Metallica - Death Magnetic

Let’s get this out of the way before I even get started: this is a great album. While I never bought into that whole “Metallica betrayed us!” meme that many metal heads indulged themselves with I did find myself just losing interest. Still I had some curiosity and tried to listen to a few songs each time a new album came out, simply because there is only one Metallica out there (Apocalyptica doesn’t count). Well in my opinion they are finally back to doing the type of music that I fell in love with in the first place, that being technically proficient thrash with a sweet groove to it. My main complaint about their post Black Album releases was that they just sounded lazy, bland and devoid of solos or classical influence. Well Death Magnetic is anything but lazy, it’s in fact chock full of 7 minute songs with a whole lot of tempo changes and heavy riffs. In a way it kind of sounds like those Metallica inspired songs that Dream Theater keeps making, only not that over the top.  

Death Magnetic is extremely self referential though, making tons of cool allusions to older works by the band. For example the album starts out with a little bit of unadorned guitar that gives way into a fast thrash beat, much like Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets did. That Was Just Your Life is fast and heavy, but it throws in some heavy slowdowns and a squeaky guitar solo reminiscent of Slayer. It’s as though their thrash metal side has finally found land after years of drifting at sea and wants to indulge in everything it has missed for so long.

The End of the Line is extremely groovy, but it has a strange Pearl Jam like riff that throws things off. Instead I rather move on to Broken, Beat and Scarred which has little to boast lyrically but packs a hard and heavy punch. The Day That Never Comes starts out reminiscent of the better elements of Load and goes into a cool facsimile of the melodic darkness of pre 90’s Metallica.

All Nightmare Long is cheesy as hell but I love it, it feels like a lost Kill Them All song only with incredibly catchy vocals. After the bouncy Cyanide the album goes into what I consider its low point, by which I mean another unwanted sequel to The Unforgiven. I can’t really tell you if its narrative is a prequel or a sequel, or maybe just another musing on the same topics. What I can tell you is that it is comprised of 90% filler and remaining 10% is a sprawling guitar solo that collapses on itself.

The Judas Kiss offers up some more thrash on par with the rest of the album but the song that follows it is perhaps one of the more important symbols of this album. This is the return of the instrumental track, which up until the Black Album (a.k.a. Metallica, like anyone grew up calling it that) was a staple of every Metallica release. The track in question is Suicide and Redemption, which is quite good but does not really stack up against their previous instrumental offerings. Its repeating theme is a little flat, although I must admit that the super harmonic guitar solo in the middle is pretty cool.

My Apocalypse is another Slayer inspired track with a nice dose of Kill Them All that acts as a final blast of old school metal, just to make sure that there are no doubts as to what they intended to do. Honestly I don’t regard this CD as highly as I do with the old stuff, but then again I don’t have decades of invested affection for it. Now if only they can clean up the intentionally cheap production issues I might be willing to call it one of my favorite albums of the year.