Metallica=Big Business: 1. Wall Street Journal reports about new albums sucking. 2. Metallica rebrands itself

Metallica is big business, and not just because of the recent release of these amazingly comfortable "Master of Puppets" underpants.

1. Wall Street Journal reports on quality of new album:
With all the upheaval in the financial markets, is there one financial institution that is still making money and may still be worth reporting on? Why yes, there's always Metallica. I know, I know...Metallica are not a metal band and no longer matter at all. I get it. Still, if you're my age or older...you remember a time when they mattered very much. As such, imagine my surprise when I opened the Wall Street Journal to check on my extensive and diverse stock portfolio (Earache Records, Blue Grape Merchandise, Axxis Drum Pedals, EMG Pickups) and found news about Metallica's new album instead. As it turns out, the new album sucks balls, and not just for the usual reasons (lack of musical ability, lack of songwriting skills, lack of a drummer etc). If you thought St. Anger's mix was bad, Death Magnetic has some issues as well, and it has nothing to do with Trujillo's crabwalking. Fans are signing petitions to have the album remixed, and album's mastering engineer agrees, saying:

"Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one."

Those are exactly the words of every single person that has been involved with every Metallica project after And Justice For ALl. You can read the article here, or just look at this fancy graphic, courtesy of the WSJ. I don't want them to sue our asses, and I believe that by crediting them, we'll be just fine. I took one class about law in a Community College once. I'm an expert.





2. Metallica hires Turner Duckworth to rebrand itself
What should an ailing band that has not produced quality music in ages do in order to better itself? First you hire a psychiatrist (as we saw in Some Kind Of Monster), and then you hire a branding agency. Why? Metallica is a brand, you see, and as such it deserves the same treatment that the likes of Coke and Amazon.com have gotten from Turner Duckworth. Look, I'm not naive. I don't object to this on the basis that branding implies big business. I'm okay with that. I know that Metallica makes tons of money, and that they're a business with employees like any other type of company. My objection is based on the fact that Metallica bandmembers honestly think that this is even worth pursuing. Forgive me for using such an overused comparison, but this is like rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic. Kerry King (out of all people) said it best. Metallica are a sinking ship. A huge, bloated ship. Read the story here.


One of the primary components of a brand is a logo. Turner Duckworth no doubt charged tons of money to the bloated monster known as Metallica to make their logo back into what it was during And Justice For All.

Sonic Violence: Metal's Answer To Right Said Fred

As we have stated here at M.I. before, the Hard N' Heavy Grindcore compilation was an extremely important landmark in the world of death metal. Not really. Still, that damn video continues to deliver joy every single time we watch it. Pretty amazing feat, since it was more than 15 years ago that each of us bought it at our local mall's Suncoast store.

Yes, the name of the video was largely incorrect ("Boring Death Metal To Fall Asleep To" would have been more accurate), the animation was laughable, and many of the bands were awful. But hey, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette. By far one of the greatest eggs to be broken in order for this great metal omelette was Sonic Violence. Many critics have argued that Cerebral Fix was the lowest point in the video, and perhaps those critics are right. But when it comes to sheer stupidity, musical madness, Right Said Fred-like fashion choices and extremely quotable content, Sonic Violence are the kings.


As you watch the video below, note that they have to use two bass players in order to replicate the heaviness of their prior bass player. Perhaps they should have looked into having one bass player use something a bit more substantial than a damn Peavy 2 x12! (Hence my use of the "budget metal" label.)

Gene Hoglan's Ballbag of Cassettes

A few weeks back fellow Metal Inquisition staffer SkullKrusher posted some gems from his vinyl collection. I, of course, also have a respectable collection of metal vinyl, but instead I thought I'd share with you something else very special--my metal cassette collection.

Yes, I know that vinyl is much cooler, but I'm a child of the 80s; the audio cassette provided the soundtrack to much of my life. I still remember buying my first cassette in 5th grade (Ugly Kid Joe's As Ugly As They Wanna Be EP) and making my dad drive me to the Wiz so I could buy Metallica's black album (not worth the gas it cost). I spent countless hours of my teen years making shitty mix tapes from CDs and stuff I taped off of WSOU (back when they still played real metal). And really, when it comes to reproducing the muddy, lifeless production of Scott Burns what better choice is there than a hissing, mangled cassette?

And now, without further ado, I present to you six gems from my metal cassette collection:



Still to this day, Demilich's Nespithe remains one of the most twisted and original death metal albums of all time. Featuring the sickest guttural vocals ever recorded and bizarre, nonsensical song titles like "The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed)" these guys put Finland on the map when everyone was busy jerking off to Swedish death metal. I bought this cassette from drummer extraordinaire Dave Witte a few year ago when he was selling off his cassette collection (What an idiot!).

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One of the few black metal bands that does not blow. These guys are like the Cynic of black metal. Not nearly as technical, but you can hear a lot of jazz and progressive influences. And instead of robot vocals you get weirdo goth vocals that sound like a cross between Leonard Cohen and Peter Murphy. A lot of the songs on this demo were re-recorded for their full length, which is awesome, but this remains my favorite stuff they've ever done because of the rawer production. I got this tape from Double Decker Records in Allentown, PA back when I was in college. They bought some dude's metal collection and it was the sickest I've ever seen. Just about every great metal record released in the 80s in either mint edition or still sealed as well as tons of early 90s black metal that must now be worth a small fortune (I still regret not having bought more, but I was a poor college student), and a bunch of tapes and t-shirts (I bought a size XL Dark Angel "LA Caffeine Machine" t-shit that was so big it came down to my knees).

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I have no idea why I bought this tape. I can get into De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, but this fucking sucks. It's a live bootleg and it sounds like shit. I've only ever listened to it once and I couldn't even get through the first song. Is this at least worth anything?

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Here's a fun game to play with friends when you're doing laps around the Newark airport waiting for someone's flight to arrive: put the Grindcrusher comp in your tape deck and see if you can name all the bands without looking at the case. Sure some of them are easy, but I dare most of you retards to tell the difference between Intense Degree and Sore Throat. When I played this game with Lucho Metales he couldn't even guess Repulsion (POSER)!

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Gorguts's early material doesn't get nearly as much love as it deserves. As far as brutal mid-tempo 90s death metal goes, it doesn't get any better than this. Plus, it's one of the few albums Scott Burns ever produced that doesn't sound like complete shit. Blue Grape, they just don't make merch like you used to.

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When I'm cruising over the Pulaski Skyway in my Mercury Cougar there's nothing better than singing along to this, my favorite Iron Maiden album, blasting out of my tape deck. When I saw them last month and they played "Moonchild" and "The Clairvoyant" during the encore I was so excited that I was momentarily able to forgot about Janick Gers prancing around onstage like a girl twirling his guitar.