(Rock Heroes) Total Time: 115:30
Another bootleg - another day. Ok Metallica are something like a holy cow - among the metal community. They ‘ve become iconic and mythical, because they’ ve been around for such a long time… so no one can bad mouth them, without being branded as a pariah, or worse a di%$head, by the “herd” !
But it’s a fact that after their HUGE success with the eponymous “BLACK” album, they not only turned their backs on metal, (the very band that had a lyric that said – we’ll never stop we’ll never quit cause we’re METALLICA, but then I suppose – they didn’t mention anything about selling out to trends or doing a grant disservice to their ejected guitarist whose solos and ideas they “borrowed” en masse during their first 3 albums… ) but also managed to release a series of really average, un-necessary “S&M” and even plainly bad albums, “reaching nadir” (NWOBHM references anybody ? I will mail you the DVD if you gimme a clue… haha) with the super-lame St.Anger, release.
At any rate, we all know who the story goes, Metallica used St.Anger as a purging experience, so as to purify themselves of all thing NON METAL and used their earlier albums as a blueprint and a source of inspiration and even as a guideline to write their new tunez (have you ever realized that, “that was just your life” is basically, a masqueraded, “Creeping Death” with portions of “Blackened” ??) and then having reconnected with their metal roots, through a series of festival appearences where they exclusively performed only OLD material, they proceeded to release their first actually metallic sounding album in ages …. (which actually they couldn’t bother to mix properly)so it sounds rather shitty any way… yeah I m talking about Death Plastic ! aka “The VAG album” (if you haven’t gotten laid in ages I guess you could start finding similarities – but I digress as I don’t see a C%IT) etc etc !!!
At any rate …. Since – I ‘ve not mentioned anything about the DVD yet – and I ‘ve just been pissing on the band for the last couple of paragraphs, I think I ‘ll turn the tables and talk about the DVD for a change.
This is your average, video wall feed/TV broadcast type of bootleg. The video is good, because of the fact that this is such a recent, recording and the sound (Dolby Digital ? Stereo) is not appalling either, if only a little muffled, but not bad under any circumstances… The band rips through 18 songs, mostly OLD material… and sounds pretty decent, considering that none of them is really an excellent musician. (I m not saying they haven’t written a s$#%$load of classic metal tunes – but neither James Hetfield is the best singer out there, Kirk Hammet, often goes out of tune, when he bends it and as for lars …… oh well he’s trying – but I always thought he was somewhat of an albatross around Metallica’s neck – keeping them from becoming a really good band….) I also guess their advancing age, is catching up with them….as any witness of their earlier (early 90s) gigs might attest. They’re still decent, but at no rate, the much better unit they used to be back in the day.
Also for me, the band is nearly done… with nothing new to bring to the table, but a fake bravado and a bunch of old tunes that seem to carry them, live at least, I’d not be too bothered to check them out again… in the future… although I just might for old time’s sake… but then again there are so many other “legacy” bands out there that outplay Metallica… even some of their thrash contemporaries…. That watching them once more wouldn’t really do much for me, anymore! Sad but true!
(decent - but boring)
