The land of ice and snow
Article: Michael Chmielewski – Editor-in-Chief
It’s all coming to a head.
It’s truly disgraceful. It hasn’t produced anything substantial in a while, since around the time I was born.
No, I’m talking about the Senate or myself; I’m talking about Metallica.
One of the founders of thrash metal, one of the most successful artists in history, is washed up. Why is this? No, they haven’t released another musical failure, and no, haven’t set themselves on fire. Rather, they’re playing a show in Antarctica.
Truly crossing another frontier.
Metallica wants to play this show because Antarctica is the only continent on the Earth they haven’t had a gig on. The Coca-Cola sponsored concert will not be amplified either, because instead it will be played to the audience through headphones. A pretty cool achievement, but apparently a band has already done it: a band named Nunatak was the only group to play in 2007’s Live Earth Antarctica.
Why the gimmicks? Why I can’t I get a good straight up Metallica album like the first few? As a musician I understand that maybe not all your releases are going to be Master of Puppets, but you won’t have any good releases unless you focus on the music, not frivolous pursuits. I’m not here to criticize the albums after …and Justice for All like most people. The song The Day That Never Comes is how I feel about their next good release. They haven’t had a good album in a long time. The album Lulu makes no sense, and Death Magnetic would have been an okay release had Rick Rubin not fucked it up. Rubin also destroyed Black Sabbath’s new release, 13. As Corey Taylor of Slipknot said in an interview with Blabbermouth.net “the Rick Rubin of today is a thin, thin, thin shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He is overrated, he is overpaid, and I will never work with him again as long as I fucking live.” Rubin is known for contributing to something called the “loudness wars” where albums are made to sound louder than they should be. Rubin’s latest feat is standing around in Eminem’s newest music video.
Metallica needs to cast aside the strange albums, the shitty producers, the infantile gimmicks, and do what made them the band they are: sit down, just the four of them, and hammer our another great metal album that people will respect them for. Until that day, Metallica is not worth the hype.
