Metallica Mix & Mastering Is Allegedly A Mess

Interesting Thread

I'm not a Metallica fan at all. Heavy Metal generally isn't my thing, though there are some metal acts that I do like. I understand Metallica's position as some kind of pinnacle act of its genre, but they've never really come close to selling me a record. It's a little tricky for me to like HM because I just can't get at the kinds of themes that interest HM acts. There used to be a guy who I'll just refer to as SV that I used to know back in High School who was totally into his stuff, and it was he who introduced me to Van Halen and the tapping thing - but I just couldn't get at the rest of the silly posturing. And there used to be a tonne of silly posturing in Heavy Metal.

Anyway, it seems the latest album sounds like an over-compressed sonic pancake and the punters are actually a little more than upset with the production value. If you want to know what musician types are saying about it, here's an interesting thread at iComp.

If you feel brave enough to listen to the whole album, you can do so track by track, over here.

If you want to know what engineering boffin types are saying there's an interesting thread here.

Here's a link to a diagram that shows just how crunched the sound is on the current Metallica album.

Now, the funny thing is, yes I can telll all the distortions and clipping, and they are unpleasant indeed, but I kept thinking "isn't this what it has always sounded like?"

Any way, I just thought I would just put that out there... and wait for the hate-mail