how were metallicas first 4 albums so good but the rest so bad?

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>>69286449
Cliff Burton died.

Cliff and also Dave Mustaine for the first and some of the second album. Cliff for the third and some of the four with stuff that he wrote before he died.

James and Kirk managed alright for the black album but it all fell apart completely thereafter. Also the cover songs album was fun.

>>69286888

/thread

Slayer became more well known and it became apparent that Lars sucks ass.

1. and justice for all sucks
2. james started writing about his feelings instead of cool shit like cthulhu
3. james started to try and prove he could sing
4. lars told kirk to stop playing cool solos

>>69286449
I listened to the singles from the new album today, and they just felt so hollow. I even went back and listened to some of and justice for all and even the pop metal on there had substance. Then I went back to kill em all and got sad at how downhill they went, from a borderline 'extreme' metal band to decent thrash, and then to hollow groove shit. It's just sad man.

Also kill em all is the best Metallica record, you could argue ride the lightning and if understand why but it's just a fact.

black album has some great tracks

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Bob Rock entered the mix, and Mustaine's contributions ran dry

it should've been lars

>>69287826
Yes it did. As far as I'm concerned it was the LAST GOOD album they put out. Other than Garage Inc which is just a covers album everything after The Black Album is shit.

Apparently people didn't like The Black Album when it came out. Good thing too cos I got good seats when they came to my town in 1991 to tour that album.They were still worth seeing in 1991.

I consider their first 5 albums to be good, they just got older, more complacent and eventually parodies of themselves

no one's perfect, at least they did a good 5 album streak

>>69286449
Load and Reload is two average albums that should have been one good album and delete the rest of the filler; some of those songs are great. 'The Black Album is bad' is a meme, only metal-children believe otherwise.

The music on St Anger is ok, but the production and lyrics are terrible, Death Magnetic and Hardwired are rehashing the same old shit because James is too scared to try anything new.

They should have broken up in the 90's, because they're so different as people that it doesn't work anymore. Metallica was a unit in the 80's, but they've lost that now, and it just sounds like they're phoning it in for each others sake.

http://sfloman.com/metallica.html

everything turns to shit given enough time

see : top gear

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>>69288157
Megadeth were able to pull themselves out of a slump

Their consistency has been questionable lately, but Megadave's been able to do make it happen

Honestly Mustaine and Hetfield should just join forces and band together before Megadeth breaks up again

>>69287860
Mustaine's contributions are overstated and ran dry in 1983.

>>69287907
People didn't like the black album when it came out because the best thrash band in the world (at the time) got talked into hiring fucking Bon Jovi's producer and spending $1,000,000 to sit in a studio for a year and write pop songs. They went from Dyer's Eve to Nothing Else Matters in a 3 year period, and fans were understandably pissed

>>69288339
Mustaine's riffs were used until at least Master of Puppets

The majority of Kill 'Em All & Ride the Lightning have Mustaine's work in them also, explaining why the songs are that good and why they fell off the wagon so soon after the fact

>>69286888
Checked
/thread
That dude went to my highschool.

>le mustine is responsible for everything
a
hhh, a fresh new contrarian 4chanian meme

>>69288395
Only Call of Cuthulu was written my mustaine. Youre talking out of your ass.

>>69288457
this Lars revisionist history meme is funny

st anger is pretty underappreciated and lulu is a literal masterpiece (though i consider it more lou reed than metallica)

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>>69288395
>megadave fanboys still believe this

>>69287809
Neither of those are Master of Puppets though.

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>>69288625
>being unable to dispute the facts

>>69288501
I will tentatively agree because me and my friends were at peak Metallica phase when it came out. My friend's dad loves it, so we were listening to it the other week over there and it's not bad once you learn to embrace Lars' stupid snare. Also saw Stu from King Jizz wearing a St Anger shirt I'm assuming unironically early this year, so that also alters my perception of it as well.

