13 December 2013

DOGS D'AMOUR

KATE BUSH - HOUNDS OF LOVE
EMI, 1985
Lucky dogs.
I've been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out what I can possibly say that would do justice to this utterly spellbinding album. It's an entire world of its own, a law unto itself. Listening to it is like being able to go back and visit your favourite dream at will. For me, it's Kate Bush's single finest artistic statement, feeling as it does like a coherent whole rather than, as with her previous albums, a collection of (admittedly breathtaking) songs. This was intentional on Kate's part, as the album is actually divided into two suites: the first, Hounds of Love, comprises standalone songs, most of which were released as singles, and the second, The Ninth Wave... well, we'll get to that soon enough.

Beginning with "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)", the tone is set for the rest of the album immediately: lush, densely layered synthesisers, undulating basslines, drums being hit with bigger drums, and soaring above it all, the absolutely wonderful, ethereal vocals of La Bush herself. As with all great art, this song was misinterpreted to an astounding degree upon release. The "deal" spoken of in the title makes its appearance in the chorus:
If I only could, I'd make a deal with God, and I'd get him to swap our places.
This, of course, caused a thousand literal-minded Christians to rend their garments in outrage, believing Kate meant she wished to exchange places with the man upstairs. However, simply paying attention to the rest of the lyrics (i.e. putting the chorus in context) makes it crystal clear that the song is a monologue from one lover to another: she wants God to swap their places so each can experience the act of love from the other's perspective. Such a simple—and beautiful—idea, made even clearer by the song's defining lyric:
Let's exchange the experience.
A different aspect of love is explored in the title track: the fear of the unknown. Of course, Kate Bush being Kate Bush, the concept is couched in metaphor: fox-hunting*, being pursued through a forest by an unseen, unnamed force, and flinging shoes into a lake. Brilliantly, the titular canines are made reference to by an absolutely inspired "Ooh, ooh, ooh" refrain that sounds for all the world like a child's impersonation of a dog's bark. And despite animal impersonations, the almost overwhelming production, and a musical landscape that actually sounds celebratory, Kate's lyrics and her emotional vocal delivery make for one of her most naked, vulnerable performances.

In the three years since her previous album (1982's The Dreaming), Kate built a private 24-track studio near her home, and on "The Big Sky", you'll believe she was determined to use every last one of those tracks. The song is positively overflowing, total sonic saturation of a kind only approached by Type O Negative's similarly-produced October Rust. The song also proves that Kate was capable of beating all those spunky, high-energy women of 1980s pop-rock at their own game: after the self-doubt and fragility of the previous song she sounds ecstatic here, especially with a delightful little "Huh! Huh!" after we "pause for the jet" that I defy you to listen to without smiling. A truly fantastic, joyous, life-affirming song that probably contains the secret of eternal youth.
She might look human, but don't be fooled.
She's better than us. A higher life form.
The wild mood swings continue on the album's most subdued, even foreboding song. "Mother Stands for Comfort" is distinctly unsettling, and I still couldn't tell you 100% what it all means. Part of this is due to Kate's murmured, enigmatic vocal, but part is because a mystery is always more fun than the truth. The soundscape conjures up images of Joy Division at their most harrowing, with a stark, simple drum pattern laid over with eerie synth lines and the percussive sound of breaking glass. However, the elastic bassline and truly beautiful piano give off a very different vibe than that of the Mancunian miserablists: this is far looser than the robotic angst of Curtis and co.

One of Kate's most famous songs closes side one (the 'accessible' side), the crystalline "Cloudbusting". Inspired by psychologist Wilhelm Reich, the song manages the same sort of emotional syncopation as in "Hounds of Love", with an incredibly sad story told by way of an almost triumphant instrumental track. Propelled by an insistent, martial beat and an instantly memorable string motif, the different layers of sound build and build in a manner not dissimilar to industrial music: that 24-track studio proving a sound investment once again. Ponder how Kate Bush, a then-26 year old woman, could be so moved by the unfair treatment of an elderly man—who died before she was even born—that she could sound near tears as she sang this wonderful piece of music†.

