. Reminds me of the start of some movie - was that Zombieland? Yes! There is it!
That was awesome. So, the song though, with the extended introduction jam before the vocals even kick in. its just hard, aggressive, ready made to slam around to. That being said, "Fade to Black" is also badass because it was the first (that I can think of) ballad for a metal band. It cranks up after a while, but for the first section, it is definitely just a light-handed ballad. But of course, there needs to be a chugging guitar jam in the middle. 4. ...And Justice for All (1988). Until the Black Album, this one was the breakthrough hit that introduced the band to the world in a way their prior albums had not. "One" became an MTV staple, and fans started to pop up in places other than comic book stores and Camaros. That being said, this one definitely crushed the time limits of popular music, with two songs that almost make ten minutes and nothing shorter than 5:13. I was in high school before I noticed this album, so I definitely never listened to it when it first came out. I recall a friend having a cassette tape single of "One," (annoyingly, I can't recall the B-Side, which Wikipedia says was called "The Prince"). I can remember jamming that single repeatedly in his house, but then stopping when his parents came home because we were both nervous about it. Funny, right? I also have a weird memory of using part of it to soundtrack a (almost certainly very shitty) stop motion/claymation video project thing we did for school. I recall also using a slice of the Vaughan Brothers' album where someone says they got shot. The memory is a weird thing, as is the humor of a 13 year old boy. I so very much wish that I somehow still had that video. So, that is obviously the song to choose for this disc. 116.9 million streams.
This is one of those Metallica songs that ends up seeming like a three piece suite. The slow, light, melodic opening. Then the main verse has a tight, melodic grind, before each time the chorus kicks in and shreds. But then the solo section, which becomes iconic when the drums start doing that super-quadruple-time rumble, and then the guitars join in, and then the yelped vocals layer on top of that? Untouchable. And then the tapped guitar solo that slices and dices its way to the end. So good. And for sure the best song on here. In that weird concert film/movie thing Nothing Else Matters, they have this gun fire sound effect during the live performance of this song that is crazy as hell. "Blackened" is good. "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" is OK (except for the weird Seven Dwarves "ooowweee ooohh, oooooooh oh" thing). But my biggest beef with this album is that you can't hear the bass guitar at all. Like, I know its there, but you just don't hear it even a little bit. Which is weak. I like when the bottom end of rock songs is strong and funky. "One" was rad though... 5. Kill 'Em All (1983). This one is pretty raw, but some of these tunes still hold up really well, even though this was their opening album. It's less polished, more frantic, more wild, the real "thrash" metal sound. "The Four Horsemen" is probably the best tune on here, but "Seek & Destroy" has more streams at 35.2 million.
They didn't make videos back in the day, so all you get is that relatively shitty version of the song available on YouTube. The real studio version doesn't have that bad compression sound you hear in that video, but I'm limited by what I can provide you here. You get the idea, and when the tempo change/solo attacks at 3:10, the idea is thrash sheddage. "Anesthesia" makes me think of some employee sitting in Guitar Masters working out his sweeeeeeeet guitar solo and driving the other employees insane by trying the same little picked out riff for days on end. "Whiplash" kinda rules. "Jump In the Fire" is kind of fun. "Metal Militia" is also fun. But other than "Seek and Destroy" and "Four Horsemen," these other tunes have never been that memorable for me as someone who came to these albums 20 years after they originally came out. But I bet Beavis and Butthead would still rage to this. 6. Death Magnetic (2008). This album came after a long hiatus, and followed the very weak St. Anger. The band really hadn't released a new album since 1997, and they had just added a new bassist. So the band had kind of fallen off the public consciousness (or at least in my memory, that is how I recall it). No one really needed a Metallica album. Taylor Swift was still kind of country. Alicia Keys and Josh Groban had the top Billboard albums for the year. Miley Cyrus was still doing the Hannah Montana music and not being a weirdo. This album ended up charting at #16 for the year. But this style of music was not the taste of 2008. That being said, the album debuted at number one in the U.S. and Metallica became the first band to have five consecutive studio albums debut at number one in the history of the Billboard 200. Rick Rubin produced, so they got a big name to help make the sound. Personally, I like it. But, it reflects an issue I have always had with Metallica, and that is their need to make every song freaking long as balls. This album has ten songs, and not a single one clocks in under five minutes. Seven of the ten are longer than seven minutes. In my opinion, its great to change up the length of tunes and have a long one (or three) nestled in there among the other stuff, but when every song has 4 separate suites and two bridges and the guitarist needs to re-tune 4 minutes in to play the seventh solo, we're pushing the boundaries of taste. For example, the Black Album has no songs longer than seven minutes. And no surprise, that was their most commercially accessible album. So, most of the tunes on this album have less than ten million streams, but one boasts 31.4 million, so go grab a fresh drink, and settle in for "The Day That Never Comes."