>>69288395
>Mustaine's riffs were used until at least Master of Puppets

The songwriting credits seem to disagree with you

>The majority of Kill 'Em All & Ride the Lightning have Mustaine's work in them also, explaining why the songs are that good and why they fell off the wagon so soon after the fact

He has 4 writing credits on Kill 'Em All (not seeing how that's a majority), 2 on Lightning and zero after that.

I could see your point if he was credited on every single classic 80's Metallica song, but that's just not the case.

>>69288765
Burden of proof lies with the claimant

>>69288837
>implying Metallica is honest with ghostwriting credits

>>69288395
Mustaine allegedly contributed a single riff to Leper Messiah, that's it

>>69288859
If they weren't honest, why is he credited at all?

>>69288837
Dave wrote the entirety of three songs on Kill 'Em All, and every other solo on the album besides Hit the Lights

The majority of Ride the Lightning, excluding Escape & Fade to Black feature his riffs

Leper Messiah also borrows from the Dave vault

The band probably figured they could write him off songwriting credits if they just replaced his recordings with Kirk

>>69288927
Consider that Dave might have stole alot of the riffs from Metallica because he was a complete druggo and that's what they do?

The solos are basically the same on KEA tho, I'll give you that

>>69288927
>Dave wrote the entirety of three songs on Kill 'Em All, and every other solo on the album besides Hit the Lights
He also tended to write the least interesting songs there, but OK
>The majority of Ride the Lightning, excluding Escape & Fade to Black feature his riffs
Wrong, he only contributed a couple riffs to the title track and a chord progression to Ktulu, he has no other credits
>Leper Messiah also borrows from the Dave vault
A single riff in the bridge section
>The band probably figured they could write him off songwriting credits if they just replaced his recordings with Kirk
Except that clearly didn't happen since he was credited despite never performing on a Metallica album

>>69288859

>implying Dave "I Spread Disease Like A Dog" Mustaine could write his way out of a wet paper bag

nice story, tell it to reader's digest!!!

>>69286449
When they started they were making music in a relatively new genre, with honesty and all the new tools they learned while learning their instruments and listening to their favorite bands, they were young and hyped and had ideas.
There is a point where they used up all their original ideas, the genre they were in is kind of getting bland and falling out of style. They want to move on and do something different, but they don't have the skills i anything else, because they cut their teeth on classic heavy metal, NWOBHM and speed metal, there is nothing else they can do well or honestly, so it all sounds shit.
Because they were good once people think they were really talented geniuses, but really they were just good at one thing and the skills they had did not carry over into anything else, they were just doing the right thing at the right time.
So in their desire to change they showed how hacky they were, and in trying to return 20 years later their lifestyle had changed and their music tastes probably changed and skill level changed and they had nothing new to offer.

>>69288988
>implying Peace & Rust aren't the apex of thrash

>>69288988
Be fair now, Mustaine may be a tard and burned out early with all the heroin he was ingesting, but everything he wrote for Megadeth in 1984 (the near-entirety of the first two albums plus Set the World Afire) was gold. If he had left out the covers from the first two albums and took the best songs from each and made one album out of that, it could have been the best thrash album ever written

>>69288980
>implying Metallica is honest with ghostwriting credits

>>69289023
>attributing writing credits to Mustaine for song HE didn't even claim to be a part of

>>69288927
>Dave wrote the entirety of three songs on Kill 'Em All, and every other solo on the album besides Hit the Lights
lol who in the fuck is talking about solos
>The majority of Ride the Lightning, excluding Escape & Fade to Black feature his riffs
please provide evidence of some kind
>Leper Messiah also borrows from the Dave vault
evidence
>The band probably figured they could write him off songwriting credits if they just replaced his recordings with Kirk
and yet somehow they still gave him credits on songs where kirk is recorded instead of him, not sure how that logic shakes out

>>69289006
I am implying that, what of it?

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>>69288479
>not knowing what a meme is

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>>69287860
I wonder if there's an alternate universe where Mustaine stayed in Metallica. I'd like to hear those albums.

>>69289009
>If he had left out the covers from the first two albums and took the best songs from each and made one album out of that, it could have been the best thrash album ever written
Maybe, but he didn't

>>69289289
A universe with a Metallica consisting of Hetfield, Mustaine, an alive Burton and a competent drummer?

