Rockin’ Friday – Metallica Shmetallica?

Welcome again to Rockin Friday! Today a discussion on one of the most famous metal bands in history. Above is a picture of their frontman James Hetfield (before he grew his crazy beard O.o)
Anywho, Metallica are one of the best selling metal acts of all time, second only to bands such as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. They are definitely the best selling and most widely known bands of the later generations of metal, which would include such acts as Slayer, Megadeth, Pantera etc etc.

After their first four albums, which includes what is seen as the best metal album of all time by many: ‘Master of Puppets’, they broke into the mainstream with ‘Metallica’, otherwise known as ‘The Black Album’, fronted by the single ‘Enter Sandman’, which is absolutely brilliant song. Since then, they have changed more and more into a hard rock group, becoming even bigger, but, as some see it, even more mainstream (and, therefore, shit. Depends how you look at it 😀 )

This spiral culminated in the ’03 ‘St. Anger’, which personally I think is a pile of crap (the single that is. Haven’t heard the album.) Basically, I believe they were going for the sound of a band jamming in a garage to try and bring their music back to the basics. While you can definitely feel the raw energy of the band, the downside is that it sounds like band jamming in their garage. I’d much rather listen to the polished music of a properly produced album. If I want raw, I’ll listen to the far rawer and polished sound of a band like Machine Head.

Back to the point, this led to great uproar among the people who’d consider themselves old school fans, as it saw a departure from their old thrash style into completely hard rock/nu metal. Which, for most metalheads, is considered rubbish.

Because of this, their new album is being widely anticipated, and hoped to be, a return to their old style and form. Recently, underground videos of their album in production have surfaced (considering what happened with Napster, I doubt Metallica would be too happy with this 😀 ) Anyway, this means you can judge for yourself. Are Metallica returning to what made them great in the first place?

There are a bunch more floating around as well.

Anyways, that’s all for this week. Enjoy!

Rock on \m/

Rockin Friday!

Hello again, and welcome to another edition of Rockin Friday!

It’s been a while, and unfortunately not a whole lot of underground stuff for you today. Next week I think I’ll look into how to rip iPods and whatnot, but for now just a bunch of random stuff.

Now bear with me American readers, as I will talk about two British music festivals. The first of these is Glastonbury, which is so famous it may even be known across the Pond. But otherwise, it is an annual festival, mainly populated by indie bands although it has plenty of other acts too. It runs for 3 days, and attracts a massive crowd every year, being the biggest greenfield festival in the world. This years festival has sparked some debate by announcing a certain rapper as the main headline act.

There we have Jay-Z wearing a wonderful pink sweater. Now, of course, announcing a rapper as the headline act at an indie festival is going to cause some issues, and many people have vowed to boycott the event. While I don’t blame them for not paying for an act they wouldn’t want to see, some of the fuss people have been making is a bit OTT, and in fact some people have been calling them up for prejudice and racism. Perhaps that’s reading a little too much into it, but they certainly have a point about them not being open-minded enough.

Now, my next festival is a perhaps less well known rock festival called Donnington Download. (It used to be known as Monsters of Rock if that’s more well known). Now, in their own words, it is a punk rock/heavy metal festival (I may have paraphrased slightly), but in all honesty it’s a primarily heavy metal gig. So imagine the furor when last year MCR and Linkin Park were announced as headline acts besides the legendary Iron Maiden. Now, both bands were bottled and booed, as both are understandably tagged as ’emo’, which is, of course, a major offense to all things heavy metal. Now don’t get me wrong, I personally have nothing against the two bands, and in fact enjoy some of their songs. I think it was wrong of the organisers to have them as headline acts when you look at the calibre of some of the bands supporting them (Megadeth, Machine Head, Slayer, etc). But what can you do? Throw piss at them? I’d rather enjoy the show to be quite honest.

This year, alongside the equally legendary Kiss we have Lostprophets and the Offspring, two bands which I actually thoroughly enjoy. But in similar fashion, this has kicked up a major fuss, what with Lostprophets being ’emo’ (Listen to their first two albums and tell me that!) and the Offspring not really being a metal band. Ah well, some people are blinded by their prejudice, be they gansta wannabes, indie kids or metalheads, and they’re unlikely to change soon.

(Lostprophets in full swing at one of their more recent shows)

That’s all for this week. Next week I’ll hopefully have something a little more underground for you, in fact I have something in mind. But otherwise enjoy your weekend and this fairly old song I recently rediscovered!

Rock on! \m/