As someone who bought "Master of Puppets" on cassette when it came out 38 years ago, you might think my expectations are high for their 11th album. The truth is I am pretty indifferent. It would be nice if they put out an album that kicked ass, but I am not about to get my hopes up for that as I have had to endure 5 albums that were disappointments. This puts them at 5 to 5 in terms of albums that rocked vs albums that range from Luke-warm to outright sucked so this is a tiebreaker. The opening track seemed like they were trying to dial their sound back in so I gave it another listen with headphones, and this is the best they have sounded in some time. To you average Joe who listens to rock radio, Metallica seems like metal, after all they have metal in their name. To an avid metalhead, not so much, the last album I reviewed was Cattle Decapitation if you need a point of reference. The title track that opens the album is metal. It has aggression to it even if it lacks the fire it had in 1986, is at least going at it as hard as they did on the "Black Album". In fact, consciously try harder to remember who they were, which I can respect.
By the punches leading into the second song, I am beginning to think this will be an album that pleases the average Metallica fan. If they are a hard-core fan of the band who likes all ten of their last album's that is also going to be a very low bar. They emulate their past pretty hard, but it still works. "Screaming Suicide" feels more like up-tempo rock than metal to my ears but is a decent enough song. They remember who they were to the point of recycling as "Sleepwalk My Life Away" feels almost too much like "Enter Sandman" . Lyrically they are even similar. The chorus to the song pretty much saves it from being a carbon copy. The more deliberate stomp to "You Must Burn!" works well even if the lyrics feel dialed in. "Lux Aeturna" did not wow me when it first came out and I am not any more impressed with it now. It feels more like Motley Crue riff wise. "Crown of Barbed Wire' is pound for pound a better song, even though it is not the band at their most inspired.
"Chasing Light' works for me and feels like a good balance of what I want from the band in 2023. The guitar solos on this album are not game changing or going to blow anyone's mind, but they work. "If Darkness Had a Son" is about the most Metallica sounding thing they have done since "the Black Album" but it is also very "Sad But True" . "Too Far Gone" is not the first time it has felt weird for these guys to crank out a riff that sounds like Megadeth, it might have been the last album where I heard it and it was weird then too. I think they feel this sounds more like "Kill'em All". What would sound more like old Metallica is if the bass was more present in the mix. "Room of Mirrors" feels both too rock n roll and in terms of tempo rushed. Trying to thrash , rather than it being the natural flow of the song. If that is the worst offense, the we have heard these guys do plenty worse.
The last song is a sprawling 11 minutes. It moves at a slower more powerful pace. Not as dark as "the Thing That Should Not Be", but a mood I can relate to more than some of these jock jams. James' voice has come a long way and at almost 60 has held up pretty well. Getting sober helped, I am sure. Five minutes in things get jammy. They get props for skipping the power ballads, so, understandably, things get more melodic in a Tool-like breakdown. Though at 11 minutes they do not go into any Iron Maiden-like prog aside from a few guitar harmonies here and there. Overall this is better than I expected going into it, but I gotta round it down to a 9, as some recycling and clock are punching, to keep it from being perfect, if you are a Metallica fan and wish the "Black Album' was more metal and power ballad free then this album is for you.
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