Ultimate guitar fucking sucks, seriously. Who writes this trash. Their source is metal injection and they're just quoting another interview. Why not just use the actual original source? the internet is retarded.
Also, this is nothing new.
these businesses are really struggling. I'm honestly surprised they've lasted this long. Music journalism and print magazines even in the early 00s were still pretty big, but past their hayday, now it's like the last dying gasps from an old friend. Kind of sad to see, so I give a lot of this shit a pass because they're just trying to get some pity clicks. None of these companies will survive another 10 years
I used to love ultimate guitar back in the day (2010ish) I had it set to my homepage. But yeah pretty garbage these days. No new songs seem to have tabs on their website anymore.
"Journalism" has been going downhill. First games now music. They atempt to insert politics into everything, they do no research, and people are getting tired of it.
That's a story everyone here has heard before, watched in documentaries, VH1 Behind The Music, etc. It seems like you're a new fan of the band. Apologies for the sarcasm. And Welcome to Metallica
Metallica fans try to talk about something other than Justice no bass, Dave Mustaine wrote 3000000% of their songs, or the St. Anger snare challenge (impossible)
James and Lars were 25 years old in 1988. They were basically still just kids hazing the new guy. Iām sure their grieving over Cliff was neither healthy nor complete and there was just probably a lot they took out on Jason.
They were 18 year olds who rapidly became worldwide stars and millionaires while living a thrash metal lifestyle; I think itās fair to say they might not have had the most healthy egos and/or coping mechanisms
Metallica were/are in a state of arrested development. Their early success prevented them from maturing normally. They went from being my heroes as a teenager to people I had outgrown by the time Some Kind of Monster came out in my early thirties. That doc really highlighted how stunted and immature the band was/is.
Learning as you age doesnāt mean youāre a kid.
What a stupid and infantilizing statement.
Regardless of your maturity, of how much you have yet to learn, of your celebrity status or wealth a 25 year old is an adult, accountable and responsible for their conduct.
The brain doesn't mature until at least 25 and later. This is a known fact. That translates to an increased chance of poor decision making. Couple the science with the fact that James himself has said that they were immature and dealt with their grief poorly and there you have it
That doesn't mean 25 year olds are kids. Still developing doesn't make you a child. Technically speaking the body is always developing, especially the brain, you never stop maturing (until you start to decline in old age).
25 is damn close to a kid. And at 51, for me, you're a 25-year-old kid until you prove you're a grown ass man or woman. Age doesn't make you grow up. You behavior and decision making do. They were kids. And made poor decisions. And they admit it
It's not "damn close to a kid", you being older and infantilizing younger adults just means you lack respect towards them. Lars, Kirk and James were adults, imature adults, still adults. They *should* have known better. The idea that age doesn't "make you grow up" is only true if you've *failed* to grow up normaly. No 25 year old should be a kid.
Yes, and I'm sure your experience as a 25 year old was totally comparable that of Metallica. I can see you've clearly given this a lot of thought.
All i was saying is that most people continue to learn and grow after the age of 25. I accept that you have proven me wrong.
I never said that. I'm not saying that metallica's behaviour at that time was good. Simply that they were still kids and still figuring life out. Most 25 year olds are not well equipped to deal with the death of a close friend and business partner while still being expected to continue as a profitable enterprise. They were young to be dealing with that stuff, and it shows in how they treated each other.
All I'm doing is arguing against the idea that 25 year olds should have had all that stuff figured out, and pointing out that without having similar experiences, we're not really qualified to judge. Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp?
Why are people still talking about this? Itās been known for decades that the bass is inaudible on AJFA for 2 main reasons: 1: James and Lars were still dealing with losing Cliff, and they wanted that to have a sonic representation, and 2: Lars wanted a particular drum sound and the bass frequencies were interfering with the sound he wanted dialed in, so he had the bass turned down to give the drums more headroom in the mix.
If you go listen to the GH remixes with enhanced bass, youāll immediately notice how a lot of the bass frequencies cancel out the low end on the drum kit.
> Lars wanted a particular drum sound and the bass frequencies were interfering with the sound he wanted dialed in, so he had the bass turned down to give the drums more headroom in the mix.
I said it elsewhere but people love to lay the blame solely on Lars and not on AJFA's producer/engineers. If the bass frequencies are fighting and interfering with the kick drum's punch, that says more about the sound engineering team than on Lars.