And now we enter The Ninth Wave, a miniature concept album centred on, as Kate put it,
A person who is alone in the water for the night... their past, present and future coming to keep them awake, to stop them drowning.
Heady stuff for a 'pop record', this. It would be remiss of me to even attempt to describe this, as these seven songs simply must be heard in full. There's nothing else in music like it. All I will say is that "And Dream of Sheep" is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard, speedboat and all. That, and at the 1:19 mark "Waking the Witch" becomes probably the scariest thing Kate Bush ever committed to record, with a demonic, almost death metal voice bellowing intermittently, bewildering and disorienting multi-tracked snatches of conversations, arguments and so on, an instrumental track that seems to change every time you hear it... and somehow, a remarkably catchy song underneath it all. Continuing through somniloquy, Irish folk music and traditional Georgian chants(!), and concluding in probably the most optimistic-sounding song ever recorded, the entire suite is an incredible journey, and one you must take.

This, then, was Kate Bush in 1985. Mutual orgasms, lush synth arrangements, shoes in the lake. If The Dreaming was described by the woman herself as "my 'She's gone mad' album," then Hounds of Love is the album of a woman who's been given a clean bill of mental health. Well, half of it is, anyway. And the other half? She's taken over the asylum.

Brilliance.

* not spoken of in glowing terms, either
† empathy is a hell of a drug

2 December 2013

HOMOPHOBIA IN CHRISTIANITY

Why Abrahamic faiths are so virulently anti-gay

The following covers a topic very near and dear to my heart. As will be obvious to anybody who knows me even slightly, I have a major problem with Abrahamic religions. Simply put, practically everything about them is vile, noxious, and toxic to the progression of humanity as a whole. From their determination to preserve an oppressive and outmoded patriarchy to their obsession with belittling, disenfranchising, ostracising and even massacring those who don't agree with them, all three of the Abrahamic faiths are nought but relics of a far less enlightened period in human history. To give just one example, were this only a few hundred years ago, I would be put to death for the simple act of writing these words. And that's just in England. In some of the Islamic theocracies in the more arid parts of this pale blue dot, I still could be put to death for it. The dignity of the human race demands and deserves more than that.

But now, to business. One of the biggest bones of contention for many who adhere to these nonsensical and archaic superstitions is the modern acceptance of the world's many millions of gay people—or, as our religious 'brethren' would have it, of homosexuals. Or, to give them the name bestowed upon them by a silly myth involving angels, raining sulphur, the transformation of a human woman into a pillar of salt, and the eradication of two cities that never even existed... the modern acceptance of the Sodomites.

Now, the aggressive attitude of the 'pious' to our gay brothers and sisters has stuck in this heretic's craw for a while, but ever moreso as I have grown and come to know more and more people for whom the opposite sex holds no attraction, or who are attracted to both sexes. An old friend—name withheld—has been an 'out' lesbian for nearly ten years now, a turn of events which only ever bothered me because I had always found her strikingly attractive. Closer to home, one of my life's dearest friends—name similarly withheld—came out around four or five years ago, and has never been happier. During his adolescence and the journey to realising who he truly was—and I honestly hope he doesn't mind my semi-biography here—he had an incredibly hard time. Many tears were shed, there were many failed relationships with girls, and much parental speculation about his sexuality. As an aside, simply witnessing his struggle drove it home for me that the homophobe's favourite declaration—that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice"—is a load of old cobbler's, simply because nobody would ever willingly subject themselves to such anguish, pain, strife and self-flagellation without being a particularly fundamentalist Catholic. The man himself has told me that he always knew in the back of his mind that he was gay, but was loath to admit it, either to his friends or family. Now, I will actually get to the heart of the matter.
I was going to write something funny here, but... I just can't.
For some reason, certain of our religious friends have always had a problem with our non-reproductive brothers and sisters—and please note I mean no slander toward the Religious Society of Friends: as everyone's favourite gay man Stephen Fry once said, who could possibly quarrel with a Quaker? Anyway. I have long wondered, among all the myriad things human beings can do to one another, why having sex with somebody of the same gender is so offensive to people of faith. By the way, of all the verses in the Bible, which feature prohibitions against everything from wearing garments of more than one fabric to eating the humble shellfish, there are only six which mention homosexuality. Many more—an order of magnitude more, in fact—feature lessons on how to treat the poor and disadvantaged, and it doesn't take a political science scholar to know how those on the right wing feel about helping the poor. So why was being gay such a terrible thing to the Bronze Age nomads who came up with these beliefs? I will be exploring the Christian view on homophobia, since it was Christianity I was brought up in and Christianity I am thus most familiar with. By the way, I will entertain no such assertions that the Torah, Bible or Quran are the "literal Word of God", as I am an evolved being with a brain capable of reason and logic, which is what I shall employ to find an answer to my question.

