. . .
This exercise has had several purposes. It’s a celebration of Metallica’s music. It’s a natural byproduct of my masochistic nature. And it’s a project so crazy that, once spawned in my head, it couldn’t not be done. Fitzcarraldo comes to mind.
But one reason stands out above the others, even above Metallica themselves. It’s the importance of songs. Metallica became the biggest metal band ever by having the best songs. They did so with remarkable consistency over four consecutive records. A few songs are arguably duds, but not only do all the songs belong, they are all memorable. On their first four albums, Metallica’s weaker moments are so strong that they stand out in our consciousness more than most bands’ greatest successes.
“Dyers Eve” is a good example. On an almost excruciatingly baroque album, it’s almost tossed off, a picking hand exercise in the form of high-octane thrash. Compared against other Metallica songs of similar energy – “Fight Fire with Fire”, “Battery”, “Damage, Inc.” – it’s lesser by far. It just goes rat-a-tat-tat; it doesn’t have the sweep that makes those songs so devastating. Many thrash bands matched or outpaced Metallica in terms of intensity. But intensity is just one front in the war called time. Metallica won that war by winning multiple fronts: vision, execution, having better songs.
“Dyers Eve” isn’t a great song, but it’s a good one. What makes a song good? Well, many things that could probably form a 35-part series on their own. But it all boils down to the song having an existence of its own. It’s not just a bunch of shredding, or a catchy riff or hook. It’s when everything adds up so that the song becomes a world. The world doesn’t have to be huge or detailed, but it must be a defined place. The parameters are the song’s duration, and the structures that give rhythm and trajectory to action within the song.
. . .
“Dyers Eve” (live, France, 2009)
. . .
The world of “Dyers Eve” is painfully small. Its duration almost doesn’t matter, because “time has frozen still what’s left to be”. The narrator is so paralyzed by rage that his existence grinds to a halt. He can’t grow up; he “cannot face the fact I think for me”. He’s dependent on his parents and enraged at that fact. Few bands, metal or otherwise, address parent-child relationships; it’s not a sexy topic. To do so with such searing focus is an accomplishment. (Interestingly, the next song in Metallica’s discography is “Enter Sandman”, which at points adopt a parental perspective, if not a particularly meaningful one.)
“Dyers Eve” captivated me as a teenager. Towards my parents I felt great rage, some of which was justified, and the rest of which was hormonal. I still sympathize with the song’s narrator, because being a metal fan means suspending, to a degree, the adult need to squash fantasy. During adolescence, the mind wanders freely. Heavy metal rewards that, but adulthood doesn’t.
Admittedly, that’s not the conflict here; in fact, the narrator says, “I’ve outgrown that fucking lullaby”. He wants to find a reality outside the constructs his parents built for him. Still, there’s a push-and-pull between authority figure and subject, and between truth and falsehood, that runs throughout …And Justice for All. “Dyers Eve” works on a personal level; unlike the songs that precede it, its scope isn’t the environment or the halls of justice. But it’s definitely another brick in the wall of AJFA’s edifice of tension.
The album isn’t good at releasing that tension, which frustrates those who want metal to be a Dionysian experience. (See Deena Weinstein’s dichotomy of metal into Dionysian and Chaotic themes.) But as music, as art, and simply as something that affects us, …And Justice for All is more than effective. It’s the most polarizing of Metallica’s good records, which perhaps makes it the most interesting one. Universal love and universal hate aren’t that interesting. But, as the saying goes, you’re doing something right if people both love and hate it. In Metallica’s case, that “something” was writing songs that people talk about for years afterwards.
. . .
“Dyers Eve”
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. . .
METALLICA: THE FIRST FOUR ALBUMS
“To Live Is to Die”
“The Frayed Ends of Sanity”
“Harvester of Sorrow
“The Shortest Straw”
“One”
“Eye of the Beholder”
“…And Justice for All”
“Blackened”
“Damage Inc.”
“Orion”
“Leper Messiah”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“Master of Puppets”
“Battery”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Creeping Death”
“Escape”
“Trapped Under Ice”
“Fade to Black”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Metal Militia”
“Seek & Destroy”
“No Remorse”
“Phantom Lord”
“Whiplash”
“(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”
“Jump in the Fire”
“Motorbreath”
“The Four Horsemen”
“Hit the Lights”
. . .
Thank you, Cosmo Lee.
+1
I’ll add my voice to the chorus of much-deserved praise. Like a lot of recent metal music, a lot of writing on metal blogs is ephemeral. I read it, and then a couple of minutes later I’ve forgotten what I just read. This series of posts, by contrast, was both thoughtful and thorough. Like those first four Metallica albums, these posts were more than just background noise /distraction for me, but were time well spent. Thanks.
