Death Magnetic

Metallica

Death Magnetic

I first heard Metallica right after I started listening to Black Sabbath, who are the Godfathers of Heavy Metal, hands down. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple just simply were not that HEAVY. Black Sabbath made the skin crawl and the blood curl. It sounded like you were in an actual horror movie and the goose bumps were starting.  Metallica just amplified Black Sabbath and made metal even rawer, faster, louder and gave the impression that they were purely insane.

I thought Death Magnetic could be louder, a LOT louder.  Sure, we’re all going to endlessly compare it to Kill Them All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and even …And Justice for All and I could just simply turn the volume up, but sometimes I wanted that beautiful noise back.

 “That Was Just Your Life” is a rumbling and charging song that got me moving with excitement that Metallica is making music again. The guitars are here by full force just like they should be and Kirk Hammett has rightfully brought back his amazing solos in “The End of the Line”. These first two songs have gotten me more excited for their ‘return’ in 2008: Thunderous and loud, finally! There was a nice break in the middle of the song too, sounded a little psychedelic there.  “Broken, Beat, & Scarred” gives a nice reminder of what Metallica sounded like in the album …And Justice for All. The guitar work here is nice and simple, and the solo is so clean!! “The Day That Never Comes” is very similar to “Fade to Black” and “One”.  It builds slowly with lyrics about death, a little bit of hope in the face of darkness; criticizing war which Metallica is known for. There is a slow start to this song that goes into a charging beat that gives you the feeling this is going to get even bigger. I like the restraint in James Hetfield’s voice as he is trying to control his anger. The distorted riffing and the chugging get the song going, but there is no loudness, no extreme Metallica like there used to be! I must admit it’s a great song for what it is.

“All Nightmare Long” just confirms that Metallica have some of the best openings in all of Metal and Rock music. They know how to set you up and get you going.  “Cyanide” has a good beat and all, great riff, the kind of old school feeling that I haven’t heard from Metallica in a while. It grows on you. But I don’t like Hetfield’s howling, or whatever you want to call it, even though the lyrics are slick. The riff is killer and Kirk and James are slamming it. This song, like “The Day That Never Comes” gets better after the middle part. The boys are on their way to getting so much better, I can feel it. Just another album or two and they will be back in business.  “The Unforgiven III” has that classical music touch that Metallica occasionally dabbles in, like on their S&M album. This song is a nice break, and shows Metallica flexing their instrumental muscle because they have so much more to offer than just metal. I can hear Metallica do thrash from beginning to end, but for newcomers trying to get into Metallica, it is an intermission worthy of their talent.

“The Judas Kiss” sounds like a lot of other recent Metallica songs, where Metallica is just trying to stay above water, stay current, but they unfortunately just sound like their countless spawn. All they have is Hetfield’s voice to make them stand apart. I have to say that the great opening and the Wah Wah pedal really helps this song.  “Suicide & Redemption” has a chuggy riff that brought Black Sabbath to mind, and this one is nice and dark!! My head is definitely nodding to this one and I’m so glad instrumentals have returned to Metallica’s repertoire! The guitars are REAL good, probably the best solo on the whole album (?) and this is what the band is about.

Again, “My Apocalypse” brings in the great rolling, beating drums that everyone knows, courtesy of Lars Ulrich. The solo guitar work is sick, and this track shows you the high-level of production that Rick Rubin has brought to this album. My only qualms are that there could be a heavier and louder bass, one that looms over the song, and takes over the song. It just could be heavier.

Their 80’s work was simply amazing, but here I am, trying to listen to their music while not comparing them to their older counterpart. Thrash should evolve and not stay in the 70’s/80’s where it was born, but I couldn’t help but ache for that sound when I listened to their new album. Let us be grateful that Metallica is still around, recording and holding on to their true sound. We just have to see where they take their sound next. 

 

 

Dark Side of the Moon

Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is a masterpiece for the ears. It is full of sonic booms and bangs that travel from speaker to speaker like a crazy train. The album is for music listeners who appreciate the avant-garde, minimalism and ambience. Guitars, synthesizers, drums, bass and the most hi-tech equipment of the day were used to construct this rock music milestone.

