Lou Reed and Metallica
Lulu

THE REVIEW

Lou Reed and Metallica: how much bullshit we'll hear around. This album will not be ideologically digestible for many people: decrepit professors and renowned philologists of rock history, nostalgic metalheads stuck 25 years in the past, depressed and insipid rejects from the prehistoric era of rock, when Lou Reed was doing tricks, will all be disturbed.

How much chatter we'll hear, when all it would take is to take this album in hand, listen to it, and silence the bovine pedantry instincts that ruin music, which is immediacy, epidermis and as such doesn't want to be confined in any damn ideology!!!

The notes start heavy and solemn, the music proceeds in an underground manner. On this apocalyptic melody, the voice of Lou Reed is grafted, an implacable rapped litany in a sort of unusual and fascinating union. It’s The View, the single extracted from this long and tormented work between Metallica and Lou Reed. We have never seen or heard Metallica in philosophical-existentialist form, and a Lou Reed so metallic we hadn't remembered since the times of "Sister Ray". Lulu is not metal, let’s clarify this: it is sick and tormented rock, nihilistic and dark, prophetic and hallucinated. In metal, one rarely comes across such ambitious discourses. Just take the third track: Pumping Blood, an absolute masterpiece, to understand what we’re talking about. There's no linearity in the narration, but under a metallic and alienating cloak unfolds the hallucinated narrative of seventy-year-old Lou Reed. An unstoppable crescendo, pulling you into a vortex of spiritual devastation, into a void where Lou Reed’s visions and the acidic and apocalyptic sounds of the guitars draw you into this spiral of self-destruction. It’s impossible not to go back in time to "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground, impossible to remain impassive in front of such sublime narrative force, capable of evoking the worst iconoclasm in music history.

A very long work, this Lulu, a long and difficult journey into Lou Reed’s nihilistic vision, involving Metallica in this journey to the underworld. “Mistress Dead” is another hallucinated and sick route. The melody is obsessive and dark and Lou Reed’s voice punctuates the total thinning of the air. There’s no light or air in this track. Splendid execution in a Velvet-like style, with Metallica in great shape hitting hard. Except for the introductory track “Brandenburg Gate”, the first part of the album is truly superb, an unstoppable journey towards this existentialist pandemonium. Impossible not to think of “Berlin” and the Velvet Underground, perfectly blended with the sounds of Metallica. “Iced Honey” is the only track on the album that has the flavor and structure of a rock ballad, beautiful and solid, very reminiscent of the melodies of “Ecstasy”. A breath of oxygen in an ocean of torment. “Frustration” is another masterpiece, made of paranoia and rabid restarts. Then there’s “Little Dog”, another splendid track, in which Lou Reed’s singing finds space among muted guitars, in a very fascinating sonic scenario. Then there’s “Junior Dad”, perhaps a bit prolix but splendid chapter, this time in full Metallica style of the last decade.

Let’s sum up: "Lulu" is a difficult work open to various interpretations. Surely this work has its own soul: that of Lou Reed, tormented and underground, and that of Metallica, dirty and robust. A well-achieved synthesis. Enjoy listening and long live Lou Reed. Even metal has a soul. It's that of this seventy-year-old. But did he really have seventy years?