+ 1
A thoughtful ending to an ambitious project. Well done, Cosmo.
probably my favourite metallica song of all time! i always felt that their faster numbers had a somewhat comical quality in a way until i heard this (particularly damage inc which is still a great tune). a good friend and I listened back to the guitar solo so many times as young teenagers that we lost count, especially the end refrain, and usually in one sitting. i’d definitely argue it was kirks finest guitar solo. a brilliant end to a brilliant album and a brilliant end to the mammoth task you set yourself cosmo. congrats!
Very well done! I’m sad that the series has to end, but it was very well done, eye-opening in a lot of cases. Thanks a bunch for doing this.
Felt like my heart was being touched by Christ as I read this.
Cosmo,
Thank you so much for this awesome series! I really hope you spawn this off into a book, or at least another series on the next 4 albums… ok, if you’re not a masochist, at least a continued feature on the Black album and a sidebar on Garage Days.
haha! Yeah if there’s a series on the NEXT 4 albums, it would have to be written in a comedic light. Otherwise I don’t think I could endure reading a case by case account of how my one time favorite band became a joke.
You could bang them out pretty fast: just list a song title and attach a random photo of human excrement. Fuel could have a turd on fire, for example.
Lars once said this was the hardest Metallica song to play (on drums); I wonder if that’s still true.
If it was true then, it’s true now.
It’s sad to see this series come to end, but what a ride it’s been. Hard to think of anything more worthy of an exhaustive review than these particular songs.
It’d be rad if one of the new staff could come up with a worthy successor to this series. It’s fascinating to revisit the stuff we’re all so intimately familiar, but to put it under the microscope in a new way. You tap into metalhead nostalgia and inevitably spark discussion.
Maybe there could be a series about classic bands’ discographies? Do a post and analysis on each album, with the only criteria for a band’s inclusion being that every album is at least worth talking about (whether it’s good or bad).
Dunno how I forgot to say this above: KILLER fucking series, Cosmo! Great work all around and it shows true dedication that you took on something so herculean in the first place, never mind delivering classic articles in the process.
“KILLER fucking series” or did you actually mean “fucking KILLER series”?
Anyways, I also second that motion: there are many more bands that shaped the metal world and need recognition in retrospect. This way of analysing trends would be most welcome by Steve Jobs, in the sense that it is only well after the events that you can join the dots to see the general direction of destiny.
I like the ambiguity of “KILLER fucking series” now that I reread it, but that wasn’t my intent — that’s just how I talk. \m/ D: \m/
I second that motion, Wash. Maybe a series called “Celtic Frost: the first tree albums and the last”.
Or a Slayer one…
Great series, Cosmo. You prompted me to revisit all these albums, which I had not done in at least
a decade and a half. It was hard for me to not feel that Metallica had lost all relevance when they made the transition from the golden years to the current period (starting with the Black Album).
To current IO staffers: I think Mr. Jones has an excellent idea, and I would like to nominate Death’s entire catalog as the first for analysis.
Wow, Death was the first band that popped into my head too! And IO just did the Individual Thought Patterns piece…
So many good bands worth coverage: Converge, Slayer, Sabbath, Maiden, Isis, Bolt Thrower, Emperor, Celtic Frost, and a million more. Darkthrone could be pretty entertaining with all 14 or whatever albums, and who knows, somebody could do some more contemporary bands like Portal or Yob. Even if different writers took on different albums within a catalog, it could be an ongoing series that changes feel as it goes.
The war called time.
Great work Cosmo. Props.
Congrats too on this task. Certainly made for a good read. And I second the motion on Cosmo/other repeating with other classic era of a classic band. Converge would be great.
However, I have to disagree on the description of Dyer’s Eve as good but not great. Its one of my favourite songs of all time, and possibly my favourite Metallica. The reason being its total relentlessness. Just balls-out hate born of years of frustration. The riffage, the drums, the vocals and lyrics make it an unstoppable behemoth.
And it has one of my favourite lines in music history: ‘Undying spite I feel for you’. Totally love that line.
Dyers Eve has always been my favorite Metallica song because of the awesome “Q and A” style riffing. The lyrics are a bit juvenile, I hate my mommy n daddy n all, but it worked for me when I was a teenager myself.
“He can’t grow up; he “cannot face the fact I think for me”.”
Ha! I’ve always had a different read of this line. I read it as the speaker blaming his parents that they cannot face that fact, not as an admission that he himself can’t.
