REVIEW: Death Magnet by Metallica

Metallica has long been a stable of the “metal” of hard-core rock genre, depending on how you define either, and it is true that many who listen to metal or harder music got their start listening to Metallica. Yet recently their albums have become the laughingstock of the serious musical community. Their musical quality and abilities have slipped and have been putting out albums largely lauded as shit. But with this new album, it would all change, they would turn their nu-metal train around and give us an album more like “...And Justice for All,” rather than “Re-Load.” But they failed. In attempting to make a sweeping, heavy, intense record, they fall miles short, leaving us with little over an hour of boring drudgery, baffling any listener into wondering why they ever enjoyed Metallica in the first place.
The first thing that strikes the listener when this album is played is the drumming. Its is absolutely atrocious. The sloppy playing, poor timing and the terrible mix that lays the drum tracks on top of everything else simply ruin the experience. For example the first track, “That Was Just Your Life,” starts out relatively decent, showing promise with the guitar intro, until Lars starts bashing away like an angry toddler, drowning out not only the rest of the band, but any hopes for a decent album. Next we are forced to turn to James Hetfield. I don’t know what he has done over these last years but he has lost all semblance of a singing voice. Any subtly of range he had is not degraded to single-tone grunting, belting the poorly-written lyrics, (Do I really need to know that “love is a four letter word,” over and over again? I think not.) into the microphone rendering himself nearly incomprehensible. However, Kirk and James have at least retained their guitar chops, laying down some very decent solos and licks from time time time. They are however, few and far between. It also seems that in writing this album, it was decided that only one riff per song was needed. This is clearly not the case. Hearing their one riff being punded over and over for 7 minutes is like being hit in the temple with a ball-peen hammer. The last thing that seems to be a glaring failure of judgment is the bass. namely the lack thereof. There is no pounding bass driving the songs forwards, no interesting licks to pull you back in after a solo, basically the surprising lack of bass is another nail in Death Magnet’s Coffin.

The Verdict!
Download, listen to once or twice and then, never again. Hardly worth your time.