Pages tagged “metallica”

Guitar Hero: Metallica has been a pretty poorly kept secret, ever since an earnings report from Activision revealed that the company was planning a title akin to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for the thrash wizards. Waiting is the hardest part though, so Guitar Hero junkies got a quick fix with the opportunity to shred some Death Magnetic while they waited for the big score.

It's shaping up to be quite a year for Metallica. The rock mavens released their ninth studio album Death Magnetic this month, and have just been named as a finalist for 2009's class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

For months now, Guitar Hero diehards have been hanging on every bread crumb of information released about World Tour, the forthcoming generation of their favorite video game. We knew about Hendrix, Ozzy and a handful of other artists on the track list. But now we have the press release in hand, and it includes 86 songs on-disk, featuring artists like R.E.M., Michael Jackson, Metallica, Coldplay, Nirvana, Interpol, Foo Fighters, Billy Idol, Beastie Boys and Dinosaur Jr., among others.

The architects of thrash dust off some old blueprints.

Metallica’s last three albums have seen the band sink progressively deeper into schlocky grunge and nü-metal—an indignity magnified by big-screen depictions of egomania and creative exhaustion. For Death Magnetic, the group was tasked by production maven Rick Rubin to reverse course and recapture the raw vigor of their early work. The result is a superb return to form that refines familiar touchstones: riotous instrumentation, E-tuned guitar solos and robust melodies.

I grew up in Winnipeg. It's a dirty, struggling town on the eastern edge of the Canadian prairies and we have a winter that often spans eight months of the year. Four hours north of Fargo and effectively in the middle of nowhere, it's not the easiest town for a touring band to visit. But as a kid, I still managed to see some great shows. NOFX and Face to Face came through a few times when i was around 14, and I remember chipping my elbow after a front flip off the stage went wrong at a Green Day show that same year. Strung Out, Lagwagon, Satanic Surfers, Millencolin, 88 Fingers Louie, Hi-Standard, and tons of other bands from that era all came through at one time or another, and it was always great, but the local bands were always at the heart of what we were doing. Luckily, we had some great bands. Propagandhi, I-Spy, Mung, Malefaction, to name a few, were the staple of our small punk-rock community. These were the bands that inspired my friends and I to start our first bands, and I still listen to them today.

Disposable Heroes, they ain't. Five years and a new producer later, Metallica is back to prove that old-school Bay Area thrash is still kicking. After tossing ex-producer Bob Rock to the curb and hiring Slayer wizard Rick Rubin in his place, the band holed up in the studio for two years, incubating Death Magnetic until it was honed to the razor edge of a Kirk Hammett guitar solo. Recently, Metallica announced that the album is finished, unveiled a tracklist, and set a release of late August for the album's first single, "The Day that Never Comes."

At long last, Metallica's ninth studio album is wrapped up (complete with apropos cover art) and has an official release date: Sept. 12th. Always ones to push the envelope before shredding it into oblivion, they've decided to release it on a Friday, bucking the usual trend of Monday-Tuesday release cycles for albums. Metallica will likely be making the entire album playable on Guitar Hero III that day as well, so attentive gamers should keep their ear to the ground.

If you're looking to ride the lightning down to penny lane on a plastic guitar, you're going to have to wait, according to siblings and RedOctane founders Kai and Charles Huang. Despite the hordes of rumors circulating on the Internet (And watch out; that Internet is crazypants!) stating Metallica will be featured in a standalone game similar to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the brothers Huang preempted the hearsay, for now: "We're not ready to comment about Metallica yet, but what I will say is that we'd love to work with all of the top rock bands of all time, whether it's Aerosmith or Metallica or AC/DC or Led Zeppelin. If we get an opportunity to work with those bands, we would love to do that." A Metallica song, "One," was featured in Guitar Hero 3.

Although we've never done it before, we assume naming a mainstream hard-rock/metal album is a somewhat daunting task. It needs to sound terrifying, yet accessible. It should include some variation on "death." It must be original, as references to the underworld/anger/murder can start to blend together after a while. And most importantly, it needs to be easily read in a ferocious snarl.