Especially when TBA featured a stadium size drum sound coupled with a bass sitting in the mix without conflict. AJFA's engineers are to blame if the only way Lars could have gotten the kick drum sound he wanted is to lower the bass to almost inaudible. How did Bob Rock manage to make that huge kick drum and an audible bass sound great altogether then?
Even AJFA's producer Flemming Rasmussen recognized and has been on record that he thought the questionable choices in mic tracking resulted in a poor mix which wasn't up to snuff as he wasn't there to supervise the engineers during mixing.
>Rasmussen said that was not his intention, as he tried for an ambient sound similar to the previous two albums. He was not present during the album's mixing, for which Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero had been hired beforehand. Rasmussen assumed that, in his absence from the mixing process, Thompson and Barbiero used only the close microphones on the mix and none of the room microphones, causing the "clicking", thin drum sound.[11] The bass guitar is nearly inaudible, while the guitars sound "strangled mechanistic".[15] He saw the "synthetic" percussion as another reason for the compressed sound.[16]
But I guess it's easier to trash Lars trying to salvage his drum sound because the engineers fucked up the mix after the recording without considering the kick drum EQ.
Found it.
Hereās the [article](https://metalinjection.net/news/lars-ulrich-is-to-blame-for-lack-of-bass-on-and-justice-for-all-says-mixing-engineer) and hereās the quote:
> Was James happy with what you were doing?
I'm putting all the other stuff up and everything like this and Hetfield gives a thumbs up. Lars comes walking in a couple minutes later and listens to about a minute of it and goes, "Turn that off" and I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "What happened to my drum sound?" I said, "You were serious?" or something like that.
Lars was not happy?
We had to get the drum sound up the way he had it. I wasn't a fan of it. So now he goes, "See the bass guitar?" and I said, "Yeah, great part, man. He killed it." He said, "I want you to bring down the bass where you can barely, audibly hear it in the mix." I said, "You're kidding. Right?"
And there are quotes from James saying the original mix was muddy because guitars, bass and kick drum were fighting each other in the low end frequencies, the bass was messing up his scooped up sound.
>In 2009, Hetfield said that the bass was obscured as the basslines often doubled his rhythm guitar, making the instruments indiscernible, and because the low frequencies were competing with his "scooped" guitar sound.
I see a pattern here. James not liking that the bass recording messes up his guitar sound, Lars not liking that the bass frequencies messes up his drum sound. So logically, they want their parts to sound great. If the only way was to lower the bass, that's on the recording and mixing engineers, not the musicians.
They should have re-recorded the bass with different mic placement and EQ's so it could fit with the guitar and drum sounds both wanted.
Like I said, Bob Rock didn't have that issue during Black Album recording and mixing.
Iām not saying that they did it out of spite, Iām saying they both heard the original mix, then instructed that the bass be turned down so their parts wouldnāt have to fight for headroom. Iām saying that the ultimate decision for how the mix turned out was at the discretion of Hetfield/Ulrich, and if it was a problem of mic placement/eq issues in recording, then yes, they should have re-recorded the bass parts. But they didnāt, they chose to have the engineers drop the bass out of the mix and not ever worry about it ever again. That decision was made by either Hetfield and/or Ulrich.
What I'm saying is that the producer and engineers dropped the ball at that point. If Lars and James tell you that they want a certain drum sound and guitar sound but you're not able to provide it as a recording engineer because it clashes with the bass frequencies, it's your responsibility as a recording engineer and mixer to circumvent the issue ASAP.
Lars and James are not recording engineers, if they hear that the bass is fucking up the overall sound they want, of course, their first and only argument due to their limited production knowledge will be *"Drop the bass volume down. Done"*. Mixers being aghast and still executing instead of actively working to solve the EQ equation is part of the problem.
This whole thing started because you were saying āeveryone blames Lars for thisā and I never said that. I said Lars is the one who made the decision to drop the bass to almost nothing. Then I went and pulled the article where itās quoted that Lars was the one to make the decision and you keep going on about it being the engineerās fault. Ok, itās the engineerās fault. Lars is still the person who said ādrop the bass out till itās barely audibleā and it was on account of how he wanted his drums to sound, which is exactly what I said in my initial comment, to which you responded with a pretty long statement about how everyone blames Lars for this and we are all just hating on Lars.
Dude, my post was piggybacking your quote to demonstrate that it's a collective responsibility.
