[mikkupikku]

Remember that Metallica band members played an active driving role in those lawsuits against their own underage fans. It wasn't just the RIAA / record company organizations behaving cruelly, it was Metallica themselves. Fuck Metallica.

[olivierestsage]

Another person who I remember really coming out as a villain in that era was Gene Simmons from KISS: "Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars."[1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/10/kiss-frontman-we...

[halJordan]

Man back when ars was good. Feels like you're pouring salt into a wound posting that link.

[tombert]

Wow, I already didn’t like him. Reading this feels validating.

[wnevets]

It's even more egregious after watching interviews of a young Lars bragging about trading bootleg cassette tapes.

[aduty]

Lars was always a scumbag.

[Henchman21]

An insult to scumbags everywhere.

[maplethorpe]

Probably the best drummer there ever was though.

[wnevets]

I doubt anyone in Metallica (even Lars) believes that.

[y-curious]

The venn diagram is closer to a circle than you think

[lazystar]

at the top there's Neil Pert, then a huge gap, then anyone else.

[Henchman21]

And then, if we grant that Peart is the best of the best, the 100 names that would follow in any sane list, Lars is no where to be seen. I doubt he'd crack the top 250.

[mindslight]

I still can't listen to a Metallica song on the radio without feeling a bit sour. I wasn't a die hard superfan or anything, but their songs were pretty good. It really didn't help that they had cultivated this tough guy image and then turned into total whiners about piracy.

[lovehashbrowns]

I became a super fan for a brief second during the Napster days, that’s literally what got me into metal in the first place. Decades later and I’m still soured on them too. Napster days were so good for music discovery. I mean, they’re better now with all these algos, obviously, but it was weirdly fun to download a track with tons of random strings in the name and end up with some parody Weird Al track and that’s how you discovered something new.

[petre]

It all went downhill after Metallica '91. Cover for Whiskey in the Jar, come on. It's okay when everyone is drunk I guess, otherwise just litsten to the Dubliners' version or Thin Lizzy's.

[Hamuko]

Not that surprising considering that James Hetfield has no qualms about his music being used for literal torture.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/19/usa.guantanamo

[mistrial9]

consider the Virginia Tech football games too.. somehow, that is related?

[reactordev]

Killed Napster and forced them overseas to create one of the most toxic streaming platforms for music the world has ever seen. Spotify. Sean Parker used to be cool…

[tombert]

IIRC, Dave Grohl actually gave a lot of shit to Metallica, claiming that it would be one thing if this were some indie band selling cassettes having their music stolen, but it's another when multi-millionaires are crying that they aren't getting extra money.

Found it: https://youtu.be/Yy45qY9c49k

[codazoda]

His book (maybe he has several) is fantastic.

[roegerle]

how they were able to recover from that is beyond me.

[dotancohen]

They didn't. I haven't bought a Metallica album since the black album. That was a decade earlier, because everything since sucked, but as I got older I thought about maybe expanding my tastes. I avoided Metallica specifically for their disrespect of their fans.

[DaSHacka]

Did they not? Seems like they're still quite popular, and I knew people in HS (for reference, late 2010s to early '20s) that were big into the band.

Additionally, looking at Google Trends[0], it seems they peaked in 21st-century online popularity in 2008 and had another notable uptick in 2017.

I think a lot of us want the assholes to have suffered real consequences for their behavior, but want is different from did.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

[larodi]

Yeah, people with botox pumped lips, pink tops, and sporty fancy wear. Basically the cream of the commercial listener who understands exactly zero of the musical substance, but is there, because ads were aired on TikTok.

Faith is not without a sense of humor.

Btw, perhaps you may not know that there's this crossover looks now - a mix of black-metal and hiphop hoodies, and all the KPop adopted this writing for their pikachu songs.

[walletdrainer]

>people with botox pumped lips

Please don’t use Botox for lip fillers, you will almost certainly die or wish you had.

[to11mtm]

I think they've got some ineffable qualities, and frankly there's lots of other genres where people might decide to give them a listen...

Which is really just a roundabout way of saying I think Apocalyptica did a lot to help refresh them in the modern zeitgeist (Yes I know it was older, but I remember youtube videos causing it to enter at least my and other's conscious space...)

[petre]

Yeah, they're popular like Ariana Grande is after the Manchester bombing. But just about everything they released after the Black album is kind of lame. The Budapest tickets sold out pretty fast, but they're still lame regardless if people go to their concerts. Compared to Depeche Mode and other bands that only get better with age, Metallica just play the same old songs or worse. And they're not a cult band like Death or The Sisters of Mercy either.

[justsomehnguy]

>> Compared to Depeche Mode and other bands that only get better with age, Metallica just play the same old songs or worse

Hah!

COuple of years ago I was sipping beer in some local bar and there were some music video running on a TV. Aged angsty men with an "AMERICA YEAH bald eagle screech" vocals and visuals. "What a lame Metallica copycats" I thought. And then the title card shown up...

[DiskoHexyl]

But they kind of are (a cult band). Most people in the world know Metalica while hardly anyone ever heard any of the Sisters Of Mercy's tracks.

Normal people don't care- they just enjoy a ballad or two.

I've long since learnt to separate an artist from their art- a fair share of the musicians, actors, directors etc aren't really a decent bunch

[petre]

Not really, they missed that chance when they released Load and Reload and who knows what they did after that. I got fed up with their foray into commercial music and moved on to prog metal and other more interesting stuff. If they had stopped after the black album or continued to release quality works, then things would be different, but they chose money, whining, lawyers and drunk teenagers as an audience. They became lame and popular, which excludes being a cult band. Cult bands are not very popular in fact, as you have yourself pointed out.

[10729287]

Who needs Metallica when we have Slayer ?

[donkeybeer]

Different styles. Slayer is more "history of death metal" thrash, Metallica is more "classic bay area" thrash. Personally I am more into the "history of death metal" type thrash and ambivalent about metallica but I appreciate them as artists.

[donkeybeer]

I appreciate Metallica but I don't know whats so special about them, that style of thrash metal was already being done on a much more advanced level by bands like Razor at that time, so if you had any personal disagreements with Metallica it seems historically it would have been quite easy to drop them.

[mlrtime]

Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightning are (IMO) classic full albums you listen cover to cover.

Doesn't mean they aren't assholes but I'll still listen to them any time.

[K0balt]

I enjoy them ironically by playing the MP3’s have of their songs that I definitely only ever got from ripping physical media that I definitely did not pirate because fuck Metallica lol.

[donkeybeer]

As I said I don't mind them, personally they are not in my list of favorite thrash bands, but they are also not in my list of sucky bands, they are competent and accomplished musicians. I just felt anyone shouldn't have felt much emotionality ditching Metallica for whatever reasons as at that time other bands were already playing far more advanced thrash metal.

[brunoborges]

You clearly haven't watched Stranger Things

[allarm]

I have and deeply regret the wasted time.

[Arubis]

Most of their fans didn't know and probably still don't. In my admittedly limited exposure (N=3 or 4), folks I know that were informed on Metallica's behavior in the Napster age that have since purchased anything from Metallica is zero.

[dostick]

As if they are not allowed to make mistakes. If you watched more recent interviews, they understand that it was not cool on their part. Musically once per album they still have some interesting and somewhat innovative tracks still.