These days it’s much easier to hear music before you buy it. With streaming media on bands Myspace pages and their official web pages you can get a pretty good preview of what’s to come before you go to the nearest record store and blow your lunch money on a cd that you don’t like.

I’m not going to touch an obvious band because I’m tired of talking about them. You know who I’m talking about. However, I have a couple of old favorites I will talk about that I have bought cds and have been disappointed with them and others that I know suck, so I will never buy them.

Pantera: The first three Pantera cds are killer. There is no disappointment in any of the first three (Mainstream, after the short lived glam days). The Great Southern Trendkill was one of my least favorite. It had a couple of songs on it that were good but as far as an album, it was less than great. I bought it as soon as it came out. I had no way of previewing it before it hit the stores and it was Pantera so I expected nothing short of awesome. It was noisy but it was ok. Reinventing The Steel was the same case. No way to preview and there are only a few songs on that album that I like. I will never say that either of these cd are great. The band had some problems after Far Beyond’ and things started to slack. I think the main problem was the band trying to keep things fresh and outdoing the last album. When you set the bar as high as they did, it’s not easy to surpass the last…even for Pantera. Sooner or later you are expected to step it up or hang it up.

Megadeth: Killing Is My Business had some production issues that I think if re-recorded these days would sound unbelievable, but that’s what makes me love Killing Is My Business. There was a sheer rawness and ridiculous amounts of killer riffs in that album. A great start for Megadeth and things only got better. Peace Sells, So Far So Good, Rust, Countdown and even Youthanasia. Cryptic Writing is where I really started to wonder what was going on. It all just sounded weak. The World Needs A Hero and Risk were the same way. Weak, yet Dave Mustaine was trying to keep up with the times. He was doing it…but not well. When I heard that Chris Poland was going to be on The System Has Failed I was ecstatic. I thought this would be a new era for Megadeth. I thought that there was no way that this could go wrong. I was mistaken. The System Has Failed had a couple of cool tunes on it, but nothing worth doing a back flip over. Untied Abominations brought me back again and I was very impressed with where Dave was going with this album. Risk and The World Needs A Hero will probably never be a part of my Megadeth collection unless i buy them as part of the remasters set. Even MD.45. I got that as part of BMG music back when it came out back in the late 90’s. I hated it then and I still hate it even with Mustaine on the Vocals. (Which he said he were lost when he went to remaster is. How convenient)

So how many times have you bought a cd that was shitty by your favorite band and tried to convince yourself that it was not that bad, good, or even great? How many times have you defended your favorite band when someone said that particular CD sucked and you told them it didn’t when you knew it did? Sometimes you just have to suck it up and come to realize that your favorite band even has their down days. Sometimes they come back to form and sometimes…they just fade further away. Without being honest and letting the bands know that they are doing a crappy job, they are going to think everything is good and will continue to make crap albums.

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So what do you think?

Post from: Metal Martyr

Post from: Metal Martyr

What I did today at work was totally outside of my listening habits. I talk a lot of trash about Metallica but I still have every song from every album with the exception of St. Anger on my iPod. So I felt like listening to The Black Album and it sounded really cool. Then when that was played through I played Load and it was completely tolerable and I thought to myself…”Wow, this is a really good ROCK album”. I think that’s more or less why the metal fans don’t care for Load and Reload. Because they are pretty much rock albums and the newer Metallica fans that love those two think they are metal fans because they love them. I honestly don’t know, but I can really say that Load and Reload are good rock albums. Not metal, but rock. I would still consider them crap in the frame of mind that it’s Metallica and we expected nothing but balls to the wall metal from them and only got a couple of rock albums and something that resembled recording with Fisher Price instruments on an analog 4 track tape recorder. Either way I actually am looking forward to the upcoming Death Magnetic. I expect Rick Ruben may have got them back on track and without question, as Izzy said, they still kick ass live.

Post from: Metal Martyr

Master Of Puppets, although started off a bit slow won the poll with 30% of the votes (42/138)

…And Justice For All Started out strong but in the past week started to fall slightly short. AJFA took second place with 26% of the votes (36/138)

Ride The Lightning came in third with 16% and 22 votes.

