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[KingsFanSince85]

Some might say over produced.

As an example for anyone who might watch the Classic Albums on Hysteria: there's a part where they are playing a long chord for one of the ballads, Mutt has them record six tracks for one guitar playing each single string of the chord

If that’s the case — then pretty much every album Queen ever released was overproduced, too.

Is it overproduced? To many subjective ears — sure. But as I joked above, any album could be considered overproduced by someone. Even the very best artists of all time don’t sound as good live as recorded. So there’s that.

I would just say that the results (sales and worldwide popularity) speak for itself.

Mutt Lange had the boys from Sheffield chase down a lofty goal — create a rock version of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. The 7 singles, several of which charted quite highly, and 25M+ albums sold demonstrate that they did a fair job of it.

As a fan of the previous albums — Pyromania, High N’ Dry and On Through the Night — I would have been fine with them going the AC/DC route and never straying far from the harder sound for which they’d been known. But I also understand the desire to develop, grow, and change.

Many criticize Metallica for doing that from the Black album and on. “Selling out”, as many put it. Going mainstream. But I believe it was James Hetfield that said something along the lines of “We’re 30+ years old with families. We’re not going to write the same music and lyrics we wrote when we were 20, single, and starving.”

Makes complete sense to me. People evolve. So, too, will their art (most the time).

FWIW, Mutt Lange also produced AC/DC’s Back in Black, which is the 2nd highest selling album of all-time. Trailing only MJ’s Thriller album.

With successes like that, it’s really hard to argue against his methods.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

But I understand that there's one word of advice for somebody thinking of opening a restaurant in California: "Don't." Might be a damper for you.

I think you can say that about just about anywhere. Most fail within 3 years. And if you are good and don't own your building you better hope you have an honest and ethical landlord. But some people just have it hard wired in their DNA. I know I resisted the call numerous times until I found a career that truly stuck.

My dad's second restaurant was in Davis and the one that went on the longest under his brand. Davis is a nice place, I had a really close family friend living in El Macero and one of my best friends in grade and middle school lived more in Davis proper, we'd bike or skate to the arcade on campus and really ride everywhere until we were driving age, a lot of good times there. I love the idea of riding to the American River trail and then heading to Folsom. I did my first metric century starting around David Lubin and riding through my old East Sac hood through CSUS, past SCDS and Jesuit before hitting the bike path and riding to Folsom and back. I can do that in Portland but have to hit a few busy streets and also ride through too many homeless encampments (granted the American River trail is not immune to that).

I believe the other family restaurant is still a Sacramento institution but I occasionally hear mixed things from friends who visit. For those who know where I'm referring, I will only say the last time I went there I had a wonderful dinner and wine tasting with my date and would gladly celebrate a special occasion there again.

 

[KingsFanSince85]

For the record I still love Pyromania. I have a pretty strong ballad threshold, Hysteria crossed it. Also the more I learned about how it was produced sealed that deal for me. By the time this record came out I had gone from Def Leppard, Ratt, Twisted Sister and AC/DC to the dying embers of first wave US hardcore and into the burgeoning Bay Area and thrash scenes.

The amount of good music I passed over because it was soft is kind of alarming to me today.

I’m giving you a hard time, of course, but I do understand your POV on this.

Hysteria was a drastic departure from their first 3 albums, the latter two of which were extremely popular. The more mainstream "Pop" sound wasn't for all their established fans. They actually probably lost a good portion of those fans at the time. But obviously gained a lot more fans via the change.

As I pointed out in my last reply, Metallica went through a similar metamorphosis with the Black album in 1991. Some old school fans suggest that the change began earlier with the "And Justice for All" album -- specifically in creating the video for "One". The Black album just sealed their fate with many of their loyal fans of a decade. And I get why. But I also understand the inverse.

One of the main criticisms I've heard over the decades with a band such as AC/DC is that all their albums/songs sound the same. They've hardly changed much over 50+ years. That tactic or choice will appeal to a faction of fans. But it will eventually age or tire out a lot of other fans.

It's a catch 22. Evolve and change and you're a sell out. Don't change and you become stagnant and repetitive.

IMO, there is no right or wrong answer. Except to follow your heart and do what you want to do. If you retain a large enough fan base -- you're all good. Many artists over the decades have made the wrong choice and eventually lost their large fan base. But AC/DC still has theirs despite never changing and both Def Leppard and Metallica still have theirs despite evolving and changing.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I’m giving you a hard time, of course, but I do understand your POV on this.

Hysteria was a drastic departure from their first 3 albums, the latter two of which were extremely popular. The more mainstream "Pop" sound wasn't for all their established fans. They actually probably lost a good portion of those fans at the time. But obviously gained a lot more fans via the change.

As I pointed out in my last reply, Metallica went through a similar metamorphosis with the Black album in 1991. Some old school fans suggest that the change began earlier with the "And Justice for All" album -- specifically in creating the video for "One". The Black album just sealed their fate with many of their loyal fans of a decade. And I get why. But I also understand the inverse.