Anyway, that’s a very true statement that AJFA does not release the tension which it accumulates. When Damage, inc. closed the previous album, it was also a very abrupt ending, but it somehow carried a silent promise “we’ll be back with a vengeance!”. Dyers Eve on the other hand just leaves us hanging there, not knowing what to expect, and asking “is that it?”. Quite unfulfilling!
One additional thing that contributes to the unresolvedness is that the speaker both condemns his parents and concedes that they might have been right after all. Ah, the question of the loss of innocence is one of great difficulty…
One thing which I mentioned previously in the comments to the post on “frayed ends”, and which I will repeat here is that James’s description of psychological states in AJFA is conspicuously focused and detailed, almost to the point where we get the impression that he himself has been subject to those feelings. I can’t help but wonder… And if this is indeed true, one should only feel inspired by his perseverence and uninhibition in creating music.
—
Thanks for this series, Cosmo!
Many people have suggested a similar type of rubric for other bands, and it sounds like a good idea. However, I don’t really think that there is any other metal band which has been consistent and able enough to endure song-by-song scrutiny. A single album maybe, but across several albums? Nah…
by the way, can anyone explain to me the title of this song? If we accept that a “dyer” is someone who “dies”, then should the song be counted as a suicide note? And why isn’t there an apostrophe? Mystified…
This is farfetched, but could they have followed Zeppelin here? Dyer Maker isn’t pronounced the way it “looks” (sounds like Jamaica if you say it fast). Dyers Eve could turn into Deceive, which fits with the theme of the song. Just a random guess…
Btw, Cosmo: This has been the most awesome blog series ever.
I always interpreted it the same way. And those are some very good observations. Also, the punctuation issue has always bugged me, too.
I don’t think any other album could stand this kind of extended analysis on a site like this. Not because there aren’t some that are good enough, but simply because there aren’t any that are well-known enough to such an extent by a large enough group of people to make the series worthwhile. Not even Reign in Blood. Maybe Paranoid, but that’s a maybe.
I see the lyrics to Dyer’s Eve as a very personal response by Hetfield to his parent’s beliefs in Christian Science.
OK, apparently no one else is wondering about the title. Maybe I’m just dumb then.
Since this is the last post of this series, I will not miss the opportunity to issue a loud “BUGGER YOU ALL!” to anyone who dares disrespect the humongous Black Album.
Day upon day, I tire of the same old complaints that Metallica’s fifth album sucks because of how they abandoned their roots, because of how well it sold, because of how popular it has become, because of how they “became a pop band”, yadda-yadda.
Listen up, there are no “roots” to talk about here. Each of Metallica’s albums has its own distinct spirit. The band itself has never identified with anything more specific than “Heavy Metal”. They were always free of the restrictions of genrification, and that’s why they became the best. The Black Album is still metal as fuck, so no rules have been broken.
Oh, I forgot; Lars in an interview circa ‘89: “We are not a thrash metal band.” True story.
As for the “sellout!” mantra, well, you should be glad that the album sold that well. Because that accomplished several quite important things.
1) It immensely boosted the popularity of metal.
2) It immensely boosted the popularity of the best metal band, and prompted people to check out the band’s worthy back catalogue. (Master of Puppets in ‘91: Platinum. Master of Puppets in 2011: 6x Platinum)
3) It promoted Metallica’s status from that of the best metal band, to that of one of the best all bands of all time. (They would have been THE best band of all time if Cliff had lived)
Yes, popularity matters. Reaching many people matters. It’s not enough to have four good albums that would have faded to obscurity, had Metallica not made The Black Album.
4) Its success enabled the band to achieve the financial means to continue to perform heavy tours around the world even to this day. For which we are all thankful.
And the songs are damn good too. Yes, Sad But True, Nothing Else Matters, Enter Sandman, The Unforgiven are very melodic. Yes, they have been overplayed to hell. Yes, they’re not that heavy. Yes, Metallica has better songs than those. BUT THEY ARE STILL AMAZING SONGS. I am worried for the soul of anyone who’d call them bad.
And, specifically “The Unforgiven”, is definitely in Metallica’s top 10. Definitely. And it blows all the songs on AJFA out of the water.
So, away with you promoters of discontent! It’s “Metallica: The First Five”.
My refutation needs only 4 words: “Don’t Tread on Me”. Bollocks and truly, nothing else matters.
Seriously, though, didn’t initially think that the album completely sucked, but it wore on me over the days of listening, and I don’t even have any version of it left. Sorry, mate.
