i also wanna add that nwobhm band diamond head influenced so many metallica songs and i think they even brought out an album of diamond head covers somewhere along the line and if it werent for diamond head metallica would be fewked i think, especially for later albums such as MOP, RTL etc.

I think MOP is overrated but I still love it, the first three continue to shock me (in a good way!) and inspire me. MOP is such an opinionated album, some people love TTTSNB and Orion and others hate those tracks...

Leper Messiah is my favorite track on the album!

I think its just a sad story that a band who (in my opinion) wrote great tracks went so downhill since meeting bob rock!

I dont care if he had any influence, or if it was mere coincidence that they lost their nack, I will always blame bob rock!!

James is this just a cunning ploy to get us all to listen to MOP? once we re-listen to it you will have our minds for your own sick pleasures...


Battery is just as great as i thought it was. it has been ages since i listened to this album, and infact any Metallica or Megadeth.

oh dear...

Battery was honestly great, Master of puppets was quite disapointing. although like most people on this board i know this song inside out... on a critical listen, in context with the rest of the album, it is a bit too slow and is only really saved by its great riffs. from here on in the album was generally so much slower than i remembered. i guess when i first got into this album, for me Metallica were thrash. i didn't know of anybody else(except Megadeth) and so i guess i didn't really have much to relate it to. The album is a good metal album... but i found myself getting bored... quite alot. its only other saving grace is Orion, that is still great, but it does feel a bit out of place due to its position on the album. basically i turned off halfway through Damage inc, i had had enough.

so.. thats a shame. i have always said Ride The Lightning was a better album anyway . If i was a thrasher back in the 80's and they released this, especially considering the other stuff they would have released previously and everything that was being released at the time, i would have been very disapointed.

James,

I just found this fantastic rant from the Thrash Unlimited forum explaining your feelings toward the St. Anger rehearsal footage, fucking amazing!

James wrote:It only served to reinforce my disgust for what they've become though, I don't know what reviled me more, the sight of lars ulrich pounding out his never above average percussive offerings, robert trujillo apeing around as he danced monkey-like to their mediocre groove riffs, kirk hammett singing along sheepishly as if he was trying hard to pretend their new stuff is good, or james hetfield coming out with phrases like "this sounds good" between whining about the "unknown feeling" - it's not unkown to me, that feeling is called irreparable shitness! HAHAHA[-(

Haha, a nice little snippet to dig up there! Forgot all about it.

On an unrelated note, Scott Tenorman Must Die is the greatest South Park episode ever!!!!

Metallica were good. Kill 'Em All wasn't that greatly influential (globally), not compared to Venom anyways... Destruction were thrashing before KEA was released, so were most of the 'first wave' thrash bands especially the first bay area bands, and the european ones! So fuck that theory!!! The only bands that 'tallica influnced were all the generic-as-shit rip off bands that came out around '86 and all the gay-ass 'metalcore' bands that are around today, pronbably because it's cool to cite Metallica as a big inspiration (also it appeals a bit more to magazines and record companies..)..

MoP is however, a good album, hell it's a great album! Never ever listen to it anymore (maybe the occasional track...) but that's because it's been overplayed. Anyone who says they don't like it is full of shit, theres a difference bettween getting bored of something because you've heard it TOO many times, and something being shit. Why would you have ever overplayed it if it's shit? All the tracks are pretty solid, well written and the thrashy parts are nice and riffworthy. Great album, not particularly thrash, but it just kicks ass overall!!!!

STD_Caps wrote: Finally, I could well consider Disposable Heroes as a track that needs more appreciation, it could wellbe my favourite song on the album. And I don't think the vocals are too repetitive.

I agree!! That is the best and most underrated track on the album, musically and lyrically!!

I guess i will always have a soft spot for the first 3 albums as i lived, breathed and slept metallica in the mid 80s, they are more than just music to me, and i guess you don't understand that!! In the early 80s they were so different in metal, they had a whole new attitude (partly borrowed from punk) and just did what they wanted to, and fuck everyone else!! They always promised no radio friendly commercialism, no make up, no videos and that attitude connected with me and many other 80s teenagers, so you have to understand that to watch them rapidly change in the late 80s / early 90s into what they always promised they wouldn't be was hard. At least the new generation of thrashers never had to endure that. It was like watching a loved one waste away with a malignant cancer!!!! Put simply, they were corrupted by the $$$$$ and sold out to it!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I concur, sir. I think to really appreciate Metallica as they were at the time, you have to have seen them in the mid-late 80's. They had an intensity and a presence on stage that was amazing. When Hetfield stood on stage at Donington in 1985 and went through his "If you came here to see spandex and fuckin' eye make-up and all that shit and the words rock & roll baby in every fuckin' song...this ain't the fuckin' band! We came hear to bash some fuckin' heads for fifty minutes. Are you fuckin' with us?!" speech it was electrifying. They didn't give a fuck. I still play MOP on a regular basis and think it's an outstanding album, but the way they crumbled away is something I can't forgive.

James wrote:Because of it's totally shit riffs.

Sorry, that was a bit of a Metal Iain, but I really can't find one likeable thing about that track.

Yass!

