Rubin gets back to basics

When I was in high school I was a big Metallica fan. (I borrowed Ride the Lightning from a classmate as a ninth-grader and probably listened to Master of Puppets more than any other album during my junior year.) I haven’t cared about them in years, but I did enjoy the recent New York Times piece on them and their new album, mainly because I find producer Rick Rubin to be an interesting figure.

Rubin has a track record of producing albums for some very big names that have gone astray, albums that are much better than those artists’ preceding work.

With Metallica, Rubin said, “I asked them to imagine themselves not as Metallica,” he said. “I said to them, let’s say there was a battle of the bands coming up and nobody knew who they were, and they can’t rely on any of their hits to get them over. What would that sound like?”

Read the article here for more.

And if you want to hear one of the new Metallica songs, you can listen to "My Apocalypse" here.