Renting Music 3 - Parliament & Metallica

Part 1 - Introduction and First Batch

Part 2 - Chvrches and The Pixies

Part 3 - Parliment and Metallica

Part 4 - The Shins and Muse

Part 5 - Mustache! and 3 Minute Hero

Specifically, Chocolate City and Master of Puppets, respectively.

Chocolate City by Parliament

Starting off, this wasn’t what I expected. It was just classified as “rock” in the library’s catalogue, and I couldn’t remember the context in which I had heard the band name before.

The first thing that stands out to me is that the instrument choice is really good and funky. The bass has a bounce to it, and the horns are a nice accent/emphasis.

Together has this bassline that reminds me of something is really nice. Not the standard like, verse quarter note rhythm keeping, but when it picks up at other parts. It almost feels like something I’d hear from Daft Punk maybe?

The real tragedy here is that I’m absolutely the “Guy whose only seen Boss Baby talking about any movie” guy but with Red Hot Chili Peppers and funk music.

I feel so unequipped to talk about funk music (well any music really), but there’s a lot of really cool stuff here. The running piano in What Comes Funky is really slick in the back and gives this fun texture with the beboppin’ bass and muted and reserved guitar line. The harmonies between the lead and backing vocals are really nice too. Just a wall of female vocalists hitting at the same time as the frontman.

Let Me Be uses this synth that reminds me of a like… harpsicord? It feels really… ok, so this isn’t a thing, but it feels like a very vampirey… Gothic. The word I wanted was “gothic” feel in contrast to everything so far. It’s still got some really good rhythm to it despite this. It’s got this sort of upbeat energy in its soul. OK now I’m getting fucked with though. End of the track has the vocals swinging back and forth between right and left channels. Not even like a call and response or two different vocalists, but one just zipping back and forth that is kind of ghost-like, the way one would haunt a room, swinging wildly back and forth.

OK, maybe that’s the simile I fell on because I had primed myself with how I felt about the instrumentation, but whatever.

The best track on the album might be Big Footin’. It has a lot of really good bounce to it, and could be a huge earworm.

There are two tracks that have Alternative versions on the album I Misjudged You and If It Don’t Fit (Don’t Force It). The alternative versions feel like they might be ones with less production or closer to a recording with fewer members? Similar sounding but the alt versions do have a very different vibe to them. I Misjudged You feels a little sadder stripped a little more bare.

After looking up the band after my first listen, ah, it’s George Clinton and Parliament is like, The Funk Band. That explains it.

All in all, this was a really fun album. Just a solid listen front to back. No notes.

Master of Puppets by Metallica

Look, it’s Master of Puppets. I need to put a sticky note on the inside of the case, as the first track Battery has an issue where it crashed all my music players about 20 seconds in.

Master of Pupppets, the title track, is a classic for a reason. It just seems to capture the entire bredth of what Metallica does, from their sweeping melodic sections to their heavier and aggressive rhythms where it feels like the drums are being attacked as if hated by the drummer.

Something in The Thing That Should Not Be that I really like is that during the verse, there’s a brief part, roughly 4-6 notes maybe? Where it sounds like the guitar is almost underwater. It has this really dense reverbe applied to it that sounds great when deployed where it is.

Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is just a solid track. Not much to say. Really morose feeling, and feels like a weight is depressing on your shoulders. The verses switching from somber, trapped, defeated for the first like, 2/3 of them, then they get angrier at the situation, and mirroring that is the instrumentation picking up to a more angry styling, more aggressive, only to lapse back into depression with the start of the next verse.

I think Disposable Heroes, at least the beginning, is a really good encapulation of how I think Metallica sounds when I’m just thinking about it away from any music. It’s got this driving guitar, crashing cymbals, and a tone that just feels like Metallica. I had heard songs like Master of Puppets, or Enter Sandman and the other radio/mainstream hits, but the first album of theirs I listened to in full was Kill ‘em All back around 2009. This track seems like the platonic ideal of what I “remember” of that album.

I think Master of Puppets is a fine album, but I feel like it falls a little short of Chocolate City. There’s something that doesn’t hit the same with with Master of Puppets, like I felt with Fragile or Signals above it. Something just felt missing but I can’t figure out what.

Maybe one day I’ll do tiers to show how close these things actually are, or I’ll be too lazy to do it and just update the rankings.

Ranking

Parenthesis indicate position change since last post

  1. Cassette Beasts OST - Joel Baylis (+1)
  2. ELO Greatest Hits - ELO (-1)
  3. Bleed Out - The Mountain Goats (0)
  4. Every Open Eye - Chvrches (0)
  5. Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers (0)
  6. Signals - Rush (0)
  7. Superunknown - Soundgarden (0)
  8. Chocolate City - Parliament
  9. Fragile - Yes (-1)
  10. Master of Puppets - Metallica
  11. Bossanova - The Pixies (-2)
  12. Best of Big Bands - Various Artists (-2)
  13. Combat Rock - The Clash (-2)
  14. Aurora Borealis - Cloud Cult (-2)

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