Firstly, it is necessary to understand the world in which the nomads lived. What is now the Middle East was, once upon a time, referred to as the Fertile Crescent, as it was the area where primitive man first was able to practice regular agriculture (viz. sowing and reaping the same area year after year, as opposed to the journeyman existence of small societies up to that point), serviced by the nourishing waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. So perhaps my choice of "nomads" was inaccurate. "Dunderheads", maybe (I jest). Now, there was only a limited amount of space available to be farmed, and because humans enjoy rutting like beasts, there was an ever-increasing number of people living on said lands.
This guy right here. This guy gets it. His sign's also a lot more
creative than the Westboro Baptist Church ones.
Allow me to digress for a time to discuss some of the other prohibitions listed in books like Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Exodus 22:31 proscribes eating "any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs." Now, you'd imagine that if you're one of the chosen few lucky enough to lay hands on a steak, you should wolf it down, but this was a primitive society where disease was not well understood; therefore, any food that didn't come from an animal set aside for consumption was to be considered "unclean". For the prosperity of a small group, this is pretty sensible—at the time. Similarly, Leviticus 7:21 forbids even touching "any unclean thing... or any unclean beast". As we know, Jews are forbidden from eating swine, and it has been speculated that this arose because human flesh, when burned, smells an awful lot like the flesh of our porcine friends. Indeed, the only thing to be done with an "unclean" thing is to burn it. A few verses later (Lev. 7:26), even eating any "manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast" is frowned upon to the point where the offending haematophagist is to be "cut off from his people". So tough luck if you like your steak rare. Again, this is linked to diseases borne in blood... but doesn't seem to matter in the masses and masses of blood sacrifices contained in these early books.

Nonetheless, these rules all seem sensible enough for a primitive civilisation with no real knowledge of germs, disease etc. This also applies to the law against the consumption of shellfish, as in Lev. 11:12, as there's no better way to catch a mean dose of food poisoning—fatal at the time—than eating bad shrimp. Unfortunately, this section also illustrates the ignorance inherent in mankind at the time, as bats are included in the prohibition of fowl. Bruce Wayne does not approve.
Gotham's Gay Pride parade even brought Batman and Bane together
Chapters 13-15 of Leviticus concern disease and its impact on small societies: anything the sick man touches is unclean, etc. A surprising astuteness, if ridiculously unfair to women, whose monthly cycle is lumped in with the lepers, the scabrous and the purulent. Aside from that stunning example of ignorant misogyny, most of Leviticus up until now has been fairly sensible. But now things get fun—and when I say fun, I mean sick, twisted and hateful.

I mentioned earlier how land was at a premium in those days. This becomes obvious from Lev. 20 onwards. If you want something that belongs to somebody else, and you lack the nous to negotiate for it, what do you do? You use violence; and it seems the sometime Jewish tradition of pacifism was not in force during the events of the Torah, as much of the book reads like the personal war diaries of King David the Particularly Bloodthirsty. Bear this in mind when you read the descriptions of those who are prohibited from offering sacrifices to God; the blind, the lame, the broken-footed or broken-handed, the crookbacked, "a dwarf", the man "that hath a blemish in his eye", or—hilariously enough—that "hath his stones broken". All of these are things that would prevent a man being an effective soldier, except for the broken stones, which would simply prevent him from having children. Remember that part, it's important.
"God is love," say the Christians. Apart from all those times when he totally isn't.
So, we have established that the thing that matters most to God—or rather, to the ruler of the Hebrews at this point—is a man's health and fitness, so that he may go to war to claim more land for his tribe. Since such joys as fighter jets, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles were yet to be invented, the winner of a battle would always be the side with the most soldiers. And with that, we are at last at the heart of the matter. Finally!

