Daily Archives: September 15, 2008
Return Of The Metal Gods: Andy B reviews Metallica’s Death Magnetic
Metallica
Death Magnetic
Warner Brothers
“What don’t kill ya make ya more strong”.
So sings James Hetfield on Broken, Beat & Scarred, the third track on Metallica’s unrelenting new album Death Magnetic. Good news, considering the disaster that was their previous release.
Let’s get something out of the way: every song on Death Magnetic is better than anything that was on 2003’s virtually unlistenable St. Anger. Longtime producer Bob Rock is gone and in his place is Rick Rubin, the man who resuscitated the studio careers of Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash, and who knows a little about metal thanks to his past work with Slayer. Having a pair of fresh ears has clearly reinvigorated Metallica for their 9th studio album.
Many critics and fans are calling Death Magnetic a return to form, a comeback after Metallica spent the 90’s shortening both their songs and their hair in supposed search of acceptance from alternative music fans. And while there’s a lot of quality music on Load and Reload, there wasn’t much in the style of metal that helped Metallica make their name in the 80’s. Death Magnetic rectifies this situation in spades. Of the albums 10 tracks, only one of them is less than 6 minutes long. There are hooks and riffs aplenty, and some fairly spectacular guitar solos from Kirk Hammett. Lars Ulrich is still a monster drummer, and James Hetfield is in fine voice. As for bassist Rob Trujillo, he sounds great when you can hear, but that’s rare since the band still seems like their bass buried.
What about the songs? The best of them are as good as Metallica gets. Opening track That Was Just Your Life begins with a heartbeat and an ominous riff, demonstrating that there’s still life in this band of 40-something metal masters. Cyanide is proof positive that metal can be catchy. Meanwhile the nearly 10 minute tour de force All Nightmare Long twists and gallops and takes you on a pretty amazing musical journey that never overstays its welcome.
Of course, Death Magnetic isn’t perfect. The final 15 minutes of Suicide and Redemption and album closer My Apocalypse just bring it down a notch. Neither are offensive, but they’re not particularly memorable either.
Ultimately, if you loved Metallica back in the day but strayed over the past few albums, Death Magnetic will bring you back into the fold. And if you’ve never given them a chance, this just might be the perfect place to start.
JMT’s Take – Gossip Girl: What Fanboys Will Like (besides the narrator)
It’s early September, most TV shows don’t air their season premiers for a few more weeks, you’ve read through the weekly haul from The Android’s Dungeon and it’s only Wednesday. What’s a fan-boy to do? Two words: Gossip Girl.
At a quick glance, Gossip Girl seems like every other high-school drama that has preceded it; beautiful teenagers aping adult behavior, with minimal input from their parental units, stumbling through the challenges the viewer can vaguely recall from their own high school experience. Scratch the surface and Gossip Girl reveals its true nature… as a superhero serial.
The central characters of Gossip Girl are each endowed with extraordinary powers. The most powerful characters derive it from extreme wealth, while the less fortunate make due with excellent deductive reasoning skills, intelligence, or extraordinary physical beauty. These powers are not the typical fodder of the superhero genre, but they serve a similar purpose. The powers provide the characters with agency. Instead of suffering the whims of fate, they determine in it. Thus, when comic book superheroes use their powers performing acts of good, they are not only heroes, but symbols of human potential.
Gossip Girl plays out on a small scale. None of the characters are ever in positions where they have to save the world. However, their powers bring them agency, thus their choices become significant. As a result, these characters too are elevated as examples of human potential, even if they fall short of becoming icons.
In your typical superhero serial the action is driven by conflict with a super villain, a group of super villains, corrupt government agency, or alien(s). These stories are most compelling when the heroes are threatened with a power that could destroy them. The danger provides the drama that holds the reader’s attention. Although the stakes are lower in Gossip Girl, the heroes and villains are clearly marked, and the drama of each episode results from the potentially ruinous conflicts between them.
Unlike other high-schools dramas, where a clique of central characters faces age-appropriate challenges in the form of authority figures, relationship anxiety, and random acts of chance, the conflicts on Gossip Girl driving the action are mostly the machinations of the characters marked as evil to destroy a character marked as good, or a weaker evil character. It is this struggle between such clearly defined good and evil forces that distinguishes Gossip Girl from the genre of high school dramas.
Perhaps the discovery that Gossip Girl is really a superhero comic disguised as high school drama, won’t make you enjoy the program any more. In that case, you’ll probably find ample comfort filling your PVR with Heroes and Fringe. However, in the event that you find yourself watching it with your better half, you’ll be on familiar footing, true-believer. You might even enjoy it
Weekend Top 10 Box Office
Box Office Estimates for weekend ending Sunday, September 14th
1 – Burn After Reading $19,404,000 Total $19,404,000
2 – Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys $18,020,000 Total $18,020,000
3 – Righteous Kill $16,500,000 Total $16,500,000
5 4 The House Bunny $4,300,000 Total $42,154,000
6 2 Tropic Thunder $4,180,000 Total $102,971,000
7 3 The Dark Knight $4,015,000 total $517,680,000
8 1 Bangkok Dangerous $2,400,000 Total $12,531,000
9 5 Traitor $2,132,000 Total $20,735,000
10 7 Death Race $2,017,000 Total $33,193,000
