Metallica - Death Magnetic
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CD Details
Artist: MetallicaEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-09-12
Music Label: Warner Bros.
Soundtracks:
- That Was Just Your Life
- The End Of The Line
- Broken, Beat & Scarred
- The Day That Never Comes
- All Nightmare Long
- Cyanide
- The Unforgiven III
- The Judas Kiss
- Suicide & Redemption
- My Apocalypse
Music reviews of Death Magnetic
Music Review: 4.5 stars for Death Magnetic
Rating: 4 Stars
I've taken an almost inordinate amount of time to let this album linger, as much to get the deluge of reviews out of the way as anything else. Not that I'll have anything new or insightful to offer outside simply another opinion, but humor me. Oh and also time taken to learn the record just a bit, of course, a luxury not afforded to paid reviewers. And in the weeks following the release of Metallica's Death Magnetic it's been a hailstorm of buzz, of which only a portion is due to the distortion in your headphones. (rim shot) For the most part the album has been well-received, the most scathing and pointed comments usually directed at the quality of the final mix. I'm simply going to ignore this aspect and not because it's unimportant (as I both possess and prefer the more soothing Guitar Hero III mix myself), but because it's been talked about to death by people far more knowledgeable of, interested in, and affected by this aspect than myself. I simply recommend you procure for yourself a GH3 copy (as it's called) and save yourself the aggravation up front so you can get onto the songs, which is what I plan to do.
Well this album really had the potential to be a train wreck. You know in some ways it was a bit like the Palin-Biden debate where Gov. Palin had set the bar so low in the previous weeks that anything short of putting a gun in her mouth and blowing her brains all over Senator Biden and Gwen Ifill on national TV might be construed as a bit of a victory. So too had Metallica set the bar down a notch or ten in the minds of many. (I apologize to the seven or so folks still madly smitten with St. Anger). It's my opinion that outside some confident charm, and not my kind of charm at that, Palin still failed miserably despite not managing to implode. Question remained, would Metallica's latest effort similarly be equal parts improvement while still remaining mostly substance less?
Thankfully, no.
Let's immediately throw out the historic comparisons, shall we? No, it's not Master Of Puppets. It can never and will never be a record of historical importance on that level. That ship sailed in '86 and was miles at sea even just a couple years later. It can be said for most bands lucky enough to survive into a third decade that the expiration date on their continued impact and relevance (if a band is lucky enough to have the latter...some don't) has probably expired. That's not a knock, it simply...is. Few bands are able to constantly reinvent themselves so as to be the impetus behind movement after movement. In fact, I can't think of a single band that's managed to do that past about 8 years, let alone 25. So what we're left with are a lot of bands who continue to do what they do with varying degrees of success or not, both in terms of sales (an antiquated notion) and fan satisfaction (much more palpable) for as long as they can. You really have to put yourself in the mindset of getting past that direct comparison mode because it's both ridiculous and irrelevant, as well as a complete disservice to the music. Doing so only sets up a band and another album for failure after failure. In that case, Rush, Iron Maiden, Metallica...they're all failures. And yet, clearly they're not.
In my mind, music is more rightly observed as an evolutionary process rather than one of direct comparison anyhow. You don't judge Van Gogh by how the next painting compares to The Starry Night. Or if Picasso's Rose Period lived up to his Blue Period and how much of a success or failure one is relative to the other. It is a success or failure unto itself, which is, of course, also subjective. Snobs will tell you there is a quantifiable precedent, but I don't prescribe to that notion.
Death Magnetic finally veers the Metallica ship (Hindenburg?) away from electrical storm clouds after the tumultuous event that was and surrounded St. Anger. Necessary as that album might've been towards getting the band from that point to this, it was at best inconsistent and at its worst, directionless, poorly constructed, meandering, self-important, and in places downright awful. The two albums (and thirteen years) preceding St. Anger were both the height of Metallica experimenting and breaking their own mold, to mixed success and, unarguably, mixed fan reaction as well. If you're so inclined to criticize the band for their 1991 self-titled release for spawning hit singles and popularity unprecedented for a thrash metal band, you have to go back to 1988 to find the band resembling "their old selves." Well the new album definitely is a return home of sorts, blending the speed and energy of ...And Justice For All with some of the plod and melody of "The Black Album," all while managing to be in-the-moment too.
There are also other eras of Metallica present here. The dry vocals by Hetfield (I'd have liked some reverb myself) are indeed tonally reminiscent of the band's dubious last go `round, although it's safe to say there's a lot more intestinal fortitude and a lot less cringe-inducing emotional whine (re: chorus of Invisible Kid). You'll also hear remnants of Load-era melody or chug and some catchy melodies that bring "The Black Album" to mind. I think the biggest difference is that there's a much-needed sense of urgency in the new songs than most of what's come lately (and with Metallica, "lately" means the last 17 or so years, suggesting they work on God's clock instead of normal time). Many of the songs on Load and Reload are high on atmosphere, but low on energy because they're intentionally deliberate and, clearly, the band was experimenting at this point. Some of St. Anger is high on verve at times, but there's also a tendency to plod and aimlessly riff in a murky soup of drop C-tuning that offers little in the way of coherent or vibrant transitions between bits and pieces.