The only reason the Abrahamic religions are so virulently anti-gay is because two gay men cannot produce a child: indeed, with no attraction to women, they would NEVER produce children. Therefore, we end up with one of the vilest pieces of bigotry in the entire canon of these outdated, blood-soaked and vicious faiths:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
(Leviticus 20:13)
There it is, in black and white. Centuries upon centuries of hatred, persecution and violence directed at gay people, for no other reason than that one tribe in the desert needed more soldiers than other tribes in the desert. While I am reluctant to give even a second's thought of credence to this bilge, it may have made sense in a limited populace when conflict with a neighbouring tribe meant the difference between survival and annihilation; however, this hateful dreck has absolutely NO relevance in a world with seven billion people and counting, a world that is already starting to weaken under the strain of supporting so many of us. In fact, it may be better for our long-term survival if more of us were gay. That, or celibate. Real celibacy, that is, not the "special" brand of celibacy practiced by certain of Catholic clergy.

By the way, as a parting shot, notice that there's no holy law anywhere in the entire Bible against woman lying with woman, despite no child arising from that union either. Why? Because they'd just rape the women and impregnate them that way. God has no problem with rape.

Eternally yours in reason,

Gregg Mather

1 December 2013

MUSIC: INHERENTLY A BAD THING?

The following was written in May 2012; I have just found out that this truly dreadful band has broken up. While this is undoubtedly wonderful news for those of us who enjoy music, it does make this bilious tract slightly useless. But fuck it, eh? It's never too late to give something terrible a good savaging.

Today, I am a man.

Today above all, above the sexual conquests, the hair in unpalatable areas, even above the rapidly diminishing state of my follicular topiary, today I have truly become a man.

For today I discovered the almost Comic Strip Presents-like existence of a truly remarkable band. Their name is DIVE BELLA DIVE, and they are utterly, utterly abysmal. I honestly haven't felt this way about a band since The Vines put out their first record—and at least that little douchebag had the excuse that he's autistic or whatever the hell's wrong with him. These guys are just fucking idiots.

Don't look at it for too long or you'll turn to stone

It's hard to describe what the sensation of witnessing your first DBD video is like. It's almost like having sex for the first time. You're trying so hard to avoid over-thinking what's happening to you, but it simply washes over you, an irresistible force. In the very worst way. Yes, listening to DBD for the first time is like losing your virginity. To a rapist.

If you thought Wolfmother were the absolute dirt-worst at taking the very shittiest elements from rock history and gracelessly humping them into hastily-recycled, lowest-common-denominator singalong songs for the mentally challenged, you're not gonna believe this shit. My first reaction—aside from "Oh, what the fuck happened to this world?"—was that it must be some kind of gag. A rag week wheeze, perhaps. Then it became clear there was a professional stylist (possibly several) at work. Boys—more on this later—if you're trying to come across as tougher-than-thou street warriors from the wrong side of dirty, disused tracks, it's a good idea not to look like a bunch of toddlers who saw footage of Mötley Crüe's Girls Girls Girls tour and tried to emulate what they saw using dad's garage and mum's wardrobe.

Honestly. The lead yelper had feathers, a bandanna, rosaries and what looked like a small furry animal around his neck, the bass player appeared to have glow-in-the-dark typewriter keys stuck to his instrument—utterly functionless, but they give him something to focus on besides how ashamed his parents are—and all members of the band are wearing the stupidest goddamned haircuts this side of A Flock of Seagulls.

Apparently, this is rock n' roll in 2013. In related news, Ike Turner has
come back from the dead to apologise for inventing it
Then there are the lyrics—which are laughable. The boy clearly watched the Dorian Gray movie, brushed over the Wikipedia article on Oscar Wilde, and settled down to pen the following inspiring lines:
And I'll ne'er return
to the streets of old White City
All the girls, begotten and forlorn
I'll go on the road, but only to delay my living
See the world reborn
All utter bilge, of course, sure to be pored and swooned over by idiotic teenage girls too old for Bieber but too young to remember the similarly dreadful Libertines. And it's a fact that this oily little tick—name of Barnaby, by the way—will get laid because of this crap, because everybody knows that teenage girls with disposable income and a penchant for lousy music made by terrible people are the easiest fuck in the world. Fathers, protect your daughters. Use firearms if necessary.

