People
are never happy. A commonly known fact. Met-fans are no
exception. We are constantly complaining: "Load
sucks", "Lars drumming is getting worse",
Kirk is killing his solos with the wah and so on. And
it’s OK. We are entitled to our opinions. Anyway,
I’m going to write this column about something I
think is quite important: Jaymz’s new style of live
singing. We all know that Jaymz is not a born singer, Kill
‘em all says it all. The voice of Metallica has
changed a lot since then... Thank god. Throughout the Ride/Puppetz
era Jaymz voice steeply rose to new heights and kept
doing so ‘till the Damaged Justice tour when
he reached his all time high. Along with the improvement
of his voice, his guitar skills grew and therefore his
ability to improvise both instrumentally and vocally.
Words like ‘yeah’, ‘baby’,
‘fuck’, ‘muthafucka’, ‘man’
and more are frequently added during live shows as
well as small changes in the lyrics. For example:
"BLOOD!
Lambs blood painted door, I shall pass. Aaah, muthafucka
yeah!!" - (Creeping Death)
"I
have lost the will to live, ooooh…" -
(Fade To Black)
…Agitation…
…Violation… …MASTURBATION…
…Planet dies. - (Blackened)
Many people disapprove of this and often think it damages
the songs and even find them it offensive. I’d say
this tells us that he is in a groove and is enjoying his
performance and this is his way of showing it. You
can’t make that a bad thing. But yet the singing has
definently gotten worse over the last few years decade.
It all began back in the early 90s on the Wherever I
may roam tour. You can for example hear how Jaymz
mutilates Harvester during the Mexico gig on Live
shit. He sings it with a Sanitarium-like
voice. It’s not pretty. Another example are Puppetz
and Bellz on S&M. Some songs sound
great with the new style but most of the older tunes do
not. The Seattle concert on Live shit kicks Cunning
stunts’s ass. Why? Because Jaymz is growling in
Seattle.
I think the question on everybody's mind is
"why?". I don’t know for sure. But I think
I know: Jaymz’s voice simply can’t take the
growl. To support this I point to Cunning stunts where
you can hear Jaymz’s voice "crack" at
least twice during Creeping death and, if memory
serves, The Kill/Ride-medley. Most of us get a
sore throat after singing one Metallica-tune. The
all-mighty Het has been doing it for twenty years. And
believe me his heavy drinking and smoking(?) did not
help. But despite all the disadvantages about the new
style there is, at least, one good thing about it: The
ballads (Fade, Sanitarium, One etc.) sound way
better with the new style, although Jaymz’s
primitive growl back in the day had a great edge to it.
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