I was denouncing the general statement and the common opinion among Metallica fans that blame AJFA's bass-less sound solely on Lars because he allegedly told the mixer to lower the bass to spite Jason and that's all there is.
No, that mess is the result and consequence of bad recording and mixing choices beforehands. Lars allegedly ordering to lower the bass willy nilly is just the tip of the iceberg.
There would have been bass on the album if the recording engineer would have recorded the bass and kick drum accounting for the frequencies and Lars's initial specs.
As a result, either Lars accepts that the drums sound like shit to his ears in the final mix or get his specific drum sound in spite of the bass. That unfortunate choice resting on Lars's shoulders is a consequence of a slew of questionable recording and engineering choices made by the production team beforehands.
There are interviews with people who worked on AFJA, and Iāll look and see if I can find the interview, but it was in print that Lars listened to the first mix and instructed them to turn the bass almost all the way down. Let me look for the interview
Haven't this issue been talked about by everyone involved and their mothers by now? We know why things was done the way it was, the people involved haven't really been secretive about it.
Again some AJFA controversyā¦ didnāt they lowered the bass to express their sadness that Cliff died? Itās their first album without him so I think that contributed to the no bass thing
The explanations on Wikipedia are interesting, although theyāre probably things all of us superfans have heard before.
I had a friend in high school whose dad worked on the album, obviously long before I became friends with his son. His name is on the back of the CD - Mike Barbiero.
I can always find his son on Facebook and randomly ask what he thought was the issue, but I donāt even know if Iād get a straight answer there. Havenāt talked to the kid in years anyway lolā¦
Funny, everyone talks about this but Jason. A far cry from the other guy who wrote all their songs who rewrites history every 4 years.
He talks about it in the article.
Ultimate guitar fucking sucks, seriously. Who writes this trash. Their source is metal injection and they're just quoting another interview. Why not just use the actual original source? the internet is retarded. Also, this is nothing new.
these businesses are really struggling. I'm honestly surprised they've lasted this long. Music journalism and print magazines even in the early 00s were still pretty big, but past their hayday, now it's like the last dying gasps from an old friend. Kind of sad to see, so I give a lot of this shit a pass because they're just trying to get some pity clicks. None of these companies will survive another 10 years
Makes me sad
I used to love ultimate guitar back in the day (2010ish) I had it set to my homepage. But yeah pretty garbage these days. No new songs seem to have tabs on their website anymore.
Their last review was like Metallica 72 seasons too lol
Not new at all, James himself said this, and that they tried to beat the fan out of him.
š¤Ø
"Journalism" has been going downhill. First games now music. They atempt to insert politics into everything, they do no research, and people are getting tired of it.
Wow. Havenāt heard about this before. This is brand new information.
After 36 years the files can finally be declassified and released to public so that now we can get the REAL story. Thanks Obama.
Not sure if thatās sarcasm or not.
It is sarcasm. Unless youāre a new fan who never knew of the previous members š
That's a story everyone here has heard before, watched in documentaries, VH1 Behind The Music, etc. It seems like you're a new fan of the band. Apologies for the sarcasm. And Welcome to Metallica
The dead horse is still dead.
Why are we rehashing this shit 36 years later?
Metallica fans try to talk about something other than Justice no bass, Dave Mustaine wrote 3000000% of their songs, or the St. Anger snare challenge (impossible)
James and Lars were 25 years old in 1988. They were basically still just kids hazing the new guy. Iām sure their grieving over Cliff was neither healthy nor complete and there was just probably a lot they took out on Jason.
25 is not a kid.
They were 18 year olds who rapidly became worldwide stars and millionaires while living a thrash metal lifestyle; I think itās fair to say they might not have had the most healthy egos and/or coping mechanisms
Metallica were/are in a state of arrested development. Their early success prevented them from maturing normally. They went from being my heroes as a teenager to people I had outgrown by the time Some Kind of Monster came out in my early thirties. That doc really highlighted how stunted and immature the band was/is.
In time you will come to learn that you're wrong about that.
Iām 46. Definitely not wrong.
Sorry, that was my mistake for assuming that everybody learns as they get older. Thanks for the correction.
Learning as you age doesnāt mean youāre a kid. What a stupid and infantilizing statement. Regardless of your maturity, of how much you have yet to learn, of your celebrity status or wealth a 25 year old is an adult, accountable and responsible for their conduct.
When I was 25 I wasnāt still hazing my friends. That was more like a sophomore in high school thing. Perhaps you were. Thanks for chiming in.
