New Metallica Album: Death Magnetic

September 20, 2008 · Posted in Metallica

Metallica: Death Magnetic

I am pleasantly surprised. Metallica after nearly 20 years of commercialized, frefab trash has finally released an album worthy of the name, Metallica. Now mind you, this is no Master of Puppets or Add Justice for All, but it’s exponentially better than St. Anger or the Loads. The first track is called This Was Just Your Life and starts off with a clean guitar that instantly gives you visions of Load, but before too long, it picks up speed, and breaks into what some would say, old school thrash, at least in spirit. The other tracks follow similar formulas, but offer enough variety to keep you from feeling the Ever Increasing Circle, we’ve come to expect from these former kings of metal. On the The Unforgiven III, c’mon, how many can we squeeze out here… Well this one tastes a big different, strays away from the “I Blame You” or “Blame Mommy and Daddy” crap the title suggests, but wraps up the trilogy with a “I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw” theme, but not really too depressing, leaves you feeling as if the protagonist of the song is going to get through whatever happened. Hark !! The instrumental track has returned to the fold, Suicide and Redemption, the longest track on this album at nearly ten minutes, also, one of the faster tracks. It moves along with great agility and some pretty decent ideas going on.. It’s no Orion or Call of Ktulu, but, hey, it’s not humanly possible to top those, so they get the benefit of the doubt with that regard. The last track, My Apolcalypse is in similar fashion as Damage Inc and Dyer’s Eye in some ways, but I ended up getting the Black Album feel from the lyrics of this track.

While not their best, it by far is not their worst release, I walked away from my first listen feeling like I just heard something good, and my initial first impression is one of some guys missing the good ol’ days and just having some fun while they’re at it. Production quality is vastly improved compared to St Anger and the bass is audible with Robert Trujillo offering some interesting and tight work, yet not to out of place. With this release, the entire band contributed to every track, which has never occurred before and it shows the widened influences well. I hope future releases will follow a similar grain with respect to songwriting and abandonment of commercalization that dethroned Metallica back in ’91. Who knows, maybe they might even cross into Progressive Metal territitory.. Time will tell.

My Rating: