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Originally Posted by The Batlord
I'm tempted to just go and listen to the two albums back to back to see just how we're listening to these albums and apparently hearing two entirely different things. To me AJFA is even more brutal than MoP.
Again. I just don't understand this. At the beginning it's about as melodic as "Fade to Black", but then it turns into what I see as Metallica's most brutal song of all time. I mean at the end that song just ****ing destroys. I mean to me that's what AJFA is about. Welding melody (though usually never as melodic as RtL) to their heaviest most complex music ever. If AJFA can be seen as a gateway to the Black Album, then it's because Metallica just couldn't top it and decided to just go for the money cause they couldn't think of anything else to do.
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Never said you were defending Metallica's credibility. I was just making a side note I found interesting that had nothing to do with the rest of the post other than to show that Metallica's jump into commercialism and "selling out" started before The Black Album (hence why the Black Albums contents should not have been shocking).
AJFA on the whole isn't more brutal than any previous release. Especially not "One". At this point we probably are hearing different things. The only thing heavy about the end of "One" is the chug riffing at the end. Heaviness at its most basic. It is one of the reasons the song still finds more frequent radio play on my local
"hard rock" station than any other Metallica song. Yes, a "hard rock" station (which they classify as some sort of false mixture of Nirvana, Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Three Days Grace...you get the point). I'm not making this up. "One" was the song that put AJFA in the hands of mainstream suburban teen metal heads and drove the band to a new level of popularity. "Whiplash" didn't do it. "Fade to Black" didn't do it. Even the epic qualities of "Master of Puppets" didn't do it (the album found international, though not mainstream US success). "One" is a song that has a short streak of heaviness, but is ultimately as accessible as "Enter Sandman", despite any differences between the two. It wasn't as if suddenly the masses thought "hey, I just realized this band is pretty good". The only time this happens is when there is an abrupt musical change. The first one Metallica experienced was with AJFA (it went platinum after nine weeks). The second one was even more abrupt with The Black Album, made apparent by its success.
If simple chug riffing is your description of heavy than MAYBE "One" would be somewhere towards the top of the band's heaviest. But seriously, the brutal speed of "Whiplash" (or most anything else from Kill Em All) is way heavier all things accounted for, not to mention it goes through the whole song. "Fade to Black" may be melodic, but it just isn't built for the radio the way "One" happened to be. And even if it was, why didn't it get all the attention "One" did upon release? Melodic doesn't mean accessible.
One other thing that had an effect on The Black Album was the band's ability to perfom AFJA live. It wasn't that the songs were difficult, but rather they were too long. Another In Flames parallel. In Flames abandoned the melodic death metal sound because the songs simply didn't work live. Both these bands put emphasis on their live performances, and when the performances where negatively affected, the music changed. In Metallica's case, it meant shorter songs. It wasn't a simple matter of "going for the money", which is an accusation thrown around quite a bit in the metal community (for many bands, and for all it is equally annoying). Bands must enjoy what they do first and foremost. If you don't like what you play live, you won't last. Metallica's new direction wasn't just because they wanted to "sell out". They took a direction they could have fun with, and people happened to like it. I don't blame them for that.