Rumors are swirling about the release date of Metallica's forthcoming album. NME reports October 28, while Billboard says September, which jives with what Lars Ulrich told the BBC back in March. It's kind of like on the playground that time when Julie heard from Charles who heard from Billy that got it secondhand from Abigail that you totally picked your nose in math class. Clearly, the as-yet-untitled album will arrive in the fall.

Official word has come, however, that the band will augment the release of its ninth studio opus with a recently launched website Mission:Metallica.com. The site promises fans the chance to win, amongst other things, backstage passes to every show this summer, album excerpts and bonus live tracks. Also, something called Mission:Metallica Platinum promises even more, including a direct mailing of the album on the street date. The website does not seem totally operational yet, but interested parties can sign up for more information.

Related links:
MissionMetallica.com
Metallica.com
Metallica on MySpace

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Metallica’s progress on a new album has taken a turn back in time...to the '80s. NME reports that the band’s new album, which is due out in late-spring 2008, will feature the soaring, melodic sounds of the band’s heyday material, rather than the more loaded recent material.

"These new songs echo some of our stuff from the '80s - long, epic journeys through different musical landscapes, heavier, but a lot more melodic,” drummer Lars Ulrich told the British music publication.

A look back may be just what the band needs, after years of trouble adjusting to the Internet era both sonically and philosophically. Still, something tells us Metallica won’t be offering the album digitally the way Radiohead did.

The new record is currently untitled and being produced by Rick Rubin.

Related links:
Metallica talks to NME
Metallica.com
Metallica on MySpace

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Thanks to a recent court ruling, a lucky couple from Kungälv, Sweden is free to name its newborn baby girl…um, Metallica.

As originally reported on Blabbermouth and then expanded upon by Stereogum, the girl’s parents checked twice with Swedish tax agency Skatteverket to make sure the name was okay, and they were given the go-ahead both times because, believe it or not, there was already a girl in Sweden named Mettalica.

Only when the couple officially filed the name did Skatteverket object, suddenly insisting that the name was inappropriate because of its hard-rocking implications. After her parents won an appeal with the district court, the little girl’s unusual name was declared 100 percent legal and, perhaps more importantly, 100 percent safe for both her and anyone she comes in contact with. Oh, Sweden.

Related Links:
Stereogum
Blabbermouth

The documentary Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster recently won the award for best documentary at the Independent Spirit Awards.

The film, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost), offers a behind-the-scenes look at Metallica as its band members confront personal demons and their relationships with each other.

"It's both exciting and gratifying to know that the Independent Spirit Awards has acknowledged our film as the best documentary of 2004,” said drummer Lars Ulrich. “Never could we have imagined the impact this film would have on our lives, and the lives of others. Metallica has always tried to push the envelope as much as possible. Exposing ourselves to such a degree in this film was never really part of the plan—and none of us had any idea of how it would turn out. However, it worked out to be something truly special for all of us."

The film’s DVD package is currently available on Paramount Home Entertainment.

Rarely has a book been so aptly titled as this superfluous, for-the-fans-only history of Metallica. But, given that James, Lars, Kirk and Cliff/Jason/Robert purport to be one of the biggest metal bands in the world, even an overpriced niche publication like this is bound to rake it in.

The book repackages band newsletters and interviews from past years. Photos abound: This celluloid cornucopia includes rare pics—albeit most of them suggestive of the dangers of tetanus. Rating high on the Velveeta-meter, though, are reproductions of handwritten quips by band members. Imagine the thrill of reading “For a good time … Kill Yerself” in Hetfield’s own scrawl! Now isn’t that worth missing a payment or two on the double-wide?

This book reads more like an episode guide to a soap opera about self-absorbed headbangers in search of a fourth member. Perhaps it should have been titled Metallica: Three Men and a Bassist.

While other artists were getting rich crooning power ballads in the ’80s, Metallica played fast and heavy, singing about war and alienation. When others wore spandex and make-up on stage, they wore jeans and T-shirts.