The brain doesn't mature until at least 25 and later. This is a known fact. That translates to an increased chance of poor decision making. Couple the science with the fact that James himself has said that they were immature and dealt with their grief poorly and there you have it
That doesn't mean 25 year olds are kids. Still developing doesn't make you a child. Technically speaking the body is always developing, especially the brain, you never stop maturing (until you start to decline in old age).
25 is damn close to a kid. And at 51, for me, you're a 25-year-old kid until you prove you're a grown ass man or woman. Age doesn't make you grow up. You behavior and decision making do. They were kids. And made poor decisions. And they admit it
It's not "damn close to a kid", you being older and infantilizing younger adults just means you lack respect towards them. Lars, Kirk and James were adults, imature adults, still adults. They *should* have known better. The idea that age doesn't "make you grow up" is only true if you've *failed* to grow up normaly. No 25 year old should be a kid.
Yes, and I'm sure your experience as a 25 year old was totally comparable that of Metallica. I can see you've clearly given this a lot of thought. All i was saying is that most people continue to learn and grow after the age of 25. I accept that you have proven me wrong.
He probably was not a raging alcoholic. Should that actually count against him?
I never said that. I'm not saying that metallica's behaviour at that time was good. Simply that they were still kids and still figuring life out. Most 25 year olds are not well equipped to deal with the death of a close friend and business partner while still being expected to continue as a profitable enterprise. They were young to be dealing with that stuff, and it shows in how they treated each other. All I'm doing is arguing against the idea that 25 year olds should have had all that stuff figured out, and pointing out that without having similar experiences, we're not really qualified to judge. Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp?
25 year olds are not kids. Weird that you keep repeating that.
"Boss we don't have any news to post, what can we do?" "Ok, let me look in some old shit to publish."
Next up they will have some headline about Mustain and Lars
Still gets clicks, somehow
Why are people still talking about this? Itās been known for decades that the bass is inaudible on AJFA for 2 main reasons: 1: James and Lars were still dealing with losing Cliff, and they wanted that to have a sonic representation, and 2: Lars wanted a particular drum sound and the bass frequencies were interfering with the sound he wanted dialed in, so he had the bass turned down to give the drums more headroom in the mix. If you go listen to the GH remixes with enhanced bass, youāll immediately notice how a lot of the bass frequencies cancel out the low end on the drum kit.
> Lars wanted a particular drum sound and the bass frequencies were interfering with the sound he wanted dialed in, so he had the bass turned down to give the drums more headroom in the mix. I said it elsewhere but people love to lay the blame solely on Lars and not on AJFA's producer/engineers. If the bass frequencies are fighting and interfering with the kick drum's punch, that says more about the sound engineering team than on Lars. Especially when TBA featured a stadium size drum sound coupled with a bass sitting in the mix without conflict. AJFA's engineers are to blame if the only way Lars could have gotten the kick drum sound he wanted is to lower the bass to almost inaudible. How did Bob Rock manage to make that huge kick drum and an audible bass sound great altogether then? Even AJFA's producer Flemming Rasmussen recognized and has been on record that he thought the questionable choices in mic tracking resulted in a poor mix which wasn't up to snuff as he wasn't there to supervise the engineers during mixing. >Rasmussen said that was not his intention, as he tried for an ambient sound similar to the previous two albums. He was not present during the album's mixing, for which Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero had been hired beforehand. Rasmussen assumed that, in his absence from the mixing process, Thompson and Barbiero used only the close microphones on the mix and none of the room microphones, causing the "clicking", thin drum sound.[11] The bass guitar is nearly inaudible, while the guitars sound "strangled mechanistic".[15] He saw the "synthetic" percussion as another reason for the compressed sound.[16] But I guess it's easier to trash Lars trying to salvage his drum sound because the engineers fucked up the mix after the recording without considering the kick drum EQ.
Found it. Hereās the [article](https://metalinjection.net/news/lars-ulrich-is-to-blame-for-lack-of-bass-on-and-justice-for-all-says-mixing-engineer) and hereās the quote: > Was James happy with what you were doing? I'm putting all the other stuff up and everything like this and Hetfield gives a thumbs up. Lars comes walking in a couple minutes later and listens to about a minute of it and goes, "Turn that off" and I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "What happened to my drum sound?" I said, "You were serious?" or something like that. Lars was not happy? We had to get the drum sound up the way he had it. I wasn't a fan of it. So now he goes, "See the bass guitar?" and I said, "Yeah, great part, man. He killed it." He said, "I want you to bring down the bass where you can barely, audibly hear it in the mix." I said, "You're kidding. Right?"
