Lars Ulrich has finally talked about the sound quality on Death Magnetic, and guess what? It’s not his fault! It’s all you! Here’s what he told Blender.com in a recent interview:
“Listen, there’s nothing up with the audio quality. It’s 2008, and that’s how we make records. Rick Rubin’s whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I’ve heard that there are a few people complaining. But I’ve been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds fuckin’ smokin’.
Somebody told me about [people complaining that the Guitar Hero version of Death Magnetic sounds better]. Listen, what are you going to do? A lot of people say [the CD] sounds great, and a few people say it doesn’t, and that’s OK. You gotta remember, when we put out …And Justice for All, people were going, ‘What happened to these guys, this record? There’s no bass on it. It sounds like it was recorded in a fuckin’ garage on an eight-track.’ And now …And Justice for All is sort of the seminal Metallica record that supposedly influenced a whole generation of death-metal bands. The difference between back then and now is the Internet.”
Here is the difference. The top video is the album version, the bottom is the Guitar Hero version.
The difference is very audible. In the album version the drums are very high and the guitars aren’t as present. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. I think the problem here is people were expecting Metallica to put out a shit album, and when it was good, there wasn’t anything to complain about. “It’s Too Loud!” was the first thing that was blurted out so “the man” just ran with it. If someone would’ve tasted the album, literally licked it and said it didn’t taste good, that would’ve been what was wrong with the CD. The music is fine, but in this technological age, we have to have incentives to buy the hard copy of music. If you can make your CD taste like Jack Daniels I’ll buy it. Metallica didn’t do that, so this album sucks my balls.
