It may be hard to remember now, but once upon a time Metallica were pretty cool. Their first three albums – “Kill Em All,” “Ride the Lightning,” and “Master of Puppets” – remain untouchable classics to this day, all very influential, and all very, very loud. It’s not often that a band can be credited with the creation of a genre – but with their marriage of Black Sabbath-esque gloom and the cocky musicianship of prog rock, Metallica are often seen as the progenitors of thrash metal, a genre defined by its manic speed and complex guitar work.
But as time wore on, the raw and uncontrollable fury of their early days was softened, replaced by an increasingly bland and commercial rock sound. By the late 1990s, it seemed like Metallica were aiming more for the Nickelback crowd than the hard-core death metal fanatics who had formed the core of their fan-base ten years earlier. Gone were the incendiary, wildly complex guitar solos of old; gone were the crashing, lumbering chords and the ridiculously fast-paced drumming.
The band’s steady downward spiral came to its nadir in 2003, with the release of “St. Anger,” a woeful, cynical catastrophe of an album slavishly following the current trend for nu-metal bands like Linkin Park and Korn. It’s one of the few records I would honestly call “unlistenable” – I bought it, listened to it once through, and threw it away. It really is that bad. Singer James Hetfield half-rapping “my lifestyle / determines my death-style” on the opening “Frantic” is only the beginning of “St Anger’s” problems.
Understandably my expectations for their new record “Death Magnetic” (released September 10) were rather low. Sure, there’d been talk of “going back to their roots,” talk of “recapturing their classic sound” – but that’s exactly what Metallica would say after releasing an album as alienating as “St. Anger.” For once, though, I can report that the rumours were true: “Death Magnetic” sounds more like the Metallica of old than any album the band have released in fifteen years. It’s an album that looks back into the past, consolidating Metallica’s strengths, rather than moving forward into a new sound. It’s a very safe record – and you know what, that’s totally fine by me.
Ninety seconds in, and I already had a huge smile on my face – courtesy of the thunderous, hulking opener “That Was Just Your Life,” an instant Metallica classic that roars along on mighty guitar riffs and a vocal performance from Hetfield that proves he hasn’t lost his legendary animalistic snarl. And while the first track may be the album’s best, there’s more than enough here to keep every metal fan happy, from the virtuoso, stop-start rhythms of “Broken, Beat & Scarred” to the grim churn of “Judas Kiss” to the relentlessly manic closer “My Apocalypse”; a song which reaches a wonderfully ridiculous peak as Hetfield spits out in strangled gasps lyrics like “crushing metal / ripping skin / tossing body / mannequin” and “spilling blood / bleeding gas / mangled flesh / snapping spine.” It’s poetry, I tell ya!
But the track that really convinced me that Metallica were back to their prime is the ten minute-long instrumental “Suicide & Redemption” – because when a band can keep you captivated for that long without any lyrics, and with the barest semblance of a melody, you know they’re good. It’s an epic work that’s almost jazz-like in its virtuosity, moving from deafening chord-thrashing to quiet, nimble guitar solos with the colossal grandeur of shifting tectonic plates. So while it may not be the best track on “Death Magnetic,” it is the most reassuring – undeniable proof that the band’s sub-Linkin Park phase is a thing of the past, and that Metallica are still the technically-skilled musicians they were twenty-five (!?!) years ago.
Of course, I won’t try to argue that “Death Magnetic” is a masterpiece – it’s too repetitive and too long for that, and sitting through the entire record in one go is a pretty numbing experience. But I doubt that Metallica’s first fans back in 1983 could have predicted that in the far distant future of 2008 the band would release an album as potent and energetic as “Death Magnetic.” And it’s to exactly those fans that I repeat: don’t worry! Metallica are back to what they do best – no more commercialism, no more attempts at rapping, no more desperate trend-chasing. It is 2008, and for a bunch of fifty year olds, Metallica can still make a hell of a lot of noise.
"Death Magnetic" released 12 September, 2008 by Warner Bros.
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. and Empire Online.
Published in the Daily Princetonian.
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