It's been a Metallica kind of week. A few days ago, VH1 had a Metallica evening where they showed every single piece of media that they had on Metallica. It was a pretty entertaining few hours capped off by a rebroadcast of MTV's "Icons: Metallica" episode. It was kind of neat hearing other people cover Metallica tunes while Metallica sat in the audience. It was also interesting hearing the details of Jason Newstead's departure and James Hetfield's substance abuse problem.

I'm a big fan of covers so it was neat seeing people like Limp Bizkit and koRn do their version of Metallica songs. Avril Lavigne did a rather uninspiring cover of "Fuel." She has absolutely no stage presence for that type of music. Even though I like covers, nothing beats the original versions of a song. None of the bands that performed could quite capture the unique hard sound that is Metallica. When it comes to that type of music, Metallica really does reign supreme.

And then on the way home from dinner tonight, I caught a bit of 97.1's "Mandatory Metallica." If it was up to me, 97.1 would be Mandatory Metallica all day everyday. Well...maybe not. But I love hearing old school Metallica songs. I forgot how socially conscious Metallica used to be. Their earlier songs really dealt with some big issues. Metallica will always rank behind Led Zeppelin in most critics books, but I have them at about the same level. In many ways, Metallica is far superior than LZ. Overall, I'd peg them as equals though. Yeah, that sounds good. But I think when my generation "comes of age," they will probably put Metallica above Led Zeppelin. Time will tell I guess.

I do know that "Master of Puppets" is one of those all time great albums of any genre.

matt out