That'd be some good shit.

>>69289454
agree 100%. But Ulrich arranges 99% of the songs, so maybe keep him around to "produce"

metallica was never good

>>69289579
I actually thought about this.

The bus crash still happens, but Lars is thrown out the bus window instead of Cliff.

The bus doesn't crush him and kill him, instead just cutting off his legs or something.

Now you've got A Hetfield/Mustaine/Burton/Actually good drummer lineup with paraplegic Lars serving as their hypeman/collaborative songwriter

>>69286888
James and Lars were always Metallica's driving force, Cliff would leave the band later, but Metallica would end up the same. Green ruins everything, at least it ruins artists with no integritiy.

They should have just released the same album over and over like Slayer did

>>69291130
To make pointless boring albums that sound the same over and over? Nah.

>>69287805
Please tell me this is a bait

>>69291182
yes, but oddly enough those shitty same-ish albums didn't hurt their credibility as much as Metallica selling out and switching genres to hard/blues rock

>>69291261
Eh, both scenarios seem quite terrible.

>>69291280
yeah, nothing good lasts forever

>>69291345
But, there are always exceptions to that. Bolt Thrower being one of 'em. They stayed good untill the very end.

their new album wasn't bad. spit out the bone and halo on fire in particular were both really good. fight me faggots

>>69291357
It was dogshit, fuck off.

>>69291357
I really liked the Cthulhu song :3

>>69291352
Bolt Thrower knew when to stop, more bands need to learn that lesson.

>>69291414
True.

>>69286888
this is true, its not even a "its sad his dead because he was the best" meme, he was actually fucking good and was the level head of the band that told james and lars that their shit sucked and wasn't a yes man like kirk is

>>69291414
The Beatles knew when to stop too.

>>69287947
>I consider their first 5 albums to be good, they just got older, more complacent and eventually parodies of themselves

Big deal, so did the Rolling Stones.

Either Cliff was the only real talent in the band all along or they ran out of creative ideas way early.

>>69288457
The badass Ride the Lightning riff at 1:56 is a Mustaine contribution. It's based on an old fingering exercise he would use.

https://youtu.be/YT516h7QwA4?t=116

>>692888339
Yes we know that. That's old news. That didn't stop it from being a good album.

Yes I was one of those fans that were disappointed that we weren't gonna get fast loud and thrashy and this wasn't gonna be And Justice for All part two or whatever but I admired the fact that they took a chance in going in a different direction and in my opinion they did it quite well. I was one of the few fans who actually LIKED The Black Album when it came out in spite of my disappointment that the only thrash on there was Anti Nowhere League's "So What". And one of the singles off of that album included Queen's Stone Cold Crazy which would've done Freddy Mercury Proud. (Can't remember which song was used as the single though.)

>>69293069
I know; it's called a spider chord. He was on Dave Navarro's radio show discussing the RTL main riff and how to play it.

>>69288339
See >>69293079

They got too big too fast. Plus, they can't be young forever.

>>69293051
If Cliff had lived, the odds are that Load would have happened much earlier because he was a big blues/country rock enthusiast and always encouraged his bandmates to expand their horizons beyond just metal.

>>69293069
btw, anybody else think they should've scrapped the last verse and just ended the song around 5:20 or so?

>>69293104
Then again, RHCP are the same age as them and they stayed relevant decades after Metallica had passed their sell date.

>>69288501
It baffles me how the "Lulu is bad" meme is still a thing. There's some fantastic tracks on there and the whole mood and aesthetic of the album is really fucking unique. Best Metallica-related album since the fucking 90's.

why is it so inconceivable that artists' taste change as they get older? are you saying YOUR tastes are the exact same as they were 10 years ago?

couple that with reaching the stratosphere with the black album/bob rock and spending 3 straight years touring (during which james voice blew out), you can see why they went the more mainstream route.

>>69293111
Hetfield was always the country enthusiast. Burton was into more experimental weird shit. He probably would have ended up in some kind of alt metal band if he left Metallica in the 80s.

