1. I think metallica had lost their “creativity” with the death of Cliff Burton. first album “kill em’ all” was nice but it was not that great musically. basically it was a dave mustaine album, fast riffs and solos; it was all about speed. after cliff started to write down songs begining with “ride the lightning” and followed by ” master of puppets”, metallica had peaked musically. james, dave, lars were only interested in nwobhm or stuff like that. on the other hand mr. burton was listenin lynyrd skynyrd, j.s.bach. reading h.p lovecraft. he was a brilliant guy with an open mind, even can be called an intellectual. maybe he wasnt writing all of the songs on his own but it was obvious that he had a huge influence on the band. after he died (and of course mustaine was kicked out before that), it was now up to lars and james to “compose” the songs. the new bass player jason newsted had also some talent but these two assholes didnt give him the oppurtunity to show himself. in ajfa they used what was left from cliff and his legacy, probably “to live is to die” is the best piece of music from that album.
unlike most of the fans i found black album quite succesful when its compared to newer stuff that metallica have crapped out. every new album was worse than the older one. album by album lars and james spend their “good” material, so for every new album there was less “good” material.
when they did the thing with symphony i was a little excited, however they failed me again. i was expecting to hear “orion, fade to black, to live is to die, the four horsemen,..” they choose to play the crap from load/reload. a concert without “creeping death”? fuck it man.
jason left the band because of the known issues there is no need to mention them again and they replaced him with an ape or gorilla; whatever you want to call him. when i saw this moron acting like a monkey on the stage where cliff used to play i felt sad, sad for these clowns.
“st.anger” was the lowest point they could have ever get. an album without guitar solos? maybe you have noticed that i havent written anything about kirk hammet yet. its because he is one of the biggest pussies you can ever see in a metal band. if i’m the lead guitarist of a band and the other members of the band told me that in the new album there wont be any guitar solos, i fucking quit the band at that moment. 25 years in metallica and “enter sandman” is the only remarkable thing that has he done?
you know sometimes i wish cliff had never won that card game, things would be so much different.
anyway, after “st.anger” i lost all my hopes about this band, and i know that the only difference between the new album:”death magnetic” and “st.anger” would be the long and boring guitar solos. and i think i have made a good estimation.
imho james and lars have really small amounts of musical talent. james used to be a good lyric writer in 80s but now he also sucks in it too. he tries to sing like a country singer (god knows why) and ruins all the good songs they made in past. kirk doesnt give anything new besides wah-wah, and “the planet of the apes” whirls round and doesnt get dizzy.

2. After cliff, the band musically died but still they got the metal spirit for a while. You can watch an old clip from “kill em all” days where they were promoting the album in a gig and james says “kill all the fucking posers out there, kill all the fake people”(or something similar to that). he was referring to glam metal bands lik mötley crüe, guys wearing fancy clothes and having make up like ladies and perform like that. this was the “metallica”, the band wrote songs like “ride the lightning”, “for whom the bell tolls”, “disposable heroes”, “one”, and justice for all”,… the protest, the uprising against the system, one of the key elements of metal music.
however with the “black album” things have changed 180 degrees. “one” had turned into “dont tread on me”. only in 2 years. what the fuck happened? i can tell you what happened, the mainstream doesnt accept protest or “anti” anything. you have to move with the trend. it is like that all over world and i guess usa is not an exception. metallica wanted to be famous, basically lars did. and they “sold their souls”. they saw the lights of hollywood in their first grammy awards, and they liked it. they could have toured with slayer, antrax,… but they would have missed the hall of fame if they chose that path. so first they toured with gnr than it continued until they tour with kidrock and linkin park. they become mtv idol and let snoopdog, avril lavigne or other shitty so called “musicians” to play their “beloved” songs. they hurt us, they hurt us bad.
they cut their hair, get private jets piercings therapists sunglasses fancy clothes etc.
james used to say “kill all the posers”, but man who are the posers now?

3. one last word to the people who seems to like new metallica albums. when you hear “battery” in a bar you dont say “oh man they are playing metallica” you say “they are playing battery dude”. but if the song is “bleeding me” you say “oh its metallica playin”. you dont say the name of the song probably you dont even recognize the name. people go and buy load, reload, st.anger, death magnetic not because they are good, but because they are metallica albums. think that “death magnetic” was released by a band called “group 84″ who would listen this crap? and after 6 months would you still be listening this album?

PS. sorry for the possible grammer and spelling mistakes

it kind of goes back to their thrashier days with a slight mix of Load…

but you’re free to have your own attitude towards them

just my two cents

I will stick with Iron Maiden.

I’m a far more pedestrian fan of metal, though, so I willingly gave the album a go - downloaded, of course - and was pleasantly surprised by it. Initially surprised that it didn’t suck, then surprised that the songs are coherent and somewhat original.