In 1972, Roger Waters, the bassist for the group, was feeling life was going by too fast for him and he wanted to slow down and analyze it. So he broke it down into key themes for this new album: First, there is the human lifetime which is the umbrella for the album. Appropriately, a heartbeat starts off the opening track "Speak to Me/Breathe", created by the bass drums of Nick Mason, the drummer and percussionist. The track segues into "On the Run" which incorporates many of the sounds the listener hears throughout the album: Footsteps, clocks, airplanes landing and so forth which grabs the audience by their ears. The song shows the maniac pace that life takes us on, and how humans are always on the run, traveling from place to place. Life goes by and according to Waters people are preconditioned by our parents and society to think that life starts when our higher education is finished and when we are out on our own. This is not the case, life begins as soon as we are born, and that is the theme of the song "Time": `You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today./And then one day you find ten years have got behind you./No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.'. Waters shows that time waits for no one and if you don't live life to the fullest, it will just waste away.

"Great Gig in the Sky" includes an instrumental piece with guitarist David Gilmour on the lap pedal, keyboardist Richard Wright's piano work and an improvisational vocal by session vocalist Clare Torry. Torry scats throughout the song. Scat singing is a jazz term, meaning that the vocalist just improvises over music with humming and what not. The song can be interpreted as a song about death, even though there are many interpretations. The vocal highs and lows match the musical flow in the background, showing the successes and depressions we all go through in life; Torry's voice speeds up, her volume increases, and then she slows down after the climax.

"Money" is a song about the good and bad sides to our dead presidents. You can get everything you want if you can afford it, but what happens when greed claims us and we want a share of what someone else has? Money makes the world go `round, it fulfills our dreams and desires usually, but the question is whether it makes us truly happy or not. Material possessions can only last so long, and the evil thing about money is that it always drives us to get more. Listeners should think that Waters wants us to remember what is really important with one of the last lines in the song: `Money is the root of all evil today'.

Next song: "Us and Them". This song, like "Great Gig", can be translated many different ways. The feeling of Us and Them is universal for humans: teenagers and their parents, natives and immigrants, countries at war, the rich and the poor, outcasts and insiders, weirdoes and the "normal" people; you can fill in the blanks. "Any Colour You Like" is full of wah-wah guitar, "Brain Damage" is a song about insanity and "Eclipse" wraps up the album saying that whatever we do is pointless because life ends: `All that's to come/and everything under the sun is in tune/but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.'. Therefore, the end of life coincides with this line which concludes Waters' album-length theme of the human lifetime.

Throughout the album, voices can be heard by numerous people that the band interviewed with random questions. There are answers to questions involving violence, brutality and death. The subliminal voices in the background featured give a whole new type of element different from other albums I have heard, and I think it makes DSOTM richer and more alive.

DSOTM is a personal favorite of mine that I can listen to over and over again. However, I do not consider it to be Pink Floyd's best; that title belongs to Animals from 1977. Animals is a biting satire created by Waters on human society, broken up into the categories of dogs, pigs and sheep, as an allusion to George Orwell's Animal Farm. Animals is raw and dirtier, something I feel DSOTM lacks. DSOTM is one of those rare and flawless albums, but sometimes it's that flaw that can also make an album great, and that album is Animals. Why did I talk about Dark Side and not Animals? Well for those music lovers new to Pink Floyd, I recommend you start with Dark Side and then branch out to the Floyd's albums before and after.

And to my fellow Pink Floyd fans, matching Dark Side of the Moon against The Wizard of Oz does not work; I have tried it. There is a rumor on the internet that if you turn off the volume on the movie and start the album at the beginning of the movie (there are debates as to when to exactly start the music), the music will coincide almost perfectly with the movie.

Now sit back with your headphones and speakers, (I highly recommend listening to Dark Side in the dark) relax, and zone out.

Dedicated in memory of Richard Wright, keyboardist, songwriter and original founding member of Pink Floyd.