Aside from possessing the cold and calculating mind of a date rapist, our boy Barnaby is also a pathological liar with obvious masculinity issues. "Spend the night living," he squeals, "every night, a bottle in my hand." This is clearly bluster and balderdash of the first water: the little toad isn't even old enough to go to the toilet unattended, never mind consume alcohol legally. And in that case, there are only two possible conclusions that can be drawn:
  1. He's lying. He is thus an untrustworthy heap of sloth droppings, and should be beheaded, with his filthy, lying, overpreened bonce mounted on a pike in Traitors' Cloister.
  2. He's telling the truth. He is thus breaking the law, which clearly states that children may not imbibe alcohol unless accompanied by their parent or legal guardian. Since I don't see Mr and Mrs Barnaby in the video, I must therefore assume they are negligent monsters, and their offspring is a delinquent ne'er-do-well who should be placed in police custody post-haste.
Protect your daughters: don't let them listen to Dive Bella Dive.

"Spend the Night Living" is the property of Island Records. I mean, come on, you don't think I'd honestly want to claim ownership of this crap, do you?

THAT'S HARD TIMES, DADDY

THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMPACT OF
PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

No, this isn't a work.

I'll start by acknowledging the "wrestling is fake" lobby. Well, of course it is. If wrestlers did half the shit they do to each other in the ring for real, they'd fucking kill each other. What are you, simple? That aside, wrestlers regularly perform nightly with the kind of injuries that would put 'legitimate' athletes on the shelf for weeks and months at a time. And while wrestlers may just be playing characters, I'd like you to look at the last movie you watched and tell me if the actors therein were being themselves. For that matter, tell me if the fight scenes were choreographed with stuntmen in place of the actors. They were? I rest my case. The crazy bastards who make their living in professional wrestling don't have the benefit of choreographers, they don't have rehearsals or retakes and they do all their own stunts.

Anyway, to the point. Much like how Dave Lister described boxing in Red Dwarf, wrestling is one of the great working class escapes, from this uniquely bizarre form of entertainment's birth in carnivals and sideshows, through the days of Gorgeous George (who inspired a young Bob Dylan), to the UK's cult heroes Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks; from "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes to everybody's favourite belligerent redneck "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.

Laugh at the crap perm all you like;
this man could beat you like a runaway slave
For the first look at wrestling's sociological aspect, I'll analyse the aforementioned Dusty Rhodes. When I first saw Dusty—real name Virgil Runnels—I wondered why he was nicknamed "The American Dream". All I saw was an overweight guy with a silly voice and a dodgy hairdo. Wait, now I get it. I kid, I kid. But what Dusty, billed as "the son of a plumber", did for people is simple to understand. He proved that you didn't need to look perfect or be in great shape to get respect, and with his legendary "Hard Times" promo, he put into words the concerns and problems of every underpaid steelworker; every mechanic who worked all the hours of the day to provide for a family he barely saw; every construction worker who saw the government taking more and more of his wage packet at the end of every month.

This was a stark contrast to the way everybody else was acting in the 1980s, the most egocentric and self-obsessed decade in recent memory, and an even starker contrast to the character played by his rival, "Nature Boy" Ric Flair: a cocky, arrogant heel who bragged about flying in Lear jets and being chauffeured around the country in limousines. It's classic storytelling: build up a heel character who possesses all the traits your audience despises, and then bring in a charismatic, good-hearted babyface to knock his sodding block off and strike a blow for the common man (which, funnily enough, was Dusty's gimmick a few years later in the then-WWF).

The dream of every underpaid worker in the world
Then there's "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. A man who'd been wrestling for several years got himself a new gimmick in the WWF: a foul-mouthed, beer-guzzling redneck who took no crap from anyone. The fan response to his character was impressive, with the usual response to a rulebreaker being thrown out the window: jaded 1990s fans could really relate to this man's disregard for authority. But it was when the WWF's owner, Vince McMahon, placed himself in Austin's sights that the Texas Rattlesnake's star went supernova. The Austin-McMahon feud would rage for a good few years, which is a hell of a long time in the world of pro wrestling, and it always drew big money. Why? Because everybody on this planet who's ever worked a day in their life would love nothing more than to hit their boss in the face with a steel chair.

