Time to call it a day, lads....

RobDavies

I loved this band in the eighties.  I worshipped Hetfield.

I can forgive Load and St Anger even, but this is just so bad......  Les Dawson on the piano...?

Just stop.  Now.

not_the_dj

Oh dear.

dafuzz

Sounded awful, but they were probably just under-rehearsed and struggling against a poor monitor mix. Oh yeah and there's some fucking pianist right there on stage playing a load of old shit over the top of their song. That would put me right off too.

DiscoStu

And I thought S&M sucked!

Bucket

Metallica should have quit after Death Magnetic, and gone out on a solid-but-unspectacular album that goes some way towards undoing the damage to their reputation from the three shitty albums before. Actually no, they should've chucked it in after the Black album.

Instead, no - they keep churning out lame publicity stunt after lame publicity stunt, basically acting up for attention and making themselves look worse, more out-of-touch and less credible every time. Where's this new album they've been apparently writing and recording for the last five years or however long it's been? Haven't heard much about that, but as long as they managed to get Lulu out...

If they can write another album that's as good as Master of Puppets, then fine. But they won't.

Also, in the video - what possible benefit is there to putting loads of tinkly piano over One? It sounds like a fucking mess. And Kirk's soloing sounds completely out of tune, it's shite. It's like Metallica foraying into avant-garde free jazz and failing.

dogload

Still not (quite) as bad as that thing with Lou Reed on Jools Holland!

viz

On the other hand, that's the mighty Lang Lang on the piano - definitely in the top 10 of pianists alive today, in my opinion. What a treat to see him play such an explosive intro!!!! Wow. Sorry but I thought that was brilliant!

ICBM

I quite liked the piano stuff, but Hammett can barely play. Take him out of the mix and it would have sounded OK. Not great, but OK. Not as good as the Lou Reed album though.

There again I was never a Metallica fan, so feel free to ignore this .

viz

Ooo eurgh i just heard the guitar intro after the piano - horribly out of tune.

cruxiform

ICBM said:

I quite liked the piano stuff, but Hammett can barely play.

Thank you! I bought my first Metallica album in 1985 and have been a fan for years. However from the Black Album onwards, Hammett has been a lazy player with little imagination IMO. You'd think he would have upped his game when Marty Friedman joined Megadeth around the same time but it was like he threw in the towel, relying instead on pentatonic double stops and that fucking wah pedal. Shame really, as he comes across as a lovely guy.I know plenty of pub guiatrists who could blow him off the stage.

Cirrus

I just don't get it. Never have. The vocals are over affected, the bass is just there to make there be low end, the lead guitar widdly widdly is tasteless and doesn't serve anything, the drums are played with a shambolic lack of grove, like each note is a dreadful stumble inexorably toward a cliff edge. I get that they might have been more potent 20 years ago but whatever they had, they have it no more.

Bucket

Agreed. 

Not just Marty Friedman - Dave Mustaine is a much better guitarist as well. Kirk used to be pretty good - there's some great soloing on Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, but since then... ugh. Wherever I May Roam has one of the worst solos I've ever heard.

As for his band... well, I've thought of the perfect comparison. Metallica are basically Spinal Tap with more money.

not_the_dj

DiscoStu said:

And I thought S&M sucked!

I thought that was epic. The string arrangements are brilliant, especially highlighted on the DVD where you can just hear the orchestra. 

Bidley

If any other band had done this, there wouldn't have been much of a reaction at all. Just sayin'.

To be honest, it was pants but not the abortion I thought it would be by the comments. Anyone expecting anything groundbreaking or genuinely inspirational from Metallica now is just looking for the next thing to whine about. They've done their bit, they know that, now they're doing what they like. And fair play to them. If they'd kept churning out the same album over and over they'd get boring very quickly. And Load and ReLoad are good hard rock albums - they're not sequels to MoP/Justice and neither were they meant to be.

The notion that Dave Mustaine is a good guitarist is depressing too - I imagine his playing, to me, is what everyone on here hears when they listen to something like Dream Theater. Aimless widdling for the sake of playing fast, with zero thought, melody or structure. Every guitarist he had in Megadeth has shown him up, even Kirk Hammett played his solos on Kill 'Em All better than he did. And you never hear anyone talk about Megadeth's last album either, probably because that was complete shite as well.

Bah.

monquixote

That sounded like a "shreds" video. 

Just horrible.

I've never really got the Hammett hate before as I only really know the albums up to Black, but that was proper shit. 

JohnPerry

The metallica/lou reed collaboration i heard on Jools Holland one night remains, i think, the worst music of any sort i have ever heard. And i'm including men who play with spoons or saws

John_P

I thought the violin player who was somehow invited to join us for a few songs on sat night was bad but that rivals the lou reed fiasco...  I could almost think they are trying to get attention for being wierd - it certainly can't be that they like it... unless they are weird.

Bod

Why is Michael McIntyre playing comedy piano all over it?

viz

Bod said:

Why is Michael McIntyre playing comedy piano all over it?

This is the chap playing the most challenging of Rachmaninov's concerti - no Les Dawson here!

randomhandclaps

I grew up loving Kirk but sometimes I wonder whether he has the onset on dementia or similar.  I've said it before but he is like the guitar playing equivalent of Benjamin Button.

Bucket

Or, in the eloquent words of Skwisgaar Skwigelf at 0:50, "He is slowly learning how to un-play the guitar"