Author: Daniel Minguez
In 1997 Metallica released the album Reload. It was an album unlike any of its predecessors. It was an album impoverished when compared to the releases of the past. It lacked the guitar busting solos and epic intros for which the band is known. It had all the bad boy lyrics, but a mere shadow of the music to back it up. It was a tame Metallica, built for the new age.
In 2003 Metallica released St. Anger, a violent rejection of that tameness. A cacophony of speed metal, nonsensical lyrics and a churning vortex of notes. Head banging to this album was like trying to turn your neck 100 different ways at once. It has been 27 years since the band’s inception, and 17 years since their 15 time certified-platinum self-titled album. Could it be that the band that brought metal to the masses is sliding down a slippery slope to destruction? Absolutely not.
Death Magnetic, released last Friday, Sept. 12, is an uncompromising display of the principles that made Metallica great. It recaptures Metallica’s lyrical instrumentals hybridized with electrifying force. The album is comprised of ten songs, most of which follow the standard Metallica formula: a well composed intro with big, but unthreatening sound, followed by a ruthlessly powerful symphony of drums, guitar and vocals guaranteed to melt your face off.
Interspersed between these songs are the types of epic compositions that have made the band famous. These songs are more than just metal. “The Day That Never Comes” drops a heart beat paced melody over a natural electric arpeggio which drummer Lars Ulrich accents with a series of perfectly timed interruptions.
Vocalist James Hetfield temporarily drops the grating angry tones he often uses and sings a lyric verse before all the components implode upon themselves releasing into a magnificent stream of metal guitar and machine-gun-like drums that straddle the line between the composure of a classic rock ballad and the mayhem of rabid metal machine. With the exception of one lyrical faux-pas, “love is a four letter word,” which I nearly gagged upon, “The Day That Never Comes” is Metallica doing what it does best.
The album also contains “The Unforgiven III,” which is instantly better than its predecessor, “The Unforgiven II,” which contained the lyrics “are you unforgiven too?” Not only did Hetfield avoid working the title into the song this time, the band managed to make use of the piano and a string quartet without sounding like Death Cab For Cutie gone terribly wrong. “The Unforgiven III” is a worthy continuation of “The Unforgiven,” released in 1991.
Sadly, not every track on Death Magnetic could be a winner. The album could have made it without the redundant and unimaginative “My Apocalypse” which rounds out the track list. But considering that it could have been as nonsensical as St. Anger or as half-baked as Reload, Death Magnetic looks like a glittering paradigm of the metal genre-and indeed in some ways it is.
The band that brought the genre of metal, once intolerable to the masses, into the mainstream has again unleashed a series of tracks that should terrify emo singles into hiding and has already begun to triumphantly conquer the air waves of your local rock station.
“The Day That Never Comes” is currently the most requested song on KROQ, and, like other Metallica singles, is expected to have epic longevity.
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