If you'd had a hard day at work, with your boss riding your ass about something you didn't give a shit about, then the next best thing to smacking him yourself would be to watch Austin kicking his boss all over whichever arena they were in that week. Even as a schoolboy, which I was during the Austin-McMahon battles, you could still take heart from Austin's actions: "Vince McMahon" was basically shorthand for "anybody who told you what to do". It's an angle that's been periodically returned to ever since, most notably with CM Punk in 2011, and most recently with Daniel Bryan this past summer.

But the first time is always the best.

Short glossary of pro wrestling terms used in this post:
Angle: a storyline
Babyface: a good guy, a hero
Gimmick: a wrestler's character
Heel: a bad guy, a villain
Promo: an interview or other speech given (or 'cut') by a wrestler
Work: something that is predetermined or otherwise fixed. The opposite of a shoot.

MASTER OF ALL TRADES

METALLICA - MASTER OF PUPPETS
Elektra/Asylum, 1986

All together: MASTER! MASTER!
There is literally nothing original anybody can say about this album. In the twenty-seven years since its release, it's been routinely held up as the Metallica album, which in turn marks it out as one of the heavy metal albums. Covering every aspect of the Metallica sound, this was a young band at the absolute apex of their creativity: the title track alone is basically a potted history of heavy music bashed out over the course of eight labyrinthine minutes.

Bookended by two thrash metal masterclasses (no pun intended) in the almost parodically intense "Battery" and "Damage, Inc.", the album isn't all about speed, also featuring the single heaviest song in Metallica's canon: "The Thing That Should Not Be", in which the bandguided by bassist Cliff Burton's interest in horror author H.P. Lovecraftexplore the concept of darkness by making it darker. Featuring a truly spinechilling guitar solo from Kirk Hammett, the crushingly heavy track does an admirable job of simulating the madness and brain-melting horror that almost universally befell the unfortunate protagonists of Lovecraft's work.

Speaking of Cliff Burton, the album contains what has been dubbed his swansong (by a thousand-and-four derivative hacks), the towering instrumental "Orion". A monument to his talent, creativity and compositional skill, this savagely beautiful masterpiece features a bass solo most people don't even realise is a bass solo, and a level of atmosphere that conjures images befitting the titular great hunter.

Even the less well-known tracks are solid gold. "Leper Messiah" is, in the hands of any other band, just another rumination on the greed of religious leaders, but in the hands of Metallica in 1986, it becomes a weapon: a lethally heavy, sarcastic and cynical weapon. Likewise "Disposable Heroes": to the untrained ear just another metal song about war, but a student of the genre and a devotee of this album in particular can tell you this is one of the most precise and focused thrash assaults ever essayed, only letting up for a matter of seconds through its entire eight-minute runtime.

Somehow these four morons wrote one of the best albums of all time.
One of the most notable things about this album is anger. Real anger, and the less said about the unfortunate group therapy session masquerading as a heavy metal album St. Anger the better. Honestly, James Hetfield's every word on this album drips with venom and spite. That's what makes "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" work so well: while basing a song on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a fucking brilliant idea, it admittedly ran the risk of sounding like a "Fade to Black" clone, falling as it does in the traditional 'ballad spot' on the album immediately following Ride the Lightning. However, what sets it apart from the aforementioned song is its delivery. Instead of sad James, we get ANGRY JAMES, and ANGRY JAMES is always better. Unless he's quit drinking, of course. Thus, because of the passion and anger in his delivery, it stands apart as its own song, unlike the truly awful "The Day That Never Comes", which sounds like an obvious ripoff of "Fade to Black", despite being released a whole seven albums and twenty-four years after it.

So yes, the ultimate heavy metal album. More than that, though: it's one of the all-time ultimate albums, regardless of genre. Razor-sharp guitars, Lars Ulrich's most consistent drumming performance, intelligent lyrics (apart from the two "fighting is totally fucking metal" songs), a genuinely angry as hell (and drunk as shit) singer, and behind it all the great lost genius of thrash, guiding the band's energy and power to new heights. It would become both a triumph and a tragedy for Metallica: the triumph of recording one of the finest albums of all time, and the tragedy of never writing anything to equal it.