Sadly the Black Album just barely beat out Kill ‘Em All with a 17 to 15. I’m assuming this travesty only happened because of all the people that voted for Master Of Puppets or AJFA took the votes from Kill ‘Em All.

Reload and St Anger both got two votes, but one of the votes for St. Anger doesn’t count because it was just me being an ass.

Garage Inc. and S&M both took 1 vote and Load, poor Load got nothing.

So there you have it. Out of 138 people/votes Master Of Puppets has been voted as Metallica’s Best Release.

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Former NIRVANA drummer and current FOO FIGHTERS frontman Dave Grohl has released the following “open letter” to METALLICA:

“Dear METALLICA,
“Hey, it’s Dave! Remember me? Yeah, I’m the guy that’s been listening to your band faithfully since 1983. I bought your first album ‘Kill ‘Em All’ from a mailorder catalogue called Under The Rainbow, I think. Actually I can’t remember. It was 1983 for Christsakes! But that album changed my life and I’ve been listening to your albums ever since (even ‘St Anger’!).
“I can’t wait to hear the new shit, and no matter what you guys do I’ll always be first one at the shop waiting to hear it. I’m sure you’ll come out and blow everybody’s fuckin’ minds, because you’re fuckin’ METALLICA!
“Good luck. And don’t release it until it’s kick-ass.
“Yours, Dave Grohl.
“P.S. Are you finished recording the drums yet?”

So…if you could write a letter to Metallica what would you say. Use the comment section below and don’t hold back!

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I think it may have started out as a documentary but quickly turned into a docudrama. If you have ever watched the movie “Pumping Iron” you will see how a documentary turns into a Docu-drama. What happens is that a documentary is deemed not interesting enough by the financiers or producers of the film. So they add drama to the mix and call it a docudrama, which the fans don’t really catch or even know what that means so they take everything seriously and suddenly it’s an issue of Sun tabloids come to life. Add a little drama, script this, script that…it’s a hit. I bet you didn’t know Lars and James were actors.

Dave Mustaine…if you knew this was a fabrication then shame on you! How dare you say some shit like “why does it seem that everything that you do is so successful yet everything I do seems to bomb” (ok, so these were not his exact words but something close) Anyway, Dave, how dare you say that because just then you make it sound as if every one of your fans has such low standards as to accept your greatness and achievements as to just barely be good enough. If there wasn’t a Kirk Hammet then there would have never been a Megadeth and that makes me wonder how I would have got hooked on Metal!?! Sure you were let go because at the time you were out of control on alcohol, but shit…that is your own fault. At the same time without that there would not have been a Megadeth and Peace Sells would not exist and therefore my love for metal would have an empty spot like a broken heart to never heal! The only one ashamed of this point of your life is YOU!

I hate that I have to go here. That I have to revert to Metalli-bashing, but it’s a sore spot in my world of metal that makes me angry. I know I’m not the only one in this love-hate relationship. I love the Metallica of yester-year. The hard hitting, relentless band that made such a metal statement, a political statement in music. But then it all went to their heads. It went to their heads to the point where they wanted so much more. They pretty much forced Jason out because he wanted to do side projects. Shun the man because he had a love for music and wanted to make more music and not just a crappy record every 5 years. Sure he was just a Bass player, he’s replaceable…would you have done the same thing to Cliff Burton if he were still alive today???

So yeah I’m pissed. I’m typing and re-typing due to the fact that I’m a bit buzzed and it’s not easy typing when your pissed let alone a bit tipsy too. My final words on this are: Metallica, you’ve already let yourselves get a big head about yourselves. What goes up must come down and your time has come. Most bands realize when they make a mistake but you guys still think that St Anger is a good record. Your not the gods of metal that you think you are. You didn’t make metal what it is. Don’t forget the bands that paved the way for you. The bands that I believe made metal what it has become today. The bands like Black Sabbath, the original pioneers of modern heavy metal. Bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead. The new wave of British heavy metal paved the way for what we see around the world as heavy metal today.

Metallica has had a huge impact on metal but Murphy’s law will always rule.

Post from: Metal Martyr