Now fans who possess an access code from the insert to the St. Anger CD package can download high quality MP3s of live Metallica recordings and do whatever they want with them: burn them to CD, share them over the networks like Kazaa, and in general, "kick ass" in an unrestricted manner. The band's organization now realizes that those same MP3s floating around the sharing services may very well drive album sales - that's a great conceptual leap the rest of the industry needs to make to take full advantage of the Internet.
"Our dream is to make this site the yellow pages of Metallica," said former Epic Records VP and Hollywood Records president Bob Pfeifer, the band's liaison between creative vision and technological realization. "We'd like it to be a highly organized, high-quality listing of everything. I'd like this to be the temple of Metallica."
Pfeifer, who was about to catch a flight to Paris to join the band on the European leg of their "Summer Sanitarium" tour when I talked to him by phone in June, also wrote the concept and design documents for the band's forthcoming video game, due in 2005, which he described as "Road Warrior meets Metallica." A thunderous trailer for the "landmark, high-action vehicle combat game" (you were expecting pretty ponies?), which will also feature original Metallica music, is available for download from the site.
While some great lumbering beasts may be set in their ways, Metallica surely is not, remaining nimble enough to rethink their Internet position, reconnect with their fans, and retool their sound by incorporating old school speed metal into an audacious new garage band rawness. If the industry as a whole can do some similar rethinking, perhaps predictions of its imminent demise may prove greatly exaggerated.
Article comments
1 - Jim S
yeah, now if they'd just release a decent studio album....
2 - Tom Johnson
Oh, Eric, you know what this will result in . . . hundreds of mostly illiterate responses griping about the last album and a few supportive comments about it, too.
Count me in as supporting - a good part of a year later I still think it's a good album. Not a great recording or mixing job, but musically interesting. Metallica fans have proven time and time again that they are some of the most fickle, narrow-minded, and hypocritical fans a band can have. It's no wonder they went in this ultra-heavy new direction - to shed the weight of these mindless, stuck-in-the-past dolts. More power to 'em!
3 - TDavid
I enjoyed the irony of Metallica releasing the MetallicaVault with that live material (which most of was very good, btw). I think, in fact, I enjoyed the live stuff they gave away better than the CD they did with the orchestra.
4 - Tim Hall
Wasn't it the time Metallica were at their creative peak (at least according to their old-school fans), the Grammy award for best heavy metal performance went to.... Jethro Tull.
5 - Eric Olsen
One the Grammys will not soon live down.
6 - Robert Brandt
It's the best album they've coughed up since Justice...but I think of it more like finding a thimble full of water after a few days stranded in a desert.
7 - Dave
Jethro Tull won for a combined category of Hard Rock / Metal performance.
8 - Robert Brandt
Was that for "Rock Island" or "Catfish Rising"?
9 - JR
Crest of a Knave, wasn't it?