If you an get past the part where you are supposedly looking at blood and pee-pee the colors are quite vivid. The Serrano portion of this cover is interesting. Reload takes from a piece called “Piss and Blood” (of course). Serrano would come to fame/infamy for his work “Piss Christ” in 1987 and has spent an entire career utilizing various bodily fluids in his work. This is the second Metallica album to use part of a work from American photographer, Andres Serrano. (Much like the album it wound up representing.) If you didn’t know who the artist was, would you be shocked if I told you this was a Pushead piece? After growing up in an era when Pushead’s work became an iconic part of the metal artwork lexicon this piece lacks teeth, and frankly seems pretty forced. With that said, there’s very few times red and orange make for an appealing color combination…this isn’t one of them. The orange design leading into the fist is more compelling than the fist itself. It looks like it’s being bound by a piece of silver lace which detracts from the affect. The fist on the cover is as cartoon-like as the angst it was supposed to represent. (Also sticking to the full-length studio albums allows us to avoid having to discuss the immensely terrible album cover for the Garage Inc. The newest release is still too fresh to dissect. What was contained within is secondary for this exercise and 2) We stuck with just the previous nine full-length studio albums. Two things of note: 1) This is strictly based on artwork alone. So we decided to take a look at the history of Metallica album artwork and give a best guess at which artwork stands out amongst all others. Those classic albums also have some of the most recognizable artwork in metal history, adorning t-shirts, denim jackets, and bedroom posters for longer than most people would care to admit.
Love or hate their post-Justice/Black Album material, pretty much nothing can taint their most classic releases at this point. Additionally, patrons are invited to come on the show to talk about any past Metallica show they've been to and are given access to ask our guests like Ray Burton, Halestorm, Michael Wagener, Jay Weinberg of Slipknot and members of Metallica's crew their very own questions.When you are talking about iconic metal bands you don’t get very far through the conversation before Metallica’s name gets dropped. All patrons of Metal Up Your Podcast at the $5 level receive volumes 1-4 of our Cover Our World Blackened EP's for free. You can further support the show by becoming a patron. If you think Metal Up Your Podcast has value, please consider taking a brief moment to leave a positive review and subscribe on iTunes here: We also discuss our unique podcast artwork, good and bad band names, John Bush-era Anthrax, MegaDave, Dimebag Darrell, Garage, Inc., how Metallica gets paid and other nutty shenanigans we're sure you'll love for decades to come.
We're back at HQ2 before hopping on the bus for the second leg of tour to listen through ten songs on Metallica's super ambitious covers album, The Blacklist.