Lulu Metallica/Lou Reed

If you haven't heard it already here it is. I honestly cannot believe this garbage exists. Discuss.

http://www.loureedmetallica.com/listen-to-lulu.php

@LuffyUzumaki:

Are you a fan of Reed's old solo stuff at all? I mean, I think it's a given that people love the Velvet Underground, but if you pay attention to the solo stuff, he had been making this kind of near spoken word crap for a while; it's just "heavier" because Metallica are in the background thrashing about.

Oh well, I haven't listened to it yet, and I really don't want to, but I'll probably review it at some point.

I heard one song from the album. Aside from sounding like complete shit(Vocals wise) the guitar solo that Kirk throws out is actually pretty fucking awesome. I wonder if I can buy the masters off of Amazon and remove the Lou Reed parts.

@N7:

Lou Reed never released instrumentals before, to my knowledge, so I doubt it. :(

His work with the Velvet Underground and his second solo album - that's where my Lou Reed experience starts and ends.

@Underachiever007:

With what you mentioned alone, he has a fantastic musical legacy. I don't see why he has to tarnish it with this crap. Imagine how astonishing his career would have been had you subtracted his solo albums by about nine or so, and VU hadn't release Squeeze?

He's still one of the all-time great songwriters, but, eh, while "Tranquilize" with the Killers was pretty good, this Metallica thing is just the shits, for lack of a better word.

With this album you have to remember that it is a Lou Reed album - he wrote the songs before Metallica came in. I think lots of Metallica fans are going to be confused once they hear it, since they won't know that it isn't a proper Metallica album. It's interesting for what it is though, just the execution could have been much better.

@Bruce: He's basically Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen at this point. The immense contributions he made to his art in his youth give him a free ticket to fuck around and release whatever the hell he wants in his old age. Not every artist knows when to stop.

Maybe I should listen to some of his other solo stuff. Recommendations?

It's just boring as hell. 

I'm not as into Metallica as I was in my high school days but I still gave this a listen. Not a complete listen, because it sucked, but there were parts of songs that could've been used in better songs. Without Reed it would've been another mediocre Metallica album. With him it's just a load of pretentious horseshit. "I'm just a smalltown girl" Are ya, Lou? Are ya?

Well, at least the new Tom Waits album came out sounding pretty alright.

@Bruce: Well there is Metal Machine Music.

Edit: I had a quick listen to a few tracks. Sounds like Lou Reed wrote some songs and told Metallica to do their stuff while he sometimes sings.

it's fucking awful. i was listening to octane on sirius satellite radio while making my weekly drive to southern oregon. that spoken word "song" came on and i had to change the station after 2 minutes.

Metallica died when Cliff died.

The album is pretty bad, but one must remember that it is Lou Reed reading poems he has written with Metallica playing to it.

@Bruce: He released Metal Machine Music which was instrumental.....that is if you even want to consider that music.

The vocals are absolutely fucking terrible. They feel like a total joke.
 
I AM THE TABLE

By both Lou Reed and Metallica standards, this album is piss poor; the equivalent of slicing my nut sack open to lick my own testicles. It's painful and not something I want to see happen.

Based on the recording quality of Death Magnetic, I think the only way this could've been worse is if Rick Rubin had produced and engineered it.

@Underachiever007:

Listen to Transformer obviously, and also pick up the 1989 solo album he put out. I think it's called New York, I dunno. Some of his other solo stuff is supposed to be okay, but there's SO much of it.

And also, Springsteen can do what he wants, because unlike Reed, he didn't make fifteen bullshit solo projects in lieu of taking a break from the E. Street Band.

I hate people that end there topics with "discuss."

I don't get why Lou would work with a shitty band like Metallica either...I guess he thought it would be funny...and it kind of is, but still, Lou, you're better than that. Hell, Metal Machine Music is a better album than this shit.

@damswedon:

What I meant was, Lou Reed has never released instrumentals of songs that originally had vocals...to my knowledge.

@Bruce said:

@Underachiever007:

Listen to Transformer obviously, and also pick up the 1989 solo album he put out. I think it's called New York, I dunno. Some of his other solo stuff is supposed to be okay, but there's SO much of it.

And also, Springsteen can do what he wants, because unlike Reed, he didn't make fifteen bullshit solo projects in lieu of taking a break from the E. Street Band.

Will do. I never really realized how prolific he's been through his solo career until I just checked his Wikipedia page.

Now that you mention it, Dylan hasn't been too terrible in his late years either. I'm thinking Time Out of Mind here.

@jakob187:

Rick Rubin is fucking poison. The news that he will be working on Metallica's next album just worries me. He's no good. I don't know if they'll ever match The Black Album, in terms of sonical quality. It's still the best sounding metal album I've ever heard.

lol pitchfork gave it a 1.0

it sounds like the album is just more of "the view", terriblay

also Rick Rubin isn't that bad, he actually just ends up producing A lot of stuff

Wait ok, Marry Lou Reed, Kill Metallica & F**K Lulu.   This is not a game?

Yup, this was kinda sad...

bonus!

st.anger is no longer the worst thing Metallica have released.

Rejoice!.....

It sounds like a coke head rambling over royalty-free riffs.

Such shit.

@Underachiever007: Transformer, Berlin, and Sally Can't Dance is all I really like of his solo stuff. And Metal Machine Music for purely historical and ironic reasons. It is bad. It's not even fair to call it bad. It isn't anything. But I love Lou Reed so much that I got it just for the hell of it.