>>69293148
>It baffles me how the "Lulu is bad" meme is still a thing

I honestly can't tell if you are joking, Lulu was a shockingly bad album and totally unlistenable

Genuinely some of the worst "music" I have ever heard

>>69293151

>>69289005
They fell apart because they ran out of ideas, but just don't know how to do anything else musically.

>>69293141
That's just because John Frusciante is that rare talent that happens once in a generation. If they still had Hillel Slovak, I doubt they would have survived past the early 90s.

The problem is ultimately Lars because he's really just a businessman/marketer, not a musician. He was always more interested in the rock star lifestyle than playing music.

>>69293232
That, and I think competent bass playing has broader appeal than competent guitar playing.

>>69293218
Nice meme. The lyrics are sometimes wacky, but in context they fit. The riffs are a bit minimal, but catchy and maintain a groove, which you need since most of the album is spokenword-ish. There are some great hooks here and there too, how the fuck is it unlistenable? Your exagerating/parroting the media's reception of the album. It's not even that weird, it just is more of a poetry/metal crossover.

>>69288501
I can agree that Lulu is not as bad as people make it out to be, but St. Anger is fucking garbage.

>>69293290
I agree that people were too quick to judge the album and it's not as bad as everyone says, but the album is still mostly uninteresting and frustrating IMO.

>>69288501
>>69293218
Lulu is The Room of music

>>69293218
Dragon is the only decent track on Lulu.

HTSD was great.

>>69293411
HALLUCINAAAAAAAAAAAATION

>>69293141
>>69293232
RHCP were an underground alternative act in the Slovak era. They didn't get mainstream until the 90s--most people don't know about the early albums or associate that sound with them the way Metallica are associated with albums 1-4. Metallica got big with the first four albums and became "locked" into that sound whether they wanted to or not. What I'm saying is it was easy for RHCP to move away from their Slovak era sound and image because the vast majority of their fans came aboard with BSSM.

That and the two bands had the exact opposite thing happen to them--Metallica lost their best songwriter/arranger in the late 80s, RHCP gained their best songwriter arranger in the late 80s.

>>69293411
>decent track
>on Lulu

Good one m9

>>69293429
Also Metal/Metallica fans are literal retards who don't like change, whereas RHCP got famous from radio-play and mass appeal, so as long as the songs are catchy it still works.

>>69293471
Yeah...metal isn't really radio friendly so less chance for mass mainstream appeal.

>>69293429
>-Metallica lost their best songwriter/arranger in the late 80s

Cliff didn't write any lyrics or compose songs, he just played bass.

>>69293497
No but he was the ballsy guy in the room who stopped James/Lars from doing bullshit songwriting or business moves. Kirk is a weenie who just bends over and takes their dick.

>>69293482
It's radio friendly in places that have hard-rock or metal radio, but it's still very selective. Metallica didn't get much radio play in the 80's, from what I can gather, so when the Black Album came out and got them alot of radio-play all the OG fans got butthurt, and when Load/Reload came out all the faux-metalheads got butthurt it wasn't 'true metal' because short hair isn't metal.

>>69293497
Cliff wrote poems, but other then 'To Live is To Die' I don't think they were adapted for songs. He did write parts of songs, and he was big into composition, and alot of the complexity of AJFA was spurred on by his influence before he died.

>>69293577
>Metallica didn't get much radio play in the 80's, from what I can gather

One was their first mainstream radio hit.

>>69293587
Yeah, it was basically the end of the decade by then. Pretty sure it charted in 89 as well. Before that, they basically had word of mouth and having second billing to every other big band through the 80's.

>>69293620
>and having second billing to every other big band through the 80's

Most of that time they toured with Ozzy who was pretty much the face of metal in the mid-80s.

AJFA was the classic unfortunate example of a band trying something beyond their reach as musicians and arrangers, Lars especially being _way_ too limited as a drummer to attempt progressive metal.

>>69293646
You can tell. There's lots of moments on AJFA that start to build up to some incredible, face-melting climax and then end in a complete whimper.

>>69286449
I wouldn't say the Black Album is bad, it's just different. It's better than And Justice For All in my opinion.

Late 80s was when all the thrash bands started getting big, at the time when the older metal acts like Ozzy, Maiden, and Priest were running out of gas.

>>69293632
I think they toured under Van Halen at one point as well? Might have be a festival. They played alot of the big rock festivals.

>>69293646
Calling out Lars' drumming on AJFA is like calling out Ringo for Peppers/White Album/etc. The only problem with AJFA was the mix, and that's what you can blame Lars for.

>>69293687
Protip: AJFA is a cut and paste job. He couldn't really play most of those songs.

>>69288157
>top gear

Lol, didn't knew that BBC execs posted on /mu/

>>69293701
That's true for everything since then, and probably half of MOP/RTL

Alot of thrash metal drummers back then couldn't play the songs live. Even most of the guitarists couldn't play at recorded speed.

>>69293761
>Even most of the guitarists couldn't play at recorded speed

James definitely could; at Live in Seattle 89 he actually plays MOP about 20 bpm faster than the record.

>>69293809
James is hax tho

Alot of Megadeth is iffy, some Slayer is slower, alot of Anthrax is slower but that might be intentional, alot of the smaller bands were up and down. It wasn't until Death Metal that you get the real freak players.

>Youtube videos of recent Metallica gigs
>if they mess up a lick or play sloppy, there's tons of people whining "oh no they lost it they're too old, they can't play their songs properly anymore" when they had plenty of sloppy shows in the 80s and besides, a lot of albums are cut and paste jobs anyway

I guess nobody who actually plays in a band post on Youtube comments.

Metallica have typically always played live songs faster than the record so they can get through a set faster.

>>69293861
It's probably actually because James had (or has) anxiety on the downlow.

Also I'm just watching old videos; why is Jason rubbing shit on himself in Until it Sleeps?

>>69293837
Also that hair metal band Nitro had an insanely fast guitarist.

>>69293838
Nobody goes to a live metal show for musicianship, they go there for energy. When it's loud af and everyone's high on drugs/drunk/moshing, nobody notices if the guitarist messes up a lick.

Not metal, but Nevermind had lots of studio editing. Cobain's voice never sounded that strong live.

WHISKEY IN THE JAR-O HYUH HYUH HYUH

>>69293674
Like when?

>>69288339
>People didn't like the black album when it came out because the best thrash band in the world (at the time) got talked into hiring fucking Bon Jovi's producer

Motley Crue's producer. Bob Rock didn't produce Bon Jovi. Also the reason they hired him was kind of funny. Metallica had been raging against Motley Crue and calling them ever bad name in existence for years, but eventually they became jealous of how Crue's albums had such excellent, crisp sound while theirs always sounded like shit.

>>69286449
Black Album is pretty good.

>>69287907
>Apparently people didn't like The Black Album when it came out
You mean some metalheads. The album was an instant hit.

>>69288058
Load is average, but it has some great tracks (Bleeding Me, Wasting My Hate, Thorn Within and Outlaw Torn), the thing about it is that Lars and Kirk took control of the artistic direction of the band, so they were composing songs similar to what Jerry Cantrell had been doing for a long time. The mistake was that they were still aiming at >5 minutes songs, so many songs like King Nothing, Ain't My Bitch and The House Jack Built sound stale.

ReLoad is pretty bad for the same reasons, but the fatal flaw is that is overly produced. James voice sounds clearly autotuned, which isn't something new, but it just sound weird on this album. Most of the songs are so arranged in the studio that the band still can't figure out how to play them live without sounding empty.

St. Anger is one of those things that could have been great, even with the same riffs, if only the production had been in the direction of Acid Bath instead of Korn. Lyrics tho, they were awful.

>>69297696
>Most of the songs are so arranged in the studio that the band still can't figure out how to play them live without sounding empty

IDK they ever played more than 3 songs from Reload live.

>>69297851
Fuel is a regular, Memory Remains and Devil's Dance were on S&M. Unforgiven II has been played a few times but it sounds weird. I think they played Low Man's Lyric on radio jam sessions and recently debuted Carpe Diem Baby which didn't sound that bad desu.

