If I spent as much time playing video games like Guitar Hero: World Tour as I do playing actual instruments like my cheap-o First Act VW guitar, I’d probably walk away knowing how to play “Eye of the Tiger” or “Feels Like the First Time.” Instead, what I get is a fleeting slot on a leaderboard and the fright of mentioning (to musician friends, predominantly) I’m a faux guitar slinger. Is there anything worse? Yes, I own a guitar. Two actually. But I only play fake guitar. How sad is that? Probably a lot like this.
Anyway, thanks to some electrical engineering nerds at Texas A&M it’s only a few scant years before I can put down the Guitar Hero crack and spend some quality cuddling time with my legit axe to learn “Looks that Kill” and “Bloodstone.” If I don’t I’ll end up like this asshole.
You know it’s metal when the members of Enslaved and director Patric Ullaeus (Dimmu Borgir, In Flames) hold invisible oranges against a chroma key backdrop. Actually, it’s just guitarist Ivar Bjørnson, bassist/vocalist Grutle Kjellson and Ullaeus cupping the almost uncuppable IOs. In fact, from the expression on their faces it looks like those are some damn heavy (metal) IOs. Look at Bjørnson. He can handle weird chords and obtuse compositional turns pretty well, but he’s struggling to keep that IO aloft. (more…)
“Robots 3, Humans 0,” huh? Decibot finds no evidence of a mechanical insurrection here, just ample proof that the latest version of Norma Jean is really just New Found Glory minus the doughballs with spiky hairdos. When you make videos like this, the terrorists win.
You’ve had almost five days to soak up Death Magnetic. To understand it. To feel it. To hear where Metallica ‘08 is coming from. But there’s one major problem with Death Magnetic. The production. Few address it strangely enough. Well, this guy was vocal, but the big boys at Rolling Stone said, “…Death Magnetic manages to sound huge, polished and tough.” Baloney! Blabbermouth’s Don Kaye almost touches upon it.
The production is garbage. It’s a sophomoric attempt to sound and ultimately convey heavy. A metal record should be loud, abrasive, and offensive. We’ll give Metallica and every other metal artiste that. The production and subsequent mastering of said production, however, should not (digitally) distort to such an extent that it sounds (even at low volume) like Metallica through blown speakers on a set of dollar store headphones.
To prove the point, we fed Decibot three samples of “The Day That Never Comes.”
Sample #1 is a wav extract from the Death Magnetic CD.
Sample #2 is a wav extract record label Warner Bros. Records sent to radio.
Sample #3 is a wav file clipped from radio.
Remember, Decibot isn’t an audio engineer or Grammy Award-winning studio guru, but it knows how to compute and print out a sound file. Those peaks, the first ones circled in red by Decibot, represent what basically is audio terrorism. In fact, those aren’t peaks at all. Those are plateaus! There’s almost no dynamic range. Death Magnetic is loud for loud’s sake, which isn’t a good reason at all. And that’s precisely why, despite having a solid set of songs, Metallica’s return-to-form album is the audio equivalent of torture. Trust us, we’ve had to endure Masonna and Merzbow.
How sweet will it be to have this genuine collectible in the Decibel office pantry? This is the ultimate realization of all of Decibot’s wildest fantasies, and Decibot has been scraping together every loose nickel and dime under the office couch (and in Andrew Bonazelli’s Members Only velcro wallet) to get a piece of… a piece of history. Many famous people, like Chad Gray of Mudvayne and Dimebag Darrell’s retarded nephews Cleetus and Jethro Abbott, have eaten really lousy food in Vinnie Paul’s kitchen while staring at the jaw-dropping merkin pasted on his swarthy chest. No, seriously, Decibot really needs to know: is this the new episode of Yacht Rock?
Decibot noticed a glaring omission in this year’s edition of the Decibel “Extreme Baseball Preview”: Dry Kill Logic. Like the Kansas City Royals, you can always count on them to be terrible.