I feel like Metallica were fucked from the very beginning with this thing. If I've learned one thing from this whole disaster, it's that everyone in the music journalism industry either sucks their dicks unapologetically OR bashes them well past what they deserve because of the Napster debacle. Nobody wants to give them a completely objective chance. Plus, the fans are going into this with a "I WANT A METALLICA RECORD HURR HURR" or "I WANT A LOU REED RECORD, HURR HURR" with each side blaming the other artist for the record's overall failure. What a clusterfuck this whole thing is.

Oh, and we get it, Metallica suck because they're old now. We get it, we get it, we get it, we get it, we get it.

Metallica has been dead for years and years.

I AM THE TABLE!

@RobertOrri said:

Metallica has been dead for years and years.

@Bruce: Blue Mask is a great album is great too, but this is a far cry from those pieces. This is bad in a very puzzling way, a way that beckons "How could something like this even exist?",

A bunch of dudes who have been making garbage music for a long time getting together to make something that's at least hilariously bad, so whatevs.

metallica hasnt been good since master of puppets

Dear god, the vocals are insanely bad.

Wtf am I even listening to.

@BUCK3TM4N said:

metallica hasnt been good since master of puppets

*cough* *cough* ...And Justice For All

I rest my case

Did anyone read the Pitchfork review? Apparently, there's a lyric where says something to the extent of "I want to swallow your (whatever word it is) like a colored man's dick." Classy Lou, classy.

I AM THE TABLE

st.anger is no longer the worst thing Metallica have released.

Rejoice!.....

Oh Lou, you used to be cool man, you used to create such awesome music. And Metallica, what's up with you? You used to drink heavily, now it's all about "artistic expression".

@Chemin said:

I AM THE TABLE!

@RobertOrri said:

Metallica has been dead for years and years.

When I clicked this thread I wondered how long it would take someone to say I AM THE TABLE!

I was thinking under 8 posts. Surprised we made it to page two.

Anyway, I hope that Metallica either keeps recording weird shit like this because it's really entertaining watching this train derail, or they're going to fling their hands in the air in frustration and record Master of Puppets II (with The Unforgiven IV for good measure). Either will be hilariously terrible unless someone figures out how to make James Hetfield mainline some Jager while replacing Lars with a competent drummer/tennis player.

The reality will be something in the middle: mediocrity. And that's what makes this band sad - they lost their edge decades ago and people still give a shit.

lulz.

@sgjackson: I did the same thing, and once I realized only one person had said it, I had to jump in on the action (yes, I was not the first, look again). The table do need some love.

I couldn't agree with you more, everything you said is totally how I feel about that band. I still can't figure out how they became so big (yes, they were one of the big thrash bands in the beginning - but that's not what they're famous for, and we know it), and how people continue to defend Lars as a good drummer even when it's blatantly obvious that he never practices and just doesn't give a shit. He never was an exceptional drummer, but in his 20s at least he had some kind of stamina left, and played a lot more. Today the band live on because of their name, nothing else. It's a brand. People defend their music because it's Metallica, and, yes, that's what fanboys do. I still find it really annoying most of the time, even if it can be rather amusing.

@Chemin said:

@sgjackson: I couldn't agree with you more, everything you said is totally how I feel about that band. I still can't figure out how they became so big (yes, they were one of the big thrash bands in the beginning - but that's not what they're famous for, and we know it), and how people continue to defend Lars as a good drummer even when it's blatantly obvious that he never practices and just doesn't give a shit. He never was an exceptional drummer, but in his 20s at least he had some kind of stamina left, and played a lot more. Today the band live on because of their name, nothing else. It's a brand. People defend their music because it's Metallica, and, yes, that's what fanboys do. I still find it really annoying most of the time, even if it can be rather amusing.

They're as famous as they are because of the One video and The Black Album and coasted on those two successes in the eyes of the mainstream while still maintaining underground cred for being one of the two highly influential bands from the Big 4, the other being Slayer. This is pretty easy to figure out - if a band's talented enough to write albums which created, inspired, and influenced entire genres and millions of musicians, they sure as fuck can sell out and write music for the masses pretty easily (with some help from guys like Bob Rock).

Very few bands have had an album run as transcendental as Kill 'Em All to AJFA. It's really easy to draw a line from Slayer (and similarly the teutonic thrash bands like Kreator and a couple of outliers like Sepultura) to death metal like some sort of metal evolutionary chain, but Metallica's influence is more widespread. They had more to do with generations of aspiring metal musicians making an effort to write interesting, progressive music than any other band from that era. I think I'd rather remember them for that, instead of James Hetfield soberly proclaiming to the world he's a piece of furniture.

Metallica haven't been relevant since the eighties, dude.

@sgjackson: Well, yeah, I actually DO know how they became famous, I'm mostly concerned with how they stayed relevant. I did word that weirdly. I love the first 4 albums, and have no problem with those albums being influential in metal overall. Heck, I even enjoyed the Black Album to some mild extent sometime in my life. Everything else though is just garbage in my ears, and the notion that they still ride on the fame of an album from 1991 weirds me out, even though they certainly isn't the first band in history to live on because of one or two popular albums. I mostly hate Metallica as a band (yes, the members) and the community of fans surrounding them. Filled to the brink with unintelligent, narrow-minded and, for some reason, angry individuals with no real arguments or logic behind their reasoning. Kind of like the Xbox 360 fanboys I come across. Fancy that.

And no, whether a band is talented and influential or not does not at all mean they CAN sell out and write catchy mainstream music, many bands have tried, most of them failed. Being a talented musician in one genre does not automatically make you a musical mastermind capable of handling any other genre, even a less technical one. Now, obviously, Metallica did increase their fame 'selling out', as you said with help from producers well-versed in that shit, so I'm mostly referring to the general side of things. Although I would also argue that in some ways it had to do with it being right in time for it to work. If that's luck or them/the producers being smart, I wouldn't know. I suppose both.