Kirk Hammett is a don. Despite being a member of Metallica, surrounded by those bandmates, he still takes time to play guest/session parts on records for smaller bands. Including, famously, for San Francisco queer punk legends Pansy Division. You can imagine how well it went down (pun intended) with Metallica’s core fanbase when he guested on the For Those About to Suck Cock EP.

I mean, he played guitar on Satan by Orbital. What a tune.

regmcfly wrote:

This celebration went well.

This thread has slowly descended into this for most acts which is why I lost interest in running it.
Unless I pick a 90s guitar band half the post are people whinging.

Someone else can do it from now on if they like. I'm bored of it.

Apologies to the people who contribute in the spirit of the thread.

There is too much negativity at the moment I cant really be fucked with reading it in a frivolous thread as well.

Sigh. I don't know, I just find it hard to be positive about anything these days.

It's not really just Metallica, I expected some dunking but a growing pattern each round.

I'll pet this one run a bit longer then see where I am at with it. It will be more apparent to me as I have to read the thread twice over. There is a definite pattern.

Hmmmmm, so Metallica then...
Never a huge fan. Rock was incredibly tribal back in the 80s, and the arrival of the thrash scene was largely anathema to my crowd.
That being said, I first crossed paths with Metallica at Donnington in 85. It was their first big UK show (having only played a few club dates at the Marquee and suchlike previously), so they clearly felt they had something to prove. Hetfield baited the audience, and their set was met by and large with breathtaking indifference from the majority of punters...



For most in attendance, they were just an annoying loud noise between sets from Ratt and Bon Jovi. That being said, this was the dullest of the Monsters of Rock festivals I attended in the 80s, and if I'm honest I remember little about the whole day.

Still, they must have been doing something right, because their rise the following year, post Master of Puppets was meteoric. 
I saw them in September of that year (86) on the Puppets tour at the Edinburgh Playhouse (with Anthrax supporting no less). I was dragged along to this by my girlfriend at the time who worked in a record shop and had a couple of free tickets. Hey, it was a night out.
The band were a lot tighter by this point, but it was still just a tedious loud noise that did nothing for me. There was no light or shade to it, it was all so one note that it quickly became incredibly boring. A quick run through of an audience recording on YouTube only confirms this...



 Hetfield had a broken arm at that point, so was on vocal duties only, with his guitar parts played by John Marshall, their guitar tech. Two weeks later, Cliff Burton was dead.

Time passed as time is want to do, and Metallica hit big with ...And Justice For All. I found this quite bewildering, because to this day it's still one of the worst produced albums of all time. Consequently zero fucks were given and the world continued to spin.

A few years later though, I remember my mate Big Pete saying to me, "So this new Metallica Black Album then. I've bought it, and it's pretty good. You should give it a listen." He wasn't wrong either. Bob Rock's titanic production had dragged them kicking and screaming into the mainstream. This was some good shit.
Like Grem and BigIain, tickets were bought for their show at the Glasgow SECC in 92, and finally, that was the moment where it all finally came together for me. I'm revisiting it on YouTube currently, and it still stands up well to this day...



A band at the hight of their powers, firing on all cylinders and making a noise like a hurricane of sound and fury. Great gig. Went on far too long, and we left to get the last train during the fifth encore. Still, great stuff.

And then...nothing. They basically over-toured that album for the next few years, and I guess it's success finally broke them. From my point of view, they never made another great record, and they've lived on former glories for almost thirty years now.

As a postscript, the final time our paths crossed was on the Load tour in 96.
They played a warm-up show for that tour at the Glasgow Barrowlands, and somehow Big Pete managed to blag a couple of tickets from someone he knew in the biz.



It was a terrible gig. They put an arena sized P.A. in a tiny venue, and consequently the sound was fucking appalling. An unintelligible deafening roar. But what really killed it was the setlist being stuffed with new material which was poor at best, and the band just played at a shadow of the level they'd achieved four years earlier. 
It was over. 
So I guess after years of flirting, in hindsight I could say I had a brief one-night-stand with Metallica back in 92, but in the cold light of day, it was just a fumble behind the bike sheds, rather than a blossoming romance.