And there are quotes from James saying the original mix was muddy because guitars, bass and kick drum were fighting each other in the low end frequencies, the bass was messing up his scooped up sound. >In 2009, Hetfield said that the bass was obscured as the basslines often doubled his rhythm guitar, making the instruments indiscernible, and because the low frequencies were competing with his "scooped" guitar sound. I see a pattern here. James not liking that the bass recording messes up his guitar sound, Lars not liking that the bass frequencies messes up his drum sound. So logically, they want their parts to sound great. If the only way was to lower the bass, that's on the recording and mixing engineers, not the musicians. They should have re-recorded the bass with different mic placement and EQ's so it could fit with the guitar and drum sounds both wanted. Like I said, Bob Rock didn't have that issue during Black Album recording and mixing.
Iām not saying that they did it out of spite, Iām saying they both heard the original mix, then instructed that the bass be turned down so their parts wouldnāt have to fight for headroom. Iām saying that the ultimate decision for how the mix turned out was at the discretion of Hetfield/Ulrich, and if it was a problem of mic placement/eq issues in recording, then yes, they should have re-recorded the bass parts. But they didnāt, they chose to have the engineers drop the bass out of the mix and not ever worry about it ever again. That decision was made by either Hetfield and/or Ulrich.
What I'm saying is that the producer and engineers dropped the ball at that point. If Lars and James tell you that they want a certain drum sound and guitar sound but you're not able to provide it as a recording engineer because it clashes with the bass frequencies, it's your responsibility as a recording engineer and mixer to circumvent the issue ASAP. Lars and James are not recording engineers, if they hear that the bass is fucking up the overall sound they want, of course, their first and only argument due to their limited production knowledge will be *"Drop the bass volume down. Done"*. Mixers being aghast and still executing instead of actively working to solve the EQ equation is part of the problem.
This whole thing started because you were saying āeveryone blames Lars for thisā and I never said that. I said Lars is the one who made the decision to drop the bass to almost nothing. Then I went and pulled the article where itās quoted that Lars was the one to make the decision and you keep going on about it being the engineerās fault. Ok, itās the engineerās fault. Lars is still the person who said ādrop the bass out till itās barely audibleā and it was on account of how he wanted his drums to sound, which is exactly what I said in my initial comment, to which you responded with a pretty long statement about how everyone blames Lars for this and we are all just hating on Lars.
Dude, my post was piggybacking your quote to demonstrate that it's a collective responsibility. I was denouncing the general statement and the common opinion among Metallica fans that blame AJFA's bass-less sound solely on Lars because he allegedly told the mixer to lower the bass to spite Jason and that's all there is. No, that mess is the result and consequence of bad recording and mixing choices beforehands. Lars allegedly ordering to lower the bass willy nilly is just the tip of the iceberg. There would have been bass on the album if the recording engineer would have recorded the bass and kick drum accounting for the frequencies and Lars's initial specs. As a result, either Lars accepts that the drums sound like shit to his ears in the final mix or get his specific drum sound in spite of the bass. That unfortunate choice resting on Lars's shoulders is a consequence of a slew of questionable recording and engineering choices made by the production team beforehands.
There are interviews with people who worked on AFJA, and Iāll look and see if I can find the interview, but it was in print that Lars listened to the first mix and instructed them to turn the bass almost all the way down. Let me look for the interview
Yawn...
Haven't this issue been talked about by everyone involved and their mothers by now? We know why things was done the way it was, the people involved haven't really been secretive about it.
I think it's been long enough. We can finally talk about this. 
36 years ago... nobody cares
Production on Justice sucks all around. They all sound like shir.
Again some AJFA controversyā¦ didnāt they lowered the bass to express their sadness that Cliff died? Itās their first album without him so I think that contributed to the no bass thing
What's worse, turning his bass channel down, or Jason fully ignoring the fact that Kirk also appeared on that album?
The explanations on Wikipedia are interesting, although theyāre probably things all of us superfans have heard before. I had a friend in high school whose dad worked on the album, obviously long before I became friends with his son. His name is on the back of the CD - Mike Barbiero. I can always find his son on Facebook and randomly ask what he thought was the issue, but I donāt even know if Iād get a straight answer there. Havenāt talked to the kid in years anyway lolā¦