Three stars out of five.Quote:
Everyone but the most comical Metallica apologist can admit the metal veterans just haven't been what they used to be. The point where Metallica jumped the shark, though, is a lot harder to pin down for certain, mostly because there are so many points from which to choose. Take your pick: Maybe it was when Cliff Burton died; when the black album gave the band a taste of mainstream success; when the band chopped its hair; when it recorded with the San Francisco Symphony; when it dropped its metal roots for hard-rock bluster for the latter part of the '90s. Whatever the turning point was, the band stopped being Metallica and settled on merely being Metallica for a long, long time.
Teaming with producer Rick Rubin -- who already helped Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond get their careers back on track -- Death Magnetic is the closest thing we'll probably get from Metallica in the way of an apology for mucking things up so completely for the past decade. And even that implied apology is half-hearted: About midway, the rockers lay down the old-school feel and get back grinding at those boring hard-rock cliches that threatened to render it inconsequential in the past.
First the good: Rediscovering its British thrash roots and everything that comes with it, Metallica is once again a metal act for much of Death Magnetic. It brings everything that job description entails, from charging rhythms and furiously picked rhythm riffs to those outlandishly exaggerated solos upon which Kirk Hammett built his name. There's plenty of reason to bang your head until you get a nosebleed. "Death Magnetic" is the hardest, most pummeling cut to come from Metallica since the days when its video for "One" was making the rounds on Headbanger's Ball. Drummer Lars Ulrich pounds harder and faster than most thought he was able to anymore, while singer/guitarist James Hetfield growls his way through a vocal that's nothing but tar and asphalt. Hammett, for his part, keeps his pick work blindingly fast; it could be a forgotten track from Kill 'Em All sessions. "The End of the Line" crashes forward at thrash-metal tempos, held together by those grinding, muscle-bound riffs that were the act's lifeblood in the '80s, only to explode into a guitar solo that' s so over-the-top technical and fast-paced that Hammett's practically begging for his job as metal guitar god back. "That Was Just Your Life" and "All Nightmare Long" don't do much but rekindle the band's heavy-metal formula from its glory days, but at this point in the game, stagnation is better than that new-era crap, isn't it?
Now, the bad, and there's as much of it as the good. "The Day that Never Comes" is the sort of monster-ballad mush that splits the band's thunder with radio-friendly arena-rock segments. Of course, it's the album's lead single. "The Unforgiven III" is an unforgivable addition into the trio of songs that firmly reminds listeners of Metallica's days as hard-rockin' sensitive dudes, which, oddly, is exactly the opposite of what Rubin was hired to do. "Cyanide" is more of the same Load of monster-truck rally crap that Metallica's tried to shift onto its listeners for years now.
If we're going to congratulate Metallica for once again saddling up to ride the lightening, we also have to wonder why it ever got off in the first place. The grunge years and the alternative revolution were tough times for long-haired bands like Metallica. Perhaps they just adapted (poorly) to survive. Perhaps they, like everyone else in America, were caught up in the excitement as alt-rock changed the musical landscape. Now that metal once again reigns supreme in the loud music world, Metallica is there once again. Shouldn't we be wondering why it left in the first place, why it chose to opportunistically change direction with the wind and why we need to congratulate it simply because it's no longer failing? Wouldn't true Gods of Metal stuck to their guns through the lean years, and carried the torch when its flame was needed most? Instead, Metallica turned tail and ran, waiting for a new generation of metal types to make it safe and commercially viable for it to get back to its roots. For that, they'll always be unforgiven, at least by the devout who did stand true to the genre during its downfall.
There can't be a return to form if you never left it in the first place. For all the classic-Metallica bluster, Death Magnetic not so subtly reminds us of that. Let's not celebrate Metallica's rekindling of the metal fires, but celebrate the times in which it makes it so simple, so easy and so free from risk for Metallica to rekindle those fires. Metal fans, enjoy this while it lasts. If history's any teacher, Metallica will start flagging once the next musical trend beats metal back into the underground. Here's to hoping Metallica can stick around here for a while before finding bold new ways to repeatedly keep jumping the shark.
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