You honour me James San. I now have my very own faux pas named after me.

thrash metal maniac wrote:Metallica were good. Kill 'Em All wasn't that greatly influential (globally), not compared to Venom anyways... Destruction were thrashing before KEA was released, so were most of the 'first wave' thrash bands especially the first bay area bands, and the european ones! So fuck that theory!!! The only bands that 'tallica influnced were all the generic-as-shit rip off bands that came out around '86 and all the gay-ass 'metalcore' bands that are around today, pronbably because it's cool to cite Metallica as a big inspiration (also it appeals a bit more to magazines and record companies..)..

MoP is however, a good album, hell it's a great album! Never ever listen to it anymore (maybe the occasional track...) but that's because it's been overplayed. Anyone who says they don't like it is full of shit, theres a difference bettween getting bored of something because you've heard it TOO many times, and something being shit. Why would you have ever overplayed it if it's shit? All the tracks are pretty solid, well written and the thrashy parts are nice and riffworthy. Great album, not particularly thrash, but it just kicks ass overall!!!!

Pretty ignorant post really. Firstly, I think you'll find that Kill Em All Metallica was exceptionally influential. You've obviously never heard Destruction cite Metallica as an influence to play faster and heavier. Also, if you saw Get Thrashed you would see many staples of the American thrash scene explain how the Kill Em All material hit the nail on the head of the formula everyone was looking for. Even Slayer have openly stated that it was seeing Metallica live shows that made them move away from their classic metal beginnings.

"So fuck that theory".

Secondly, it's quite peculiar that you believe that anyone who doesn't like Master of Puppets is "full of shit". Isn't it the whole point of being a music fan to find one's own taste and musical identity? Do I think the fact that you think bands like Xentrix and Testament are great is quite laughable? Yes, but it doesn't mean you're 'full of shit' as a result.

I've explained my reasons for rating Master of Puppets so meagerly, and I think it still stands that it is horrendously overrated.

James wrote:Firstly, I think you'll find that Kill Em All Metallica was exceptionally influential.

No, well of course it WAS but I don't like to bum it too much especially when there was a hell of a lot of other stuff greatly influencing the same badns at the same time...

the Kill Em All material hit the nail on the head of the formula everyone was looking for.

Exactly - it wasn't Kill 'em All the Metallica ALBUM that influenced the ORIGINAL bay area bands mate.. I think you'll find that it was SEEING 'tallica (when they had Dave on guitar I hasten to add) live that gave them inspiration to play faster. And it wasn't exactly like Metallica influenced Destruction that much, where's the 'tallica sound there? There's no songs on KEA about satan and venom-esque lyrical themes... Anyway, Venom were the heaviest band around that time and pretty much as fast as any subsequent Metallica track.. And one documentary hardly qualifies as total knowledge (not that I'm saying I have it..)

Secondly, it's quite peculiar that you believe that anyone who doesn't like Master of Puppets is "full of shit". Isn't it the whole point of being a music fan to find one's own taste and musical identity?

OK, put it this way - how many times have you listened to that CD?

Do I think the fact that you think bands like Xentrix and Testament are great quite laughable? Yes, but it doesn't mean you're 'full of shit' as a result.

I like them, they've recorded damn decent albums too, and they are good bands, it's up to you whether you like them or not, but you can't question their musical ability and songwriting skills, same with Master of Puppets..

I've explained my reasons for rating Master of Puppets so meagerly, and I think it still stands that it is horrendously overrated.

Overrated maybe, but I'd hardly qualify 'I find it boring now' a reason to slag off a classic metal album. If you re-read my post I fully explain the point I made about being full of shit if you just dismiss it as crap...

Make the distinction between the album and the previous live appearances if you want, but I'm treating them as the same material - Kill Em All pretty much sums up that initial stage of their career, and this whole discussion is based on albums anyway, and so I was talking about Kill Em All RELATIVE to Master of Puppets.

I don't understand how Venom are brought into this - another undeniably influential band, but the thread is not even about Metallica's influence compared to other bands, it's about (in part) the fact that surely Master of Puppets had less of an impact than their earlier releases.

And now to your point that I am dismissing it through 'boredom' or 'over-playing'. I didn't mention that at all in my first post. I didn't say "I've gone off Puppets now because I've listened to it too much, and now find other things more interesting", I revisited the album listening to the nature of the riffs, structure, and so on, and comparing it to both Kill Em All and Ride the Lightening. In this way, and not through boredom, I've decided it really is far from the classic that it's reputation suggests.

There are a handful of tracks that remain at the pinnacle of Metallica's achievements which I can still enjoy - proof that I'm not just "bored" with the album in general. Also, in actual fact I never really rated tracks like The Thing That Could Not Be or Welcome Home, from pretty much the first listen. It is not simply boredom which has put me off the album.

I like them, they've recorded damn decent albums too, and they are good bands, it's up to you whether you like them or not, but you can't question their musical ability and songwriting skills, same with Master of Puppets..

And yet it's somehow alright to claim that the lack of appreciation for one Metallica album happens to be "full of shit"?

master of puppets is one of the most overated albums ever. it's still a decent metal record though. bit of elitism maybe?