Out now: Metallica's Death Magnetic
- Sep 15, 2008
With the X-Files franchise riding a revival of sorts it re-awakens the speculation of life on other planets and little green martians with big elbows. I can't help being suckered into the idea of extra-terrestrial life, but I refuse to entertain the thought of bogey-coloured midgets with enlarged arm joints. If there are indeed folk out there I reckon they're exactly like you and I, living on an identikit Earth, and dosed to the tits on a popular culture parallel to ours. However, what passes for popular there is - like themselves - out of this world.
In space, their Metallica have been the one to beat for the past decade. 'Load', 'ReLoad' and 'S&M' courted brand new critical highs, and the band's meteoric rise in importance was celebrated by the free dissemination of their work on the internet - much to Lars Ulrich's pleasure. 'St. Anger' went platinum a billion times and the 'Some Kind of Monster' flick did anything but display Metallica as whinging wotsits. Outer space domination was theirs, though that all went arse over tit this year when they decided to return to a pre-'Load' era. Thankfully for our own Metallica this translates to a turn in good fortune.
So the word is out: Metallica have returned to their hairier roots. The shredding solos, the proper drums, the big instrumentals and the heavy thrashings stain 'Death Magnetic' as it did the first four records. However, this is less a case of money for old rope (which was no bad thing, hairy metallers love a good piece of old rope) and more a break for freedom. Be it the southern blues, Bob Rock or whatever it was holding them back, they've absolutely bloody legged it and made a lot of old skool racket on the way.
A heartbeat opens the album, mimicking the chest activity of your frantically hopeful Metallica fan, before blowing like Apocalypse Now all the way til the appropriately-titled closer 'My Apocalypse'. Sufficed to say, the fan worry gets doused in petrol and set aflame - right along with your eardrums. You'll walk away from this record wanting to buy yourself new decibels; 'The Judas Kiss' alludes to a severe aural battering by dragging in 'Suicide & Redemption' at such a low volume you're checking your ears for blood.
There are a couple of links to 'The Black Album' littered around - the most obvious being 'The Unforgiven III'. Sequels are often unnecessary (don't get me started on that X-Files film) but trilogies always have the eyes rolling back to the wrong parts of the skull. In print 'The Unforgiven III' does just that, but the song itself lends new levels of mood, calm and darkness to both the track's series and 'Death Magnetic'. A pretty essential addition, also for those ears.
'Death Magnetic' has Metallica riding the lightning once again, however the outer space Metallica don't have Scotland's Glasvegas pulling the plug on things. The palms at Mercury Records got a bit sweaty this week and pushed the UK release date of 'Death Magnetic' ahead of today's worldwide release, creating a near-comical battle of indie versus metal in the musical blogosphere. In all dramatic-ness, both bands are out to prove a heck of a lot this week - Glasvegas are making a mark, whereas Metallica are trying to reclaim theirs. Metallica arguably need this more, and to win would really be justice for all.
