Metallica released their 11th studio album, 72 Seasons, earlier this year. The group has been teasing out singles since last November, beginning with Lux Aeterna, which this reviewer found underwhelming, and found company in this assessment...read my mock-review of Lux Aeterna here...
Then Spotify recently tipped me off to the most recent track from the album to be put out by the band, Too Far Gone? and I was far more impressed this time around. Yes, the riffs were somewhat derivative of old-school 'tallica, but isn't that what we wana hear, really? If I ever coughed up the green to go see these guys in concert, I would demand to hear my favorite sounds from Kill 'Em All through the Black album. Why should I ask anything else of the new record?
72 Seasons (the eponymous first track) opens with a deadly buzzsaw of palm-muted 6th-string galloping, slowing to a funky thrash groove a-la Megadeth or Flotsam and Jetsam.
The title itself refers to the first eighteen years of life. In reflection, James sees this as a formative time, which he has been working through ever since, and is the foundation of his ouvre. In a wider sense, I think most fans of the band probably have had a similar experience, if more or less traumatic. I was a wee little white boy of fourteen trying to fit in by listening to commercial hip-hop and R&B in the late 90's when Hetfield first spoke to me, as much with his violent jabs of rhythm guitar as by the tortured but ironic poetry reflecting a world gone savagely amok. Now as my oldest son approaches eighteen himself, I am forced to confront this album as a desperate communication, to the new generation as well as us that are already living it, of the noble tragedy entailed in being a man in today's society.
The song gets under way with riffs that remind now of Battery; Blackened; Fight Fire With Fire...
Kirk plays a memorable solo and probably wrote the riff that builds into it.
Shadows Follow reminds of Justice...not just the muscular guitar, but the insistent snap of the snare drum. Lars continues to hold down the back-beat while James adds decisive accents...then it goes into a little part reminiscent of Mercyful Fate. The engineering is really good on this record, with a thick sound that isn't all compressed. Lars has been compared unfavorably to a number of metal drummers, but in most cases, they are just showing off...Lars is hitting the exact right notes at the perfect moment that every song requires, in order to complement Hetfield's unique rhythms, which are fresher than they have been in years. The solo is also good.
Screaming Suicide confronts all the self-doubt that culminates for too many in the tragic and senseless taking of their own lives, depriving us all of what that person had to contribute. Working it out, we can give back through our children, our art, our service to our brothers and sisters...thanks for sticking around, Mr. Hetfield!
Sleepwalk My Life Away opens with an almost tribal drum ostinato, perhaps recalling Kreator's Terrible Certainty, overlaid with a fast-rolling bass lick suggesting Flotsam and Jetsam again...after they lost Jason Newsted, who Metallica later traded to Ozzy Osbourne for Trujillo, who, with all respects paid to the psychedelic baroque musical genius of Cliff Burton, may be the best bassist the boys ever hired. The song reminds also of Load or ReLoad and the mutual influence Metallica and alternative rock had upon each other. Musically I may find this a turn-off, but the group managed to stay relevent and gain new fans at a time when heavy metal had become quite decadent. Even Miles Davis sometimes had to follow the pack to remain the leader.
You Must Burn! A great statement. We all now have to worry about an auto-da-fe in addition to the other concerns of modern life. If nothing else, heavy metal has continued to tell the truth, after reggae and punk long since sank into Epicurean complacence and the most popular rappers offer their services as court poets to the highest-bidding tyrant of some upstart liquor enterprise. Screaming aloud the pain accumulated over a lifetime has always been a greater catalyst of social change than a scramble by the biggest dupes the establishment has to offer to keep up with the latest trends in political correctness...those same people that would have gleefully lynched a Black man a century ago will now stop at nothing to ruin the lives of some hardworking, innocent Americans...in the name of 'anti-racism'!
Perhaps Kirk's best wah-wah solo of all time?
Lux Aeterna might not be as bad as I have elsewhere suggested...but it is still rather predictable. Understandable it was used as their first single. It is effective propaganda for a new market saturated with soundbites, pretense and Apollonian illusion. Fast and driving, a throwback to Kill 'Em All and Reload simultaneously. Kirk overuses the whammy bar in his guitar solo.
Crown of Barbed Wire actually sounds like 21st century metal. For all the commercialization the Black Album represented in the group's career arc, in many ways it gave new depth to the heaviness of metal. The sound is dark, words stumble and suggest states of feeling more than they narrate the details. I can't understand how someone could listen to Metallica and also feel unironic patriotism as an American. Still, to look something in the face this way is impressive.
Chasing Light Is that really just James singing in the chorus?
"Without darkness, there's no light"---perfect distillation of James' counterintuitive folk-wisdom. Celebrate the disagreeable, the objectionable, limitations, failure. Becoming is the act of being forcibly rent from our tender cocoons anew each day. Kirk really lets shred with a solo reminiscent of the very competent job he did learning Mustaine's solos to record the band's first album.
If Darkness Had a Son Another more contemporary metal song, opening with Ulrich's infamous kick and thunderous guitar and tom-toms, going into a kind of Eye of the Beholder groove. As a thrash vocalist, James has made some questionable choices, but that fearless, iconoclastic feel for experimentation also yields these really unique moments when the music, the voice, the words and the reality disclosed by the words all find themselves working toward a new, organic creation. This is the essence of art.
Too Far Gone? Real old-school thrash up-front, the verses chugging along to a powerful chorus that asks, "Am I too far gone?". A kick-ass solo and a beautiful harmony guitar breakdown lead to the final chorus and the answer,
"I can make it through the day.
Just for today."
Somebody really needed to hear that.
Room of Mirrors If we are just reflecting the worst we perceive in each other constantly, how are we to make any improvement? I'm sure he has other things in mind, but, for my part, sardonically mocking the latest endeavor by the most hard-working, successful rock band of the last thirty years does not really contribute anything substantial to the world of art and culture.
More desperate harmony guitar towards the ending.
Inamorata Is heavy metal, music, art, life itself, nothing but an incessant craving for suffering to continue?
"Misery
She needs me
Oh, but I need her more"
Amen
Closes with more incredible harmony guitar, reminiscent of Justice... again, but also revealing its origin to be Black Sabbath's Sabbra Cadabra.
72 Seasons may perhaps be James Hetfield's final autobiographical testament of rage, as well as earning a place in the canon in its own right, alongside the more significant metal of the last twenty or thirty years.