I agree with your basic premise that it’s a good album . . . but not a great one.
1. It killed metal, in the eyes of many. It opened the doors for Pantera, sure, but also for the much-maligned nu metal movement.
2. Agreed
3. A defensible position
4. As a fan of recorded music rather than live music, and as someone who has indeed seen them twice, I would say this was most definitely not worth it.
“The Unforgiven” is NOT in the band’s top 10. Not even close. How can you possibly say it’s better than “One” or “Harvester”?
I don’t think I really need to expound on that, because this audience already has their opinions. And I think you will be quite alone here. (And I in the majority . . . for probably the first time ever.)
Yeah… but the black album sucks, brah.
Ah yes, some may think that the ‘Black Album’ sucks and was the epitome of selling out, but some unskippable gems it does contain: “Through the never”, “Sad but true” and the stratospheric “Wherever I may roam” come to my mind.
I just got real sad, realizing this is the end of the Cosmo posts. He will be missed. But anyway, I do need to add something that might sound kind of like disagreement on the “adult need to squash fantasy”. It’s an immature adult need. Tolkien at least once noted (possibly in the foreword to The Hobbit) that you can appreciate fantasy again when you have become more mature, or old enough to appreciate it again, and he’s right.
Does it bother anyone else that you can only get the complete cover art on the cassette version of this album? A nerd-gripe of some magnitude I’m sure…
Further nerdism…and forgive me if this discussion has been had and closed for twenty years, but could the inverted perspective of the logo on this sleeve be implying that the stone for the logo on ‘Master of Puppets’ was cut from this wall (…and polished)? And could the strange choice of colour actually imply that the hollowed source has been pissed in? I’d be interested to know if I’m just making stuff up between the lines or if I’m on to something here…
Regarding this song; though I would change not a damn thing about any of the first four albums, every one has a song that’s always felt sort of half-baked, where things don’t come together quite as cohesively as the rest. Almost as if a bunch of leftover, albeit killer riffs were welded together, or a vocal pattern/lyrics were not quite ripe but picked anyway. ‘Disposable Heroes’ was that song on ‘…Puppets’ and ‘Dyers Eve’ is that song on ‘…Justice’ for me.
I really like your point on unreleased tension, but it has me remembering that when I was much younger this song was my favourite because it was so frantic and frankly relieving after ‘To Live is to Die’, but the height of the song felt like the final tapping section of the solo and how it seems to untie the tension of the entire song and relax into the riff/rhythm following it. The title track has a similar effect near the end (about 9:20) where the bouncy/stop-start repetition moves into this smooth as glass segue back into the main harmony theme. Both moments are really brief but relieving and climactic. ‘The Frayed Ends of Sanity’ seems to do the complete opposite when the harmony builds and builds and everything stops so Lars can introduce the change up (about 4:00) and the proceed to tie some tight knots in the middle of the song. That might be my favourite moment in music; and Lars Ulrich is responsible.
‘Disposable Heroes’ half-baked…? Er, how?
What the hell, “Disposable Heroes” is like the best Metallica song. Come on, man…
Damage, Inc. was the song on MoP that was based on leftover riffs. (hear the Disposable Heroes demo, it initially had Damage, Inc’s riff) But it still kicks humongous ass.
The verse riff and vocal pattern/melody really hold the song back for me, at least in the context of the whole album. It almost seems like the verse itself was created solely to hold the song together. I’ll stop short of calling it an afterthought, but it still feels like the weakest part of this song is its most recurring theme. The title track on ‘Ride the Lightning’ has a very similar feel to me. Still…it’s a bit like pointing out lesser-shining nuggets in a gold rush.
This series should be made into a book of some kind. Well done Cosmo.
Thank you for this series Cosmo.
As some of you guys may know, Metallica are currently in the midst of doing four very special shows at the Fillmore for their 30th anniversary. Yesterday was their second one, and they apparently played “To Live is to Die” in its entirety. Crazy!
Metallica are a band. They write songs. This makes them better than a lot of bands who do not. Songs are important because they are about something, and that means you can study them and find out what they are about. That makes you feel something. Not all of Metallica’s songs are great. I am just saying that quite bluntly so that you will see that I am not just a Metallica fan boy. But I will qualify that by saying that while not all Metallica songs are great, many are great. And those that are not great are mostly very good. The remainder (a small amount) are not good. In closing, I would like to reiterate that without Metallica and their top notch song writing ability, I would not have been able to write this which you have just read. You may thank me in the comments below.
people talk about the lack of bass on this album,but Reign In Blood has the same lack of bass. just an observation