My 2012 New Year’s Resolutions for Metallica

 

I love Metallica. I really do. I listen to their songs regularly and hum to their tunes from time to time. They play an important role in my life and their music has influenced me in so many ways. However, like any bands, they make a few blunders over the years and make us fans look bad. While James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Jason Newsted and Robert Trujillo are not known to have wild behaviors like most musicians do, they as a whole have made some dumb decisions and leave you to wonder why they do things that they do and vice versa.

We all know about the Load/ Re-Load incident – the two albums that most consider to be one of Metallica’s biggest flaws and an absolute joke because the music strayed far from Thrash Metal or even Metal for that fact. St. Anger corrected that mistake but while the music was a lot heavier, the tracks sounded really awful with buzzing drum sounds, over-the-top vocals, the lack of guitar solos and off-beat melodies. For me, I’ve never disliked those albums. I accept them for what they are and I enjoyed majority of the tracks like the Unforgiven II, Until It Sleeps, King Nothing, Mama Said, Fuel, etc. I believe that bands should never stick to one sound and one genre. They must be diversive in their music.

Death Magnetic was a great comeback to the Metal roots with hits like All Nightmare Long but overall, I was not satisfied with the record. I find the tracks to be dry, repetitive and not that interesting. As for the Lulu album…sigh! It was bad. Lou Reed is a douche. What was Metallica thinking?

With all these mistakes pointed out, I thought it’d neat if I can share my personal input of what Metallica should do in order to please the fans this year or in many years to come so here it is: the top 6 things Metallica should do in 2012:

1. Produce an official compilation – To this day, Metallica is yet to release an official Greatest Hits compilation featuring all their super hits. Devoted fans may not feel the need to have one but I was thinking of taking this opportunity to attract newer fans. I don’t normally favor the idea of bands launching a greatest hits album after only producing 3 – 4 albums but for Metallica, they are long overdue for one.
2. Remastering their albums – It baffles me as to why Metallica hasn’t yet re-released their first five albums (Kill ’em All, Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, …And Justice for All and The Black Album) into remastered editions. While the current versions are still in great shape, it’d be a lot better if they can crank up the vocals, guitars, basses and drums a bit more like what Megadeth and AC/DC had done with their albums. I’m aware that Metallica did re-release these five albums in 2010 but they were only released in Japan. Why?
3. Adding the bassline on the Justice Album – For those of you who don’t know, the fourth album (“…And Justice for All”) had no bass in it from the get-go. It was the first album to feature Jason Newsted in the band who replaced Cliff Burton after he died in a tragic bus accident in 1986 and I find it insulting for his basslines to be removed from the album. For many years, Lars and James have given all kinds of excuses for this blunder – ex-bassist Jason Newsted wasn’t present during the mixing session, it was in loving memory of Cliff Burton, bla bla bla bla. Whatever the excuse is, I’m not buying it. Just add the basslines already! It is worth pointing out that there do exist a version of the Justice album on the Internet with the original bassline included appropriately dubbed “…And Justice for Jason”. It may not be an official work but majority of the fans including myself think it’s a much superior version than the original bass-less version so bottom line Metallica, please put the bassline this time.
4. Adding extra tracks on the remastered albums – Remastered albums should always include extra tracks in them whether it’d be demos or unreleased tracks so…please do so.
5. Fully orchestrated version of Nothing Else Matters – Nothing Else Matters is one of my favorite tracks of all time. It’s got great harmony, beautiful words and plenty of exquisite guitar playing. Michael Kamen was asked to add orchestration to the track to help amplify the song but even though he had it done, Metallica and producer Bob Rock did a lousy job of mixing it. The song does have the orchestra tune added in but you can’t really hear it for the most part. My request to Metallica is to please add the orchestration to Nothing Else Matters.
6. No more collaboration with other artists – The Lulu album sucked ass. Nuff said.

Metallica, I love you very very much and if you love your fans, please fulfill these tasks with love. We’d appreciate it.

– Psykhophear