But yeah, given how weird Unforgiven II sounds, that's probably the case for the rest of the songs.

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>>69286449
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!
Metallica's 5th album was the first Black Metal album ever, how can you ignore an entire genre being pioneered by these madmen?

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>>69298162
I prefer some black funky metal

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>>69288927
>Dave wrote

There's a couple of really fucking obscure audio recordings of Mustaine and Hetfield talking and playing riffs in Lars garage way before Kill Em All. The clips total around 45mins of audio from what I recall.

You can hear Mustaine playing riffs and the other 2 guys critique them basically. Dave is playing proto versions of riffs that stretch right into the And Justice For All era on those tapes. You can instantly recognise the similarity to a ton of Metallica songs that they transformed into.

I have no fucking dout that Lars and James kept those tapes for years and used them write from. I also remember reading in a metal mag around 1989/90 that Metallica lost all their old "riff tapes" with some of their best material, so i'm wondering if the tape actually got stolen maybe resurfaced?

Anyway I heard them on a youtube vid about 4 or 5 years ago but don't know if it got removed or not.

The most interesting thing was how snarky Lars and James were towards Dave even back then in the garage.

They should all have died in the bus crash, not only Cliff, now they would all be seen as legends by everyone, they would be the Death of thrash metal.

>>69290388
so Kirk died in the bus accident while Lars was rendered a paraplegic in this universe?

So I take it that after the incident, MegaDave patched things up with James and Lars, returned to fill Kirk's void and they found a really damn good drummer to take over Lars as he Brian Wilson'd things behind the scenes?

Very interesting timeline, I'd say. Fuck, perhaps Metallica got Dave Lombardo after his initial split from Slayer during the Reign in Blood tour and Megadeth either broke up after "Peace Sells" or would occasionally return as Mustaine's side project during various periods of Metallica's in-between album and touring inactivity.

>>69288418
Nice.
My English teacher went to high school in Ruston and he claimed to have known Jeff Mangum.

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>>69299751
Sounds dank as fuck

>>69299886
Also, I imagine that the album that replaces "Justice" is basically a mish-mash of our Justice and Megadeth's So Far, So Good, So what, the EP that replaces "Garage Days Re-Revisted" has a few of the same tunes, plus a new Metallica version of "The Mechanix" and perhaps a cover of "Peace Sells" with James and Dave sharing vocals.

Plus from this forward, James and Dave pretty much become co-vocalists in Metallica (with James occasionally appearing in whatever new Megadeth albums come out here and there) while Jason Newsted remains in Flotsam and Jetsam, allowing that band to grow bigger than they did in our timeline.

>>69286888
/thread

st. anger is their best

>>69288058
He TRIED something new.. and it was terrible.

>>69286888
Rob Trujillo is their best bassist

>>69300310
This is true, pity they won't let him make any meaningful contributions.

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>>69299751
Holy fugg reading this is making me wet desu

>>69291261
>hard/blues rock
I think you mean buttrock

Which is worse, Megadeth's Risk or Metallica's St Anger?

>>69289602
Honestly for the first 4 albums I'll fucking fite you for saying that boi

>>69291352
Best Bolt Thrower album to start with

They tried experimenting with load. People wanted them to go back to being "hardcore" and they listened, which is why we got st anger. I think if they kept experimenting with new ideas, they could have gone somewhere cool

>>69286888
This. Also, most bands have two or three good albums in them. Some more, some less. Four in a row is pretty incredible, especially considering two of those are Master and Justice. From 83-89 Metallica could do no wrong

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>>69301745
>They tried experimenting with load. People wanted them to go back to being "hardcore" and they listened, which is why we got st anger. I think if they kept experimenting with new ideas, they could have gone somewhere cool

Lars pushed all these retarded changes in direction.

He got a bit of money and started hanging around art galleries, dating super models and generally thinking he was hot shit in high society.

Fucking dumbass didn't know to keep things simple and "if it works don't change it".

>>69286449
implying metallica wasn't always trashbags