Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, a new documentary currently showing at 3 Penny, teaches us that heavy metal isn’t just tuneless bashing: it’s tuneless bashing about deep inner pain. Drummer Lars Ulrich provides one of the film’s many revelatory moments as he lays down a rare vocal track, screaming “Fuuuck!”–one long, drawn-out, vein-popping syllable–until he topples over in exhaustion. Wow, we’re supposed to think, here is metal’s distilled essence: a scream of rage from a tormented soul. When front man James Hetfield bellows, “I’m madly in anger with you,” we’re meant to be impressed by his emotional courage, even though he sounds like Eddie Vedder impersonating a water buffalo impersonating Glenn Danzig.
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In 1986 Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a tour-bus crash. In the documentary Burton is mentioned only a couple times in passing–it’s hard to tell he was anything more than just an awesome bassist. But in fact Burton was the most musically adventurous member of Metallica. Hetfield and Ulrich were primarily fans of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)–punk-inflected thug-metal bands like Venom, Crucifixion, and Black Axe. But Burton was into everything: from Thin Lizzy to the Velvet Underground, the Misfits to Simon & Garfunkel, R.E.M. to Stanley Clarke. Guitarist Kirk Hammett, quoted at the Web site cliff-god.com, said, “The only person who was able to figure out a time and write it on a piece of paper was Cliff. He had an immense knowledge of timing, musical harmonies, and music theory in general.” In 1987, with new bassist Jason Newsted, Metallica recorded the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP, a collection of covers they’d played over and over with Burton. Possessed by his spirit, songs by Diamond Head, Killing Joke, and Budgie became as fun and terrifying as old country blues–the record made the entire metal genre seem worthwhile.
In a perfect world, that would be the end of the story. But more records followed, each worse than the last. Released in 1989, …And Justice for All had a few bright spots, but with the untitled “Black Album” two years later the band started down the road to banal buffoonery. On its cover the demonic lightning horns were pruned off the first and last letters of “Metallica,” rendering it as bland and inoffensive as any other corporate logo. The next album’s title, Load (1996), says it all, and Re-Load (1997) was more of the same.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who’s ever truly cared about Metallica knows that the new stuff sucks ass–and there’s nothing funny or touching about watching three talented performers systematically betray themselves, their fans, and their art.
All these things are just symptoms though–the real problem is that the band no longer seems to care about music. What are they listening to? What inspires them? The answer on both counts seems to be “nothing.” For the duration of the film, we hear only Metallica tunes–maybe this has more to do with licensing problems than the band’s collective taste in music, but it would’ve been hard to follow the old Metallica around for two years without overhearing plenty of great obscure shit blasting out of car radios and boom boxes.
