Like 489,999 like-minded people, a couple weeks ago, picked up the most talked about album of this year, aside from maybe Chinese Democracy. Yes, I am talking about Metallica's new Death Magnetic. Maybe you've heard of it.
However, my question is, have you heard it?
I'm sure many of you deployed the ironic tactics and downloaded the CD illegally. Hell, it dropped almost a week early on torrents. The excitement for some people was tantamount to a six-year-old on his birthday…nay, like a pimply faced teenager twenty-something year old fumbling in the dark, on the verge of losing his sacred virginity, I pounced all over the shady woman album, and within 20 minutes, I had:
Death Magnetic. And herpes.
Unzipped and ready to go, I first decided to listen to "Unforgiven III". Because that's about as far as my Metallica education goes: "Unforgiven I and II." And to my surprise, the audio quality was to be reckoned with. Then I tried various other tracks, including "The Day That Never Comes"; each one aurally raped me with a studded ear-dildo. I thought to myself, "What the fuck? Did some effable person purposely fuck with the quality, or was this some kind of jank-i-fied webrip from hell?"
My first Metallica hard-on was flaccid. It literally sounded like my copy of the CD was not recorded by the Rick Ruben, but by Rich Rubenstein, the hobo on my corner. The quality was that of a tin can wedged in his ass, ever so purposefully mic'd.
Whether or not your intentions to buy Death Magnetic are not on trial here. I bought the album, as I mentioned previously. Because I am a consumer whore. And because it was only $9 on Amazon. I cannot even buy lunch at that price anymore. However, that's a topic for a whole other column, though.
I ripped it, a bit more jaded this time around, at 320KB/S and placed it, carefully named and cataloged, into iTunes. Seconds later, I was befuddled and bemused: the sound was still that of Ass-Hobo! I have cassette tapes with better quality than my rip! Foul, I cried! What foul beast is this!
So, like every self-respecting person, I turned to internet forums, only to find out there were thousands of like-minded people that wondered the same thing. "Had something gone horribly wrong?" And then there were a group of UK people who didn't even get the CD in the box set. Again, a whole different column on that.
I found an article, talking about how the quality from the Guitar Hero III game is better than that of the CD! There's no distortion, it doesn't sound mashed and turned all the way up. Says Ian Shepherd, master engineer: "As you can see, the CD version…has been heavily compressed, limited and/or clipped, and sounds massively distorted as a result."
Shepherd shows that the CD release is fucking 10 decibels louder than the Guitar Hero version. You know what this means? It means that Death Magnetic sounds about twice as loud to the human ear. Chris Athens, says on the Gearslutz Mastering Forum thread:
Rick Rubin and Metallica are solely responsible for the end product. They gave the directions, they approved it. They are not rookies and no one at the label can ever bully these guys into anything. Both parties are 800 pound gorillas in the music industry. These guys are smart and in control. You and I may not like their taste, but it's not a Chris Athens record. It's a metallica record and this is what they want to give the record buying public. Only Metallica and Rick know why it sounds like it does.
That seems pretty clear to me. Welcome to 2008, guys. I had the full intention of pulling a Bono, opening my windows, and playing the CD very, very loudly. Now I have to do it with my bass turned almost all the way down. If I haven't mentioned it to this point, I am very, very displeased.
So, I did what I do when I'm pissed with musical things: I turned to the Brain Trust, consisting of Mitch Michaels (the editor), Dan Haggerty, and Dan Marsicano. Hags returned this wonderful bit I'm going to quote from the email he sent me:
This is something I have been thinking about for a while, and Ben hit a nerve talking about the production job on Death Magnetic. I've mentioned in my column about the tendency to turn up the production on newer albums.
Now when I thought of looking at older vs. newer mastered albums, I was thinking Rush. If you have heard the album Vapor Trails and the single "One Little Victory", that album suffered from being literally blown up so bad it screwed with the sound. So I was going to compare that song to one from the groups 80's albums on a graphic display to show what the difference means.
"Fade To Black"
"The Day That Never Comes"But Ben's comments made me think of that all of a sudden, so I put Metallica's "Fade To Black" in, then the new song similar to it "The Day That Never Comes". It's rather distinct to the point of alarming. Everything over the lines is flattened, which means the sound was clipped/flattened. Yikes.
I found a pretty neat petition that aims to have the album re-mixed and re-released. You can check that out here. It currently stands at about 7,000 signatures and growing rapidly. You don't have to sign up or even enter an email address.
Like it or hate it, folks, you can't deny the problem is there. It's bad enough that people got screwed out of the album in the UK (but did they really miss out on anything?). I haven't listened to the album all the way through yet. The hype is dead, and this CD is basically just a coaster for me now. Or, perhaps, to use an idea that Mitch mentioned: use it as a pizza cutter.
