We have a keen sense of observation here at Decibel, and we recently noticed a lot of metal hype for Samuel Butler’s novel, “The Way Of All Flesh.” Recently-defunct Grind crusts ASRA and death Frenchmen Gojira both named their latest albums after it, plus there’s a Malevolent Creation song (which maybe only Albert and Chris Dick have heard) that also borrows the name.

Why though, we can’t fucking imagine. Some of us here at Decibel ran out and bought the book, mostly because we thought reading it would enhance our metal cred. What a disaster. We couldn’t get through it, and it took us this long to not get through it.

What the fuck. The back reads, “Samuel Butler’s great autobiographical novel sounded the death-knell of the Victorian age.” Well, who cares? It’s got nothing to do with metal and puts you out like classic Nyquil. It’s a crap cannon.

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.”

Click here to download the outcome.

• 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.

The following documents were covertly obtained by the Deciblog from an unidentified source. Written by Darkthrone’s Fenriz to former Peaceville owner Hammy in 1991, pages one through three contains detailed notes on the layout of the classic A Blaze in the Northern Sky LP. Highlights include drummer-cum-turntablist Fenriz wondering aloud, “I would wear my Skid Row t-shirt on the album photos. Do you think it will affect record sales? Will you refuse me to wear it like the other members of the band did? I’m quite a glam rocker actually.”

Not to be outdone, D-throne frontman Nocturno Culto authors love letters to Hammy (circa 1993) on pages four and five of the PDF. Though not quite as entertaining as Fenriz’s notes, I gotta admit I wish dude followed through on his idea to release a “maxi [single] of slow, sad, evil black metal on [Peaceville’s electronica-laden subsidiary] Dreamtime.” It would have almost certainly beat the shit out of this:

Anyway, click here to download the kvlt korrespondence.

The following document was covertly obtained by the Deciblog from an unidentified source. Authored by Type O Negative frontman (and Deciblog favorite) Peter Steele, this essay on “Human Rights” was originally scheduled to run in an edition of the late Creem magazine back in 1993, but was pulled at the last minute and seemingly lost forever. Until now. Download here