Metallica & Lou Reed - "Lulu" (2011)

Cautiously optimistic.

EDIT:  Double post.

Yeah, I really need to give this a listen.

Yeah, I need this in my ears yesterday. Could be amazing, or an unmitigated disaster.

Sidenote: I'm giving Lars a no-judgement free pass now if he wants to throw a toupee on. Douchebag or not, there is no reason to walk this world looking like Charlie Brown's scrotum.

That clip brings to mind that old Kurt Cobain/William Burroughs record. I've got middling expectations for Lulu but maybe the pairing will convince other artists to give weird collabs a shot. Call me when Laurie Anderson pairs up with Slayer for an album. That would be glorious. 

First full song is up.  It's pretty awful, I'm sorry to say.  Lou Reed spoken word poetry over boring metal riff, and some stunningly awful drumming.  Lars sounds like he should be competing at a high school battle of the bands.

Reminds me of Rollins Band... except with even less vocalization. Sorta baffling.

If there was any chance of this being even half as twisted as Berg's opera, I'd be more enthusiastic; but then, I'm the guy that thinks Berlin had to be Lou's idea of a joke on Bob Ezrin (or possibly vice-versa), so I might not be the ideal audience.

I think this is Metallica's I'M STILL HERE.

Actual quotes from the loureedmetallica.com page:

James Hetfield: "I thought: we need to just agree that this is awesome"
Kirk Hammet: "Nobody in our world, the heavy metal world, has ever done anything like this"
Rob Trujillo: "It's made us a better band"
Lou Reed: "This is perfect. This is the best thing I ever did"

But my favourite quote comes, as always, from Lars Ulrich:

Lars Ulrich: "This is turning into a monumental chapter in the on-going saga entitled ‘Lars Ulrich...living the dream!!!’”

For so long I've wished to see some alternate-dimension Metallica where they actually had a real drummer and not a businessman masquerading as a musician for the past 25 years. And that's coming from a huge fan. I remember that festival a few years back where they had Jordison and Lombardo filling in for Lars and it was fantastic, even with them only rehearsing for a couple hours before the show.

I couldn't make it past the first two songs of Lulu. Complete garbage. My buddy told me there's actually some good riffs throughout the album, but I'll be damned if I can suffer through it to find them.

The thing is, ever since they hit the big time with the Black Album Metallica have had this stick up their arse about being seen as 'legitimate'. It was at its worst during the Load era, with the attempts at blues-rock, Achtung Baby ripoff sleeve and THAT Marianne Faithfull guest spot, but there's been this sense of embarrassment at them being 'just' a metal band ever since. Hence the terrible orchestra shows; hence the fucking around with the arrangements and production on St. Anger, which was essentially them trying to have their cake and eat it ("OK, we'll give you a metal album but we're still gonna be all avant-garde!") Basically, they wanted to be any band BUT Metallica. It's a big part of why they're in such a creatively fucked-up state in Some Kind of Monster; they literally have no fucking clue who they are anymore.

Death Magnetic seemed to see the band come to their senses, but Lulu is social-climbing Metallica back with a vengeance. As with their other attempts at being 'arty', it also shows that they've lost none of their knack for stunningly bad career decisions. It's very clear that they took on this project a) Because this kind of attention from such an art-rock icon gave them the vapours, and b) For the cred they thought the collaboration would bring them.

Problem is - much like St. Anger - nobody seemed to be putting any thought into making it listenable. Basically, Reed and Metallica don't mesh.  I've always considered Reed vastly overrated (So you'll have to account for slight bias on my part), but he sounds terrible on this album - out of key, out of time and in complete ignorance of what the music's doing. Hetfield's backing vocals are simply comical, his attempts at high notes on Why Do I Cheat On Me literally spine-curdling. Metallica have some great musical moments (The Iommi-esque riff in Frustration, the dreamy Junior Dad) but mostly sound out of their depth. They've boasted a lot in interviews that a lot of the songs were one-take affairs that were put together at the last minute, and boy does it sound like it.

