Just to be a dick... if you are going by record sales...

Backstreet Boys have 130 million albums sold. LOL

So basically, "Detroit Rock City" minus the ha-ha. Got it.

St. Anger's actually a very good album in regards to the songs. Where the album ultimately fails is in the production and the producer. Bob Rock has a certain "sound" and his sound is polished, not raw.

So, in order to make the record sound more "raw", they replaced all of the drums with lo-fi samples (and in many cases, multiple samples in order to make it sound more lo-fi). They EQ'd the top end out of the guitars to make it sound like a lo-fi recording, recorded the bass, then split the signal an octave lower and added distortion and lastly, used a cheap mic to record Hetfield's vocals, then refused to tune his vocals.

The end result was very grating on the ears. But if you watch their live performance included with the movie "Some Kind of Monster", the songs sound killer and it sounds, production-wise, like the Black album.

So finally, they hired Rick Rubin to produce Death Magnetic because he's well known for raw sounding records. Personally, I think they need to hire someone like Andy Sneap for their next record to make it kick ass sonically but they have their fans to please, so it probably won't happen.

Isn't this the case with nearly every artist and band?

Like "shit"? Really?

I hope you realize that you're listening to a 96kbs bit rate encoded MONO audio file.

I thought Death Magnetic was fantastic. One of their best albums IMO.

What's the deal with its sound problems? Haven't really noticed it, but I guess a lot of people have complained about it. I guess my ear isn't that fine tuned.

In the mastering process, Death Magnetic was considered by many (myself included) to be sonically inferior due to the overuse of a Brick Wall Limiter in mastering.

Limiting essentially "squishes" the audio content to the point where everything is the same volume. What this does is make the quietest parts as loud as the loudest parts and allows for pushing the overall decibel limit near Zero. So by squishing the audio, it makes for a louder playback on CD, Mp3, etc. but it also removes dynamics, smears the stereo image and sounds harsh.

For example, if you hear the same exact tracks in Rock Band, they sound absolutely amazing because Rock Band requires stems (i.e, all of the "sums" of the guitars, vocals, bass and drums on separate tracks) with no mastering or limiting.

No.

A lot of the songs on Death Magnetic sounds like their older stuff. It's definately a departure from the Bob Rock sounding stuff from Black album, Load, Re-Load.

So you liked it better pre-Black album?

On the early albums, there was egregious amounts reverb, multiple delays (long, medium and short) along with the doubling and tripling of the lead vocals, then blended together.

What you've heard in the last 15 years is his voice without all the garbage.

Dry and raw.

I find the songwriting of Load and Re-Load unbearable. I can't even stand those songs for more than about 20 seconds.

St. Anger was a step in the right direction and Death Magnetic all but nailed it, at least for me.

Agreed. There are maybe 1 or two songs total I like on Load and Re Load.

Death magnetic was great despite the extra "noise"

Cool. Very interesting.

Metallica defined a generation of music in the late 80's and 90's. Which, fortunately I was a part of. That being said. I have not bought anything of theirs after St. Anger, Total let down. I will give Death Magnetic a shot. IMO people still buy the new albums hoping for that old sound and go to the stadiums to hear some of the best music made, and go smoke and pee during the new stuff. I'll probably go see this just to reminisce all of the great shows I saw back in the day. Seeing them with The Cult in I think '88 will always be at the top.