Metallica Concerts, 1982-2012 [Infographics]

Cool idea, but I'm going to quibble a bit on the Audience vs. Band Chart. Suppose for simplicity that a band has four songs A, B, C, and D that respectively 40% 20% 20% and 20% of people would prefer to hear at a concert. Now suppose the band can only play one song.<p>Which song should they play?<p>I don't think the answer to that question is a random mix of the songs with 40% song A, I think the answer is 100% song A. If you play any of the other songs, you make 20% of the audience happy, if you play A you make 40% happy, it strictly dominates. In other words, I don't think playing the songs at a concert in proportion to their last.fm statistics makes sense since at home listeners have as much time as they want but concert time is a limited resource that should be used on the best songs.<p>So I would be interested in the rank order of listening stats vs. rank order of concert songs and look for anomalies. Unforgiven (I, II, III?) are probably going to make that list since I've actually heard of that one and I am definitely not a Metallica fan.

This is pretty cool.<p>A few interesting observations:<p>1. Metallica seems to have realized themselves that St Anger wasn't something they wanted to play after that tour. The Load album seems to have been similarly dropped pretty hard.<p>2. It appears they never even tried playing the majority of Reload live. This is interesting to me as a musician, because I'd have thought that Metallica would be the type of band to try a lot of their songs live before recording them, but it doesn't seem to be the case.<p>3. Very shocked that they never played Unforgiven II live, since it was a single and everything.<p>4. I really liked the Audience vs Band chart.

I am happy that is <i>actually</i> an infographic: original analysis presented graphically. Too often, an “infographic” is just a list that someone did in Illustrator.

This is great, but the low contrast between the text and the background makes it very hard to read.<p>With no evidence I feel that this is something of a trend at the moment; I've recently battled our designers when they have sacrificed readability.<p>I'm 29 and have excellent vision, I can't imagine how hard this could be to read for people who don't.

I gave up on Metallica years ago after they went on their tirade against Napster. Band that becomes famous because of people sharing garage-band tapes with each other bitches about people for sharing their music after they become famous; it's the ultimate hypocrisy.

I am so glad that some people have a lot of time on their hands. This is awesome.

It's actually surprising how much time has passed since Metallica used to be good. Looking at the infographic, they've now spend nearly 2/3 of their career in the "play the songs from this album on its release tour, then never again" phase.<p>I still distinctly recall the day in 2003 when I first uttered the previously unthinkable phrase "more crappy Metallica" on hearing their new release.<p>I actually downloaded their latest album when it so publicly got leaked on the internet. Then, with dashed hopes, deleted it an hour later.<p>Shame.

Pretty well reflects the quality of the Albums. Thank god for Death Magnetic.

About Audience vs Band Chart<p>When I am home listening to Metallica I might prefer the lighter songs like Unforgiven II. Whereas a concert is not just 'music', it is a whole performance! An energetic song definitely makes a difference. Thus, the chart is partly right saying that the songs from the extreme left would make people more happy, but how would playing those set the mood for the concert which determines the overall experience?

I can't believe they never played "Don't Tread on Me"

I'd like to see an infographic on how badly Lars' ability to maintain tempo live has degraded over time. I love their pre-Black studio work and LSB&#38;P, but live it's just tough to listen to them bludgeon their songs to death at 110-200BPM.

Metallica before the black album is the Metallica I like, anything since then I can't simply listen to it.

For the love of god where is the PNG?

The Black album wins. Obviously.

Is this what happens when a Metallica fanatic takes Adderall?