One of the main criticisms I've heard over the decades with a band such as AC/DC is that all their albums/songs sound the same. They've hardly changed much over 50+ years. That tactic or choice will appeal to a faction of fans. But it will eventually age or tire out a lot of other fans.

It's a catch 22. Evolve and change and you're a sell out. Don't change and you become stagnant and repetitive.

IMO, there is no right or wrong answer. Except to follow your heart and do what you want to do. If you retain a large enough fan base -- you're all good. Many artists over the decades have made the wrong choice and eventually lost their large fan base. But AC/DC still has theirs despite never changing and both Def Leppard and Metallica still have theirs despite evolving and changing.

Justice is my favorite Metallica album despite it's production choices. I did not like the black album when I brought it home at midnight, tried my damnedest to love it, and as time has marched on I accept it as their choice to go in a new commercial direction but musically they stopped being interesting to me.

My issue with AC/DC is that I thought Bon brought a lot more to the table than Brian brings. I don't agree that they made the same album their whole career, I do agree that they've been trying to remake Back in Black ever since though. Since Bon died did we ever get another Touch Too Much? I could go down the list of Bon songs that they never really replicated in later years in any form. I put Back in Black alongside 5150 in categories of kickass band with new singer makes a great record but never matched it again. I don't want to get into the questions of whether or not much of Back in Black was Bon's material either. Unfortunately for me the band after Bon just wasn't a great band after Back in Black.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Justice is my favorite Metallica album despite it's production choices. I did not like the black album when I brought it home at midnight, tried my damnedest to love it, and as time has marched on I accept it as their choice to go in a new commercial direction but musically they stopped being interesting to me.

I'm on the same page with Justice being my favorite Metallica album, but I never really felt it was that far production-wise from Lightning/Puppets, I just heard a small evolution from album to album. Black Album was obviously a big shift and created a bunch of controversy at school - there were kind of three camps: "Sell-Out!!!", "It's different but I like it" (I was in this category...but I'll bet I haven't listened to it straight through since '95 or so), and "Hey, have you guys heard of this cool new Metallica band?" Good times.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I'm on the same page with Justice being my favorite Metallica album, but I never really felt it was that far production-wise from Lightning/Puppets, I just heard a small evolution from album to album. Black Album was obviously a big shift and created a bunch of controversy at school - there were kind of three camps: "Sell-Out!!!", "It's different but I like it" (I was in this category...but I'll bet I haven't listened to it straight through since '95 or so), and "Hey, have you guys heard of this cool new Metallica band?" Good times.

The big thing with Justice was the lack of audible bass guitar. Jason played on it, but they only allowed him to play the root notes of the guitar chords, and he was down in the mix because Metallica was scooping the mids on the guitars so much. This is one of those things hotly debated in guitar communities but it is generally accepted today that scooping the mids sounds awesome at home when you are playing by yourself but terrible when you put it into a mix and the guitar doesn't balance nicely with the bass.

James and Lars were also losing their hearing at this stage too so they turned down Jason to hear themselves.

Up until this stage they were playing in E standard and I think Bob Rock was the one that talked them into using drop tunings and D standard to achieve the heavier sound they wanted without scooping the mids. Now "heavy" music is almost always played in lower tunings.

The lesser complaints are people not liking Lars's drum sound, and that is because it was all done with closed mics, which I think also contributes to the other complaint that the production is too dry overall.

But they spent 3 album cycles crafting "the Metallica record" - they followed pretty similar sequences with a heavy opener on each side, a thrashing closer on Master and Justice (two of my all time favorite 'tallica songs, especially Dyers Eve), a ballad closing side one (and always track 4). An instrumental closed Lightning but was the penultimate track on Puppets and Justice etc. And when you just look at the songwriting, overall musicianship, and the progression from the 3 albums I think it's hard to argue they didn't perfect that formula on Justice.

Which is why it's also understandable they moved on.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

The big thing with Justice was the lack of audible bass guitar. Jason played on it, but they only allowed him to play the root notes of the guitar chords, and he was down in the mix because Metallica was scooping the mids on the guitars so much.

Oh. Well, that explains it. I've got some low-frequency hearing loss (possibly due to antibiotics during childhood) and I have the damnedest of times hearing a bass under layers of guitar. Like there's that chill section in Orion and I can follow the bass line there, but if the bass isn't front-and-center it's usually lost to me.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Oh. Well, that explains it. I've got some low-frequency hearing loss (possibly due to antibiotics during childhood) and I have the damnedest of times hearing a bass under layers of guitar. Like there's that chill section in Orion and I can follow the bass line there, but if the bass isn't front-and-center it's usually lost to me.

To be honest I really, really have to listen to hear the bass guitar on just about anything and don't separate it well. I think most of my loss is in the higher registers though as I also struggle to hear cymbal work. I have to really sit down, drop everything, and actively listen for those parts, and when the bass and guitar are playing the same notes just an octave down, I really have a hard time picking up where its coming from depending on the mix. That's with everyone, but Metallica did give Cliff room to shine here and there. Had he survived the bus accident I wonder what direction the band would have gone in, or if he'd have grown frustrated and left.

I always hear Randy Rhoads was also on the verge of doing that before the plane crash, just finishing up the tour and he was done.