Like an effective film experience, the story in music is often told in the editing process. It's about the marriage of imagery and movement and how those things correlate and weave in and out of one another. You don't linger too long on any one shot. You create tension and atmosphere though movement and inter-cutting. I think that's been one of Metallica's weakest links the last few albums; knowing what's good and what isn't, and how to maneuver within that. The result has been a lot of wankery.
That's a problem they've mostly corrected on Death Magnetic.
There's a lot of music in these ten songs and at first it seems a bit overwhelming, but after a few listens, the pieces make good sense and, better still, the songs flow well, despite their muscular running times. You begin to anticipate the change and realize the coming riff. You might argue there are a bit too many transitions and musical cues abounding at times (thus the album's most notable similarity to 88's Justice LP), and if the songs have a slight fault it might be that there's a bit over-indulging going on in spots, but overall there's a coherency that's married to the energy and it works well, so that's a small distraction I can easily live with. The songs are journeys, mini-epics with discernable beginnings, middles and endings. They have transitory elements that make sense and, yes, guitar solos to help accomplish this.
The songs simply move and while that sounds fundamental, I can't say that about a lot of the songs from the previous three albums.
It doesn't take long to realize, too, that there's a concerted effort to get back to the riffage and speed that dominated earlier albums. Don't be mistaken, this isn't Ride The Lightning II here, but the supple-wristed Hetfield has some fine flashes we haven't heard for some time on songs like All Nightmare Long, which, to me, harkens back to Puppets-era writing, execution and skull-thumping delivery. Thrashier numbers like the bookend opening and closing tracks have a raw punk-metal flavor to them, not unlike the verve found on their debut album. I wouldn't call this mimicry though. This is clearly 2008 Metallica having fun tapping old veins with the best and - let's face it -- most smile-evoking intentions.
Sure there are the more cynical fans who see this as the band desperately trying to be 20-years-old again, feebly trying to garner lost respect by saying "we can still play fast, see?" I don't get this impression at all because I don't think that urge ever left the band. I think, rather, Metallica spent nearly 20 years doing something else, evolving as I mentioned earlier. That doesn't mean it's necessarily successful growth, because that comes down to taste, but it is something they deemed necessary at the time, for better or worse. To return to their roots to me isn't some kind of self-denial or denial of growth, but instead it reads as a band coming to terms with and embracing its past. But to some who loved the early days and fought the change as it happened, it might be an attempt at feeble apology. To some of the newer fans, it might be a Neandrathalic and unnecessary step backward. To most everyone else it might best described as a proper melding of all eras of the band, which is how I hear it.
"The Black Album," for instance, is here, present in the most literal sense with the inclusion of The Unforgiven III, but also in terms of the string section, vocal melody with the heavy verse - soft chorus formula established with the first Unforgiven entry, etc. It's felt on a song like Broken, Beat & Scarred with the middle eastern flavored riffing, as well as in the infectious choral melodies and relentless chuggings of tunes like Cyanide and The Judas Kiss. ...And Justice For All rings true in the complex arrangements and lengths of many songs, as well as the welcomed-return to many of the dual-guitar harmonies present on that record. The middle break in the instrumental song Suicide And Redemption has a true Justice feel to it.
And so it goes.
It's a rather unpleasant position Metallica find themselves in. Not so much from their insulated perspective, but really from the fan's perspective, watching both critics and other fans lend their take on Death Magnetic. It's a position that they've put themselves in, having spent enough time doing their own thing that they've managed to infuriate and isolate one part of their fan base while gaining a whole new crowd altogether. Most of the rest bob around somewhere between pleased and disappointed, having the opportunity to be one or the other only about every five years or so, the dreadfully-prolonged pause between albums being perhaps the biggest sticking point of all. What you're left with is a bickering assortment of fans eager to pounce on whatever turn they take at this point. On one hand the band experiments more and people cry, "Why can't they just do music like they used to?" Tread too far back into the past and it's condemned as being pathetic mimicry.
In the vast pool that is "can't please everyone" comes Death Magnetic, which is nothing short of an energetic, enthused, competent and invigorated return to the spirit that previously compelled them. Nothing will ever be Master Of Puppets and nothing should ever have to be, nor could it. But what is past is also prologue and Death Magnetic seems more the beginning of a new chapter of self-discovery than a nostalgic thumbing through of faded memories and dusty picture albums.
4.5 stars of 5
Description of Death Magnetic
One of the most influential bands in music, ranked eighth on the list of the biggest-selling groups in history, Metallica unveils its ninth studio album, Death Magnetic. The band'sfirst album in five years, Death Magnetic is also its first with renowned producer Rick Rubin (Danzig, Slayer, System Of A Down,
Slipknot), first with bassist Robert Trujillo, and first on Warner Bros. Heavy and thrashy, unafraid to embrace the band's past yet move
into the future.
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