Metallica track #2 poll

How could it be anything other than "Master of Puppets"?

yep

hi alex :)

sad but #2

i so wanted to cut it off after the black album

aw i love "the memory remains"

"The Four Horsemen" is one of my favorite Metallica songs ever. Narowly over Master and Ride.

Those first three are all classics, but "Master OF Puppets" is undeniable.

I'm a huge Gan of the title track on justice.

Fan

sad but #2

― some dude, Tuesday, March 12, 2013 3:19 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

nice.

Sad but 2x4

PS - Thought NYCNative was AiNYC!

But yeah, "Master," easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMegSkUQCpo

Has there been a track 4 poll? Track 4 on every Metallica album from "Ride The Lightning" through "Reload" (yes, even those two generally hated 90s albums) were all great.

I looooooooooove Horsemen but Puppets wins this, no contest. So epic.

Opening riff for Ride The Lightning melts faces and STILL it's Puppets

master of puppets

Track 4 on every Metallica album from "Ride The Lightning" through "Reload" (yes, even those two generally hated 90s albums) were all great.

lol @ any suggestion that "the unforgiven ii" is great

i love load and reload and "unforgiven ii" is still the worst

the answer to this is Ride the Lightning. just count the riffs

wow, i've always wondered about this:

Ulrich and Hetfield next assemble a click track that schematizes the song's various tempos.

Hetfield: "First I'll lay down a scratch rhythm, then he'll go in and do his drums. I think our click track situation is something unique from what other bands do because some songs have between 10 and 15 click-track samples, which really freaks people out. They can't understand it. Usually clicks keep the time steady, but we have many moods and grooves within each eight- or nine-minute song. So for every riff we figure out what tempo it sounds best at, to make it fit better with the whole thing's overall feel.

"Putting down the clicks for a couple of songs on Justice! took two days each. But when I tell that to other people they think I mean two hours or something."

mi always assumed they didn't use a click in the studio, that everyone just overdubbed to lars (who recorded with a live guide track maybe), and that there was a lot of master-level tape-cutting for the '80s records. this makes more sense.

more

’One’ was played entirely to a click track, and it took us probably half a day to figure out the varying tempos,” Flemming Rasmussen now recalls. “The chorus was actually a lot quicker than the verses, so I had to manually punch in and out a Linn Drum click track on the 24‑track to make sure we got that tempo transition over the bridge, before it then fell back to the original tempo for the verses. Kirk and James played their guide parts together with the drums. Then we took the tempo from that and, once we had laid down the click track, Lars did a quick run‑through and the guitarists played their parts to that. From there, we started building the track, section by section.
“The whole thing with that specific song — as well as several of the other songs — was their desire for a technical perfection that would have been easy in these days of computer editing but which, back then, we had to achieve manually. Lars’s playing had to be extremely tight, and we did 20‑ to 30‑second segments with me punching in and out over 18 drum tracks. When we got a good bit, we’d sit and listen to it a couple of times to make sure it was cool, and if, say, one hi‑hat hit was a little late, I’d chop out a tiny bit of tape with a razor to make it exactly right. That was a long and tiring process, and whereas it would now take about half a day to complete one of those drum tracks, back then it took us a minimum of three to four days. For each song I had a big envelope full of bits of two‑inch tape that I had chopped out, and I remember joking to Lars that they should hold a competition for the fans, enabling them to win lost bits from his drum tracks... He didn’t find that at all amusing. However, for that time, what we ended up with was almost computer‑accurate, even though it was just him playing.

“As for Kirk, he received cassette tapes all the time and he was sitting at home, composing solos. Then he came into the studio and played what he’d written, and most of the time we’d go, ‘Nah, we hate it.’ Lars actually constructed most of the solos on the album, and I’m pretty sure that famous solo on ‘One’ is a Lars/Flemming/Kirk construction. When it came to the actual performance, some it Kirk ad libbed, and he probably did five or six takes before we figured out which parts were great and put them together. Then he learned that and played it again. In the end, that solo probably took most of half a day to do.”

I remember joking to Lars that they should hold a competition for the fans, enabling them to win lost bits from his drum tracks... He didn’t find that at all amusing.

lol

i love this shit

How does Justice differ from Puppets?

"It's a lot... " begins Ulrich.

"Drier," continues Hetfield.

"A lot drier, and a lot more...

"In your face," Hetfield pipes in again. "Everything's way up front and there's not a lot of 'verb or echo. We really went out of our way to make sure that what we put on the tape was that we wanted, so the mixing procedure would be as easy as possible and not like the old saying, 'We'll save it in the mix.'"

