...they seemed to go more mainstream to get airplay or something.
I'm gonna dissent a little here and defend my former bruthas a bit.
There is something to be said about the artistic aspect of the music business (although stooping to the word "sucked" is a whole other conversation)... and the matter of taste and preference by the consumer is certainly fair game.
but it is also the music
BUSINESS.
Sure early diehard Metallica fans have cried "SELLOUT" for years....decades now.
One thing about Metallica now is that they are freakin MASTERS of their genre. If they stuck to their original formula and never "branched out," they'd not be as huge as they are now.
Similarly, Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) may have been faced with pissing off the original folks who liked his small town shop.....does he "suck" for choosing to expand and becoming a multi-billionaire?
I came up in the hard rock biz at the same time with Metallica....and was part of a lot of inner-circle discussions about "branching out" in order to sell more records...(not with Metallica, but other burgeoning biggies of the '80's metal scene).
It was never a slam-dunk decision when record sales and income potential is on the line.
Let's face it who among us would turn down the opportunity--out of had--to quadruple our income? Whether we're making $30k, $80K, $100K, $200K, $500K or
$2.0 million a year--sure there may be travel, work load, family and other sacrifice issues to consider--but, c'mon....we'd WRESTLE MIGHTILY with the factors and pros and cons.
If yer so committed to your craft that you are willing to severly limit your your income potential, more power to ya.
But ya can't blame a BUSINESS or say that they "suck" for trying to continually improve the bottom line and increase profit margins. Metallica has hung in there pretty damn well...their longevity could end up rivaling the Stones, man.
It's not like they now sound like ABBA.
Side: If there was a way to get the original die-hard fans in a profit-sharing, stockholding position with voting rights...they might not mind the "branch out" discussions.