Metallica – Death Magnetic

The new Metallica album. For metalheads this is actually bigger news than who will win the presidential elections in the US. Those are the same fans that stood by the band when they released mediocre albums such as “Load”, “Reload”, bawled their eyes out in the documentary “Some Kind Of Monster” and then finished things off with the musical atrocity that is “St. Anger”.

Just when I think pretty much everyone was going to give up on them, the good news came. Hetfield, Ulrich, the man with the moustache and that bass-playing beast rediscovered their thrash roots, kicked Bob Rock out of the producer chair and welcomed Rick Rubin. Together they would record an album that would show the world that these guys still were the one and only kings of metal. Hell, they even brought the old logo back!

So they re-recorded “One” and called it “The Day That Never Comes”. They wrote ten songs which all wear out their welcome before they come to an end, including the 10-minute instrumental “Suicide & Redemption”. The third chapter of “The Unforgiven” was created and serves no point at all and Kirk Hammett was given a bonus for every single solo in which he could play 1 000 000 000 million notes in under 15 seconds.

There is good news as well though. The drums no longer sound like trash cans. Or in Metallica’s case… thrash cans (haha) and “Broken, Beat & Scarred” prove that they haven’t completely forgotten how to write an exciting song. Other than that, there isn’t a whole lot to drewl about making “Death Magnetic” the musical equivalent of a bottle of wodka from which all of the alcohol has evaporated. Something that Hetfield would’ve never let happen in the old days.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
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