Metallica – Death Magnetic – 7/10
Metallica is one of the most prominent and well known hard rock/metal bands to ever exist and were one of my favorite bands since early childhood in the 80’s. They had a rocky mid/late 90’s period… and an even worse early 2000’s. Filled with strife, mediocre music, arguing, rehab, and Lars.
Ahem.
What it comes down to is St. Anger was a huge disappointment and an exercise in what not to do on a production. Here we are 5 years later and a new Metallica album, Death Magnetic, is released. Now I have had this album for a bit now and when I decided to write a review on it I had a mental block. I couldn’t get my thoughts gathered about it and my initial thoughts were too critical and not open minded enough, and now my thoughts are scattered again.
Metallica is a love or hate band, and if you love them then you really don’t give a fuck about my review and you’ve been banging your head and paying $80 a show to see them live already. This is a critical review for sure and probably will piss off die hard metallica fans. Sorry.
The album begins with “This Was Just Your Life” and instantly you remember one thing — Lars is just not a good drummer! Its been said 100 times before and will always be said. Lars has nothing good going for him other than a simple 4/4 back beat. It continues throughout the rest of the album — the second thing you’ll notice is James voice is back to being where it should be, and has almost a “…And Justice For All” sound to it, just a little deeper.
It starts strong and continues strong — I won’t lie I did dig this album quite a bit however Metallica isn’t really fooling anyone anymore and its easy to realize that they are doing what’s smart for business and are more of a corporation than a band. They rip their own riffs off, mostly riffs straight from the songs that people always classify as ‘their best’. It works.
The album has a few throw away tracks that should just have been left on the cutting room floor, one of them is “Cyanide”, also “The Unforgiven III” just take up the middle of the album and drag it down to a hole they spend the rest of the album trying to dig out of.
After Unforgiven III completes their first single “Judas Kiss” comes back to where the album was heading all along followed by the return of “We do instrumentals!” Metallica, and the album closer “My Apocalypse” which just rips and I hope the next album is exactly like this song but more!
Overall the whole album sounds like it was supposed to be released right after The Black Album and is superior to The Black Album in almost every single way… there I said it. It’s better than The fucking Black Album. Because it is. Could it be a huge cash in on Metallica’s side? sure, it probably is… didn’t work though since France leaked it.
Of course its possible the reason I really dig it is its refreshing to hear Metallica ripping themselves off instead of other bands ripping off Metallica (Hi Trivium!)
All That Remains – Overcome 7.5/10
Just grabbed this one today, and I admit I was eagerly awaiting this to be released. I truly enjoyed every single last ATR album on different levels and listened with anticipation as they moved and evolved as a band, I was ready to be blown away. The Fall of Ideals set a horribly high standard for ATR, their writing as a band was tighter than on previous albums and Phil LaBonte honed his vocals to a point where he could go from a Death Metal growl to a powerful singing voice in the blink of an eye.
I popped Overcome in and was greeted with a brutal building riff machine coming from the band building up to a show of each of their talents all in the first 35 seconds. Phil comes in sounding like an absolute monster up there with the greats of Death Metal vocalists… that is what I like to call a tease to what is to come… except I was wrong. After the amazing first verse and moshy build up the song takes a fall into horribly Poppy territory when the chorus hits. Phil’s voice hits an almost emo whine during the chorus… this is sadly the direction the album takes.
Mike and Oli destroy with their guitar work. It’s fast, technical, harmonic, and has an amazing song structure to it they are heavy and melodic at all the same time. Jason Costa’s drums back everything up with a great technical display as well, throwing in the double bass and syncopated beats exactly when they are needed. This is the first album with new Bassist Jeanne Sagen, and no offense to her but who cares. The bass plays absolutely no roll in the song writing on this album, it’s barely heard, and doesn’t offer anything special in any way to the songs themselves. It’s really just the way it is.
Phil truly is the weakest link however in this entire album. I don’t mind clean vocals in my metal, quite the contrary. I think its an amazing thing when a vocalist has a truly huge range in his voice and can change styles. As a musician myself I respect that immensely on every single level, when it’s done right. Killswitch Engage, they do it right. Shadows Fall, they do it right. Devin Townsend, He does it right. There’s tons that do it right and All That Remains used to be one of those bands that did it right. However I think either Phil gave into record company pressure — or the truth finally came out that he truly doesn’t like or respect metal… I think in an interview in Guitar World he did state “We’re NOT FUCKING DEATH METAL” and it kind of shows.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like the album overall but it is not without its short comings. I just wish Phil would have stuck to the more powerful clean vocals then what he did on this record. It feels like a reach for the mainstream that they never needed to make. I respect the band, and Phil does seem like a completely down to earth and cool guy to know but his vocals are not my cup of tea on this record…
Special Addendum — These are fully my initial thoughts on my first listen of this cover, I stand by them fully… they will probably piss off people.
Believe in Nothing (Nevermore Cover) – WHAT THE FUCK is this garbage… Phil Labonte has the wussiest sounding voice during this entire song, he has no true emotion and it sounds like absolute shit. Nevermore is one of my absolutely favorite bands for a long time and All That Remains completely ruined one of their best Ballad songs they have ever written. Don’t get me wrong, the musicianship showed by All That Remains is excellent — they do nail the song there. The vocals… my god the vocals absolutely kill the song. Phil fuck yourself if you think you were remotely good on this song.
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