'MERICA! Salute the Troops! Hooyah! The song only really kicks in at about 5:30, when they finally start jamming and quit ballad-making. And the video is boring as hell up until that point too, and then I actually got all tensed up. I'm such a sucker for a good war movie. Also, to be honest, I thought "Cyanide" would have been the hit on this one. But I think that section of the song actually points to the best parts of most of these songs, when the vocals take a pause and the band just pummels you for a few minutes. "All Nightmare Long" is a good example of that - at about 4:30, Hetfield kind of grunts at the end of a chorus, and the solo frenzy kicks in. And "Suicide & Redemption," clocking in juuuuust under ten minutes, is a gigantic pile of riffage and double-time drumming, without a single lyric to muddy it up. My one big complaint with this album is that I think they keep Trujillo to low in the mix. I want more of the bass parts, but they're absolutely a fourth class citizen in the production. Trujillo is great, so I want to better hear his action. I also tire of the fact that they keep releasing Unforgiven songs. This album has "The Unforgiven III," and while its a fine song, and so was #2, I can't forgive them for playing #2 instead of the original when I saw the band in 2015. The original is amazing. 7. Load (1996). This one actually boasts a bunch of hits - I had forgotten most of them, this album just faded into obscurity for me, but I've heard a number of them on the radio still today. "Until it Sleeps," "King Nothing," "Hero of the Day," and "Bleeding Me," all had and have radio play, and you can tell that this one followed the big hit Black Album. They're still trying to chase that same dragon. They keep most of the songs to an acceptable radio length. They rawk but not too terribly hard. I would have thought that "King Nothing" was the top track from this album, but as far as streams go, its actually the ballad-rocker-ballad sound of "Until It Sleeps" with 15.2 million streams. But my preference is the plodding, righteous bray of "Hero Of the Day," which only has 10.6 million streams.
I remember playing that song a good number of times after finding it online somewhere back before even Napster was giving you free music. Good times. And that video is damn weird - I kind of like the TV show versions of the band, but what is up with the lights showing the guy that the phone or doorbell is ringing (but he can hear, as he talks on the phone), then random sexy-time, then he eats a bunch of pills and washes it down with booze, but then while he is passed out the robots crawl out of his ears? What does any of this have to do with anything? He also works out with like 3 pound weights, which is odd, not that I'm pumping major iron or anything myself. "Wasting My Hate" might also have gotten radio play. An odd detour on this one, that I actually enjoy, is the country-tinged "Mama Said." This album overall continued a change for the band, away from the straight thrash of their first handful of albums, and into a more alt-rock, hard-rock direction. Which is part of the reason for this ranking for me. Its got a couple good tunes and overall sounds pretty good, but I want them back at their roots. Like every Metallica album after the Black Album, this one debuted at number one on the Billboard chart. And like the gross cover art for Reload, the cover imagery from this one is artwork of a guy named Andres Serrano, who pressed a mixture of his own semen and blood between sheets of plexiglass. You'll never look at that cover the same again. 8. Hardwired...to Self-Destruct (2016). Inexplicably a double-disc, but only 12 songs. I definitely enjoyed the first song the most - "Hardwired" is just a hardcore rage that must absolutely destroy Lars Ulrich to play. I mean, the dude is like 55 and there is no way that beating the living shit out of the drums for 3 minutes doesn't take some sort of toll on the guy. I get sore forearms from using my mouse for an hour. This dude uses his to make the sound of a fully automatic machine gun with some sticks. Awesome.