Now they’ve made a rock documentary that strays from the usual band-plays-grueling-tour formula and instead depicts them undergoing group therapy and constantly bickering while recording yet another hit album. When detractors said the film was too long and that it might resemble a real-life version of the cult-classic rock ’n’ roll satire This Is Spinal Tap, they trusted the filmmakers’ vision and didn’t cut any of the two-hour, 20-minute running time.

The documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster is an in-depth emotional profile of three long-time friends who come close to losing their band and each other as they confront a midlife crisis.

“This film turns the rock genre on its head. Most rock documentaries deify rock stars, but this film humanizes them and puts them on the same level as us,” says co-director Joe Berlinger, who along with his partner Bruce Sinofsky, met Metallica in 1996 when the band allowed them to use their music for free in the documentary Paradise Lost.

“Therapy saved us. That’s very un-metal,” says guitarist Kirk Hammett.

The movie—which began filming in 2001 and took two years to complete—was originally meant to boost sales of Metallica’s first album of new material in six years. But on the first day of shooting, the band began group therapy after long-time bassist Jason Newsted called it quits, and the filmmakers realized they were onto something more than just a “making of the album” documentary.

“This is a film about relationships, about people in crisis,” says Sinofsky. “It just happens to be the biggest hard-rock band of all time. These guys are professing to everybody that you can learn communication, that you can learn to deal with things that have been festering for 20 years.”

With Newsted gone, the remaining band members—Hammett, singer/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich—start working on a new record with producer Bob Rock. Just as therapy starts to reveal deep rifts in the band, Hetfield enters rehab to battle alcoholism after his wife kicks him out of the house.

“We shut up for so long just to keep the ball rolling so it wouldn’t disintegrate, and finally we came to a point where we had to let it all out,” says Hetfield.

The singer returns 11 months later, but can only record four hours a day as he tries to spend more time with his wife and three children.

“Going to therapy on its own is tough enough, but inviting a camera …” mused Hetfield when asked why the band allowed so much intrusion into their professional and private lives. “Why did we do it? Metallica is always open for challenges. It was a mirror to see ourselves in, and once we started, we couldn’t stop. The more the cameras were there, the more we became real with each other and it became a truth serum.”

“When James went into rehab, it felt like we might lose him and Metallica might not be what it ever was,” said Hammett, who acts as a buffer between a sulking and intractable Ulrich and a controlling Hetfield. Hammett gets some help from producer Bob Rock, who throughout the film balances the artistic egos of Ulrich and Hetfield and manages to turn average riffs into powerful, penetrating songs.

The band gradually rediscovers its love for aggressive music, but not before Ulrich and Hetfield air their grievances in some of the most emotional and potentially embarrassing moments in the film.

“We decided that we were going to be as accessible as possible,” says Ulrich. “In the wake of that, we’re setting ourselves up for criticism, but we don’t think much about things like image.”

Some critics said that a section featuring Ulrich selling his collection of modern paintings at the Christie’s auction house for millions of dollars does not belong in the film as it has nothing to do with Metallica and just seems to underline the band’s fabulous wealth and their being out of touch with every day life, but the drummer disagrees.

“I wanted this film to really go into who we were, and that is a big part of me,” Ulrich says. “Some people might find it odd, some might even find it distasteful, but art has been my great escape and my great passion, that’s where I go when I’m not with my family and I’m not with Metallica.”

In the end, they complete their album, St. Anger, which goes on to sell more than 1.5 million copies in the United States. They recruit new bassist Robert Trujillo, credit therapist Phil Towle for saving the band from breaking up, and go on a sold-out world tour.

“We have the best relationship we’ve ever had,” Ulrich says. “We’re psyched that people still give a shit.”

For his part, the imposing and impenetrable Hetfield is now a changed and sober man.

“You go from being a completely one-man show to being a father of three kids and having a wife, plus doing your job,” he says. “It’s tough to adjust at times, but I’m not resorting to the drink. I know there are other ways of filling that hole of connecting with people, and music is certainly a gift. I found that the real reason I’m out on the road is connecting with people and enjoying that two-and-a-half hours that we’re on the stage.”