Skip to content
What’s up Sorry Staters?
The weather is nasty as hell today as Dom and I are standing behind the counter at the store trying to bang out some words for y’all to digest. Funny enough, we’ve been super busy early on today at the store, which is a nice shift from last couple weeks. I guess there’s not much to do in Raleigh on a rainy day besides shop for records. The holiday season usually yields a surge of people coming in looking for Elton John and shit like that, so maybe this last week or so we will be slammed.
So, I’ve got something different this time around. Rather than talking about a record we’re stocking here at Sorry State, I’m gonna talk about my indulgence in silly internet entertainment. I spend a lot of my downtime watching YouTube videos. Like, more than I’d like to admit. One new trend I’ve noticed that seems to be a total product of what you can do with technology these days is people remixing or reworking classic records. That sounds kinda vague, but does anyone know what I’m talking about?
I’ll try to get into this in a roundabout way. Has anyone heard the new Metallica song? It’s called “Lux Æterna,” and it’s admittedly not the greatest thing ever. I heard one person review the song and refer to the main riff in the song as a “boomer riff,” which I found funny for some reason. But honestly, I love the first 4 Metallica records. And knowing how awful their recorded output was in the 90s and onward, I always set a pretty low bar for expectations when a new Metallica track comes out. And with this new song, I didn’t love it, but I don’t exactly hate it. It’s just kinda phoned-in, I think. I bet it’s hard to make aggressive music when you’re sleeping on silk sheets. I immediately recognized the references to “Overkill” by Motorhead and Diamond Head, so at least it doesn’t sound like St. Anger or something.
But here’s the thing. Has anyone heard these things where people re-record band’s songs with tones to sound like they’re on a different record? Like for example, “What if ‘Enter Sandman’ was on Master of Puppets?” I’m not joking, people really make videos like this. To my knowledge, it seems like what these people do is totally reconstruct the songs from the ground up and re-record the performances themselves. Which is NUTS. Recording technology has come such a long way that I guess you can download a profile of a guitar tone that is pre-made and that sounds pretty damn accurate to the tone on the record. And I guess you can do that with drum sounds too. So what I assume happens is these dudes program a drum track with some sort of program like EZ drummer, then plug their guitar directly into an interface and use a plug-in to nail album-appropriate guitar sounds, and THEN take the vocal track from the original record and chop it up to fit their reworked track. Sorry, that’s a lot… You following what I’m saying? I gotta say, lots of YouTubers do this kinda thing, and the quality of people nailing the sound and character of different Metallica albums really varies. But this one I stumbled across recently, this YouTuber StateOfMercury took “Lux Æterna” and totally re-did the song so that it sounds as if it were on Kill ‘Em All. Now, James Hetfield’s vocals on this new song would probably sound out of place on Kill ‘Em All these days, so this dude got someone to do his best young Hetfield impression. It’s also interesting, because StateOfMercury in his reimaginings doesn’t necessarily replicate the riffs exactly like the original. He sort of alters them to sound more like something the band would write during the era which he’s trying to replicate. I find it super clever.
Anyway, this is all incredibly nerdy, but I find it pretty interesting. He has several videos where he totally reimagines Metallica songs as if they were on different albums. New songs on old albums, but also old songs on newer albums. It’s wild. And funny enough, “Lux Æterna” being redone as if it were done by a young and hungry early Metallica almost fools me into thinking it’s a rad song. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qONdZg95Vi8
I guess this is kind of a weird write-up for the newsletter, but I thought it’d be fun to talk about. That’s all I’ve got this week. As always, thanks for reading. Happy Holidays!
‘Til next week,
-Jeff