I mean, I don't care what you do or like or whatever, if that doesn't inject a little adrenaline into your veins, then you need to reevaluate your life. This is what I mean when I talk about shorter songs having a valuable place for this band. There's no long, weird interlude, just a compact fistful of power jammed into your earholes for three minutes. This is their most listened to track on the album, with 55 million streams. This album also debuted on at number one on the Billboard chart. Eight year hiatus in between albums, but people were still hot for it, topping the chart in 57 countries. I think that is something interesting about this band, is that they are huge world-wide. I'm not so sure that the Eagles would sell out a stadium in Peru or China, but Metallica could go for three nights in a row. Wikipedia says it sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. Personally, as you can tell from this ranking, I'm pretty lukewarm on this one. It's not bad, but it just feel like well-trod ground by now. After the power of "Hardwired," the rest of the songs are longer and less visceral. They still have good grooves and riffs and all that good stuff, but they just feel less vital to the future. I'm curious whether these songs will still be in the rotation when they play a big festival (as opposed to their last few shows which were all in support of this album). Also of note, the first disc has some 180 million streams of the songs, while the second disc has only about 62 million (with the final tune, "Spit Out the Bone" taking about a third of those). Not a good sign. 9. Reload (1997). These songs came from the same sessions that made 1996's Load, but these didn't make the original cut and needed more work. I think that shows - a few of these are memorable - "Fuel" or "The Memory Remains" or "The Unforgiven II" but the majority of the album is stuff I have no recollection of hearing in the past (when I know I have). And the stream counts reflect that, with most of these songs in the 2 million stream range. Except for "Fuel," which is AMAZING when they use it to start a show out of the Ennio Morricone intro. Just over 38 million streams.
IN fact, now that I think of it, this reminds me of "Hardwired," from the new album, where they open the disc with a blast of badass power, then downshift into less energetic tunes that kind of disappoint after the opener. Like "The Memory Remains," which is the second-most streamed tune on this disc, but its just sludgy and slow, with that weird System of a Down-esuqe drunk gypsy singing interlude in the middle and the end. What is up with that? Although I was annoyed that the band played "Unforgiven II" instead of "Unforgiven" at the show in 2015, its a pretty solid tune. Much better than the third one. But "Where The Wild Things Are" is like a bad Stone Temple Pilots song with a replacement lead singer found on YouTube. A lot of this album just feels formulaic and uninteresting to me. Not surprised these were the B-sides. Of course, the album still kicked ass with the world - Reload debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 436,000 copies in its first week, and was certified 3× platinum by the RIAA. One last gross note for this album, the cover artwork by a guy names Andres Serrano, who used a mixture of his own blood and urine to create the image. So there's that. 10. St. Anger (2003). This is their worst album, as far as I am concerned. It almost felt like they were trying to make a new sound and leave behind the straight-forward thrash and metal and hard rock of their history. The world apparently agrees, as many of these songs have less than 3 million streams. The album opener actually tries to have harmonies in some of the vocals, which is offputting, and the main guitar riff is this down-tuned, effects-laden guitar string bend that gets old quick. Its almost like they tried to join in the grunge thing, but 10 years after everyone else. The top track is the title song, which won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2004. Hard to believe there wasn't a better metal song that year. "St. Anger" has 21.9 million streams.
Cool video. But the sound of the song is just muddy. The drums aren't crisp and have a weird tone in some of the hits, the guitars sound muffled, and the vocals are a little flat and then sound like some Nu Metal bullshit with this "flush it out" yell in the background. Not good. The other weird thing on this album, is that there aren't many of the usual long solo sessions. Not sure what happened with that, but it makes the songs even more of a slog, without the cool release of the guitar sheddage in the middle. They also didn't have an official bassist at the time, as Newsted quit right before the sessions, but you can't really tell because their producer ended up playing bass for them. They also had to pause recording so that Hetfield could go into rehab, so I think this album was just a mess from the start... Damn thing still went double-platinum and sold 6 million albums worldwide. Which is wild. But this album is very bad. 11. Lulu (2011). I get the idea behind this, I suppose. Join forces with a classic vocalist and create something cool and new. Instead, this is a pretty bad mashup of Lou Reed and generic Metallica riffs. Reed sounds bad, trying to push his voice to match the thunder of the band, and the band sounds neutered, trying to make metal-ish sounds that will work for Rock Grampa to sing with. Kind of reminds me of the final Johnny Cash album when his voice was faltering and you started to feel bad about it. Lou Reed just kind of reads bad poetry while the band repeats some riff package they left off of St. Anger. Not shockingly, this is one of those albums where the first song has a bunch of listens, and then the numbers dribble down as you move through the album. #1 track has 93k. #5 track has 34k. #9 has 27k. People tried this out of curiosity, but quickly moved on. Just so you can see what is happening here, I give you "Brandenburg Gate," that top song.
