Metallica

Flaming Blimp Crash said:
I get the impression it'll be a concept album the same way Death Magnetic was where everything was about, well, death. There's no narrative connections like on Seventh Son, but everything ties to a common theme at least.
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Nearly all of Metallica's songs are about death though. Die, death and dying appear literally over a hundred times in their lyrics.

Dityn DJ James said:
New album is going to be 77+ minutes long. Can anyone write a 45 minute album anymore? They need a third party in there to trim the fat. I didn't think Hardwired was a bad album, just way too boring because it goes on forever.
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Thing is though, that's 12 tracks. If they cut it down to 8 like they used to in the record days, I think the overall length would also come around to being more or less the same. Take HTSD. If you did what I'd do and excise all of disc two other than Confusion and Spit Out the Bone, you'd end up with a 50-minute album, so perfectly in line with Metallica's 80s efforts.

It's not that the songs have gotten super long, it's just that bands prefer to get closer to filling a CD so they end up doing more tracks than they used to. Death Magnetic had far longer songs on average and that album was only ten tracks long as a result.
 
Kalata said:
Why new ground? It's a song in their old classic style, the fans are satisfied and I think that's the reason why it was released as a first single.
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It's a two-way street, I guess. Nothing wrong with a band finding their sound and sticking to it, but I also don't mind if a band wants to push the boat out a bit and try something different. Plus, personally I tend to prefer Metallica more mid-paced and riffy, so this song aping Kill 'em All doesn't do much for me. But..

Kalata said:
I'm sure the album will have more ''deep'' and interesting songs that will show their recent (or maybe new?) style.
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...I agree with this. I think it's gonna be like "Hardwired", a decent-if-unremarkable first single that gets totally overshadowed by the rest of the album. Although it depends on how far they take the concept, if this album's supposed to represent/be inspired by the first eighteen years of their lives, is the whole thing gonna be a "homage" to their early sound and influences? Then I start to wonder, where does "homage" end and "rehash" begin?

Dityn DJ James said:
They need a third party in there to trim the fat. I didn't think Hardwired was a bad album, just way too boring because it goes on forever.
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It wasn't so much the length that bothered me with Hardwired, just that there was a massive dip in quality in the second half. This is why I'm hoping Kirk and Rob have given a bit more input this time around, James might've shelved some of his weaker ideas in favour of stronger ones from them.
 
I agree about bands making longer and longer albums, it's simply too much. I don't mind when prog bands do it because that's literally the conceit of the genre, but with bands like Maiden and Metallica it's so clearly a way to "sell more" records due to outdated sales count methods and a way to add more and more material to streaming services.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
I agree about bands making longer and longer albums, it's simply too much. I don't mind when prog bands do it because that's literally the conceit of the genre, but with bands like Maiden and Metallica it's so clearly a way to "sell more" records due to outdated sales count methods and a way to add more and more material to streaming services.
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Also, since the output frequency has significantly slowed recently, at least for the bigger bands, it might be the inherent fear of releasing "too little", if the fans waited so long.

Well, the kings of bombast Blind Guardian have released their first serious album in 7 years and it's a 1. throwback almost to their speed- era, 2. it's fifty minutes long. And it's absolutely awesome and guess what, I have yet to read someone complaining that it needed more songs.

Actually, the only double album recently that I don't mind at all - and an absurd case at that, I feel stupid for saying this - was Mastodon's Hushed and Grim. And that's where everybody complains, because not only it's a double album, it's a decidedly one-note double album to boot.
And yet, I just can't help but feel it's absolutely right, with the one-note being looked at from different angles ... it's just grief and melancholy, chewed over and dissected and presented in various colours.
Maybe it's the Stockholm syndrome, but in that particular case I absolutely get it, as a kind of experiment. And I know I go against the majority.

Well, and Songs from the North, that was a perfectly adequate triple album... but that's also 7 years ago, I realise now.

Even with the prog metal - I mean, Ayreon's The Source was an excellent album, probably Ayreon's best ever... but do I feel it held consistent across the two discs? No, I don't. Well, Lucassen has double albums as his trademark, but it must be hard coming up with enough music to fill it every time.
 
Jer said:
Yep. "Confusion" and "Spit Out The Bone" are the gems, "ManUNkind" and "Here Come Revenge" are OK, and "Am I Savage?" and "Murder One" just tread water, IMO.
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Confusion's great. Spit is phenomenal. The rest are forgettable.

The album'd challenge their highs of the 80s if they cut the forgettable ones out. It'd still be about a 50-minute album.
 
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As someone who greatly prefers progressive music to traditional metal, long albums and song lengths rarely annoy me. Most of my favorite albums are at least 50 minutes in length, which I consider to be on the short side. Off the top of my head, only two of my favorite albums barely surpass 40 minutes - Rust in Peace and Opeth's Damnation.

That said, there are several Metallica albums that desperately needed to trim the fat. The black album could have cut a few, and the Loads should have been a double album with at least 7 or 8 tracks cut. With Hardwired, the first half is flawless - but the back half's only standouts are its bookends. Revenge and Murder One border on filler, with ManUnkind and Savage being flat-out bad songs. The album should have been 8-10 tracks, tops. Death Magnetic, on the other hand, had no filler tracks - but the songs were too long for being relatively non-progressive.

I start to lose interest when albums are relatively short (under an hour) and contain ~12 tracks of decent quality, but with very little to distinguish them. I can only handle the verse-chorus-verse-chorus etc. thing for so long, so I'd take an album of the same length with 6-8 tracks which weave through various sceneries (key, time signature, and tempo changes) any day of the week.

Edington said:
Nothing wrong with a band finding their sound and sticking to it, but I also don't mind if a band wants to push the boat out a bit and try something different. Plus, personally I tend to prefer Metallica more mid-paced and riffy, so this song aping Kill 'em All doesn't do much for me.
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Very much agreed. I think the band was it its most interesting when it varied the mid-tempo chunk with the faster stuff.

JudasMyGuide said:
Even with the prog metal - I mean, Ayreon's The Source was an excellent album, probably Ayreon's best ever... but do I feel it held consistent across the two discs? No, I don't.
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I love that album, and while there's a few slight dips in quality during the second half, it's a roller coaster the entire way through.
 
I actually think that “Confusion” is merely solid while “ManUNkind” is super underrated and has an intriguing song construction and “Here Comes Revenge” is kinda fun. “Murder One” straight up sucks though.

New song intrigues me. I look forward to the album.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
I agree about bands making longer and longer albums, it's simply too much. I don't mind when prog bands do it because that's literally the conceit of the genre, but with bands like Maiden and Metallica it's so clearly a way to "sell more" records due to outdated sales count methods and a way to add more and more material to streaming services.
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What difference does it make a sale of a record of 50 minutes with one of 77? Also regarding streaming, I understand that the count is as per song not as per duration of a song.

They just want to fill the space, is all.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
I agree about bands making longer and longer albums, it's simply too much. I don't mind when prog bands do it because that's literally the conceit of the genre, but with bands like Maiden and Metallica it's so clearly a way to "sell more" records due to outdated sales count methods and a way to add more and more material to streaming services.
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It isn't though with Maiden, Maiden have been releasing "longer than the average" albums since Piece of Mind days.
 
Spaldy said:
50 mins can fit on a single LP. 77 mins is a double LP therefore you can charge double the price.
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In case of vinyl. But 77 minutes is a single CD isn't it? Thus the many seagulls in Darkest Hour + eternal fade out in Hell on Earth :D

*Just checked. Hardwired at 77' was released as a double album.. Though The Final Frontier with roughly the same duration (76') as a single one.
 
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