Warner Bros.

Perhaps there is no greater love-or-hate band in all of metal (or music, now that I really think of it) than Metallica. At one time they were the measuring stick that all things metal were judged by. That time has been long gone, as anyone who has followed the band for at least the past 15 years would attest. Take a glance at any metal message board and you will no doubt find that the topic of Metallica will inspire much raged debate. Even the people who swear they hate the band can't stop talking about them. I'm not sure if there's any greater way of judging success than that.

The past two years have been full of rumblings over a new Metallica studio album. Many questions surrounded the band asking if they could recapture their former glory, if they can reclaim their former throne. Could they put the fire back into the flop that is the thrash metal revival? Or would they shoot their foots again? Could they make an album worse than St. Anger, which 5 years after the fact is still ridiculed mercilessly (even by the band themselves). So much hoopla over four guys getting together and making a new album. Amazing.

I'd be remiss if I didn't briefly mention my one time love for this band, which then turned to a furious hate which later turned back into a somewhat love for the music but dislike for the people making it. I am trying not to be biased in my views of Death Magnetic. Some people will be biased against the band no matter what they do. So it goes. I'm trying my best.

I love this album.

There, I said it.

Its far from perfect. In fact I have some rather big gripes about some aspects of it. Despite all the flaws (which I will get into), the band has managed to string together a series of songs that both honors their past and at the same time steps forward to the future.

The album opens up with That Was Just Your Life and the first minute alone is ten times better than anything offered on St. Anger. One minute > seventy five minutes. This song, like most on the album, is a hefty seven minutes long (only three songs out of ten are shorter than seven minutes). The band packs in all of their best ideas and it pays off. James and Kirk's guitar playing sounds tighter than it's been in years. The reins that were put on Kirk for St. Anger (no solos?!?) were lifted and it sounds like he's making up for lost time. Robert Trujillo finally demonstrates why the band hired him in the first place (I watched Some Kind Of Monster and really, he was the best guy of the bunch). His slap bass style doesn't feel out of place at all, even after 14 years of Jason Newsted's bass picking. In truth, the only guy out of the bunch who didn't bring is A game is, not surprisingly, Lars. I really don't wanna beat a dead horse after the maggots have long eaten away the last bit of festered meat, but the guy really does suck. He's always been sloppy and even on his best day (which was a long time ago), the best compliment I can give him is that he's average.

After That Was Just Your Life finishes whipping you around, The End Of The Line comes around to do it all over again. This is one of the best songs on the album, having a cool groove that sort of brings to mind some stuff from Load but goes about it in a much heavier fashion. That one-two punch is continued with a swift kick to the temple with the massive Broken, Beat And Scarred. Despite being one of the shorter songs on the album (coming in at a brisk 6 minutes...hey wait...), the band comes in swinging and doesn't give you time to gather your thoughts.

A change of pace comes in with The Day That Never Comes. At first it feels like a song from the melodic Load albums, but in reality the band is actually going for a Fade To Black styled song. The first half of the song is melodic, slowly throwing in some heaviness until the song reaches its peak and rides out with a lengthy outro jam in the second half. Good stuff. Next up is All Nightmare Long, my choice for the most ass-kicking song on Death Magnetic. Just take my comments about the three songs that opened the album and multiply it by a dozen. This song seriously rocks. If this song doesn't become a permanent fixture of all their future set lists then there really is no justice in the world. At all. Or For All. Yeah.

We're halfway through the album and I am liking everything I've heard up til now. Cyanide is up next, a song that took me a while to really dig into. It was the first song from Death Magnetic that the band played live and obviously recordings of the track was found everywhere soon after. The song is a bit disjointed, particularly when it comes to the chorus which feels like it was left over from another song, but the music makes me bang my head so ultimately it gets a pass from me.

Hey! Didn't they already do two songs with the Unforgiven name? Indeed they have. The second song (from Reload) was blatantly modeled after the first (from the self titled "black" album). For the third installment, the band thankfully tries something different entirely. In truth, it doesn't even need the Unforgiven title attached to it since it's strong enough to stand on its own. I do have one observation on this song and its that it could have been shortened by a minute or so. The song builds to an amazing climatic solo by Kirk and it would have been great if it went out on that high note, but it goes back to the song's chorus and stretches the song out a bit needlessly. There's something else about this song that I should get into, but its something I'll address later.

The Judas Kiss is up next and out of all these songs, I think this one will be the one that fans will point to years down the line as the underrated song from Death Magnetic that will slip through the cracks. Its a cool song with a riff that brings to mind one of the songs that they covered on Garage Days Re-Revisited (the $5.95 Ep).

Alright, so I've gone through eight songs and I've giving a favorable review to them all. There's still two more and uhh...these two I'm not really sold on. I have no doubt that many people will complain about the long song lengths and that the band should have scaled back a bit. On most of the songs I don't think this is the case, but Suicide And Redemption is one that could have certainly been further edited. Its an instrumental (their first since To Live Is To Die on ...And Justice For All), something they used to excel at, but all of their old instrumentals had a key ingredient that is missing this time around: Cliff Burton. Their late bass player had an innate knack for crafting together a superb instrumental that was more than just a string of random riffs (Cliff co-wrote parts of To Live Is To Die, FYI). Suicide And Redemption on the other hand, feels just like that: a string of random riffs that the band wrote but didn't know where to put them. The song does have a main piece that helps move things along, but after 5 minutes you just wanna skip to the last song.

Ahh yes...the last song. My Apocalypse. The only way of describing this song is that its the weakest song on the album. Its in the same thrash ass kicking style of the earlier songs, but the tank is running on fumes by the time they get here. Its a throwaway. On the other hand, it is the shortest song on the album...at 5 minutes? Hey wait...

Ok, now for the major gripes I have. I've already mentioned Lars' poor excuse for drum playing (old hat) and I'd rather preferred that the last two songs were cut out completely. Now I have to remark on James Hetfield's singing. In the past he never was the best out there (in fact the only reason why he sang in the first place is because John Bush turned them down and they couldn't find anyone else) but he always had a distinctive voice and it worked. Not this time. I don't really know what's happened in these past several years, but he's lost it. At times his vocals get on my nerves, but its at its worst on The Unforgiven III where he relies on his melodic voice for much of its duration. He has a whiny tone in most of the song and the only time his voice has any real strength is when he screams right before the solo. Now, it was much worse on St. Anger, but Death Magnetic doesn't show great improvement in that area.

Last, but not least, is the production. Actually, no...its the mastering. I don't know if it's Rick Rubin to blame (and if it is shaaaame on him) but the album has a bad clipping problem. When you crank the album (like all good music should be) the sound gets distorted into a garbled mess. Its amazing to me in this day and age that bands allow their recordings to be tainted in this manner.

So, after all these words, what is the verdict? Thumbs up. It has its glaring flaws but by this point you have to take the bad with the good. And Death Magnetic offers lots of good. Are the kings back? I'll let you be the judge of that.

In my book Iron Maiden would have to go take a piss break for Metallica to even get a moment on that throne.


01. That Was Just Your Life
02. The End Of The Line
03. Broken, Beat And Scarred
04. The Day That Never Comes
05. All Nightmare Long
06. Cyanide
07. The Unforgiven III
08. The Judas Kiss
09. Suicide And Redemption
10. My Apocalypse

Score: 8/10