Wasn't Linkin Park a boy band that they added a rapper to? I'm pretty sure you can't sell out if you were already a corporate whore.sirdanrhodes said:Lets think of a few examples here:
>Linkin park - I saw these guys loads, but since minutes to midnight, I wasn't impressed.
If anything, they sold out with Insomniac, not Warning. Warning was the end of the pop punk period for them, which they pretty much started with Insomniac, so maybe even that wasn't selling out as much as it was creating a genre sell outs could easily conform to.>GreenDay - Warning wasn't THAT bad, but all albums before it made it look abysmal.
Bob Rock is the antichrist. True story. Actually, I watched Some Kind of Monster, that documentary that came with St. Anger, over the weekend. (I do agree they sold out with the Black Album, but by God I liked Load.) By the time St. Anger rolled around, however, you can tell they just don't get it anymore. Hetfield and Ulrich ran off Newstead and wouldn't listen to Hammett about the complete lack of solos in St. Anger. Even the new guy they got to play bass had an incredulous, "what did I just sign up for?" moment when he heard the album. But I honestly think they were TRYING to make good music for an audience that grew up on Metallica, but between Hetfield kicking drugs, Hammett not having enough of a role in the band to force the solo issue (he's by far the best musician in the band) and Ulrich being completely done with Hetfield, nothing good was going to come out of the studio.Around comes the 90's however, and the 'Tallica boys get hungry. They're the biggest underground band in the world, but they want to be the biggest band in the world, full stop. So for the Black Album, they ditch the intricate, complex nature of their previous works. They get rid of any brutality in their sound, and try to 'slicken' it up. Over the next few records they abandon guitar solos, Hetfield's vocals become half-arsed affairs, and the band all but embraces nu-metal. This isn't expanding their sound. It's chasing trends for the sake of money
I do retain hope that Rick Rubin can squeeze something decent out of them, sort of like a last hurrah a la Rocky Balboa, but he's such a big name I doubt he'll do much with them other than make them over-loud and just as radio-friendly.