Shame On Metallica!

Being a fan of ‘Metallica’ doesn’t stop me from criticising them. Recently, front man James Hetfield said in the press that “the new bassist has contributed more to the band than Newsted ever did”. How the fuck can they say this?! It wasn’t Newsted’s fault he didn’t appear on any of their albums from 1986 to 2001. It was theirs. It wasn’t Newsted’s fault he quit the band. It was theirs! I don’t think anybody had ever done more for the band than the Mr. Jason Newsted. All albums, ‘… And Justice For All’, ‘Metallica: The Black Album’, ‘Load’, ‘Reload’ and ‘S&M’, Newsted has toiled for the band, and it has shown. All the albums were smash hits. In this period, it was established that the band had moved on from Cliff Burton’s death, and was still capable of delivering quality music. And then, when Newsted could no longer tolerate the teasing and the quarantining and the hazing from his discourteous colleagues, he quit. What more could he do? A real kick in the teeth for this man, and Hetfield and Ulrich should be sorry they said this. They might have even understood that they were responsible for Newsted’s resignation, but it wasn’t spoken of! Why? Were they so ashamed of those acts? Then why say this now? If Trujillo has done well, then laud him; don’t say Newsted didn’t do as much, because you know he did!

Trujillo vs. Newsted

And of course, Kirk Hammett and his silence: understood, sir, you want to keep the job.

I wonder what Cliff Burton would have said.

Hot contest at the 51st Grammy!

HOT CONTEST AT THE 51st GRAMMY! “Death Magnetic” has been nominated in the Best Rock Album and Best Recording Package categories, while “Suicide and Redemption” gets the nod in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance area and “My Apocalypse” goes up for Best Metal Performance. And a big congrats to Rick Rubin, who was also nominated for Producer of the Year.

ACDC are up for “Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals” for their smash single “Rock ‘N Roll Train.” They will be up against Coldplay, The Eagles, Kings of Leon, and Radiohead.

Both events will be telecast live from the Staples Centre, Los Angeles, on February 9th, 2009.

Let’s go get ’em, metalheads!

Metallica's Death Magnetic

Well, I’m surprised I haven’t posted anything on Metallica for a while. So here it is. The following link is a PDF file displaying the Metallica tour dates for 2008 and 2009: metallica_tour_dates1. Anyway, about Death Magnetic, at first I didn’t like the album but listening to it again and again, the songs seem pretty fine although they don’t come as close to Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets. Here are some of the reviews from various sources.

And the reviews: Rolling Stones, Metacritic, Los Angeles Times, Culture Bully, Pitchfork, Blabbermouth, Blender.

And I think you should know of Robert Trujilo, Met’s new bassist. He was chosen as a replacement to Jason Newsted, who left the band due to personal and musical conflicts. Trujilo has been much publicized because of the fact that he’s Met’s first finger-style bassist after the legendary Clifford Lee Burton. But of course, Newsted was the only one between the two 😛 Do you think Trujilo is better than Newsted?

Personally, I don’t think so. Setting aside the plucking style similarities, Newsted seems to have done a much better job on any of his albums (Black Album, Load, ReLoad…) than Trujilo on DM.

And this is the link to AOL’s Online Radio, which sports an ‘All Metallica’ station under the music category. Check it out, it’s pretty good. Met songs playing all the time, with some ads once in a while. They’ve even got Ennio Morricone’s ‘Ecstasy of Gold‘, which Met recorded in their studio in February, 2007.

Now, for a bit of trivia. The stats for DM were out recently and apparently, they sold 490,000 copies in the first week, with the album peaking in at #1 on the Billboard 200. With this, they become the first band in music history to have five consecutive albums peak in at #1 on the list. Well, I am surprised it had to happen with DM, but all’s well that ends well. I’ll keep posting as and when something comes up.

Death Magnetic cover – now with reviews!

Death Magnetic cover

The greatest metal album of the year, the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic, is slowly drawing close with the event stated to be held on the 12th of September, 2008. ‘Cyanide‘, a song from the album, has already been played alive by the thrash metal band in many cities since it was first performed in Dallas.

And now, some two weeks after the release of this album, here’s what people think of it:

Rolling Stones, Pitchfork, Los Angeles Times, Blabbermouth, Metacritic.

Based on a glance through the above sites, Death Magnetic seems to have done pretty well for itself, although it doesn’t seem to live up to Master of Puppets, The Black Album or Kill ‘Em All by the same band. But yes, thankfully, it is not St. Anger.

Rapidshare link for ‘Death Magnetic‘:

http://rapidshare.com/files/142199867/METDM.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/142199763/METDM.part2.rar