Oh, and the lyrics... Jesus Christ. My new tagline under my username is a lyric from the album, and it's not even the worst line on it. Imagine Grandpa Simpson loitering outside a Metallica rehearsal reading from 'My First Erotica Book' , and you'll get the gist. The album's based on a pair of late 19th Century German plays about a homeless girl who becomes involved with a string of wealthy, self-involved men, but Reed's so enamoured with the sordid stuff you never really follow what's going on.

And on that note - because I've not heard one person ask this question since this stupid project was first announced - what the fuck has Metallica got to do with 19th Century german sexual politics anyway?  When I think of sexually-exploited country fraus, I don't think of Metal Up Your Ass.

Lou Reed might, though. Fuck, I might be giving him lyric ideas. I might have just enabled LULU 2: METAL UP YOUR ASS.

Fucksake. 

I wish I could have seen my own face when the album started off with Reed saying "I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff"

Really? People thought this wasn't going to be a gimmicky, clunky mess?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

Really? People thought this wasn't going to be a gimmicky, clunky mess?

Oh, we knew. Still, just because you know the train's gonna wreck doesn't make you savour the carnage any less.

Clunky mess is exactly what I expected. I listened out of pure morbid curiosity, mostly to see exactly what Lou Reed's contributions would be. But those lyrics? Definitely did not expect that level of ridiculous.

What a waste of talent. But, though I can't say that Metallica's inferiority complex isn't real, Death magnetic was just good enough to make me not want to write them off completely. Call me a fanboy, but it takes no more than three of four songs per album of Metallica actually being Metallica to make them worthy to me. I lived and breathed Metallica in my formative years as a metalhead. They're just too ingrained in my brain. Ulrich would have to convince them to go into dubstep* before I'd wash my hands off them.

*No disrespect to dubstep intended. 

Of course this is the "best thing they've ever done!" That's what every tired and over the hill band claims with each outing. I appreciate the enthusiasm artists have but I would think by the time middle age hits, they'd be more realistic and grounded. The scathing reviews and poor sales will ultimately bury the "best thing we've ever done!" hyperbole and their next album will be "back to their roots, doing what we do best and giving the fans what we want!" That also will be the "best thing they've ever done."

See also: Van Halen III

Remember that album? Anyone? Bueller?

Gotta say, it's moments like this I feel lucky I'm a fan of Tom Waits from way back while Metallica and I parted ways many moons ago. It's nice to love a guy that actually bucks the trend and gets better with age - and you never hear him say a new album is his best, he just lets that shit speak for itself. 

I just feel embarrassed for all involved in this Lulu project frankly. Not "Chris Cornell produced by Timberland"-embarrassed, but feeling pretty sorry for Lou, Lars & co I have to say.

This is the final word on this album as far as I'm concerned.

Really though, the album's fairly dreadful in a lot of ways, but I don't hate it the way a lot of people do. I'll take a compelling fiasco over bland mediocrity any day, and Metallica have been involved in worse things than this. Also I loathe Metallica's pompous fanbase and find it quite funny seeing the band trolling them so effectively, like a musical George Lucas. Incidentally, far as I know only Lou said it was 'the best thing he ever did'.

The tracks that are basically Metallica backing tracks with Lou weakly rambling over it are pretty awful, but when they move into more avant-garde, post-rock territory they occasionally hit on something interesting. The track which mixes high speed thrash with dissonant strings and freaky vocals is unique at least. Disc 2 works a lot better than disc 1 and the final three tracks aren't bad for what they are. And hey at least no one can call it a sell out.

Said this in the metal thread, but the second someone makes a version that nixes the vocals entirely, Im all over it. Musically, Metallica has little to be ashamed of here.

If they could re-record this with an interesting (or even remotely competent) vocalist, I'd be really interested.  Not that it'll happen, but I think it would work, there's some enjoyable music here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike J 

 

See also: Van Halen III

 

Remember that album? Anyone? Bueller?

