Last night, the METAL Injection crew got together, smoked an took in the new album from Metallica, Death Magnetic.
The first few tracks were not bad at all; quite tolerable. Hearing these new songs felt like the last 3 albums were a bit of a detour and this was actually their natural progression post-Black album. It was almost shocking to hear solos again. Sure some songs sounded a little long but it was decent enough to forgive (at the time).
When track 5, "All Nightmare Long" hit, we were blown away. It sounded as though they invited Kerry King into the studio to help produce the track. This is bar none the best track on the album. Real fast, real heavy. What the entire album should be. Just a really awesome old-school thrash jam. It was all downhill from there…
Metallica – All Nightmare Long
By this point it's been around 40 minutes and we're only halfway through the album. Following up "All Nightmare Long" was their hard rock appeasing track, "Cyanide" Its almost like this album has a split personality as the later songs song like Load-era progression. In that they sucked hard. Unforgiven 3 was just a bad (if not worse than) everybody's expectations. The instrumental just sounds like a demo that needed vocals.
We noticed almost all of these songs follow the same formula of intro, bridge, verse, chorus, verse, repetitive jam, chorus, another "meh" jam back to chorus. The songs start to get old quick to the point that we started shouting "END IT ALREADY". Bands are supposed to want you leaving more, whereas Metallica makes sure you eat everything on your plate and then stuff you with seconds even though you're already full.
By the end of the album, we were drained. When the album started, we were excited and wanting more but by the end we had more than enough; too much, in fact. If you trimmed some of these songs down to three and a half minutes as opposed to seven, they would be way more tolerable. The only song I have an interest in hearing again is track 5, "All Nightmare Long" and not much else.
This album is lightyears ahead of St. Anger across the board but still short of what could have been an awesome album. Here's to hoping that some brash young audio engineer will take this album, and do an edit trimming all the excessive fat and pointless jamming into a solid album of catchy hits. Maybe next time, Metallica.
Official Video for "The Day That Never Comes"
