The Metallica Letters: THKD vs. Last Rites – Load

In 1996, Metallica unleashed Load, an album which saw the band drifting even further away from the complex thrash metal they’d made their name on in favor of stripped-down, southern-tinged hard rock.  They also toyed with their image, chopping off their once flowing locks and ditching black jeans and t-shirts for eyeliner and designer duds.  Before it was even released, the band made seismic waves with the Samuel Bayer-directed, Hieronymus Bosch-inspired music video for first single “Until it Sleeps,” which seemed to exist in another universe both musically and visually from anything they’d done previously.

I distinctly remember me and my buddy Jon going out to our local Best Buy to buy the album the day it came it out; we excitedly popped the CD into his car stereo and… we thought it was awesome.  You see, growing up smack dab in the Midwest with no access to a metal underground of any kind gave us a unique perspective; in spite of being familiar with Metallica’s back catalog we didn’t feel betrayed, rather we welcomed the band doing something different and not putting out The Black Album Part II.  Maybe we were naive, but I’d like to think we were open-minded.  At sixteen years old I wasn’t listening to albums with the critical ear I have now, and we had no concept of elitism or preconceived notions of what metal had to sound like in order to be “true.” The fact that we were raised on classic rock and loved alternative rock almost as much as we loved metal made it pretty easy to appreciate what Metallica were attempting, even if in retrospect their attempt was heavily flawed.

As recently as last year, I was still proclaiming my love for Load, stating that if any other band had released it, it would be hailed as a great hard rock album.  As it turns out, a more thorough critical analysis reveals that only about half the album is as strong as I’ve previously proclaimed it to be, the other half is a combination of filler and failed experiments that make a strong case for Load and its sister album ReLoad being whittled down to a single combined disk (that could be a whole other piece unto itself… hmm…).

In the second part of our Metallica Letters series of collaborative posts, Last Rites‘ Jordan Campbell and myself tackle the bloated, quintuple platinum-selling beast that somehow propelled Lars and Co. even further into the stadium rock stratosphere in spite of its inherent weirdness.  Check out our thoughts on Side A below and then head over to Last Rites for Side B.

The Metallica Letters: THKD vs. Last Rites – The Black Album

When I offhandedly remarked via social media that I wanted to see more people writing about Metallica’s “crappy albums,” I had no idea that it would lead to the biggest crossover since Marvel vs. DC. But when Jordan Campbell of the mighty Last Rites called me out, challenging me to an inter-site throwdown on Lars and Co.’s dark ages, I had no choice but to put my money where my mouth is for a track-by-track death match.  Head on over to Last Rites to read Jordan’s intro and us wreaking havoc on Side A of Metallica (aka The Black Album), and then come on back over to THKD for the Side B carnage below.

Pentagram – Last Rites (Metal Blade, 2011)

Pentagram should have been huge.  They should have been America’s answer to Black Sabbath, our very own harbingers of doom.  But somewhere along the way, things went horribly awry.  Vocalist/mastermind Bobby Liebling let his drug abuse take precedence over his music, and the band couldn’t even get their shit together long enough to get signed to a decent label or release an album until fourteen(!) years after forming.  More often than not, Liebling and Pentagram have appeared destined for failure.  Yet here he stands in 2011, holding a Metal Blade recording contract and being backed by arguably the strongest Pentagram lineup of all time.  Having never been addicted to anything (well, maybe caffeine and heavy metal, but I’ve managed to kick the former), I suppose I’ll never understand what Liebling has been through over the past four decades, but whatever that personal hell might have been, I’m glad he managed to claw his way out of it, especially when an album as stellar as Last Rites is the result.  Liebling isn’t here to be a another rock ‘n’ roll casualty.  He’s here to kick your ass, and uh, to quote the man himself, “show ’em how”.

Looking like some kind of fucked up yet infinitely wise old wizard (possibly the same wizard that popped up in my review of Dawnbringer’s Nucleus), Liebling rocks harder and with more energy than a hundred men half his age can muster.  The man is unstoppable, as his inimitable vocal performance on Last Rites attests.  He’s one of metal’s last truly great, distinctive vocalists, sounding as vital and vibrant here as he did on the archival recordings featured on the First Daze Here collections.  Like all the Pentagram full lengths, Last Rites is a collection of classic songs that never received the proper treatment as well as newer compositions, and Liebling attacks them all with equal vigor.

Then there’s Victor Griffin, Liebling’s right hand man.  He is an out-and-out master of ten ton doom riffage, wielding a guitar tone that is best described as an iron fist sheathed in a velvet glove.  It’s warm fuzziness gently caresses your ears as it pummels them on tracks like “Treat Me Right”, “Into the Ground” and “Walk in Blue Light”.  Anyone who’s listened to Griffin’s Place of Skulls knows that he’s all about the savior, but you’d swear that he’d had to have struck a deal with Lucifer himself in order to command this kind of fiery six-string righteousness.

It’s interesting to me that many of the older doom metal practitioners, such as Liebling and Griffin, are down with the good lord.  So many modern doom bands embrace the dark side, and it seems they missed the entire point of Black Sabbath (both the song and the band).  Ozzy and Co. weren’t happy to see Satan standing before them, they were fucking terrified (“Oh please God help me!”).  That to me is what doom metal is about; coming to the grim realization that conjuring up the forces of darkness isn’t a good thing and struggling to attain some semblance of salvation, even if there is little or no hope of it.  That might sound strange coming from an avowed atheist, but for whatever reason I’ve always seen doom as a some sort of biblical struggle between good and evil taking the form of debilitatingly heavy riffs.  Liebling and Griffin understand this inherently.  They’ve danced with the Devil longer than any mere mortal has a right to, and somehow managed to come out of the ordeal not only alive, but at the height of their powers.  Now it’s their duty to deliver the warning, keeping all of us from suffering the same fate.  These are the things I hear when I listen to Last Rites.

Regardless of your stance on the spiritual matters of doom, you should have no problem appreciating Last Rights.  This is timeless music played with conviction and craftsmanship, something all too rare in today’s flavor-of-the-minute fueled metal scene. Last Rites is one of my favorite things I’ve heard so far this year, and hopefully the support of a respectable label will wake more people up to the fact that Liebling and Pentagram are nothing short of a goddamn national treasure.  Doom on, brothers and sisters.