METALLICA Interview Cancelled Over Controversial 'Death Magnetic' Review

METALLICA's European record label Universal Music cancelled the band's interview with the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan last week after one of the paper's writers admitted in his review of METALLICA's new album that he illegally downloaded an alternate version of the CD via the Internet.

In his three-star review (out of a possible five-star rating) of METALLICA's long-awaited new effort, "Death Magnetic", Jonn Jeppsson mentioned an edited version of the CD that he obtained through the Swedish web site The Pirate Bay, which bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker." According to Jeppsson, "Death Magnetic: Better, Shorter, Cut" contains the same 10 cuts that are found on the regular version of "Death Magnetic" but with "one to four minutes of each song trimmed off." He wrote, "Once the songs are saved from their fatsuits — compare this to people who can lose half their body weight and you can sense how many times too often the choruses are repeated on the original tracks — they're not just glaringly precise and intense, they really live up to expectations."

Speaking to Dagens Media about the review and Universal's decision to cancel Sydsvenskan's scheduled interview with METALLICA, Universal Music Sweden president Per Sundin stated, "The reviewer is referring to a BitTorrent where someone has altered the original songs. The reviewer explains exactly where one should go in order to download the file that totally infringes on a copyright. It's not only an illegal file, but an altered file. The reviewer also writes that this is how the album should have sounded."

He continued, "File-sharing of music is illegal. Period. There's nothing to discuss. That fact that Sydsvenskan has a writer that has downloaded this music illegally and then makes mention of an illegal site in his review is totally unacceptable to us.”

Sundin added that Universal Music has not yet determined what impact this incident will have on the label's relationship with Sydsvenskan.

"We live in symbiosis with each other and we send them our artists' record for free for review," he explained. "But if they download the records illegally instead, then there's no point in doing that."

Meanwhile, the "enterprising young audio engineer" who claimed responsibility for the edited version of "Death Magnetic" e-mailed the MetalSucks web site on Thursday, September 11 and explained that "basically, I just wanted a new album by METALLICA that I could listen to without getting irritated by some lame lyrics or ploddy riffs that go nowhere for three minutes before turning into something cool. The original version of 'Death Magnetic' is the best thing that they've done since '…And Justice For All', but it ain't great. My version is great."