Which brings us to a best song.
That's a tricky one for me. If we were going by studio material, it would have to be a toss up between Enter Sandman and Wherever I may Roam...but...if I'm honest, my lasting memory is of them doing Creeping Death on the Black Album tour, in all it's "Die, Motherfucker, Die!" singalong glory. Ultimately, stupid is as stupid does, and that one wins it for me...

g.man wrote:

Hmmmmm, so Metallica then...

G, that’s a fucking A+ post. Great read.

Gman has done criticism proper and better than anyone else so far on this. I've just been spinning shouting Ulrich is awful. That was a good read.

I can’t match G’s insight on this contest. I was never a Metallica fan. But I don’t hate them either, so …

I guess I first encountered Metallica as a schoolkid. I had a crush on the school’s ‘bad girl’ and she often wore Metallica T-shirts under her white school blouse. Album cover art showing through when I was looking at her tits, quite frankly. Master of Puppets, or … and Justice for All. (She was one of my first actual girlfriends, so it worked out in the end.)

Musically, I wasn’t all that into metal so it was Metallica’s ballads I heard most often. Nothing Else Matters and Sad But True got a fair bit of airplay on TV and I found both pleasant enough.

Getting a touch older and going to rock clubs changed things a bit. The Black Album was out. I was drunk. Enter Sandman was a fucking MONSTER of a dancefloor filler. I could get behind that.

And, eventually, I listened to more Metallica. At mates’ houses. In girls’ bedrooms. And in nightclubs. And I think I can say that I do have a favourite. My top Metallica track is One.

It’s bleak. It’s hopeless. It’s relentless. And it’s too long, by far. But it’s defiant in its heaviness, insistent in its riff. And for me, that’s the essence of Metallica.

No. Metallica haters can fuck off and let the rest of us listen to them. 



Moving on already from a band whos average song lengths is the above is fucking madness.

I'm in a better mood now after a good walk, apologies for ranting earlier.

This is the plan.
I run Metallica until tomorrow lunchtime ish.

Tomorrow is Friday so let's have some suggestions for up beat artists again. Maybe something House, or light Hip Hop or whatever, just something with good summer vibes.

Run that until Monday, then on Monday I will do a big hitter who has been requested a fair few times before. I have decided on who this is but dont want to say so we keep focus over the weekend.

I was going to suggest the following which don't fully fit but meh

New Order

Beastie Boys

regmcfly wrote:

I was going to suggest the following which don't fully fit but meh

New Order

Beastie Boys

I really like both, will consider them but as you say maybe not 100% right. Also I think both could carry a full week long round, especially New Order vs Joy Division.

LivDiv wrote:

So Metallica contributions and up beat summer vibe suggestions for the next 24 hours please.

Have we Daft Punked yet?

Diluted Dante wrote:

No. Metallica haters can fuck off and let the rest of us listen to them.  Moving on already from a band whos average song lengths is the above is fucking madness.

I bloody love that you actually pulled a graph out.

I'm a rock and metalhead, no doubt about it, though my tastes in music are super eclectic also. MEtallica where were my love of heavy music started in about 1989. I bought 'Justice' and while, yes, the production on the subsequent many re-listens isn't great, there are some absolute bangers on there. 'One' of course stands out, the opening track 'Blackened' blew me away, as it's probably among the most thrash-like songs on the album.

That led me to getting into the back catalogue, and the first 4 albums are where my tastes for Metallica have pretty much stayed ever since. I don't necessarily subscribe to the 'sellout' theory that a lot of fans have about the Black album, but I think they realised they could have a wider appeal and sell more albums with a change in music. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that direction came from Lars, as in every interview I have seen with him, he seems less bothered about the music than he was back in the day and more about the business of it all.

All that being said, my shortlist came down to:

Blackened
Master of Puppets
Creeping Death
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Hit The Lights
Seek and Destroy

While I would listen to any of these, I think the winner for me has to be Master Of Puppets - title track of what for me is their best album