I find Metallica's
...And Justice for All to be completely unlistenable. The production value is just so awful on that album that I have to have an equalizer setting specifically for it, and it
still sounds bad. That's sad, because it's an amazing album when performed live.
Death Magnetic suffered similar production problems, in addition to just being a typically shitty post-1992 Metallica album. The common thread between the two? Lars Ulrich stuck his fingers in the production of both and overrode the actual mixers and producers. "Yeah, this sounds
good. Leave it like this." It should be noted that Lars Ulrich has had hearing problems since the mid-1980s as a result of never once using any kind of hearing protection and is nearly deaf now. He probably should not be the arbiter of what sounds good.
Obviously I haven't been in control of the tunes in some 17 years, but when I was it was most-often mixed tapes or CDs of various artists and songs, with me just switching them out here and there. I rarely listened to a single artist or album, with some notable exception being Tesla's
Mechanical Resonance , Guns 'n' Roses
Appetite for Destruction, Megadeth's
Countdown to Extinction and
Youthanasia, the compilation
Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath, Queensryche's
Rage for Order and
Operation: Mindcrime (when I have enough time to listen front-to-back), and Junkyard's
Sixes, Sevens and Nines. I also had a bunch of home-made "best of" CDs from such artists as (but not limited to) Megadeth, Junkyard, Stabbing Westward, Veruca Salt, Dokken, W.A.S.P., and Van Halen--which of course contains
nothing with Sammy Hagar's voice in it. I also did some "themed" mix tapes/CDs, such as a two-volume set of lesser-known oddball covers I titled
Graven Images I and
II and another two-disc compilation called
Electronic Hell that wasn't electronica so much as being fast-tempo "industrial"-type songs due to heavy effects or sampling, including covers and complete remixes.
If everything seems kind of old, please refer to my above comment about not having driven in 17 years.
