Day 12 – A Song By A Band You Hate
“ For Whom The Bell Tolls” – Metallica
I’ve never been a fan of Metallica, and this is long before the whole Napster issue where the band went after its fans for copyright infringement. I don’t blame the band for what it did, but I think they went about it the wrong way. Not the issue, however.
What is it about Metallica that I don’t like? It’s hard to put my finger on it. I don’t mind the group’s earlier stuff, their first four albums, but I don’t have them and don’t feel any sense of loss for not having them. Even before the band started going after file sharing and then broke big in an overly commercial way with their fifth album, I just didn’t like Metallica as a band. I admired their D.I.Y. attitude, and they did seem to appreciate their fans, being fans of metal bands themselves (which is essentially why they started the band in the first place).
Having respect for a band and liking them are two separate things. While I can admire the group (less so today) for their work practices, a lot of the music doens’t do much for me, and almost the entire time that I’ve known about them (since 1983) they have come off as having a bit of a superior attitude. That feeling has only intensified over the last few years as more “behind the scenes” stuff has come to light about the band. If I was apathetic about Metallica before, at this point I just don’t like them at all.
Still, some of those early songs are quite good. I don’t think I’d mind having those first four albums, but there are plenty of others (at least 200 off the top of my head) that I’d rather spend money on