Metallica
Death Magnetic

THE REVIEW

Many reviews have already been written about this new Metallica album, but I want to share my opinion too.

Many have said that you couldn't fall lower than St. Anger, and indeed, I couldn't agree more, but many have explicitly stated that The Four Horsemen are now dead and that only the '80s remain of them. This latter statement is absolutely not true; this new album marks a very radical departure from "Load," "ReLoad," and especially from that indefinite and undefinable "NU thing" called "St. Anger." In fact, the new album represents the long-awaited and unexpected return to Thrash for The Four Horsemen. It's not possible to say that it is pure Thrash since productions have changed a lot, but the rediscovered sound is very close to that of the '80s. But now let's analyze the work in a more appropriate way.

The sound is very Thrash, very similar to that adopted by Exodus in their splendid album "The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A," especially in the tracks "Children of a Worthless God" and "The Atrocity Exhibition". In my opinion, it's not entirely correct to call it Thrash, but rather its more modern and melodic derivative, a more evolved sound (but not necessarily better), and I won't waste words inserting the names of derivative genres since I don't like using overly specific labels at all.

Starting from the first track That Was Just Your Life, you start to smile because you realize that Metallica seems to be back. The song is very fast, fired up, and I've never heard James so fast in his singing. The chorus is fantastic, catchy, and solid, and when Hammett's solo starts, I can't believe it, there are solos, and they are good! Then it moves to The End Of The Line with a powerful riff, the pace is pressing, and the chorus is catchy. However, a song that convinced me less was "Broken, Beat & Scarred", which, although catchy, I find bare and repetitive, the solo is good; one of the songs that certainly struck me is the album's ballad "The Day That Never Comes", which, besides being catchy, is musically and organically perfect with one of the most beautiful solos on the album, melodic and technical at the same time, the lyrics and the chorus are also beautiful. The fifth, possibly the best song on the album, "All Nightmare Long" is intense, violent, fast but also enjoyable, and catchy. The chorus is memorable, and the most captivating riff they could compose, highly distorted guitars, blinding solo, Kirk Hammett is enlightened. Next is "Cyanide," very catchy with a nice solo, pleasant but too redundant in some moments. Now it's time to make a comment on "The Unforgiven III", it's hard to do so especially after listening to the fantastic first chapter of the saga. The intro is on piano, and honestly, they could have spared it. It might be catchy, but if you notice, it's composed of the usual three notes that follow each other for 1 and a half minutes before giving way to the guitars, and from this point the song is more interesting. It's very different from the other "Unforgivens," but it's certainly better than chapter two, the intro is skippable. "The Judas Kiss" is not bad at all and has a powerful riff and a catchy chorus, technically impressive solo.

Track number 9 is entirely instrumental, lasts almost 10 minutes, and is rich, it's "Suicide and Redemption", beautiful, beautiful but too many riffs are pasted one on top of the other, they could have been used for example to craft other songs in the future. The album concludes with "My Apocalypse" from which the album's name "Death Magnetic" is derived and thus it is somehow the title track, it's truly heavy and thundering, the technical solo and catchy riff are nice, the chorus isn't bad, but I find the lyrics too violent, like in track 3.

In summary, a record that makes us understand that Metallica haven't come back, they've always been here! In some parts, I find the instrumental section excessively heavy, somewhat verbose, the percussions are at slightly too high volume levels and some lyrics excessively violent, but as already specified in the track descriptions, the good qualities of this band have been brought out!

Waiting for the day... the day that never comes.

but for the Four, the day has arrived... the day of redemption!