The half life of Metal vs. the half life of Rock
A while back when the Rolling Stones did a tour, the jokes were flying about how old they were and that they were too old to rock. They proved people wrong by having a successful tour.
Metallica just released a new single. In case you haven’t heard it, here’s my in-depth, riveting analysis of it: It sucks ass. It sucks real bad. It’s god awful.
SayUncle is a metal head. I love it. My favorite newer bands are Mudvayne, Slipknot, System of a Down, and Taproot. I’m a sucker for drop D (heck, even A for those 7 stringers out there) tuning. Older bands that I like include Pantera, Sepultura, and old Metallica. And the greatest band ever is Faith No More (who proved that you don’t have to be metal to be heavy).
By old Metallica, I mean anything from And Justice for All and before. Back in the day, Metallica was the heaviest thing around (until Pantera showed up). And when you bought an album, you got your money’s worth. You’d get like thirteen songs that were usually six minutes long. Then came the Black Album. It was the beginning of the end. Metallica went into that artsy-fartsy stage and released songs like Unforgiven. And they sucked. When I heard that Metallica was supposedly going back to their metal days on the new album, I half believed it. I heard the song. Hetfield doesn’t have it anymore. He’s too rich to be angry. The drummer is still amazing, and still remains in my top 10 favorite drummers list. It seems that following success, most metal bands can’t do a good album after that. The Deftones had a cool album (forgot the name, but it had Bored on it) then after that they started doing this music that had no hook, no feel, just meandering chord progressions and dissonant lyrics that didn’t go anywhere. I guess money mellows the angry metal types out.
The difference between rock and metal: The Rolling Stones were made fun of because they toured at like age 80, but they still rocked. Hetfield turns 40 this year and he is metalled out. You can still rock when you’re older, but you can’t give a rebel yell or the devil horns without looking (sounding) your age.
