Rubin Gives Metallica a New Spark
By Matt Clizbe
Clizbeats always tries to hit you with some of the best hits in the world of music today. In that process we are often able to pay close attention to some of the industry’s greatest headline makers from the past working on their all important come back record. The latest band on the build after 5 years of touring over seas is Heavy Metal legends Metallica.
According to the band’s blog and Myspace, the mixing and mastering of their ninth studio album is done. Death Magnetic is finished and waiting for fans. As originally announced in early 2006, Death Magnetic effectively brought the band’s 15 year long partnership with rock production ledged, Bob Rock to a close. This is a surprise to fans that has brought both a wave of fear and optimism to the table. Rock is credited with helping develop Metallica into a marketable band, crafting their sound to better capture the essence of their intense live shows, and formatted it for a studio album. Leaving Rock behind meant also leaving their music safety net for success.
Bob Rock is responsible for the production of every Metallica album between and including 1991’s self titled (The Black Album), to 2003’s St Anger. Although St. Anger was an immediate hit in sales, the album was an incredible disappointment to fans who felt cheated. It’s hard to say who is to blame for the album’s negative reception. Maybe it was a fluke? Maybe fans still felt disenfranchised by the very establishment based stance they took on the peer to peer sharing of music files? Maybe fans were hoping the band would further enhance the genre, only to find them oddly out of place in a musical landscape saturated with hip hop and digitally placed pop? Maybe they were trying to connect with a sound that wasn’t them anymore and they were too caught up in the process to realize it?
Whatever the reason it was their collective reasoning to stop, collect themselves, and go back to the drawing board. Multi-genre producer and co-founder of Def Jam Records, Rick Rubin was chosen to be at the production helm. Matallica recently told MTV News that Rubin encouraged them to go retro. He asked them to think back to the mood and influences of 1985 when they were making 1986’s Master of Puppets.
"One of the coolest things was Rick actually suggested that we all stand up and rock out, like we would live," said bassist Robert Trujillo.
"And we did, and it put a lot of life into the basic tracking of it all. It was almost to the point where, when I was retracking stuff, I was standing up, headbanging. I'd never done that in a recording situation before. He's a great song doctor, and he has great ears."
Guitarist Kirk Hammett continued to tell MTV
“Rubin's style was drastically different than Rock's, in that he was less hands-on. In fact, he was barely ever in the studio. The great thing about working with Rick is he's never around, I would say that's a very strong point, in that it leaves the four of us to take on the entire brunt of the work and the planning that goes into the songwriting process and the recording process. Of course, Rick was there for part of that process” The group then told MTV how Bob Rock would add things to the Metallica sound
"Bob would add a lot of his own musical input, and with that came a lot of his own influences and style and jurisdiction and idiosyncrasies," Hammett continued. "And it would eventually make it into our sound.”
Front Man James Hetfield said that while Rock was a solid producer, Rubin's style is dramatically different
"Rick is not the kind of producer like a Bob Rock, who's there every moment, holding your hand, making you step up," he said. "[Rock] arranged everything, all the time, and wore many hats in the studio. Rick Rubin? No hat. Rick comes in and goes, 'Well, where's the songs? OK, that's good. That's not so good. More of this, less of that — see you in a few months. Goodbye.' And that's what we needed — that brutal honesty, to get through it, and it worked."
I have a lot of respect of Rick Ruben’s insight. Ultimately what has happened to Metallica is the fact that they went from being a metal band with serious power in their performance, to striking a cord with the masses and stepping into the momentum of the favored rock trends of that era, creating a cultural explosion. By default, they have become iconic partly because they are truly great, but also because they embodied something bigger then them that was going on at the time.
Subconsciously, Metallica probably felt like they had to represent their genre on a mass level once again with the release of St. Anger, muchlike their previous work.But it was in the process of putting the metal genre on their shoulders that they most likely lost their freedom to truly create. While it is always good and necessary to be progressive in a genre, maintaining one’s own perspective is still most important. Bob Rock was brought in because his studio knowledge gave them new perspective on making records. He helped contain the energy they already had so that the current could flow better to the audience. So if they’re now running low on that perspective , Rick Rubin is just trying to ignite some new sparks. Rick is finally letting them be what they were in the first place. I’m very interested to see what happens. Look for Metallica’s ninth studio album Death Magnetic to be released September 12th.
