Metallica continues its ineluctable slide into Spinal Tap territory. If the band members aren’t baring their teeth in PR photos (scary Lars!), they’re getting their little noses bruised in PR gaffe after PR gaffe, even if they are not, strictly speaking, entirely the band’s fault.

Now, sound technicians analyzing the group’s new album have found something that is the band’s fault:  Excessive compression in the mix of the band’s new record, Death Magnetic, severely limited the dynamic range of the music fans bought; indeed, versions of the same songs the band sold to the video game Rock Band sound far better. Says mastering engineer Ian Sheperd:

[…T]he continuing arms-race for “loudness at all cost” is now dramatically damaging the music we listen to—even in a traditionally loud, distorted genre like rock. As a result we are given squashed, lifeless and often unpleasantly distorted products to listen to. These are less exciting, less involving, less impactful and ultimately fatiguing to listen to.

There’s a lot of interesting links in his post. A Wire Listening Post story on the controversy is here. My favorite part is where Sheperd quotes from an interview with the band’s James Hetfield, whose comments sound even better if you imagine them intoned with a Nigel Tufnel accent:

I think things came out really good. They’re going to be mixing it while we’re away in Europe. Yeah, and that will be…well,we haven’t done that in awhile. We’ve usually been around for the mixes. I think it will be good for us to step away from it for a while.

And Boston’s not a big college town. Meanwhile, the band is also under attack after the head of its label in Sweden cut off access to a Swedish publication a writer for which had had the temerity to talk approvingly of, and even link to a torrent site that offered, a fan remix of the new record that eliminated chunks of music from each song. (The songs on the album average nearly eight minutes.) According to Wired, the writer, whose work is in Swedish, said the changed version sounded better–as if the band had stepped out of fatsuits.

“The reviewer is referring to a BitTorrent where someone has altered the original songs,” Universal Music Sweden president Per Sundin told another Swedish publication, according to RoadRunner Records. “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.“

Emphasis added.