SMAAAA TAAAUUU GUUUUUUUUUUUH! SMAAAA TAAAUUU GUUUUUUUUUUUH! No thanks! In fact, full disclosure, I could not finish this album. Lou Reed started yelling about tying him up and feeding him, and I had to just move on... 12. Some Kind of Monster (Live) (2004). I'm not going to review this album (or any of the other live ones), because its just a live disc of their older songs, but I have to note that the eponymous tune on here, the album opener and redux from St. Anger, is freaking terrible. Eight and a half minutes of sludgy crud. You should not try it out. This album came out in conjunction with a 2004 documentary about Metallica's touring and demons. I never saw it, but I never heard anything good about it either. Setlist and What to Expect. I'll also add in a note, that the band has used Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold," from the movie The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, as their concert walk-out music, and its freaking KILLER. It sounds goofy, to use instrumental, operatic music from a old school Western as the intro for a metal band, but the crowd can howl along to the notes like its a "Seven Nation Army" type soccer chant, and then they use it to build up right into something flaming hot like "Fuel" or "Enter Sandman" or "Creeping Death." It works really freaking well. Try this one - gives me goosebumps.
So, what can we expect to hear in the Fall? Their most recent setlists show that they are playing a bunch of songs from the new album, which would be slightly disappointing to me if they did that at ACL. The most recent show was on May 11 in Helsinki, and featured:
Hardwired - 5
Black Album - 3
Master - 2
Lightning - 3
Kill Em All - 2
And Justice - 1
Death Magnetic - 0
St. Anger - 0
Load - 0
Reload - 0
So, interesting. None of the most recent albums except for the new one, and a bunch from the new one. But I expect that we would get more of a greatest hits show, and less of a show still related to the tour of that most recent album. So maybe it is more like two or three of the tunes from the last album ("Hardwired," "Atlas Rise," and "Moth Into Flame") and then add in some of the Load/Reload hits like "Fuel" and "The Memory Remains," and maybe a Death Magnetic tune like "Cyanide" or "The Day that Never Comes."
Either way, this is going to be great. Believe me. The guy who just wrote like 10,000 words on a stupid band, when he is woefully behind on all the other stuff coming in just over a month, believe me.
One Liner: Mid-90's hard rockers with a few great tunes and then some Incubus and screaming sludge. Wikipedia Genre: Alternative metal, experimental rock, art metal, post-metal, nu metal (early). I like that - a differentiation to show that they were nu metal in the early days before shifting. Good work Wikipedia peoples. Home: Sacramento, California Poster Position: 3 Day: Saturday at 6:30 Weekend One Only.
Thoughts: I very much enjoyed a few of their songs back in the post-college days. I have a distinct memory of downloading a few tracks from the early Napster hellscape, burning them to a disc, and jamming them in my truck while commuting from Dallas to Lewisville each day (along with System of a Down, Rage, Disturbed, Limp Bizkit, etc. Such great taste in tunes). Saying that this sounds like Tool isn't quite right (this is more punkish), but neither is the comparison to Rage Against the Machine (more arty than those guys), but its somewhere in that same wheelhouse of hard rock bordering on metal that depends on syncopated rhythms and vocals that vacillate between a quiet menace and a loud bellow. Definitely harder than regular alternative rock, but most of their hits don't go quite hard enough for me to call them metal. I'm not a fan of this entire catalog, but some bits are very good. The only album I ever really knew was White Pony, which came out in 2000, but they have a surprisingly large number of other albums. A 1995 debut called Adrenaline, 1997's Around the Fur, White Pony, and then more albums in 2003, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2016. I'll give you the two hits from White Pony before we dive into the newer stuff. "Passenger" is my favorite one, although it is only their third most listened to track - this one sounds very much like Tool (because lead singer Maynard James Keenan does the vocals, but also because of the Tool-esque metered jams).
