EchoBrain
Echobrain

THE REVIEW

Echobrain is an album that pisses me off.

If it had been released four or five years earlier, music critics would have hailed it as a masterpiece.

The birth of this band coincided with the (almost) death of another important entity: the Metallica.

At the end of the nineties, indeed, bassist Jason Newsted wanted to do something else, and despite the decade spent amid various successes and some falls, the weight of still being treated as a newcomer (by James and Lars) was present.

On the occasion of the 1995 Super Bowl, he hosted a party at home. On this occasion, he met the then sixteen-year-old drummer Brian Sagrafena, with whom an artistic partnership was born immediately.

When guitarist and singer Dylan Donkin joined the duo, the synergy became even more constructive.

Pressures from the Metallica made the bassist leave the main band forever in 2000.

Hetfield said about the Echobrain during an interview:

Side projects by members of a band ruin the dynamics of our work. What's he planning to do with this new group? Go on tour? This undoubtedly takes energy away from Metallica.

Kirk Hammett nevertheless has a better relationship with Jason, and helped him on some occasions during the recordings for the album.

It is important to state that this album has nothing to do with heavy metal; it consists of ten tracks balancing between honest pop rock and some well-chosen stylistic innovations with particular echoes of the English modus operandi, strangely.

The most representative tracks in my opinion are Adrift and Ghosts; the first more dynamic and Beatles-like and the second with a more refined mood. Even though I hate making comparisons, I have to admit that fans of Queens Of The Stone Age and Soundgarden will in my opinion especially love Echobrain.

A few years later Newsted, as usual, moved on by dedicating himself to his self-titled thrash metal project and then taking a long break from the music world.

The most purist metalheads have always disapproved of this kind of departure from their world, but a true musician like Newsted, who looks around from all angles and is not afraid to divert his gaze from his background, risked offering a work that conveys many more sensations compared to the usual demonic screams.