Friday, February 22, 2013

Because why the hell not? Jan 12, 2007 9:55PM PST

Let's look at Metallica albums "Ride the Lightning", "Master of Puppets", and "... And Justice For All" and figure out the best mixture of them to put on one album. Please note that "Dyer's Eve" has had to be eliminated because it's number 9 on Justice and I'm going for 8 songs, so it just confuses me.(It was such a good song though, oh well) Also, some instrumentals have been moved to 8 rather than 7 so I can compare more similar songs. Here we go:(Note: this is really just for Metallica fans, so I haven't made much to explain to non-fans. sorry.) #1(the thrash opener) Blackened. It doesn't have as good an acoustic intro as "Fight Fire With Fire" or "Battery"(or y'know an acoustic intro) but this easily wins the spot for album intro because it's the most well thought out of all of them, most epic, and most melodic. #2(title track) Master of Puppets. In my opinion "Ride the Lightning" has the best solo of any Metallica song and "... And Justice For All" is one of the most epic songs Metallica's done, clocking in at over 9 minutes. But... you pretty much HAVE to choose "Master of Puppets". I like how the song seems to tell a story with the guitar solos helping build up to the climax where a drug addict is questiong his life and the fall leading to his death. Also, Hetfields vocals sound inhuman. Very cool. #3(the crunching riff slower heavy song): For Whom the Bell Tolls. In my opinion, "The Thing That Should Not Be" can be great when I'm in the mood for it, but otherwise drags on too long from repetition. "Eye of the Beholder" was hard to pass up because it has some of the best lyrics in a Metallica song from lines like "Energy derives from both the plus and negative" and "I hunger after independence, strengthen freedom's ring". In the end though, "Bells" was the most musically interesting of these songs with its high flying opening solo and eerie retelling of an Ernest Hemmingway novel. #4(the ballad): Fade to Black "One" was a great song but this is one of the places on ....And Justice where the lack of bass really bothers me. The machine gun outro was a great idea but would have sounded better with bass to give it a more full sound(RIP Cliff). "Welcome Home(Sanitarium)" was great and eerie but I personally found the solo somewhat uninspired. Fade to Black's ending solo is literally what got me into music, so I simply cannot deny its amazingness. #5(the storm after the ballad calm) Disposable Heroes. "Trapped Under Ice" had some great lyrics and riffs, but can't quite compare to the epic scope of "Disposable". Meanwhile, I found "Shortest Straw" surprisingly uninteresting. It repeats too much and is a bit slow for my tastes, though it does have some interesting lyrics that some relate to Burton's death. "Disposable Heroes", like "Master", does an excellent job of telling a dark story through music. It nails the deadly battle scene vibe it's going for with chugging riffs, Hetfeild's barking vocals and a very memorable solo. #6(the melodic slower heavy song) Escape "Harvester of Sorrow" really brings you in to the darkness of domestic violence and has a nicely melodic main riff while "Leper Messiah" though a bit uninsteresting musically totally gets across what I was saying last blog(entitled "Freaking Satanic Christians.. Damn them" if your interested) with some great lyrics regarding religious hypocrisy. But in the end "Escape" is just fun to sing along to("out for my own out to be feee -ee-e-ee") and has the best riff. #7(thrash answer to thrash intro) Damage Inc. "Creeping Death" was a very close runner up if not only for the "DIE DIE DIE" chorus and its grand representation of the Angel of Death from a real Bible story, not to mention it's actually one of the most accurate pop-culture retelling of this story due to that it understands the dark nature of the situation. "Frayed Ends of Sanity" sounded cool with its tale of a schyzophrenic(sp?) but neither quite compares to the absolute speed and power that Damage Inc. has. "Bleeding on your knees conformity, or dying on your feet for honesty", "honesty is my only excuse, try to rob us of it but it's no use!" Rebellious songwriting at its finest. #8(instrumental) Call of Ktulu The appropriately named "Orion" is cool because it actually does make you think of stars and the universe with its spacey/laid back sound and lovely bass interlude. As for "To Live is to Die" I loved the interlude with the string section and the softer melodic parts of it, as well as eerily relevant lyrics to Burton's death written by Burton. Unfortunately, it dragged on and repeated too much about everywhere else in the song. "Call of Ktulu" draws the listener in with a moody intro and never stops being interesting once it becomes faster. It also has the most epic ending to the instrumentals. While I love all the instrumentals, this was in all honesty a no brainer. Well, that's my two cents. Feel free to tell me what songs you would have chosen and why.

No comments:

Post a Comment