With Gary Cherone?  Yikes.  A resounding "thud" on the music scene.  Hell, I enjoyed "Balance" when it came out a few years earlier.  Van Halen III to me is like remembering New Coke.  While it's not forefront in my mind, when someone mentions it, I think "Oh yeah, I remember that" and then immediately forget about it again.

What riffs specifically are you guys (Justin, kernel) finding interesting?  I somehow managed to listen to the entire album, I certainly wasn't blown away by anything James and Kirk were pumping out.  And the drumming is a new low for Lars, I think.  Boring, simplistic and repetitive, and I doubt he can even pull this shit off live.  This is coming from a long-time Metallica defender.  This album is fucking awful, let's not kid ourselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin Macken 

What riffs specifically are you guys (Justin, kernel) finding interesting?  I somehow managed to listen to the entire album, I certainly wasn't blown away by anything James and Kirk were pumping out.  And the drumming is a new low for Lars, I think.  Boring, simplistic and repetitive, and I doubt he can even pull this shit off live.  This is coming from a long-time Metallica defender.  This album is fucking awful, let's not kid ourselves.

I like the riff in Frustration. It's got a very Tony Iommi-esque vibe to it IMO.
 

I enjoyed a lot of the music on Lulu, more so on the first CD than the meandering of the second I think, but in all, aside from Lou Reed's embarrassingly off key and out of step vocals, it was some decent hard rock.  Nothing mind blowing, of course, but bear in mind, I made my peace in the early 90's that Metallica transitioned from metal into a hard rock band.  They no longer shred and they don't crunch, but they are a decent hard rock band.

Death Magnetic was a darn fine hard rock album.  Even St. Anger I give an A for effort, just an F- in engineering and mixing since the snare drum was three times louder than the vocals and other music combined.  But if you remixed it, there would be some cool music there.  Even on Load/Reload, there is a fair amount of decent heavy music there.  I personally put Bleeding Me up there with Fade to Black, Master of Puppets and One in the Metallica pantheon of total classics I love.

As far as the drumming goes, meh, outside of something like Dyers Eve, I've never really had a drum boner.  Keep the time and go bang at the right spots and I'm good with the glorified tambourine player.

Maybe if somebody out of the box, like Zack de la Roche, who's got an knack for weird, off beat lyrics, gave this a try, these songs could rock, that's all I'm saying.

ETA: Quick addendum, can you think of a relevant musician that's been around as long who's voice has changed as much as James'?  Listen to Hit The Lights and anything recent, it's crazy.  I'll go with maybe Geddy Lee, but I can't really think of anyone else off hand.

With Hetfield's voice I think it was probably a combo of his voice lowering (probably helped along by booze and such - it was starting to sound different even by Justice), and him deliberately moving away from his old gruff shouty/barky style into more conventional singing he didn't do so much of before. They also started making his voice a lot clearer and more front and centre in the mix starting with the Black Album, which makes it sound different from when it used to be covered in reverb.

As for other singers who changed massively, let's see... Mike Patton has a really high, yelpy voice on his early Faith No More stuff that sounds a lot different from the deep-voiced crooner he turned into pretty quickly. In the non-metal world, after a couple of decades Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson were barely recognisable as their 60's selves, going just off their voices.

It's all semantics but I don't really see what makes Death Magnetic hard rock and Justice metal. They're both have a pretty similar balance of mid-tempo to high-speed stuff.

Playing devils advocate for Lulu again:

On the Metallica side of things, Hetfield's vocal bits suck but otherwise it's generic at worst, and at its best they have some solid riffs (Dragon and Junior Dad being the highlights) and do some dissonant post-rock style things that are interesting coming from them and are pulled off fairly well. I don't really get the complaints about the drumming, seems pretty standard for the band to me.

Also I think people should look at this not as a Metallica album with shit vocals but as a Lou Reed semi-spoken word experiment that takes Metallica's style of music and puts it in an avant-garde context. Not to say it was a good idea, but I do think that is closer to the intention of the thing, certainly with disc 2 (which I maintain is not particularly terrible).