Metallica

I know it’s just one more review about an overviewed album, but I can’t hide my annoyance about the way that metalheads polarize their opinions; I mean, I agree that everyone is free to speak what’s in their minds and (is a cliché, I know) each one of us has his own opinion, but there are many ways to tell them to others, I think. It’s easy to be destructive by saying everyone that Metallica sold out with this album and songs became so shitty and this is no fucking metal, but a loss of integrity and so on and so on. It’s almost trendy to say “I don’t like Metallica” and things like “if you’re a genuine metalhead, you’re only allowed to listen to Metallica until “…And Justice for All”. Bullshit. That’s just a deceptive argument to say “Hey! I know what heavy metal is and you don’t know shit! They don’t sound like heavy anymore. They shouldn’t have innovated”. These are the same guys who say that Slayer or Cathedral is bad just because it’s “always the same”. Feel free to say you hate Metallica and this album, but stop trying to change others’ minds. I bet most of you have jumped with “Enter Sandman” and headbanged with “Sad But True”. I was 11 years old when I heard “Enter Sandman” for the first time and it was enough to set me into heavy tones: first “Metallica”, shortly “Ride the Lightning”, “Master of Puppets”, Pantera, Iron Maiden and so on…

This is only my opinion:

Honestly I don’t know why so many people find this album Metallishit number one; we are in front of a monster which committed a “crime” by exposing heavy music to the world and in spite of whatever you think, I feel it’s a thing good that heavy metal didn’t remain always underground.
The “Metallica” album is not the traditional thrash bay area sound, alright, but it’s still heavy metal with remarkable solos, as well as massive and catchy riffs and, most of all, songs that make us feel good and became, nowadays, true classics.
It is the work that allowed Metallica to step into the rank of those bands (and I’m not talking about metal bands exclusively) who have nothing to prove to anyone and culminates a meteoric progress that probably any metal band ever had (let’s see if Mastodon can do it…).
At a first listening, you can easily catch some impressions about the whole album such as James “master of the riffs” Hetfield: the legendary one from “Enter Sandman” or heavy ones like “Sad But True” (somehow recovered in “Some Kind of Monster”) and “Of Wolf and Man”. James shows also a fine vocal display that I would define as transition vocals, very well supported by the finest production ever, though. Lars shows us decent drums. He may not be the most talented drummer, I must admit, but what he lacks in technique is left behind by a firm pulse which never lets the music down (a little bit like that Dave McClain from Machine Head acquired through the years). Lars has interesting peaks in this album that I would recommend like “Don’t Tread on Me”, “The God That Failed” and “My Friend of Misery”; Kirk’s performance is amazing, once he gets, in this album, many of the best solos heard during Metallica’s career. To finish, I’d like to enhance a detail you may not notice, but I think it was a great choice to put the songs in that order. Unfortunately, I don’t like the fact that too many songs fade out at the end.

Talking about the “elements”, talking about the music, this album is a tour de force (kill me). Metallica derives from an impure bay area sound (they’ve always been one step ahead for the fans or one step behind for the haters of the band) into a sophisticated and catchy heavy metal. I feel the anger is still there, but somehow refined. It is a landmark for all the reasons: as I said before, the classics that still remain, the millions sold (either if it’s a good or a bad sign), the tour… I would call it a drastic paradigm shift, I guess. If they had the will or the art to make it like Iron Maiden, people would noticed and admired it; the whole Maiden career is a paradigm shift (a very good one); instead, Metallica’s life is fragmented and maybe they didn’t have the ability to deal with a good management of their sound as time went by, but who knows, maybe they didn’t care for it?

I never wanted this to be a boring song by song review, but let me detach a few moments that still send “the shivers up and down my spine”:

“The Unforgiven” is not a ballad or a sweet kind of song. This is a doomy dragged masterpiece. It starts off with an addicting intro with a great acoustic support by Hetfield. Then he strikes with some hard chords and the way he sings is awesome! The chorus is mellow but always conveying a sad tone. When the main body of the song stops, it’s time to hear one of the most outstanding solos I know from Kirk. And it hauls to the end in the same melodic sad mood. “The God That Failed” is huge! One of my favourite ever. The heavy punishing atmosphere they create is almost unique. Kirk’s solo is faultless, then it stops, the rhythm beats you again and Kirk comes back. After the little pause (when you hear a distant “hey!”) the song ends in the best possible way (just listen to the last 20 seconds).

Talking again about details (but in life is all about details, right?), you can catch, here and there, a glimpse of the finest stuff heavy metal has to offer, like the way they worked the overlapping of guitars and vocals in “Wherever I May Roam” (the “and my ties are severed clean…”;”anywhere I roam…” part) or the technique they chose in combining guitars the way they did after a hypnotizing soft part in “My Friend of Misery”.

The boys took a great shot here. Just let this all flow. But hey…it’s only my opinion!