"Puppets was very well recorded," says Ulrich, "and had a very huge sort of sound, but didn't really fuckin' come out of the speakers and hit you in the face."

"Compared to Ride the Lightning it did," Hetfield reminds him.

"I don't want to listen to Ride the Lightning," groans Ulrich.

"Flemming was in a reverb daze," explains Hetfield.

Did the experience of recording The $5.98 EP affect Justice's sound?

"I think we were pretty pleased with the way it was so upfront and raw," reckons Hetfield.

"We learned something from that mix," says Ulrich.

"We learned that the bass is too loud," says Hetfield.

"And when is the bass too loud?" chants Ulrich.

Together: "When you can hear it!"

"We learned that the bass is too loud," says Hetfield.

"And when is the bass too loud?" chants Ulrich.

Together: "When you can hear it!"

http://www.lucasforums.com/images/smilies/arms.gif

Also:

• The band moved to San Francisco, not New York.

• Cliff Burton died in autumn.

• Hetfield and Hammett alternate leads and vocals kinda misleading.

it reads that like an old vaudeville comedy skit

'verb

I have no idea what they're talking about, yet I find the behind-the-scenes stuff fascinating.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

you flush it out, you flush it out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE4MekLM5XY

out of that list, MoP is the best song, but not the best "Tallica song

mi always assumed they didn't use a click in the studio, that everyone just overdubbed to lars (who recorded with a live guide track maybe), and that there was a lot of master-level tape-cutting for the '80s records. this makes more sense.

not certain but the old old-school way of manufacturing a click, which appears to be what James is talking about, involved somebody playing and constructing the click by running a short segment of what they played backwards at speed. it's very, very hard to play to the old-school manufactured click, but it can be necessary depending on the order of tracking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhOca6kV24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNt6OXXaIgA

YEAAARH VIKA GOES WILD re: pplains' Youtube. She's got loads of grebt covers, "Battery" probably my favorite one (hah pun). And in her "Fade To Black" cover, she wears black nail polish. ♥

If Lars was a better drummer they wouldn't've had to use a click... just sayin

not true at all, it's pretty unavoidable if you're going to record everybody separately (especially if there are parts where the drums drop out). it makes me respect him more, that he could pull off some of those takes to an unforgiving click.

uh, very true... I've done plenty of recordings without a click, and without anyone playing with me. The time was good, so good in fact, I've had engineers sync delays up that never wavered. When the drums drop out.. you mark the time on a hi-hat or whatever that cane be pulled out in mixing. They had to come up with ways to get good takes out of him cuz he such a shitty drummer

I am not a musician but I don't think the correlation between shitty drummers and using click tracks is scientifically valid. I mean, Neil Peart used click tracks for years and nobody thinks he's a shitty drummer. This doesn't mean Lars doesn't suck. He does. But I don't think his using a click track is evidence for this.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

MAS-TER!

MAS-TER!

four horsemen

Peart uses a click cuz he needs to sync up with sequencers and shit...apples and oranges. But using a click does not equal shitty drumming. In fact its hard to use a click, but in terms of the how and why they needed Lars to use one, its a sign of his lacking.

i guess so, if by "why" you mean so that it would be easier to do tons of punch-ins and record the drums in short sections. what i admire about lars' playing is compositional anyway, not technical.

nice spread on the results btw. :)

um I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is actually RTL and not MOP title track.

sure, MOP title track IS classic, is well-constructed, and has that beautiful interlude into thunderous conclusion, BUT....

RTL title track, while more compact, has a hell of a whallop.

that harmonized opening into the opening chuggy riff is what fist pumping is made of, and James screams notes he probably was no longer able to sing five minutes after they recorded the song. plus it's a fucking song about dying in the electric chair. MOP is about ....the danger of drugs. idk.

the "someone help me, please god help me" part is legendary, and that middle section where the tapping solo comes in into the speed up with the crazy Hammett solo is my favorite bit in their history.

Puppets is the boxer that doesn't land any knockout punches but wins on points after 12 rounds. RTL is a third round KO. that's not an insult on MOP. still one of my favorite songs. but it has a different aim, whereas RTL wants to kill you.

agreed. In general I find MOP (the album) slightly overrated compared to RTL

now can we get a track #1 poll going??

what i admire about lars' playing is compositional anyway, not technical

just wanted to highlight jordan’s otm defense of lars from eight years ago lol