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by mikkupikku11 hours ago |
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upvoteby olivierestsage6 hours ago|
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Another person who I remember really coming out as a villain in that era was Gene Simmons from KISS: "Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars."[1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/10/kiss-frontman-we...

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upvoteby tombert2 hours ago|
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Wow, I already didn’t like him. Reading this feels validating.
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upvoteby halJordan4 hours ago|
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Man back when ars was good. Feels like you're pouring salt into a wound posting that link.
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upvoteby 4 hours ago|
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deleted
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upvoteby wnevets7 hours ago|
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It's even more egregious after watching interviews of a young Lars bragging about trading bootleg cassette tapes.
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upvoteby aduty5 hours ago|
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Lars was always a scumbag.
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upvoteby Henchman211 hours ago|
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An insult to scumbags everywhere.
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upvoteby reactordev11 hours ago|
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Killed Napster and forced them overseas to create one of the most toxic streaming platforms for music the world has ever seen. Spotify. Sean Parker used to be cool…
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upvoteby tombert4 hours ago|
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IIRC, Dave Grohl actually gave a lot of shit to Metallica, claiming that it would be one thing if this were some indie band selling cassettes having their music stolen, but it's another when multi-millionaires are crying that they aren't getting extra money.

Found it: https://youtu.be/Yy45qY9c49k

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upvoteby codazoda4 hours ago|
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His book (maybe he has several) is fantastic.
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upvoteby roegerle11 hours ago|
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how they were able to recover from that is beyond me.
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upvoteby dotancohen10 hours ago|
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They didn't. I haven't bought a Metallica album since the black album. That was a decade earlier, because everything since sucked, but as I got older I thought about maybe expanding my tastes. I avoided Metallica specifically for their disrespect of their fans.
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upvoteby DaSHacka7 hours ago|
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Did they not? Seems like they're still quite popular, and I knew people in HS (for reference, late 2010s to early '20s) that were big into the band.

Additionally, looking at Google Trends[0], it seems they peaked in 21st-century online popularity in 2008 and had another notable uptick in 2017.

I think a lot of us want the assholes to have suffered real consequences for their behavior, but want is different from did.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

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upvoteby to11mtm4 hours ago|
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I think they've got some ineffable qualities, and frankly there's lots of other genres where people might decide to give them a listen...

Which is really just a roundabout way of saying I think Apocalyptica did a lot to help refresh them in the modern zeitgeist (Yes I know it was older, but I remember youtube videos causing it to enter at least my and other's conscious space...)

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upvoteby petre6 hours ago|
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Yeah, they're popular like Ariana Grande is after the Manchester bombing. But just about everything they released after the Black album is kind of lame. The Budapest tickets sold out pretty fast, but they're still lame regardless if people go to their concerts. Compared to Depeche Mode and other bands that only get better with age, Metallica just play the same old songs or worse. And they're not a cult band like Death or The Sisters of Mercy either.
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upvoteby DiskoHexyl5 hours ago|
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But they kind of are (a cult band). Most people in the world know Metalica while hardly anyone ever heard any of the Sisters Of Mercy's tracks.

Normal people don't care- they just enjoy a ballad or two.

I've long since learnt to separate an artist from their art- a fair share of the musicians, actors, directors etc aren't really a decent bunch

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upvoteby petre4 hours ago|
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Not really, they missed that chance when they released Load and Reload and who knows what they did after that. I got fed up with their foray into commercial music and moved on to prog metal and other more interesting stuff. If they had stopped after the black album or continued to release quality works, then things would be different, but they chose money, whining, lawyers and drunk teenagers as an audience. They became lame and popular, which excludes being a cult band. Cult bands are not very popular in fact, as you have yourself pointed out.
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upvoteby brunoborges7 hours ago|
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You clearly haven't watched Stranger Things
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upvoteby Arubis5 hours ago|
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Most of their fans didn't know and probably still don't. In my admittedly limited exposure (N=3 or 4), folks I know that were informed on Metallica's behavior in the Napster age that have since purchased anything from Metallica is zero.
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upvoteby iririririr9 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby coreyburnsdev8 hours ago|
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one of their best songs is "don't tread on me"
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upvoteby budsniffer95o9 hours ago|
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Why are all forums inundated with this ridiculous nonsense? They are "MAGA"? How so? Are people who follow MAGA typically anti-piracy or something? Bizarre.
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upvoteby throw109208 hours ago|
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It [calling anything you don't like "maga"] is political in-group signalling of a tribal ideology that also serves the dual purpose of destroying the meaning of language. Categorically inappropriate for HN - flag it and move on.
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upvoteby amanaplanacanal7 hours ago|
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Similar to the way people use "woke".
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upvoteby fc417fc8023 hours ago|
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Quite similar. I guess serving largely the same purpose that "alt-right" used to.

However it's important to note that "woke" at least has legitimate (if politically contentious) meaning outside of its broad misuse as a sort of slur. The other two terms don't have that AFAIK.

The case of "maga" specifically strikes me as a spiteful attempt to misappropriate the descriptor (vaguely similar to winnie the pooh) whereas the rise of the other two seems organic.

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upvoteby throw109206 hours ago|
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Yup, exactly.
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upvoteby mindslight6 hours ago|
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Or it's just going to be a generic term for play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Surely in a thread like this we can acknowledge the futility of things like Xerox trying to maintain their strict definition of the word xerox.
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upvoteby garyfirestorm8 hours ago|
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The ideology has an inherent toxicity to it, along with a self own, doubling down on mistakes that would harm you and the others in longer run, embracing silly ideas and a general disregard for niceties. Would have been nice if they didn’t hurt their own fans like that could be simply phrased as ‘being MAGA’
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upvoteby mindslight6 hours ago|
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I still can't listen to a Metallica song on the radio without feeling a bit sour. I wasn't a die hard superfan or anything, but their songs were pretty good. It really didn't help that they had cultivated this tough guy image and then turned into total whiners about piracy.
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upvoteby lovehashbrowns4 hours ago|
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I became a super fan for a brief second during the Napster days, that’s literally what got me into metal in the first place. Decades later and I’m still soured on them too. Napster days were so good for music discovery. I mean, they’re better now with all these algos, obviously, but it was weirdly fun to download a track with tons of random strings in the name and end up with some parody Weird Al track and that’s how you discovered something new.
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upvoteby petre6 hours ago|
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It all went downhill after Metallica '91. Cover for Whiskey in the Jar, come on. It's okay when everyone is drunk I guess, otherwise just litsten to the Dubliners' version or Thin Lizzy's.
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upvoteby Hamuko8 hours ago|
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Not that surprising considering that James Hetfield has no qualms about his music being used for literal torture.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/19/usa.guantanamo

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