Still dig that track. 19.2 million streams (up over a million since I started this review, which was right after the bands were announced, originally at 18.1 million streams, which is interesting. Is it because of being announced for ACL? Why would they get a 5% bump in listens in one month 18 years after this album came out?). Very good stuff. Interestingly, the band won a Grammy at the 2001 awards show, but not for that track or for their most popular track, but for a different one called "Elite." "Elite" is literally one of the least-listened to songs on the album, and yet it won the band a metal Grammy award. Weird stuff. The Grammys are wack. We'll skip that one that the dork judges liked so much (because it isn't great, shitty vocals over a generic driving fuzz track) and give you the band's most popular track (by quite a bit at 50.5 million streams, edit - up to 53.4 million since last month). This is "Change (In the House of Flies)."
Another good one. That track still gets play on alternative rock radio even today. Before that White Pony album, their earlier two albums were a pretty similar sound, the comparison to Tool is even stronger to me, although nothing on the first one is that memorable. "Bored" is the most listened to, and the album opener, and it sounds kind of like Nirvana trying to play Tool. The second album, 1997's Around the Fur, has a few tunes I recall from college days (as well as the cover, which features a very high angle photo of a young lady in a bra or bikini top. The top track from that album, their second most listened to track overall, is "My Own Summer (Shove It)," which has 33.4 million streams and that same whispered then yelled vocal style over an aggressively sour guitar riff.
Meh. I guess I like the music groove, but the screaming portion of the lyrics I can do without. And honestly, that is what holds me back from fully embracing this band. I've been running through the albums after White Pony, and they have some really good songs that make me think I need to add this band into my normal rotation, but then they'll have one that is all dissonance and screaming and it breaks the spell. The 2016 album (Gore) has one song with almost 10 million streams, but it is the album opener, and you know my theory about that. One more gets over 5 million (the relatively chilled "Hearts/Wires"), but its not that special. Likewise, the 2012 (Koi No Yokan, which translates to Premonition of the Dark - spoooooky!) album has one song with significantly more plays than the others, and it is the album opener. I like it, check out "Swerve City."
Oooh, that hot cowboy lady's gonna shoot that fancy car man! Driving beat, kind of sweeping sound, makes my head bob, I like it. And other bits of that album are great too, but then you'll get a screamer like "Poltergeist" and it snaps the mood. Too bad, although I'm sure they have a legion of fans who live for that screamy art of the album. I also like the long ass track "Rosemary" from this one. If not that Koi No Yokan disc, then I think my favorite album after White Pony would be the 2006 album Saturday Night Wrist (although not a single song from that album shows up on the band's current top ten songs). Pretty sure the lead singer from System of a Down is on "Mein," although he doesn't get credit. Yet again, the top listened to track on this album is the first one. Maybe I should explain this theory again, in case you are new here. When a band has a great debut album, or really any album that is very popular, but their later albums can't live up to the goodness of the old stuff, you see a lot of people hop onto their Spotify to try out their later albums, but my theory is that they try out that first song, decide it isn't as good as the classic, and move on without hearing the rest of the disc. I think that is what you are seeing here. The opener on this disc has over 6 million streams, then nothing else breaks 5 million and most don't break 2 million streams. Big falloff. Like other albums, my favorite parts of this are when they go kind of chilled, restrained, coiled. Try this one out, "Cherry Waves."
Hard enough to rock. Melodic enough to be pretty. Kind of longing and sweet, while still not pandering or adding in a suite of strings. Good tune. But then "Rats!Rats!Rats!" is awful. Like a bad Refused B-Side, and just full of jarring transitions from melodic to screaming. Hate it. And the ending of "Pink Cellphone" is foul, like one of those stupid, juvenile outros that Limp Bizkit used to do. I'm also entertained by the 2011 album Covers, which is an album of (wait for it!) cover songs. I wouldn't say that Covers is necessarily great, but it is entertaining to hear them tackle such diverse stuff as The Cars, The Smiths, Skynyrd, or Sade. I don't recognize a lot of these other tunes, they are going deep into the musical rabbit hole. I gotta say I was excited about "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," but the original is infinitely better, the nuance and simplicity of the original music matches the song too well. But I do enjoy "Simple Man," because that song rules. They also have a B-Sides album, which includes a cover of Helmet's "Sinatra," which definitely rules (although it doesn't stray very far at all from the original). So, a final ruling. I guess I'd go see them play. Their good outweighs the bad, and I would expect that they will be trying to bring their good out instead of trying to go full screamo for a crowd of people who are definitely not their core fans.
