Nice

[andrewducker]

Metallica Sue Canadian Band over E, F Chords

Metallica are taking legal action against independant Canadian rock band Unfaith over what they feel is unsanctioned usage of two chords the band has been using since 1982 : E and F.

"People are going to get on our case again for this, but try to see it from our point of view just once," stated Metallica's Lars Ulrich. "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."

I rather liked Metallica, up to the Black Album. Sadly, following that they seem to have had problems being at all inspired, and instead fell back on "making albums that sound like Metallica", only not very good.

Comments

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the rise and fall of metallica, not sure about the case though. It depends on how similar the tune being used is, but I find the idea of 'Metallica branded chords' rather worrying. I'm comfortable with a tune being intellectual property, but a particular chord or note seems to be stretching it a bit. Ok, its two chords in a row, but how many notes does it take to make a tune?

I've just listened to a couple of tracks from 'St Anger' and I think its crap. Crap derivitive of System of a Down as well. Although I have to admit my first thought when hearing System of a Down was how similar to Metallica they sounded.

[andrewducker]

It really does sound like after the Black Album they had a conversation along the lines of

"So, James, what kind of music do we do?"
"Heavy Metal, Lars"
"And what does that sound like?"
"Listen to this."
"Oh, right. I can do that, no problem."

Whereas before that, it sounded like they were doing the music they liked to make, which happened to fall into the genre "heavy metal"

The article, by the way, is definitely a fake.

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

So it is, I should have spotted the dodgy URL first time round :o)

This seems to happen to a lot of innovative bands/musicians. At first they create the trends and everyone else copies them, this was definitely the case with Mettalica up until the Black album, then music styles move on and the band either has to accept its popularity waning, or else try to keep up. Keeping up inevitably involves copying others instead of being the creative ones. Sad, but somewhat inevitable.

What I find ammusing is to listen to the bands and songs that were the epitome of 'heaviness' back when I were a lad, and to realise how tame they seem to sound these days :o)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the extreme now seems placid.

I remember thinking that Disco Volante was just noise.

...And Just For All still sounds like it was produced in a cardboard box tho.

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]

I did not know you were hip to Disco Volante!
One of my favorite albums; though I did have to listen to it constantly for about a week until it made sense to me...

[andrewducker]

Yeah, me too. It took a while for my brain to lock onto the patterns hidden in it.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

But, amazingly, the production on "St Anger" sounds *even worse*. Its horrible.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Cue.... Def Leppard.

They sounds so heavy to me when I was a kid. D'oh!

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

It's a fake but quite a few news organisations. seem to have fallen for it.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to start bootlegging copies of Metallica songs, just to piss them off.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Two chords! Wow, even Status Quo use three.

heh

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

Up to and *including* the Black album?

To me, that work seems like a nice bridge between their great metal past and their current pop rock garbage.

Re: heh

[andrewducker]

yeah, including that album.

I thought that chunks of the Black Album were fantastic (Enter Sandman is definitely up there in the "best riffs of all time" competition), other bits of it less so.

The stuff before that was frequently flawed, but it was them trying to stretch themselves and create the best music they could.

The stuff after that, meh.

Re: heh

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]

I liked the Black Album for about a week, then hated it for about 10 years. Now I can listen to it as a well produced Metallica album, a creature that had not existed before...

I found 2 things really really funny about this in the moment before I realized it was a hoax: first, that the chord progression in question was one they had ripped off from their early influences; second, that there was a mini-scandal at the time - the song Enter Sandman had pretty much been lifted in its entirety from an LA metal band. Metallica denied any knowlege of them, saying something about there were anly so many progressions that worked in their style of music... The other band did not sue, and just enjoyed the publicity.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of this.

Poetic, because I'm posting this in a Microsoft testing lab.