Cosmo Valdemar

I've given that ZZ Top album a good listen, and there are some surprisingly clean bass tracks on there! But for the dirty songs, I still think it sounds very close to the EBS Billy (not that I expect for a minute that Dusty Hill would have used one!). I've been fiddling with mine and it really helps if I run my cheap Behringer EQ in the dirty loop to pull out the lows, it really tightens up the distortion and doesn't interfere with the clean lows. That said, on the ZZ Top recording, the tone of the bass is doing most of the work - the distortion is the seasoning.

Dr Robert - Johnny and The Moondogs

Cinema - Yes

Dandy - Kinks

Blowing Free - Wishbone Ash

Let's see the tattoos then!

How Many More Times - LZ

Revolution - JPGR

Too Late - Frozen - Type O Negative

Experiment In Terrier - Fantomas

Bungle In The Jungle - Tull

Holy Tears - Isis

Five Hundred Miles - Shadows

Metal is a very broad spectrum. Judas Priest and Immortal are both metal but are nothing alike. A lot of Priest - and Maiden - is nice tunes you can hum along to. I don't think metal is necessarily designed to be challenging, although some of it certainly can be, particularly to non-believers 😄 I'd imagine a lot of musical genres have extremes than can prove difficult.

But can they figure out how to make sub-75 minute albums?

How did you get on?

Quicksand - Bowie

Solitude - Black Sabbath

Repeat - Manic Street Preachers

Spicks and Specks - Bee Gees

I prefer Precisions in every way.

I actually really liked the last album, even though it could have easily lost 4 or 5 sub-par songs. Spit Out The Bone was the best thing they'd done in a decade. This new song just sounds so... limp.

Out of nowhere. Now, I do love Metallica, and have done for nearly 30 years, but I have to ask myself, is this really the best they can do? Really?! It will probably sound a lot better live with the guitars dominating rather than those ridiculously loud drums.