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Originally Posted by the ikara cult
What exactly is the problem with later Metallica compared to earlier? Its a thing people talk about in the same way that people talk about other older bands who continue (such as.... Sonic Youth). Is it for the same reasons (I.e. feeling the band has "sold out" or something like that)?
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No, because, for the most part, the people who say Sonic Youth "sold out" got into them from the first three major label albums then went back and discovered Sister and DDN and then these people generally got older and lost track of Sonic Youth and in their laziness to figure out what the band has actually done in past fifteen years, they just say, "They sold out!"
Metallica on the other hand were a band who created a rather massive following on their own terms: creating music that was too long and agressive for radio play, refusing to make videos at the peak of MTV's influence, and denying various cliches of their own genre while embracing influences such as Killing Joke and the Misfits well before such crossovers were readily accepted in the metal world. They set up a fanbase who looked to them as the standard bearers of a kind of anti-industry purity and then they took an about face - first with videos for songs on And Justice For All, then with Bob Rock's very radio friendly production of the Black Album, and finally with the incredibly embarassing Alternica/Nu-Metal direction they took after that.
If you look at people who were into Sonic Youth heavily in the '80s, you will usually find people who like NYC Ghost & Flowers and Sonic Nurse a whole lot. Sonic Youth have maintained pretty much the same course the whole time from then until now, and that's a course that has always allowed for a lot of experimentation and side projects.
You'd be hard pressed to find many people who were heavily into Metallica in the '80s who can bear to listen to anything they've done since. I'm not saying there aren't any people out there who might be exceptions to that rule, but most old school Metallica fans who still care about metal at all are probably more likely listening to Sepultura or Entombed or something else.